Thoughts on VR and Uru

[Deledrius]

Here it is, if you want to have a look I didn't design it with re-exporting to Plasma in mind, although with tweaking you might be able to re-export things through Korman.

It works wonderfully! Thank you so much for sharing this!

What are you doing with Myst 3? Are you using ResidualVM as a base, or something custom?

More or less. I started by tweaking ResidualVM, in order to remove all black borders around the screen and make it render in 16:9 aspect ratio. Works fine, mostly.
Now my goal is to make it work in VR on Daydream phones. Since I hate C++ and ResidualVM's custom engine was not designed for VR, I'm trying to port ResVM code to Unity (C#). Dunno if the whole game will be playable, but I would be content just having Unity read the Myst3 archives and act as a VR node viewer.

Maybe once you do that, you can try making a VR node viewer for Myst IV as well.

And right now there aren't a lot of games worth playing in VR anyway.

Just Obduction, really. And from what I understand, my favorite effect (the seed transition) isn't even enabled in VR mode!

[Sirius]

Maybe once you do that, you can try making a VR node viewer for Myst IV as well.

That was the original plan. The resolution of Myst 3's cubemaps is a bit too low for VR. Myst 4 would look less pixelated and much better. Also, Myst 4 has a depth of field effect. Meaning you could probably rebuild stereoscopic rendering using the depth information

However, I don't know of any open-source program that can read Myst 4's archives - and I need to steal borrow someone's code for this since I don't know much about reverse-engineering binary code.
Actually I think Riveal can read these archives, but it's programmed in Java, which once compiled doesn't seem to retain variable names - unlike C# or Python.

Just Obduction, really. And from what I understand, my favorite effect (the seed transition) isn't even enabled in VR mode!

No indeed. Maybe it was disabled because it didn't work so well with stereoscopic rendering.
To be honest, I prefer playing Obduction on a standard 2D screen. Some objects or visual FX look wrong in VR, which make me prefer the flawless standard version. Just my opinion though, the VR version is still great.

As for other VR games... Well, I'm looking forward to Skyrim in VR. Knowing the developers of that game, it will be a slow, bug-ridden mess, but a fun mess nontheless

[Deledrius]

Myst 4 would look less pixelated and much better. Also, Myst 4 has a depth of field effect. Meaning you could probably rebuild stereoscopic rendering using the depth information

That's why I was thinking, too. The depth info would allow you to do some interesting VR effects. On that note, I wonder if there's enough depth info in Grim Fandango to hack together a realtime node viewer... (they use a high-ish-res z-buffer for occluding the 3D character in the 2D scenes that was generated from the original room geometry). I suspect there are too many holes in some rooms for it to be viable, since it was never meant to be 360° like Myst IV was.

However, I don't know of any open-source program that can read Myst 4's archives - and I need to steal borrow someone's code for this since I don't know much about reverse-engineering binary code.
Actually I think Riveal can read these archives, but it's programmed in Java, which once compiled doesn't seem to retain variable names - unlike C# or Python.

Making a tool for that is something which has been on my TODO list, but that list is long and it's not near the top. If I do, I'll let you know. I like REing data.

Well, I'm looking forward to Skyrim in VR. Knowing the developers of that game, it will be a slow, bug-ridden mess, but a fun mess nontheless

That would be a lot of fun to explore.

[Sirius]

On that note, I wonder if there's enough depth info in Grim Fandango to hack together a realtime node viewer... I suspect there are too many holes in some rooms for it to be viable, since it was never meant to be 360° like Myst IV was.

Yeah, I'm not sure that would look good since Grim's viewpoints are not 360°... But since the models aren't too complex, maybe some areas of the game could be redone in Blender. Rubacava at night was pretty neat...

Making a tool for that is something which has been on my TODO list, but that list is long and it's not near the top. If I do, I'll let you know. I like REing data.

Well, making a M4 node viewer could be a fun thing to do. But there is indeed no rush.
Personally I will start with a proof-of-concept for Myst3 first, see how "playable" I can make it.
(I've always been impressed by reverse-engineering. I know how to program stuff, but I never understood how people could make sense of already compiled code )
Another thing I wish I could do one day is reverse engineer either of the realMyst games... But it's not top-priority either since we can count on Cyan to provide us way too many remasters of realMyst