The Myst Graph: A New Perspective on Myst

by tobr • 1 year ago

253 73 1 year ago

deater3• 1 year ago

when making the Apple II version of Myst I more or less generated graphs like this by hand based on playing through the game (in order to hook up the data structures for the custom 6502-assembly language engine) I wonder if it would have been easier to automate it like this.

tombert• 1 year ago

I hadn't heard of the Apple II version of Myst, so I looked it up...it's very cool, and pretty impressive!

djmips• 1 year ago

It's fairly new.

lawlessone• 1 year ago

Is this yours?

http://www.deater.net/weave/vmwprod/mist/ It's cool

deater3• 1 year ago

yes. I also made an Atari 2600 version but that one's only a subset of the game (though it's enough can beat it using the speedrun route)

deater3• 1 year ago

if anyone is curious, the data structure used in the Apple II version had the idea of "locations" which just hold 4 of the nodes described here. Usually this would be for North/South/East/West, plus there would be an additional clickable area that would call a function callback, usually used for puzzles but it could also be used as a hack to take you to an additional location.

This setup was more or less enough to implement the whole game, the one problem area was Channelwood where the pathway platforms are pentagons and thus had more than 4 backgrounds. There were also a few areas where a location could have used an additional clickable area but had to make do without. Also to fit on 3 disks about half the nodes were left out: generally when walking a straight path every other node was left out for both disk space and also time-consuming-rotoscope reasons.

bsenftner• 1 year ago

Myst strikes me as a milestone of lost human opportunity. Myst is an incredible creative literary tour de force. I hoped for an entre genre to form around literary hypertext with diegetic narrative, but it never did, and popular culture never even seem to recognize the unique literary structures at play in Myst.

Well, now, decades later it s clear Myst is intellectually an Everest to most people, and all they did was stare up in uncomprehending awe.

thoroughburro• 1 year ago

I hoped for an entre genre to form around literary hypertext with diegetic narrative

Twine and other interactive fiction engines provide this to some degree, though I think Cyan’s visual aesthetic is also intrinsic to the feel of the games.

https://twinery.org

piltdownman• 1 year ago

I mean far be it from me to extinguish someones hyperbole about literature, but it's simply not that unique or groundbreaking - as for its supposed intellectual insurmountability, it's hardly Finnegan's Wake.

Games like 'What Remains of Edith Finch' handles the literary and primary source based diegetic narrative, with games like Firewatch or similar expanding on the premise as genre-games. Then you have the likes of Journey or To The Moon serving to upturn expectations on concepts of traditional narrative and structure, and things like The Stanley Parable satirically prodding the nature of choice and narrative viz a viz a player's actual agency.

In the ghetto of SCUMMWare point and click games with cartoonish graphics and themes I'm sure Myst was a breath of fresh air. Intellectually, however, any number of games make it look like a remedial student.

Take 'The Fool's Errand'- a 1987 computer game by Cliff Johnson which presents itself as a point and click meta-puzzle with an overarching narrative extrapolated through various visual and logic puzzles and a cryptic treasure map. The game is structured as a storybook divided into five parts, each containing a large number of different chapters; the storybook can be paged through and read as continuous prose on screen. Starting to sound familiar? No doubt, as both it and Myst lift a lot of their inspiration wholesale from Masquerade by Kit Williams

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fool%27s_Errand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masquerade_(book)

Jumping back to the soft-core philosophical gum-chewing, we can see the same themes emerge in a far more articulate sense as early as the Gibson/Dick-esque dystopian nightmare of Deus Ex in 2000.

Deus Ex played with any number of interesting literary vehicles including a 'novel within a novel', the agency of man vs AI and its textual interaction with the world, the inversion of symbols and signifiers, and a huge debt owed to both Gravity's Rainbow and Foucalt's Pendulum structurally and thematically. Hell, G.K. Chesterton's metaphysical thriller 'The Man Who Was Thursday' is included in excerpts throughout the game simply for flavour!

Nowadays there's plenty of easy and lazy comparisons to make based on similar mechanics and core gameplay loop - The Talos Principle or Soma for example - but I'd go more recently with Disco Elysium, which owes huge amounts thematically to China Mieville's 'The City and the City' and Émile Zola's 'Germinal'. I would like to go on (for thousands of words) but I would only spoil people's enjoyment of a TRUE creative literary tour de force and game that requires appropriate and actual intellectual rigour to engage with.

mock-possum2• 1 year ago

Have you checked out Outer Wilds?

Closest thing I’ve found to the wonder of exploration, puzzle solving, and gradually unearthing a story.

Another one to look at would be Heaven’s Vault.

marssaxman• 1 year ago

I did the same when building the screen saver. It never occurred to me that the task could have been automated. It's difficult to imagine what tools I could have used for that purpose, thirty-odd years ago.

guerrilla3• 1 year ago

Would even better if it was an interactive graph (with zoom) using the actual scene images somehow.

lanternfish• 1 year ago

I think that's called Myst (1993)

escapecharacter• 1 year ago

Thank you for this guffaw

adastra224• 1 year ago

I’m not sure if this is serious or tongue in cheek. Did you play the original?

rendaw• 1 year ago

I second the request. Sing the images spatially related to eachother would be really cool. Like: this room is only 2 nodes from this room. Or like, you see one node with a ton of links and wonder which room that is.

The article itself shows some nodes and their corresponding images, but it'd be cool to have it for all of them.

guerrilla3• 1 year ago

I mean having them flat. Yes, I played all versions and sequels.

hoten• 1 year ago

I made a similar thing but for Silent Hill 2: https://connorjclark.github.io/sh2-graph/

It's much more linear.

source: https://github.com/connorjclark/sh2-graph

anon84873628• 1 year ago

For those, like me, wondering how to play it today. It seems the original studio has released a modernized version available on many platforms (including VR):

https://cyan.com/games/myst/

I missed out on Myst in its heyday, but have always wanted to check it out after hearing so many great things.

Curious if any superfans think it would be better experienced as the original in an emulator or similar.

maxsilver• 1 year ago

Curious if any superfans think it would be better experienced as the original in an emulator or similar.

(superfan checking in) -- I still believe the definitive release is the original `realMyst (2000)` (Sunsoft). https://archive.guildofarchivists.org/wiki/RealMyst . If you only ever play one version, that's the one to play. GOG maintains a beautiful version of this (that works well even on modern Windows), but Cyan de-listed it from GOG a while back, so you can't technically buy fresh copies anymore.

Don't mistake this for "Real Myst: Masterpiece Edition", which is (sorry Cyan), not very good. They imported the old assets into Unity for the re-release, and then did some random texture/asset swaps, the lighting and mood didn't survive the import and is all randomly weird -- strongly recommend ignoring this one.

The original release is good if you want the original experience - https://www.gog.com/en/game/myst_masterpiece_edition

And the new Myst (2021/VR, Unreal Engine) release is wonderful and beautiful, but is more of a re-make to modern gaming sensibilities.

Svip• 1 year ago

Don't mistake this for "Real Myst: Masterpiece Edition", which is (sorry Cyan), not very good.

I know you link it further down, but there are two Masterpiece Editions, one for Myst (1999) and one for realMyst (2014). The one you link is the MPE of Myst, and technically not the original 1993 game, though as far as I can tell, it's just an upgrade of graphics and sound, whilst remaining faithful to the original.

I couldn't get realMyst to work back when I got it on GOG, so I'll admit I haven't tried it (nor its Masterpiece Edition), but I did enjoy the 2021 remake, although I noticed that even though it had been over a decade, I sped through that game (I mention this, because I actually visited it after having played the 2024 Riven remake, where the changes to the puzzles did stump me from time to time). Though, personally, I am more of a Riven fan.

tiltowait3• 1 year ago

Myst is one of my favorite games, but I never could get into realMyst. The idea was great at the time, but I thought the visual fidelity was lower (despite being ... "real"), and the click-based movement never played well.

I did like Real Myst: Masterpiece Edition a lot (though it ran terribly on my powerful-at-the-time system). But I'd argue for the OP to play Myst: Masterpiece Edition first. IMO the interface is just as important to Myst as everything else.

bunderbunder• 1 year ago

Get a modern version with higher-resolution graphics, better color, and other playability improvements. Masterpiece Edition is my favorite version I've played. I think there are a couple of even newer versions; I don't know how they compare.

I wasn't a fan of RealMyst. The game's environment wasn't originally designed for the player being able to wander freely, so it doesn't really add much to the game and even detracts from it in some respects.

rich_sasha• 1 year ago

I find in old games, the relatively dated graphics detract from the gameplay - even if they were very advanced for their era. The Zen of Myst is in the mystery (duh), in playing a game where you don't even know the rules or the objective, exploring, guessing, observing, being curious, immersed in a misty riddle.

I think better graphics would only refine that, rather than detract from it.

jimbob45• 1 year ago

I disagree specifically with Myst and Riven because the real magic for me is in the audio (tantamount to ASMR) and that remains high enough quality. The visuals are mostly just helper references for what you’re hearing with the audio. I suspect a text&audio version of Myst would work pretty well.

adastra224• 1 year ago

I agree with the idea behind this post. Almost always playing the original is the best experience.

Myst is the exception. The 3D remake is exceptionally good, and I expect the VR experience to be even better.

robmccoll• 1 year ago

I'd play the 2021 UE remake unless you are specifically a fan of retro gaming / have fond memories of playing games in the 90s. If you are new to the series, it hews close enough to the original that you aren't missing anything on puzzles or story, but its modern graphics and fully explorable world might give you an experience similar to what it was like to play the original closer to release.

Then go play the Riven remake. They simplified a few puzzles maybe a bit too much, but otherwise it's fantastic.

insane_dreamer• 1 year ago

Did they remake Exile too?

jamesfmilne• 1 year ago

And unfortunately they have had to lay off half their studio:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/half-of-myst-developer-cyan-wo...

The news from a lot of games studios has been pretty brutal over the last couple of years.

whutsurnaym• 1 year ago

For a second I thought that article was old because it refers to Firmament as an "upcoming title"

rf15• 1 year ago

What's wrong with that article? It says it was published two days ago, but talks about the 2018 game Firmament as "upcoming". AI slop? SEO to show articles as more current than they are?

cess112• 1 year ago

Already Riven was a little too slick to have the same kind of lo-fi magic Myst evoked, so if that's what you want to get a feel for it's probably best to dig up some old ISO or CD and emulate. With a bit of luck some of the videos will refuse to render or glitch a bit, like they were prone to do back in the day.

If it's more that you want to see the storytelling and puzzles later adaptions are likely fine. It's a neat game, exciting without direct conflict.

ehnto2• 1 year ago

If you are used to modern games, I would play the modern remake by Cyan. It's amazing to explore the worlds with proper First Person movement.

I can also highly recommend their new game, Obduction, and their remake of Riven. I have played the games in VR too and it adds a whole new feeling of scale and presence to the world.

wkat42422• 1 year ago

Yes I think Obduction was way better than Myst. Really good and captivating game.

moron4hire• 1 year ago

Incidentally, I found the VR version quite easy. I had played the original when it was new and had quite a difficult time with it. There were times I thought I was never going to get through it. But the VR version I breezed through in a few hours.

Now, you might say that I just remembered the puzzle solutions, to which I will counter that I have received too many traumatic brain injuries in the intervening 25 years for that to be the case.

tiltowait3• 1 year ago

In the original game, lots of important clues were at the sides of the screen. With VR, you have a perfect mapping of the center of your attention being the center of the screen. I wonder if this, coupled with smooth motion letting you see objects from all perspectives instead of 1-3 angles, makes a noteworthy difference.

wkat42422• 1 year ago

I never liked Myst back in the day. It was just too weird and the puzzles too difficult for me. In those days there was hardly any internet so it was hard to find hints too (hint lines usually were US only and calling the US was ridiculously expensive from Europe). Eventually I played it through years later but needed handhold.

I thought Obduction from the same makers which had full VR support from the start, a much better game. Nice understandable story, not overly weird. Puzzles not too hard. I highly recommend it.

mock-possum2• 1 year ago

FWIW the fully 3D Riven rerelease is pretty excellent, and even offers slightly different gameplay from the original, so veterans won’t be able to just breeze through.

WorldMaker• 1 year ago

Myst is probably one of the few games that benefits from its upgrades and modernization and you won't find too many sticklers for "play the original only". The original was a mind-blowing CD-ROM at the time, but with hindsight it was a grainy slideshow that was sometimes hard to navigate because you only had a couple options at each point and sometimes they didn't line up with your mental model of what they were supposed to do. The modern one is a gorgeous free movement thing that makes it easier to get lost in the puzzles.

As a "superfan" of a certain other sort, my biggest complaint with the modern one is only that I can't find my Ki or Relto book while playing it. (In Uru, Cyan's attempt at an MMO version of Myst-like exploration which you can still play today thanks to community support, your Ki is your communications/chat tool to other players, and Relto is the player's "home island" and having a book linking to it at all times is a safety mechanism/security blanket for visiting dangerous Ages. It's also a fast way back to any of the more social hubs. Any of the more modern single player ones feel like they should still connect back to multiplayer, even this many years after Uru's second cancellation.)

d_tr• 1 year ago

The latest Myst and Riven remakes are fantastic. The puzzles are the same, the environments are wonderfully made and the atmosphere is there 100%.

doublerabbit• 1 year ago

Also going to throw this interesting article where someone debugged and eliminated the loading times of Myst 4.

https://medium.com/@tomysshadow/fixing-the-loading-in-myst-i...

gwbas1c3• 1 year ago

owing to the relative freedom it affords players

That's really not "true". The 3D games at the time let you go anywhere, view anything. Myst only let you move to predefined locations.

The difference is that you didn't have enemies trying to kill you all the time, or extremely difficult bosses to defeat in order to advance to other levels. Instead, Myst let you generally explore most of the game as you wished. You could explore quite far without technically "advancing" because you could ignore the puzzles. This made the game quite fun if all you wanted to do was look around.

It's kind of similar to the actual freedom in Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom, where you don't need to advance in the game to explore the world.

MBCook2• 1 year ago

The 3D games at the time let you go anywhere, view anything.

In 1993? I don’t remember any full freedom games back then. Certainly nothing could begin to approach the visuals for a very long time.

gwbas1c3• 1 year ago

Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992

amatecha• 1 year ago

I remember a fully 3d game from quite a bit earlier than then! Spectre for Macintosh, from 1991: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(1991_video_game) , and some gameplay at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-F3XISR3ME

qingcharles• 1 year ago

Cholo was open world 3D in 1986:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholo_(video_game)

adastra224• 1 year ago

There were no full 3D games in 1993. Quake was still 3 years in the future.

gwbas1c3• 1 year ago

Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992

cess112• 1 year ago

Maze/Maze War, Chuck Yeager's AFT, Elite. Not as polished or fast as Descent or Quake on a Pentium chip but you'd need to redefine 3D with rather obtuse constraints to exclude them.

tiltowait3• 1 year ago

I think this probably depends on your definition of "freedom". If you mean freedom as in movement, then yes, 3D games were freer.

If you mean freedom as in game design, then I'm having a hard time coming up with contemporary rivals. You can reach any of the Ages from the beginning, tackle them in any order, and even leave them unfinished if you wish (though you couldn't go back and forth at will, since you had to find the exit book first). Combined with the lack of enemies you mentioned and lack of any chance of failure (until the end), it stands out among its competitors.

Possibly there were some other adventure games that rivaled its freedom. Day of the Tentacle comes close, though it's more scripted than Myst—and it's not 3D.

alex1138• 1 year ago

Please, engineers, invent actual linking books that work

NBJack2• 1 year ago

Is the graph file available as raw data? This looks like fun.

glth2• 1 year ago

Author here: In a few weeks, I will publish the graph generator's source code and a DOT file encoding the Myst graph in this repository: https://github.com/glthr/DeMystify. I would love to see how others render the graph and how the generator can be improved. A follow-up article will also dive deeper into the technical details. Stay tuned!

NBJack2• 1 year ago

I'm looking forward to it! Will try to share if it turns out well with what I have in mind.

gcanyon• 1 year ago

The second article: https://glthr.com/myst-graph-2

immibis• 1 year ago

The last sentence in the Directions section is reversed. in Part 2, Visual Indicators, the icons are not as described and are also reversed.

glth2• 1 year ago

Author here: good catch, thank you! I have fixed the two errors.

The Myst Graph: A New Perspective on Myst

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