Guild of Writers

Great work!

Personally I’d love to see a geometrically consistent Myst island (among other Ages), precisely because it would look different and physically possible.

Your posts are fascinating, Aloys - it's great to follow your progress and share your discoveries about the original Myst Island. Keep up the excellent work!

An example of what I mean is this picture.

Acorn wrote:it's great to follow your progress and share your discoveries about the original Myst Island. Keep up the excellent work!

Thanks!
I'm pretty sure I could write a small article about all the various inconsistencies and other unexpected things there is about Myst island that most people don't notice..
In fact, a long time ago there was a site called The Nitpicker's Guide To Riven which did just that. (I think it was the name, it was a while ago), it referenced a number of odities like that for Riven. And it had quite a bit of content.. Myst island isn't big enough to write a whole site about it; but maybe once I'm done with this project I'll make a list of the funny things I found.

Aloys wrote:I'm pretty sure I could write a small article about all the various inconsistencies and other unexpected things there is about Myst island that most people don't notice.. maybe once I'm done with this project I'll make a list of the funny things I found.

Ooh, yes please!

Acorn wrote:

Aloys wrote:I'm pretty sure I could write a small article about all the various inconsistencies and other unexpected things there is about Myst island that most people don't notice.. maybe once I'm done with this project I'll make a list of the funny things I found.

Ooh, yes please!

I agree with this. I would find that very interesting.

Yay, the library is now in Unity. There is still a couple things to tweak with the assets, but for the most part I'm happy with where is stands now.


Now I need to bake those lightmaps and get rid of those 12 dynamic lights that bog down the frame rate..



Only a couple other features to add (proper sounds sources placement, small menu and/or splash screen, some more framerate optimizations) and I should have a first fully playable version next week or so.. Then as soon as it looks good enough I'll send it to Cyan, to see if I can get their legal approval to publish the thing.. Doesn't hurt to ask.

Wow. Now, this looks like the Myst library !
Very good lighting ! It's impressive to see how much better it looks than the shadeless model

Yeah, inconsistencies in the point-and-click Myst game are very subtle, but in realMyst and RMME they are really obvious, if you're willing to pay attention to it.

Well, actually the lighting setup is pretty basic, but it suits the place.
Except I facing a silly technical issue now: I must have lightmaps on that mesh, but then I need an unlit shader, and if I have an unlit shader I lose the specular highlights (which is needed to make this wood look good).. And right now I have now idea how to fix this.. Another riddle to solve!

Ok, the lightmap + specular plan went down the drain.. Unity does support a specific format of lightmap that allows specular highlights, "directional lightmaps" neat stuff. But it means using their default shaders which uses the most basic specular setup and it looks awful... Since I have never taken the time to properly learn HLSL and the plugin I use to setup my shaders doesn't support Unity's lightmaps I am out of a solution for the automatic lightmaps. Which is too bad.
So I started creating a lightmap by hand with a shader that handles it properly. Good thing it is a small model, and many parts are repeated, because creating lightmaps manually is pain in the butt.. >_>

Aloys wrote: I'll have to look at realMyst again to see how they copped with this.

realMyst won't run anymore on my current computer. I tried the compatibility modes, running as an admin, no dice. It could also be a 'customized' install with experimental modifications, but I don't have my original CD around to make a clean install... Ha well.