
Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM [video] - jtaft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4
======
lathiat
I'm loving this series from ARS, another great one about Crash Bandicoot where
apparently they needed extra RAM so selectively overwrote the sony libraries
in RAM with their own data, by experimenting which areas were needed on
whether it crashed or not.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o)

~~~
jacobush
Wow, that's so crazy and wonderful. And yet very okay, since it wasn't like
there would be any other application running. :)

If I recall correctly, (original) XBOX games would often go the the next level
of whatever game by just loading a new EXE and start over from scratch, rather
than bothering with some kind of "level loading and init" code.

~~~
Insanity
guess that could make sense in a way. Dump all 'state' to disk, start new exe
that begins by reading that state, and go from there.

~~~
akx
Reminds me of how Emacs is built, with a `temacs` executable whose state is
dumped to generate `emacs` which boots faster...
[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Bu...](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Building-
Emacs.html)

------
laurieg
Hearing about Myst and CD-ROMs reminds me of my trouble with the sequel,
Riven:

Riven came on multiple CDs. When you moved from area to area you had to swap
the discs in your PC. I got part way through the game and it said "Please
insert disc 5". I couldn't see any disc 5 and wondered if this was some kind
of clever, 4th wall breaking puzzle.

Well, turns out the jewel case would open up an extra door and the 5th disc
was there. It wasn't supposed to be a puzzle, it was just unexpected...

~~~
coldpie
The shift from Myst to Riven and the following sequels is really interesting.
Myst really clicked with me, while I was never able to get into the later
titles, Riven included. I know the dev team had major changes between every
title, so I suppose it's not surprising that they don't gel together very
well. I wonder if anyone's done a deep dive comparing the first two titles'
gameplay philosophies and technical and development differences.

Certainly the 5 CD release was itself a stumbling block. It penalized
exploring the island freely, which has some bad gameplay effects. When you're
stuck on a puzzle in a Disc 2 area, should you keep exploring that area, or is
it possible the clue you need is on some other disc? Which one? Are you
willing to put up with the hassle? It wouldn't be so bad if each area was
obviously self-contained, as they were in Myst, but in Riven they tried to
change from a collection of puzzle boxes into a real world where the "puzzles"
were diegetic. So there aren't really discrete "areas" anymore, or even puzzle
themes restricted to an area. The clue you need may well be anywhere, which in
combination with the disc swapping, makes finding clues into a huge chore
instead of a delightful exploration.

And the biggest shame is it was built on very crappy technology (Quicktime)
that even back in the day was held together with spit and string. For the
better part of two decades, it was basically unplayable on any modern PC
without major effort. So I haven't gone back to replay it since the original
5-disc release in the 90s. They did a re-release a year or two ago, which I
guess is probably worth a shot, but my memories of Riven are just so soured by
my experience. Meanwhile Myst holds a special place as a fun, quick little
puzzle game.

~~~
Rounin
I remember working around Riven's disk swapping problem by mounting all of the
disks at once in five virtual CD-ROMs. To prevent audio and video crashes, the
entire game had to run on one single CPU core. Finally, there was a part when
some buttons had to be clicked, but the game only occasionally captured the
mouse presses. So I made a button mashing script to work around that.

Nowadays, though, the game runs fine in ScummVM. It's amazing how many games
they've saved over the years. Myst III runs in a similar project called
ResidualVM.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I wasn’t aware you could play Myst and Riven today in a VM! Would you happen
to have a link you’d recommend?

~~~
Operyl
[https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Myst_series](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Myst_series)

[https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=User_Manual/Quick_S...](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=User_Manual/Quick_Start#2.2_Installing_ScummVM)

~~~
WorldMaker
Also, I believe if your copies of Myst or Riven are up-to-date from Steam or
GOG (or the recent collector's edition that was the referenced Kickstarter
upthread), they'll use the ScummVM engine under the hood rather than the
original engine today.

------
sp332
Transcript: [https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2020/01/Myst_...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2020/01/Myst_Transcript.txt)

Much longer (1 hour 47 minutes) cut of this interview:
[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/an-extended-
interview...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/an-extended-interview-
with-atrus-himself-myst-creator-rand-miller/)

~~~
jeffhuys
Weird, that transcript link gives a "Cannot decode raw data" error in Safari,
and just doesn't load in Chromium. Well, `curl` it is!

~~~
ChrisSD
Weird. It's just a plain .txt file. There isn't a HTTP Content-Type though,
which might be what's tripping some browsers up.

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amatecha
Coincidental timing - a bunch of people online just did a weekend game jam
using HyperCard (the same product used to create Myst and other Cyan games):
[https://cancel.fm/hyperjam/](https://cancel.fm/hyperjam/)

I didn't get a chance to participate myself, but you can see all the stacks
everyone made at [https://itch.io/jam/merveilles-
hyperjam](https://itch.io/jam/merveilles-hyperjam)

------
earthtourist
I've really enjoyed this series. I do wish they just told stories about
developing their games without the contrived framing of every one as a "near
death" story. It's just unnecessary and rings pretty false in most cases. It
feels a bit like tricking non-technical people as well.

Despite that flaw, I do like it. I hope they keep em coming.

~~~
jerf
"I do wish they just told stories about developing their games without the
contrived framing of every one as a "near death" story."

Unfortunately, the gaming industry really _does_ seem to work on a model where
darned near every major game is a near-death experience for the company in
question. It remains fairly common even today for relatively large companies
to essentially be brought down by one bad release, resulting in them getting
acquired by EA. If you look out at the studio landscape over history, it is
still very, very frothy. There aren't really that many studios that have been
around for even five or ten years; most of the names that will leap to mind
are now actually particular name brands of conglomerates.

I think it's a real thing to a large degree, not a contrived framing.

(I would credit this to the way that games have been getting exponentially
more expensive over time; in such an environment, the next game is going to
naturally take most of your money, even if your previous game was a wild
success. I think we're now about in the middle of that no longer being true.
We're not done yet; AAA games are still trying to slug it out on the
exponential curve, but more and more we're seeing successful games made at an
earlier plateau of cost, including the entire output of companies like
Nintendo.)

~~~
mywittyname
This makes sense, old school game development required paying (relatively
high) salaries for years before maybe getting a payday. It would be
difficult/impossible for any company to keep 5 years of salaries in savings to
mitigate the risk of your next title failing.

Yeah, this ignores the role publishers play, but I doubt a publisher is going
to give a relatively new studio too many opportunity. You're game needs to
make money if you want another shot.

------
neom
There is a fun review of the game from Computing Gaming World 1993 here:
[http://cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/cgw_113.pdf](http://cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/cgw_113.pdf)

I never completed Myst, it was such a frustrating game. Granted I must have
been 10 or 11 when I played it, I've thought a few times about going and
playing it as an adult but I still have PTSD from the frustration it caused
me.

~~~
LeoPanthera
The reward for (let's be honest) suffering through Myst is that you get to
play the absolute joy of a game that is Riven, possibly the finest
exploration/discovery/puzzle game ever created by humans. I love it really
quite a lot.

~~~
kabdib
I didn't get very far with Myst.

I really enjoyed Riven, however. Fantastic game. Right up until the
penultimate puzzle, and it's a doozy that basically requires you to have paid
careful attention to things along the way (my notes were mostly sufficient),
and to not be red-green colorblind (wups, I am genetically screwed).

I wrote in to support, and actually got a refund on the game.

~~~
lb1lf
-I had the same issue, after cursing my bad luck I eventually got around to using a couple of coloured cellofan candy wrappers as colour filters. :)

------
jonas21
This is part of a great series of interviews with the developers of some of
the most influential games in history.

Two of my favorites are Andy Gavin on Crash Bandicoot:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o)

and Sid Meier on Civilization:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwUM33VJRbY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwUM33VJRbY)

~~~
monocasa
A new one released today on Homeworld.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q38556KTTR0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q38556KTTR0)

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Imnimo
He mentions Lunar Lander as one of the things that got him into computer
games. There's a lot of interesting information from the creator of Lunar
Lander here:

[https://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~storer/LunarLander/LunarLander....](https://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~storer/LunarLander/LunarLander.html)

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ngcc_hk
I thought what he refer to might be called sub-second response time which is
impossible to do for wide area network under cics.

