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PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Myst Online Trailer 266

Posted by michael from the missed dept.
Allaran writes "The latest installment in the Myst story, an online experience entitled URU: Ages of Myst, is ramping up to its release. This has been up and coming for some time, but a trailer (Warning:20MB) [BitTorrent link via GameTab] has just been released, made entirely from within the game engine. Apparently, there is a significant offline game that can be played, with the option to subscribe as well."
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Myst Online Trailer More

Myst Online Trailer

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  • No Macs (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pudge ( 3605 ) * <<slashdot> <at> <pudge.net>> on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:14PM (#6883636) Homepage Journal
    "Currently Uru is only planned to be available on the PC. But we are exploring options to expand to other platforms. Check back with the Uru website for updates regarding additional skus that may become available."

    Dear UbiSoft: fuck you.

    "Let's screw the platform that made the Myst franchise what it is today!"

    • Wow .... someone is Pyst!!!! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I had to!

    • Re:No Macs (Score:3, Informative)

      by fadeaway ( 531137 ) *
      Erhm. Perhaps Myst was born on the Mac, but it was the PC sales that broke software (and CD-ROM) sales records.

      • Re:No Macs (Score:3, Informative)

        by pudge ( 3605 ) *
        And it never would have had the chance for such popularity had it not broken all the records on the Mac, first. No offense, but, um, duh.
        • And it never would have had the chance for such popularity had it not broken all the records on the Mac, first. No offense, but, um, duh.

          Yeah, I forgot all about those 39 (and counting!) Mac copies. Sorry. =P
          • No, it was probably more than a million copies for Mac. Cerainly hundreds of thousands, if not a million, before there was ever a PC version.
            • No, it was probably more than a million copies for Mac. Cerainly hundreds of thousands, if not a million, before there was ever a PC version.

              Pudge, buddy.. I seriously doubt there was even a million Macs in 1993. But.. you're the resident Mac expert. If you can find figures to prove me wrong, I'm all ears.

        • Re:No Macs (Score:3, Informative)

          by GryphonTech ( 702482 )
          Cyan sold over 1 Million before the PC version saw the light of day. Besides when Myst first came out on the Mac, PC graphics and CPUs were not powereful enough to run it. I'm sure this was even pre-Pentium days back when the 386 was the dominant seller and the 486 was just out. They were forced to wait a couple of years before it could work decently on a PC.....
    • Wow, that attitude 'll get you more support. Yes sir.

      I imagine Ubisoft would say the same thing to you.

      And why would you be worked up over, of all series, Myst? Unless they've made serious improvements, all the games have been mediocre at best.
      • Wow, that attitude 'll get you more support.

        So I would get zero support instead of zero. What do I lose?

        I imagine Ubisoft would say the same thing to you.

        And I should care?
        • And I should care?

          I couldn't say. I don't really see why they should care about you, though, especially if your reaction to not having support is "fuck you".

          As someone said after me below, Macs are not made with gaming in mind, and you should have known that when you bought one.
          • As someone said after me below, Macs are not made with gaming in mind

            Dude, you're retarded.

    • Re:No Macs (Score:4, Insightful)

      by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:24PM (#6883741) Homepage Journal
      Why are you mad at UbiSoft? They're just the publisher, not the actual people doing the work of creating the game right? Like when Myst was originally made, broderbrun was the publisher. It was 2 guys in their garage that actually made the game.

      I can't really blame them though... People don't buy macs as "gaming machines" From what i've seen, mac's are primarily used by a few types of users..

      Graphic Artists (scrotumshop)
      Desktop Publishers (Quark)
      Coders (using codewarrior dev enviroment)
      Amatuer film makers (can't remember the name of that new apple video editing suite offhand)

      Gaming is just not what mac's get used for. For getting serious work done, yes but playtime on the mac is almost non-existant. I don't think it has to do with the mac being harder to code for, as it's more a profitability issue.

      • Re:No Macs (Score:3, Funny)

        by pudge ( 3605 ) *
        From what i've seen, mac's are primarily used by a few types of users..

        You haven't seen much. No, really.

        • Not sure where they got the idea only coders using CodeWarrior used Macs. Personally, the main programmers I've seen using it are Perl programmers. Personally, I use the Mac as a coder, running Debian. But I'm a bit out of the ordinary. :)

          Excuse me while I go back to this exciting Freeciv game on my Mac. :)

      • Re:No Macs (Score:2, Funny)

        by Teach ( 29386 ) *

        I can't really blame them though... People don't buy macs as "gaming machines"

        DrunkGamers.com would agree:

      • Re:No Macs (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Cutriss ( 262920 )
        Why are you mad at UbiSoft? They're just the publisher, not the actual people doing the work of creating the game right? Like when Myst was originally made, broderbrun was the publisher. It was 2 guys in their garage that actually made the game.

        Ubi Soft is not just the publisher, but it is also the company *commissioning* the development of the game.

        Just as it isn't up to Valve to decide to make a Mac port of Half-Life, it's not up to Uru's developer to make a Mac port. Ubi is calling the shots. So, I th
        • By the way - The Miller brothers pretty much signed away the franchise during the development of Myst III. One of them (Robin, I think) is still a "consultant" on the series, but they're both pretty much out of the picture now.

          They signed away the Myst franchise, correct, but they did so in order to focus all their (Cyan's) development effort on Mudpie, now known as Uru
        • Just as it isn't up to Valve to decide to make a Mac port of Half-Life,

          Actually, that isn't true with Half-Life. While VALVe is only working with a publisher so someone else can handle all of the logistics of printing boxes, getting promo crap to retailers etc. The game is completely self-funded and thus they get to make all the calls completely internally. Some of that power could have been given up in the details of the publishing contract, but given their incredibly strong bargining position at the time
      • People don't buy macs as "gaming machines".

        Not everyone has the luxury of buying a separate gaming machine.

        From what i've seen, mac's are primarily used by a few types of users..

        And the Myst series of games tends to appeal to people other than traditional gamers.

      • Re:No Macs (Score:3, Informative)

        by Khomar ( 529552 )

        Here is the response as seen in the forum on their site:

        Given the state of the computer market, the PC client was developed first, and Cyan has since run out of money for further development of additional platform support. We've been given assurances by a couple of people at Cyan that if the PC version of the game sells well, there will be a Mac version released at a later time, similar to (though hopefully with less of a delay than) realMYST. Of course, if the PC version bombs, it won't matter either wa

    • Re:No Macs (Score:4, Informative)

      by John Hurliman ( 152784 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:24PM (#6883742) Homepage
      I toured Cyan's studio a few months back, as it's local to the area. The sound engineers and artists primarily still use Macs, but the programmers have entirely shifted over to MSVC/Win32 platforms, to speed up the release cycle and avoid cross-platform issues. The game is based entirely on DirectX libraries, so doing other platforms wouldn't be an easy task. It's hard enough to find competent programmers at all in Spokane, let alone ones that can write cross-platform 3D games.
      • It's hard enough to find competent programmers at all in Spokane, let alone ones that can write cross-platform 3D games.
        I'd be willing to relocate...
      • If this is true, it's sad. Fuck them for using Microsoft, though. Not that they need me to say it: using Windows means getting fucked on a daily basis.

      • Re:No Macs (Score:2, Interesting)

        by randyest ( 589159 )
        You just made me think of this:

        Has (or why hasn't) Apple considered developing a DirectX-compatible graphics API, or OpenGL wrapper, or similar? Seems to me that even moderate compatibility with the most popular, most heavily-developed (and by many accounts pretty good these days) graphic subsystem (DirectX 8+) would go a long way toward helping revive the flailing mac gaming market, which would be a good thing.

        I, for one, would certainly love to be able to frag some of my mac-using buddies in Battle
    • While I'm not a mac person, Myst was actually made for the Mac platform in the first place. It seems to be a major fuck you to the people who actually made Myst popular.

      I remember Myst version 1. I typicaly didn't play video games on the PC, so as I didn't really have a spiffy video card. As a result, I found gameplay much more acceptable on the Mac. It was one of the new applications you could show the average PC user what a stock Mac can do that your PC could not. I think it was probally the first
      • While I'm not a mac person, Myst was actually made for the Mac platform in the first place. It seems to be a major fuck you to the people who actually made Myst popular.

        This is what I am saying.

    • Re:No Macs (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:34PM (#6883833) Homepage Journal
      "Let's screw the platform that made the Myst franchise what it is today!"

      Indeed, when Myst was originally created by Cyan back in 1992/1993, it was an all Macintosh operation. They used all of the video and audio built into Macs leveraging Quicktime (on Quadras I seem to remember) for the production and play of the game. All audio and video was a Macintosh operation. When it was ported to Windows, I had a friend complaining it simply did not look as good as it did on my IIci or my Quadra 840av. The really cool thing was, this was created using Hypercard and Hypertalk scripts! and is probably one of the all time greatest Hypercard programs.

    • Amen. This is a disturbing trend...it seems like there are fewer and fewer titles being made available for Mac since OS X came out. Team 17 made a few Worms titles for Mac back in the day, and now you can't find them anywhere.

      Still, it seems odd that they would release RealMYST on the Mac and not Uru. I imagine the Uru engine is derived at least somewhat from the RealMYST engine...so why not?

      I bet we'll see a Mac release about 6 months after the debut, which may be a blessing in disguise, given the buggin

    • Re:No Macs (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rozinante ( 664527 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @06:20PM (#6884163) Journal
      "Let's screw the platform that made the Myst franchise what it is today!"

      If only Hypercard were still around today, they wouldn't be so bold....

    • Well, if there's no linux support, I'll definately not be buying a copy; whether I like the look of the game or not.

      Its just a lost sale (but there may be more than one)
    • AFAIK PC stands for 'Personal Computer'

      Clearly Macs, Linux boxes etc are not Personal Computers; perhaps they are Public Computers......no, thats not it.....

      I know, I know, its been said before but its such a bluidy stupid non-generalisation that I thought most people had grown out of using it.

      When we hear this term "PC", most think of an Intel derived system running MS Windows.

      Perhaps it stands for "Permanently Crippled" - Who knows.........
    • Follow a couple of links around on the UBI soft site, and you will find that the creators Cyan have a complete opensource section around the myst stuff. right here http://open.cyanworlds.com/ [cyanworlds.com]

  • Finally.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by fadeaway ( 531137 ) * on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:16PM (#6883646)
    A game that will ensure that not only will my GF let me upgrade, but she'll *demand* it!

    Thank you Ubi!
    • ..you've seen enlightment.

      You know know the path to upgrade is not to upgrade, but to make others want to upgrade.
      My wife likes the Might and Magic games. Imagine my 'surprise' when she insited an upgrade, when All I said is 'I don't think the new one will run on our computer'.

  • Warning:20MB (Score:5, Funny)

    by MeanE ( 469971 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:17PM (#6883655) Homepage
    Is that supposed to be for us or for UbiSoft?
    • seriously tho.. 20mb direct link, pretty inconsiderate.

      im just pissed cuz it was /.'d before I could dl it :\

      • Re:Warning:20MB (Score:3, Informative)

        by Ilgaz ( 86384 )
        Well, there is BitTorrent, perfectly legal for such stuff and FREE (nobody will come to their door and want $10k)...

        IMHO there is no reason to complain... Also when big companies like that uses that stuff, it will open path for Java (embedded) and ActiveX bittorrent clients which works easily for average user.

        I now download it using Shareaza (http://www.shreaza.com) and I am sure I don't even "touch" any of their hosts, bandwidth...

        Why companies are so slow adopting excellent stuff which would save hundr

  • warning?!?! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:19PM (#6883668)
    oh my god.. a 20mb download?? Where will I get those 3 seconds of my life back?!?

  • Okay (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Verteiron ( 224042 ) * on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:20PM (#6883678) Homepage
    That's damn impressive for realtime. Hell, it's pretty impressive even for a prerendering. I wonder what the specs were on the machine that generated it...

    On the other hand, RealMYST had a mind-bogglingly beautiful realtime engine, even by today's standards, so I'm glad to see that they're still making progress.

    • Re:Okay (Score:2)

      by ewhac ( 5844 )

      On the other hand, RealMYST had a mind-bogglingly beautiful realtime engine, even by today's standards

      Yeah, but it was chunky as all hell. Certain scenes or viewing angles would reduce the game to little more than a slideshow.

      This was especially true of the "extra" age in RealMyst, where you messed with the morphing crystals to get a projected image of Riven. Even though my machine was quite beefy for the time (dual 1GHz P3, 512M RAM, GeForce2 GTS w/64M RAM), it would always come to a grinding halt

  • BT link? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jehreg ( 120485 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:24PM (#6883738) Homepage
    <Meek voice> Any BitTorrent available, or is it already to late for even that? </Meek voice>
  • Now instead of being alone and frustrated about what the heck to do next in the game, I can be in a community of people... frustrated about what the heck to do next in the game. ;)

  • I'm certainly not buying it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by SargeZT ( 609463 ) <pshanahan@mn.rr.com> on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:25PM (#6883749) Homepage
    I found out a long time ago that I could achieve the same effect as playing Myst in real life by looking at a bunch of photos and making atmospheric noises.

  • BitTorrent Link! (Score:2, Informative)

    by eaglebtc ( 303754 ) *
    URU Ages of Myst Online Trailer [aimhoe.com]

    Thanks to suprnova hosting! This torrent originates from my home machine on a cable connection. Shadow's client is in use, and super-seeding is active.

  • Mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by inertia187 ( 156602 ) * on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:44PM (#6883900) Homepage Journal
    The site is slow, here [martin-studio.com] is a mirror.

    Martin Studio Slashdot Policy [martin-studio.com]

  • Linux version?? (Score:3, Informative)

    by pair-a-noyd ( 594371 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:52PM (#6883959)
    I found *no* mention of the platform so I *assume* it's M$ only??

    I tried the get the *original* myst to run under winex from transgaming and it's a no-go..

    Any hope of ever seeing a Linux port of any of these games? I really liked Myst, way back when.

    I even have an original copy of "Drowned God" somewhere that I would like to play once again someday. I hate to think of installing M$ just to play a game or two and I can't stand the thought of connecting an M$ loaded machine to my broadband (virus pipe)..

    • There's Pyzzle [sourceforge.net]. I stumbled upon this while considering a go at developing a Myst engine for Linux/PC/whatever. I'm not a Python hack or fan, but this looks pretty good as far as a true to Myst game engine is concerned.

  • Stupid question... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zapp ( 201236 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @05:53PM (#6883972)
    Can anyone explain to me what the hell is going on in the world of Myst/Riven/etc?

    I played about... 75% of Myst, and then oh... I dunno, 50-75% of Riven... and lost interest in them both before I could finish them (usually stuck at some puzzle).

    What is the story, what is going on? Last I knew, people in books were talking to me :)

    I'm sure its quite complex, so if you know of any websites that explain it... just point me there :)

    • Re:Stupid question... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05, 2003 @07:14PM (#6884472)
      Obviously there's some spoilers.

      I haven't played Exile and didn't finish Riven, but I beat Myst multiple times and have read all three novels.

      Chronologically, the story begins in the second book, Myst: the Book of Ti'ana. Anne, Atrus's grandmother (the father of the two brothers stuck in the books) finds her way into the underground empire of D'Ni, where human-like people can link to worlds using books. It's considered an art form, they're in their prime, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. Long story short, a jealous friend and psychopath destroy the entire empire with a plague, but Anne's family survives by going into a private book world where the jealous friend has a change of heart and decides not to send a body with the plague to them. They return, Anne's husband dies, she takes her son (Ghen, I believe) back to the surface.

      Cut to the FIRST book, Myst: The Book of Atrus. Ghen had a son with another human woman, then headed back to D'Ni to try to restore the empire, or at least to rediscover the art of world-linking, or making as he believed. He leaves Atrus, his son, with Anne until he reaches a certain age where he steals him and takes him to D'Ni, where they work on making worlds. Ghen's tend to be unstable, he uses them as playthings to experiment with, and thinking he 'creates' them instead of linking to them, he has the people of these worlds worship him like a God. Atrus falls in love with a human woman from Riven, Ghen's greatest world. Atrus rescues her and locks Ghen in the world of his creation, destroying the way out and using the final book to get back to Myst, the world he created, while falling into an abyss.

      The book he used is the one you find at the beginning of the first game. You go into the book to find that Atrus and Catherine (his wife) have had two sons. Atrus set the red book and the blue book to trap his sons in as they were corrupt and had thought like Ghen did, but after he had set the trap, before it was sprung, Atrus was trapped in D'Ni and Catherine in Riven by said sons. You rescue Atrus, and he asks you to save his wife.

      Cut to Riven. I'm assuming you save his wife and make it back to Myst.

      In the third book, Myst: The Book of D'Ni, Myst and D'Ni (another section of it, not the collapsed room Atrus was in) are both re-inhabited by people from the book worlds. While going through some libraries, they come across a linker book to another civilization (the name fails me), and go to explore it. It's another group of book-writers, but one which uses the book peoples as slaves and playthings. You get your typical, albeit well written, story of outsiders attempting to free the slaves, slaves uprising, etc, etc, etc.

      As for Exile, your guess is as good as mine, although I do believe it happens between Riven and the Book of D'Ni. Cheers to anyone who can toss in/tweak what I've put.

      The books should all be rather inexpensive now, and they're all easy but satisfying reads. I suggest checking them out.
    • You probably don't want to bother reading the books, contrary to what other commenters have said- they're only for real Cyan geeks and are just extrapolations from the good but rather minimalistic story of the games.

      The trouble in telling you the exact plot is that the plot and story are given away gradually in the games, and this constitutes much of the point of the games. Find a copy and try playing them again, and if you don't enjoy puzzle-solving and get really badly stuck then grab a walkthrough off t

  • Online Myst? (Score:5, Funny)

    by DrCode ( 95839 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @06:16PM (#6884135)
    I'm trying to imagine what this might be like:

    I pull a couple levers in one room, then walk around to another room to see what happened. Meanwhile, someone else sets the levers back. Then we get into a duel where the weapons are books, each of us trying to snap ours shut on the other person.

  • Gametab has a working torrent now (Score:3, Informative)

    by adpowers ( 153922 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @06:22PM (#6884182)
    I looked at Gametab a few minutes ago and nothing. I search the comments for a working bit torrent link, but nothing. So, one last ditch to check Gametab and what do you know? Here is the link to the torrent:

    http://www.gametab.com/files/torrents.php?fuse=70 [gametab.com]

  • URU Beta Test (Score:3, Informative)

    by Andrevan ( 621897 ) on Friday September 05, 2003 @07:25PM (#6884536) Journal
    Well, there is a non-disclosure agreement. I can't say anything about it other than I am very disappointed. It's glitchy and not at all Myst-like.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • What I miss with all these OpenGL 3D games is the incredibly beautiful renderings of the Riven game. I wish it were somehow possible to have interactive raltime renderings of that quality.

    One can dream, can't one.
  • ok, as a beta tester, i agreed to a restrictive NDA telling me not to discuss things i see in the game outside of the beta forums... so my apologies if this is lacking in details.

    i'm seeing a lot of comments about killing the myst franchise by going online, the game possibly sucking, etc. let me say this: it is by far the most impressive online game i've seen yet. the graphics are great, the music is incredible, the puzzles and ages are wonderful, there haven't been any lock-ups or timeouts, everything i
  • Anybody else looking at a lot of whitespace between the blurb and the threaded responses?
  • I remember when I got the first myst... I had just finished a couple of upgrades (cyrix drx2 cpu and a blazing fast 2x cdrom!) and got MYST to try everything out. I started playing at 10pm and had finished the entire game at 6am the next morning. Even though each puzzle had the same format, requiring you to visit 3 sites in each area to get info and then plug that info into the machinery in other areas, I remained fascinated through the entire marathon session.

    The toughest part of MYST was where you had

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