The Deforestation of Myst
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- Over the years, Cyan has re-imagined its flagship game several times. While I am surely in favor of this, I fear one of the key elements of the original magic has been forgotten.
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#TreesPlease #UnlockTheMystTreesOfMyst
Thanks for pointing this out.
Hundreds of trees. :) (Stay awesome)
I hope some people at Cyan see this and reconsider their life choices
I definitely agree that some aspects of Myst island's original visual design have been sadly left behind as its been remade so many times. But to play devil's advocate: In building Myst for VR, it probably becomes more necessary than ever to have the trees exist at a realistic scale. The tiny pencil thin trees of the original game are mostly convincing when seen in slideshow format. But if you're in VR walking up to them and seeing their physical scale with two eyes and depth perception, the illusion probably completely breaks down.
That said, there's another clear solution to that problem, and it's to just make Myst island bigger! You can have a nice big dense forest if the island just has more area to work with. And that's the kind of thing it would have been cool to see in a real "reimagining" of Myst.
I was afraid to say it because I wasn't sure, but the original Myst Island does look a bit larger to me than any other version, especially in the forest area. I'm definitely a proponent for that.
While I don't know the logistics of how to adjust for VR, I figure there's at least a middle ground that can be achieved in tree size and especially density. Some real life trees really are thin, after all.
I for one would be in favor of upscaling Myst Island to the size of Riven's Book Island or Exile's J'nanin.
@@shadyparadox Some forests are densely packed with thin trees, and other trees have been split off at the trunk.
Trees grow where they want, and a forest is no exception!
Hmm, take the forests in the Appalachian Mountain Range or the Rocky Mountain Range, and it would be that densely packed in the original Myst instead of this sparse patch of trees. I personally think Cyan's going for logistics over beauty, and the island's size reflects that.
I agree with this. Myst was small, trying to act like a larger real place. It's been remade as if it was always supposed to be tiny.
"Hundreds of trees."
For real, I do agree that not always knowing where you are exactly adds to the experience.
Now this was fascinating! I never realized the re-releases of Myst decreased the amount of trees until you pointed it out. This was really entertaining as a result!
Growing up in Northern CA and many many camping trips, I didn't realize that either. Maybe that's one of the reasons I loved that game so much, all the beautiful redwoods. I had a big redwood tree out my bedroom window on the 3rd floor, almost like being in a treehouse
It's so dense, every frame has something going on.
"i may have gone too far in a few places"
And it rhymes.
MYST has been remade plenty of times. I want to see a remaster of Riven or Exile.
A remake of Riven is coming. There was a fan project called Starry Expanse which was working on an unofficial full 3D recreation of Riven, and Cyan has brought the team onboard to make it an official project.
I think the series is coming to the switch also
You got half yo wish : )
"Unreal" Riven coming in two weeks!
@@filouk2 sauce?
This is the kind of weirdly specific content I like to see
Myst Island when viewed from above in the cover art looks quite a bit like some kind of condensed illustrated map that's not quite to scale, where things are exaggerated to better show them, like when landmarks are drawn large on tourist maps. But when you play the game, between the fixed views where you can't quite tell how far you've moved, and features like the mountain and the dense forest which visually isolate different areas from one another, make it feel like the island is quite a bit bigger than it actually is. The heavy mist that surrounds the island also contributes to a sense of scale, as one of the key visual cues we use for far distant depth perception is haze or mist, the mountain looks huge because it's shrouded in mist and we can't move side to side to see that it's actually close.
If we think about the path from the library to the log cabin, you go down the path past the fountain, down the trail, continue further down the trail, then take a left where the trail splits, then down that trail is the cabin. That's quite a hike. But in realtime 3D you become acutely aware that it's only a few steps. The island needs to be made bigger in realtime, but it actually looks like the entire island has been shrinking instead.
spot on. the original each part feels like a different isolated part of the island, the new one looks like a $5 game with just random puzzles stuffed together on one little island, where you can see them all from anywhere. no getting lost, no thinking 'which way do i go'
I didn't realise that the number of trees has considerably decrease over the games. The trees does give the impression that the island is quite big, a world inside another world, and it could be nice to get kinda lost/explore the huge forest. #BringBackTheTreesInMyst.
Anyway, what do you think Cyan does with the trees once chopped? Do they work with Gehn and give him the trees, so he can continue to expriment in the making of a working linking book, as Gehn has already done some deforestation in Riven. Maybe Achenar, the hoough master, would agree with our cause, and could potentially help us convince Cyan to put back the trees.
Joking and speculation aside, have a good day/night, and have a bonus imaginary hoough emote ( and a hundred trees).
It's likely the trees are gone because Achenar headbutted them and knocked them over.
A shopping mall. That was some good humor I wasn't expecting.
Shopping mall? More like chopping mall with all these trees that had to die.
Major props for referencing Catherine’s writing style 😎 Get this man some trees, STAT!
Please let's get this video to the developers! #savethetrees #oratleastmakethemfeelguiltyaboutit
"Trees are the key to all of this." - Leorge Gucas
Hundreds of trees please!
I prefer the surreal aesthetic of the original game. Like how the water is green and it looks like it’s still and vibrating. And the ground looks like turf and clay from another world
"Hundreds of trees-"
Thanks for this! I grew up near forests similar to original Myst and thought my memory was faulty when I booted up later iterations. This video (and ambient whooshing of wind in the trees) brought back some good memories.
Interesting analysis of the differences of an aspect I've never really noticed before. It is fascinating how the original Myst used the consistent lighting (no day/night cycle) to maintain better atmosphere in each location. This is true on most of the ages, but especially Stoneship in my view, which is so unnecessarily dark and stormy in RealMyst Masterpiece Edition, to the point where it's really hard to see when you're standing outside. It was always such a calm, overcast age, not a tumultuous one. Perhaps that could be amended with some kind of 'weather cycle' too.
The Starry Expanse developers talked about this too once, mentioning the Sunners on their rock as an example of an aspect that would be hard to keep consistent at different times of day. The sunlight and weather on each age is vitally important, so while shifting that can be cool to see, it can also affect the way players interpret what they're seeing in each area.
One note though, Myst wasn't written by Catherine, but by Anna, Atrus' grandmother, whose grave ironically sits right by the rock wall on the back of the tree elevator in both RealMyst versions (wonder if that element will be retained in the VR version, since Rime apparently won't be in at launch).
My memory was that it was Catherine, so I glanced at the wiki page and since it said "Catherine and Ti'ana", I didn't spend any more time on it. So I wouldn't know if one had greater influence than the other.
@@shadyparadox I actually checked the book to remind myself, and it's Atrus' initial assumption that it's Catherine's age, but later he realises Anna was the true writer:
"I should have known at once that Myst was not Catherine's. But how was I to know otherwise? I had
thought Anna lost."
Though, it doesn't make much difference to this video's point or the actual Myst seen in the game, which was rather more thrown together for gameplay reasons that by any character based design like, say, Riven.
Now that you mention it, it sounds remotely familiar. I read a couple of the books many years ago, but I'm not a good fiction reader so I didn't absorb it very well.
Ah well. I try to avoid inaccuracies in my videos but fortunately as you said it's not central to the issue.
There was a gravestone in the VR version, but the name was written in D’ni, which I thought was a neat touch.
@@shadyparadox it makes sense that an age might not have a night cycle at all or a really long day cycle.
The island felt bigger in 1993 and not just due to forest. It was our experiences in preceding games, that made Myst's worlds seem epic then and small now looking back. We today are used to far larger settings made possible by better tech. By the way, got to say I am very happy Riven is finally getting a remake. Hope cyan does not mess that up.
No wonder I didn't feel at home in Real Myst. It felt wrong. A lot felt wrong.
As one of the biggest fan, Myst on Quest 2 is the best thing that happened in my life. The feeling of standing close the rocket is amazing, it is huge 100feet long. Taking the weird electric train is also quite impressive. I just like to sit on the beach near the clock and enjoy being there for real.
Kind of like you said, I think the reason the trees are less is because of the ability to free-roam now. Look again at that log cabin image of the original Myst. Even if game performance because of graphics was not an issue, a player trying to walk around in there would be hitting tree after tree, barrier after barrier, and would get really annoying to them. I also have a feeling that trying to program the game perfectly with that many trees so the player doesn't accidentally get trapped somehow would probably be a nightmare.
I see what you're saying. It might take a few rounds of play testing to get it right, but I'm sure eventually you can determine whether the player should be able to walk in the middle of the trees, or if there should be a wall of clipping that keeps them on the trail.
I prefer the dense forest of the original as well. However, there is some optical trickery going on, where you see a tree like that and imagine it bigger than it actually is. Those trees are actually comically short and would look awkward in a 3d version. So I understand why the switch to 3d did what it did.
However, since they already modified many things for VR, I would have liked to see the scale of the island increased so they were able to more densely populate it with trees. Give us that feeling of the original back. It's SO SMALL in VR and you can really feel that in a way you couldn't in the slideshow version.
Oh well, I still loved the VR version. It is great for what it does, and the 1993 version is a classic that will always have a soft spot in my heart.
Good analysis. I think similar things could be said about the erosion of the mood in Stoneship over the versions.
For what it's worth, realMyst's marketing on the box said "You can pick your own path through the forest", like they were trying to make it more open and let you move around the space more, whereas the original put you on fixed paths. I think you're probably right that it could have been for technical reasons, and they just used that as an excuse.
It would be very nice to have "hundreds of trees" back in the VR version.
Wow. Thanks for all the hard work that must have been to put together. Really fine and I too hope cyan is paying attention. I read about the game and the brothers in Wired Magazine and went out and bought a computer just to play it. Upgrade from an Osborne. VR version just hasnt had the same impact. Now, thanks to you, I know one of the reasons why.
Assuming your doing a Myst 4 stream tonight, I feel this will be good discussion topic.
There something very bizarre about dozens of remakes of the original game, idk, can't get my head around it. The original game was made using very to none prior 3D experience, with no point of reference to and just with very limiting hardware. Even though 2020 version actually looks good, you can kinda see that overall design and development decisions are almost 30 (!!!) years old. Not to say that RM:ME is really a mess on all fairness. Considering that it was developed in 2014 it really lokks cheap.
P.S. By the way, what's with that next "myst" game?
This is why we need the Green New Deal.
You're joking, right? $90 trillion that we don't have? That much money doesn't exist on the entire earth, using all currencies combined. If you stole ALL the wealth from the top 30% wealthiest people on the planet, it still wouldn't be enough to pay for a program that has nothing to do with the environment, but everything to do with control. No thank you. I'll keep eating my hamburgers as often as I want and driving my cars (even though I don't personally drive). I don't need or want your stupid electric cars. They're too slow and need charging way too often.
@@DavidRay39 How dare you steal Greta's dreams and childhood? If we don't question and stop the erosion proces in videogames, what chance do we have to stop it in real life?
I think Shady should chain his pixelated body to one of the trees to get the message out to Cyan.
I think the point is they don't NEED to have the amount of trees on the island like they did in the first myst to give the island character. It would probably be really annoying to navigate the same forest in 3d than the frame by frame movement of the original.
Um, I think there's a much bigger problem with this new Myst retelling than the lack of trees. Did anyone catch the name of the console this was going to be released for?
Tell me, what do you need to play games on an Occulus Quest?
I've heard the initial release will be on Oculus Quest, but will be released on other platforms soon after.
It better be anyway, because I don't have a Facebook account myself.
@@shadyparadox I wonder if the Quest's limited power might actually have driven the reduction in trees, at least for the Quest version. Would be a shame if the PC version suffered for the sake of the Quest. They just need a foliage slider, so we can "try moving the slider."
@@shadyparadox The Myst remake already has stores on both Steam and GOG, and GOG even put up an article about Myst when the store page was added.
hmm, starting to wonder how Atrus gets all the paper for his books....
5:49 Atrus's grandmother Anna wrote Myst, not Catherine.
I agree, though. While the original Myst went a bit overboard with the number of trees (which would definitely not have grass growing underneath them at that spacing), removing so many makes the island feel a lot smaller. Really, they need more trees, taller trees, and more undergrowth, especially at the forest edges.
Don't you need more lines in a D'ni Linking Book for each tree made?
I think they just trimmed Myst's Linking Book into a magazine.
Is that Catherine's Writing Style? Huh. Must've been more vain than I thought.
nah, sounds more like gehn ....
although that, along with the tree / deforestation thing .... hhmmmmmmmm ....
I'm really excited to explore in vr tbh.
yeah if you dont mind face book stealing your data kek :v
@@djaydeved Just get an HTC Vive or Valve Index. Problem solved.
Maybe this one will allow some kind of modding. I was always surprised why nobody ever modded anything from original RealMyst > Upwards.
Then we could bring those trees back and make them look like the typical (kind of realistic) cone shaped trees. They never managed to make them look simple and realistic...
Well, realMyst, as a program, was a test bed, and I think as a result, according to Rium+ of the Official Discord Cyan Chat, it was poorly optimized. This was a program to cut their teeth on. Unfortunately, it hasn't aged well. A lot of the ideas used in primitive 3D games don't translate well. Every shadow in the game is faked, lots of corners were cut (for performance sake), and in terms of graphical capability, we didn't get to using UV mapping until around 2001, so every texture is separate and its own, and we also had no shininess/environmental mapping. All the shininess of the textures were baked into them, and it doesn't exactly look good now.
It wasn't until Uru and Magiquest that Cyan had made something substantial out of the Plasma engine (the game engine that realMyst runs on).
I was disappointed by the crystal towers in the Selenitic Age in realMYST and realMYST: Masterpiece Edition. In the original MYST, they have a red and blue texture. In realMYST, they're just gray stone.
I wonder what they will be like in the new version of MYST.
Quartz, most likely.
Probably pink and silver.
The "lotsa trees" in original MYST were meant - I guess - not so much as "create a forest" but rather to cover up the surface a little, and yes, dissuade players from trying to go there - or rather "create an excuse" for "nope, can't go there" - BUT it has to be said they all looked like clones (they probably were) of one actually modelled tree. Not really realistic, not even "close enough".
Having fewer trees, but ones actually looking like trees (maybe even like "happy trees" ;-) is much better option IMO. And then deforestation is a global issue nowadays, we're told, so... "When in Rome do as Romans do", right? ;-)
I would love to see the original Myst in 3D, and by that I mean the original 3D models from the Strata 3D software. Some of them were available for the high tier backers on the Obduction kickstarter campaign. But I guess that not all the 3D source files are available any longer and my dreams of seeing the original 3D world like we saw in the Making-of video will never come true. 🙁 I just like this sterile design of the orignal Myst. Both realMyst versions ruined it for me, especially on Myst island.
Seems that Cyan enjoys reinventing MYST 724 times....RMME on the unreal engine although a little choppy, was kinda dope, though its a given it was just an update to the RM models instead of the strata models...Dont get me wrong, I love MYST and RIVEN as they're truly original pieces of artwork, with the advent of new technology that could probably render the strata models of Myst instantaneously, whats stopping cyan from trying to incorporate the models into a real time 3d environment? Guess its an easier said than done task.
I would hope that cyan re-release Myst Masterpiece Edition with high-res stills and incorporate the technology of Myst III so we could enjoy the original look and feel on modern machine, instead we get a ScummVM version of Myst Masterpiece edition, complete with all the shaved down feel of the original plus an upcoming remake of RMME that's still lacking the original look and feel IMO.
I wonder if Rand ever found the original pre-post production tapes of him and his brother from the original Myst...his acting in RM felt a bit rushed and lacking...and Sirrus and Achenars postage stamp videos don't seem to have aged well...
/ramble
Myst was written by Anna, not Katran. She goes a lot more naturalistic.
it's because of the Oculus quest graphical limitation
Well, considering all the other versions after the original had few trees as well I doubt they've even really considered making it as dense as it was, whether it was feasible on Quest or not.
You know why they needed to get rid of more trees and make the paths wider? Its because our digital avatars are wider now compared to 30 years ago! Must be all that spam we keep getting delivered! (Rolls eyes at his own bad jokes lol) Seriously though, yeah the deforestation is kinda sad. Your video really highlights that.
A G A V E
Will this be on rifts also?
Yes, eventually but just Quest at first.