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toblix

Riven

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I just had this crazy idea today, and installed, played and completed Riven, using a Virtual PC instance running Windows 98. I was sort of expecting to be really let down by the prerendered graphics after ten years, but I quicky concluded that, resolution aside (this game runs at 640x480), this is still one of the best looking games I've ever seen. No other games using prerendered graphics, except maybe Myst 3 and 4, have come close to the incredibly beautiful images and animations this game consists of (because, as we know, the Myst games basically are graphics and animations). From beginning to end I was immersed in that world more than I ever was in Half-Life 2 or Crysis or Call of Duty or whatever, and those are some immersive games.

I started thinking about what a prerendered Myst game would be like, look like and sound like ten years later, probably filling at least four or five DVDs with high resolution images and animations, but after a couple of seconds I started crying because that'll never happen. At least I finally got to play a ten year old game without ever having to excuse it for its age.

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It's interesting that you bring the topic of 'future proof' games up because I'm just done reading an old article about the animation system of Messiah in which the designer reveals they worked with high poly models which they 'simplify' at runtime depending on how fast the hardware is... I'd like that kind of technique to be applied to more games.

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That's a pretty common technique. See crowd scenes in Kane & Lynch or Hitman: Blood Money. If you only have a couple of guys on screen they're pretty detailed, but the games can also have dozens of people on screen at the same time, and if you look closely they're way less detailed. The games adjust Level-Of-Detail on the fly.

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The Black & White games do it really obviously. It would only be future proofing per se if the maximum possible detail was way above that intended for top-end systems of the day. Messiah was the first that I heard of to use this though.

Other than level-of-detail-adjustment, I never really heard much else about Messiah. Is that an indication that the actual game itself is a bit pants?

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That's a pretty common technique. See crowd scenes in Kane & Lynch or Hitman: Blood Money. If you only have a couple of guys on screen they're pretty detailed, but the games can also have dozens of people on screen at the same time, and if you look closely they're way less detailed. The games adjust Level-Of-Detail on the fly.

Not the quite same thing, though, if I understand this Messiah business right. Dynamic LOD is old hat, simplifying meshes based on certain parameters (most often distance). The way I understood the Messiah thing, though, was that the character development workflow throughout game development allowed for dynamically altering the detail of the characters at any point, so that they could possibly release a 2010 (or whenever) version of the game with the characters completely intact as modeled.

Of course, I may be wrong. I often am, haha!

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Of course, I may be wrong. I often am, haha!

I don't think you are, I understood the paper this way too.

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...but I loved Messiah!

Certainly, the control system wasn't brilliant. But the setting and story were hugely compelling I thought. Even my strictly-no-gaming (at the time) brother found Messiah really interesting and played it a lot.

I've been hoping for a sequel ever since. ;(

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I started thinking about what a pre-rendered Myst game would be like, look like and sound like ten years later, probably filling at least four or five DVDs with high resolution images and animations, but after a couple of seconds I started crying because that'll never happen.

There was Myst V in 2005. I know it's not super-recent, but wasn't that pre-rendered? (I don't know; I never completed Riven and only messed around for a few minutes in IV!)

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I started thinking about what a prerendered Myst game would be like
know it's not super-recent, but wasn't that pre-rendered?

You both mean rendered in real time, right ? Because Myst 1 through 4 were prerendered and Myst V (which was actually quite enjoyable) was in realtime. I'm all confused now.

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Of course you're confused when you only read half my sentence. Let's have a look!

I started thinking about what a pre-rendered Myst game would be like, look like and sound like ten years later[...]
See? Riven was prerendered, and I wondered what a prerendered Myst game would be like in 2008. Of course, I kind of failed to mention Myst IV, which was prerendered and came out in 2004, so okay, four years later. Anyway, these two later games weren't made by the same people as Myst and Riven, and even though they both look amazing, there's still something about Riven that just blows my mind, and I think that if that game was made today, it would be abso-fucking-lutely amazing to behold.

And yeah, Myst V was real-time, and it looked good, but come on, real-time always looks like shit compared to prerendered.

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Uh, OK, I thought you were wondering how Riven would look like if it was released today in realtime with the same assets that were used in the original pre-rendered version.. hence the 5 DVDs and so on. Sorry 'bout that.

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I'm pretty sure he means if you take an example of each from the same time..... otherwise that's a pointless comparison.

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Obviously, although I still think Riven looks better and feels more immersive than any other game. Obviously, there has been progress in various areas, and Riven is clearly aging in areas like image resolution and the animation of the various animals, but the islands themselves, and the materials and lighting and the realness of everything, a feeling of physical presence of every little thing from buttons to trams to walkways I've never seen the like of, even in the sequels. I'm suspecting there's a huge element of nostalgia or something fogging and blurring and colouring my view, but fuck it.

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Now wait. Yes, pre-rendered will always look better than real-time. Mysts I-III were pre-rendered, Myst V was real time, but I have Myst IV and if I remember correctly, it had pretty steep system requirements (for me at the time) and it doesn't look nearly as beautiful as Riven or Exile. The settings were adjustable and I remember there being some slowdown if you turned them up high enough. Whereas Mysts I-II (and probably III as well) were basically interactive slide-shows, I'm pretty sure Myst IV had something deeper going on under the hood. Is it possible that it had real time elements within a pre-rendered world?

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Is it possible that it had real time elements within a pre-rendered world?

Any more of that filthy language and I'll report you to the moderators!

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Myst IV was pre-rendered as well, with more looping animation/ layered environments. I think it looked better than Riven- plus you could examine the entire environment from any angle. Although it was kind of broken, in Quicktime-Vr kind of way.

Toblix: The reason you might like the look of those games so much is because with pre-rendered you can not only take as long as you want to render the scene, but you have tons of options for post-processing: giving it that finished look that real-time 3d engines usually can't pull off. (In that Riven screenshot there is color correction and grain added, at the minimum).

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Toblix: The reason you might like the look of those games so much is because with pre-rendered you can not only take as long as you want to render the scene, but you have tons of options for post-processing: giving it that finished look that real-time 3d engines usually can't pull off. (In that Riven screenshot there is color correction and grain added, at the minimum).

Well, I don't think there's much point in considering the post-processing in particular as an advantage. The two ways of rendering the game world are so wildly different what counts as post-processing in one can be considered an integral part of the other. It's simply a matter of giving the modelers, animators, designers and texture artists greater freedom, by several orders of magnitude in almost every aspect. There's just a fuckton of faces and reflections layered materials that real-time rendereres are only considering faking.

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I just started playing Myst 3, which has an awesome engine that gives you the ability to freely rotate the view around in each fully animated node. While the resolution is higher (though still noticeably pixel(l?)ated), I still find the graphics of Riven to be superior. I also prefer Riven over the Myst 3 worlds. Anyway, Myst 3 still rocks.

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I just started playing Myst 3, which has an awesome engine that gives you the ability to freely rotate the view around in each fully animated node. While the resolution is higher (though still noticeably pixel(l?)ated), I still find the graphics of Riven to be superior. I also prefer Riven over the Myst 3 worlds. Anyway, Myst 3 still rocks.

Oooh, I can't wait until you finish Amateria (it's the age with all of the rollercoaster-like tracks and funky polygon stones). Make sure you save your game before the final puzzle so you can replay the end of the age. It's massively cool. :)

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Oooh, I can't wait until you finish Amateria (it's the age with all of the rollercoaster-like tracks and funky polygon stones). Make sure you save your game before the final puzzle so you can replay the end of the age. It's massively cool. :)

Yeah, I've played through these games a couple of times before. It's awesome.

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That's the only Myst game I've finished. I guess because they say it's the easiest, and even then I checked a walk-through at least a couple of times. I liked it enough to buy IV too but I never finished that.

Brad Dourif for the win.

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I recently tried Myst for the DS again, which was pure rubbish, but even on the PC a while ago, I just couldn't get into that world. It was so obscure, so lifeless, so still. Perhaps Riven would be better to play.

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I just couldn't get into that world. It was so obscure, so lifeless, so still.
That is, as they say, not a bug but a feature. If Myst and its worlds don't do it for you, don't expect to get off by playing Myst or something.

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