realMyst

From MYSTlore

realMyst interactive 3d edition (working titles Myst 3D and Myst Dimensions) is an adaption of Myst made in 2000 using Cyan's real-time 3D engine Plasma. It was developed by people from Cyan as well as Sunsoft, and originally published by the short-lived Mattel Interactive.

[edit] Improvements

Not part of the game, but apparently planned: Channelwood at night, with a frog and the moon clearly visible.

realMyst's interface is vastly different from the point-and-click interface. While the first-person perspective is retained (unlike Uru's default), movement is continuous, rather than stepping from one node to another. This allows for a virtually infinite amount of perspectives, compared to the fixed point of view in Myst and Riven.

realMyst also allowed for music fade-in and out when the player approached a certain screen (such as the Forechamber) instead of beginning and stopping abruptly.

In addition to all Ages featured in Myst (and Myst Masterpiece Edition), realMyst features Rime, a small experimental Age of Atrus's for various purposes. Its viewer technology provides a new tie-in with Riven, as that Age can be seen through the viewer. Therefore, the storyline connection between the two games has been improved through this additional Age.

realMyst also adds some weather effects. For example, Myst Island features a day cycle of 30 minutes, and Selenitic and Stoneship each of 15 minutes, allowing the player to experience sunset. Stoneship also has rain and thunderstorms. A night version of Channelwood was planned, but for some reason it was left out.

Some small tidbits were also added, such as Ti'ana's gravestone.

[edit] Background

This was the first actual released product using the Plasma engine, and is thus seen by many as a testing ground for their then-ongoing Mudpie project. realMyst still has various remains of DIRT, with hidden settings making no sense for this type of game (such as avatar emotes), and strings in the binaries pointing at its origin.

However, Mudpie would later move to using version 2 of Plasma, obsoleting much of realMyst's architecture.

Mere months before release, realMyst was also the basis of Myst Mayhem, Cyan's 2000 April Fool's joke.