RealMyst:ME modded

[Sirius]

Hello everyone,

I made a couple of mods for RealMyst: Masterpiece Edition. Nothing huge, but it might be interesting to some:

• A flymode
• A fix to allow using ZQSD (AZERTY keyboards) instead of WASD (QWERTY) for us French frog eaters
• A runtime hierarchy/inspector, similar to Unity's own (well, much less powerful but still useful)

Those mods also come with a mod loader/manager, whose sole purpose is to make loading multiple mods easier. This means you can easily create custom mods if you wish.

Download link ← ONLY includes the files. Refer to the below link for installation instructions.
README ← Contains installation instructions, and infos about what each mod does. Yes, reading this is mandatory.
Sources ← Sources for the mod loader and the individual mods. Use this as reference if you intend to make custom mods.

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, but a request by /u/Generalitary over at Reddit finally motivated me for doing this. Thanks to him !



Compatibility:
The mod-loader edits a file from the game which is version-dependant (Assembly-CSharp.dll) and will have subtle changes with each release of RM:ME. I'll try to keep the download link on this page up-to-date with the latest version of RM:ME, but it's worth making sure your own copy matches the following:

Code: Select all

BuildID (Steam Properties → Local Files): 3136950
File ID (realMyst.exe properties): 4.7.2.65147
Product ID (realMyst.exe properties): 4.7.2.11009659

Mismatching versions will appear to be working at first, but will cause issues sooner or later. Don't do it.
If a new version of RMME comes and I didn't already make a new version, feel free to notify me and I'll do it.



Interesting stuff...

Show Spoiler

While modding the game, I discovered those two things left by Cyan:
[list]
[*] Typing "cheet" will enter cheat mode. In this mode, pressing F5 makes the day/night cycle much shorter. Press again to return to the normal daylength.
[*] There is an easter egg somewhere on Myst Island which can only be seen with flymode.[/list]
Those are not added by mods. They are available in the base game.

Can we finally create or edit Ages ?

Show Spoiler

No. Well, it's possible, but it's not simple.
The issue is that RMME uses the Unity engine. "Builded" Unity games can only load "assets" (meshes, textures and worlds) that were baked and packaged into Unity's own format. These files cannot be modified, they can only be created using the Unity Editor - hence ruling out the possibility of editing them.
Creating those files is possible, but require a pro version of Unity, which costs money (AssetBundles are now a free feature in recent versions of Unity, but not in the version RMME uses - and extremely unlikely to be backward-compatible).
Fortunately, mods have access to the full Application Programming Interface (API) of Unity, which is quite powerful. This includes modifying existing assets from code, and to an extend create new ones without using Unity's own archive format. However this is still limited and complex, thus I don't intend to do it.

[Hazado]

Is that easter egg listed in the spoilered link?

Show Spoiler

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=510861131

[Aloys]

Nice! Christmas comes early this year. Thank your for that!

RMME is interesting because of Unity, surely there's a lot that can be done with it. But it was released in early 2014, what version was it made on? 5? 4.6? I think the Unity project I was working on at the time (shameless plug) was using Unity 4.6. Not sure what the limitations are with these old file formats.

AssetBundles are now a free feature in recent versions of Unity, but not in the version RMME uses

I did not know that. I guess then the next question is: what can we get from these RMME files? There are tools to extract most assets from the .assets files. Textures/shaders/Sounds are easy enough to get. Meshes are more problematic. (they're some weird format I couldn't use) But what about the code? You mention a couple tools to decompile and even rewrite on the fly existing code, most of this is over my head (I only do basic gameplay code, nothing so low level). Basicaly what are the limitations?

A fix to allow using ZQSD (AZERTY keyboards) instead of WASD (QWERTY) for us French frog eaters

Ugh! Finally. Thank you. As a fellow AZERTY user, I consider that an unforgivable sin from developpers to ignore different keyboards layout. It's not like it's the most complicated thing to do...

It took a quick look at your code, and it looks clean and well documented. This opens so many new doors! I must shamefully admit I have not spent a lot of time with this edition of Myst. Time to fix that...

[Sirius]

Is that easter egg listed in the spoilered link?

Ooh, I actually missed/forgot a lot of those ! But no, the one I'm thinking about isn't in this list.

Show Spoiler

Try flying just under the surface of Myst island, and you'll come across it eventually

But it was released in early 2014, what version was it made on? 5? 4.6?

The current version is 4.7-ish. Cyan bought a license for the 4.x series, so our current version of RMME is "stuck" on this version. This may change when they release the Switch version of the game, since Switch requires at least Unity 2017 IIRC - so maybe they will upgrade the PC version as well. Or maybe not, we'll see.
This is quite unfortunate, as they released it a short time before Unity 5, which brought a whole bunch of upgrades to the renderer (including PBS), lightmapping engine, as well as performance improvements and more. Unity 5 is also the first version in which all the pro features are available for free, including AssetBundles. Too bad...

I guess then the next question is: what can we get from these RMME files?

Oh, not much I suppose. AssetStudio can extract and decompile most of the files if you want, but since Unity strips unused assets in builds, we're unlikely to find more than what is already visible in the game. Also, Unity's static batching means most meshes are hard/impossible to extract for use in another engine (yeah, I've tried ).
Extracting some assets at runtime is also possible using Unity's API, but it's still quite limited.

But what about the code? You mention a couple tools to decompile and even rewrite on the fly existing code, most of this is over my head (I only do basic gameplay code, nothing so low level). Basicaly what are the limitations?

Basically, a hack to one of the files of the game allows injecting any code at runtime, in the form of mods. Mods can do all you can usually do in Unity: interact with the C# libraries, Unity's API and Cyan's own scripts.
Due to the nature of C#, they can even overwrite Cyan's own code or access private fields/methods, thus giving you a LOT of control over the game. Complex modifications are still a bit trickier of course, but even an average programmer with a good tutorial can pull it off.
(Like I wrote in the readme, most of it is possible using dnSpy, reflection and if necessary Harmony.

Ugh! Finally. Thank you. As a fellow AZERTY user, I consider that an unforgivable sin from developpers to ignore different keyboards layout. It's not like it's the most complicated thing to do...

Yeah. On the other hand, it seems like QWERTY is so widespread that people simply don't know about this kind of issues. Just like with color blindness I guess...


Aaaaand... The Reddit post I made with a link to here was removed. Eh, not surprising. Still, posting tutorials about using CheatEngine to hack the game is fine, but actual mods aren't. Oh well...

[Deledrius]

Aaaaand... The Reddit post I made with a link to here was removed. Eh, not surprising. Still, posting tutorials about using CheatEngine to hack the game is fine, but actual mods aren't. Oh well...

Unfortunate.

[Chacal]

Dear me, I played through the whole RMME without realizing it was running on Unity.