This one is very theoretical, because I have no idea how it would work, except manually, but it would be very useful, and cool.
You have probably heard of Photosynth before, Microsoft’s tool for stitching together photos to make a virtual re-creation of the place or object in the photos. It lets you swivel around an object, or virtuallyy explore commonly-photographed landmarks. It’s all very cool.
Now here’s the Myst connection. If there was some kind of tool like this, but for Riven, it could take Riven screenshots and stitch them together based on the objects in the game, creating easy-to-use 360° views.
“What good would that be?” you ask. Well, consider the submarine on Jungle Island. If you walk up to the place where you first find it resting, you can see these 3 views (and others in between these) on the way there:
That’s all well and good, but what if you want to see the back of the submarine? Of course it’s possible to see it:
But how do you get there? Here’s how:
So I trust you understand now why this would be awesome. Of course, I don’t plan on doing this project myself, because I have absolutely no idea how it would work. I just had the idea, and figured I should tell people. If you have any idea of how it would work, let me know and maybe we can try to get it working. For now, file it under “hypothetical”.
I’m starting a series of blog posts wherein I explain all of the Myst projects I’m currently working on (or thinking about working on). This is my first project: realMyst on a Mac!
This was actually relatively simple to do, turns out. Using CrossOver Games 8.0.0 (all I have access to, unfortunately. I can’t guarantee anything about newer versions of CrossOver), I ran the realMyst installer from the Windows realMyst CD (again, all I have access to, though I can tell you that the Steam verison doesn’t work. The GoG verison might be better. If you want to give it a try, let me know and I’ll try to help you out). I let CrossOver set up the bottle for me (a WinXP bottle), and then the installer ran without a hitch.
Patch & No-CD
I then installed the v1.1.1 patch & a no-cd patch (required, seems like CrossOver can’t see the CD drive):
Download the patches from this page (Direct links: patch and no-cd). Un-rar the no-cd patch.
In CrossOver, do Programs > Run Command…
Select the REALMYST bottle (or wherever you installed RealMyst to), type a ” into the Command box, drag your real_myst_patch_v1.11.exe file into the box, and type another “. Something like this should now be in the box: "/Users/YOUR NAME HERE/Desktop/real_myst_patch_v1.11.exe"
Run that sucker. Select the right directory for realMyst, when it gets to that part.
Assuming that all went smoothly, you can now install the no-cd patch. In a new Finder window, do Go > Go to Folder… and go to this folder, replacing your name (and Bottle name, if you didn’t install to the REALMYST bottle): /Users/YOUR NAME HERE/Library/Application Support/CrossOver Games/Bottles/REALMYST/drive_c/Program Files/Cyan Worlds/realMYST Interactive 3D Edition/
Drag the new realMYST.exe from the no-cd folder to this folder, and replace the old one when it asks.
Ok, that’s realMyst all set up. You can eject the CD now, you won’t need it anymore.
To launch the game, you should be able to just use the shortcuts CrossOver makes for you in its Programs menu. If (for some reason) these shortcuts don’t work, you can find instructions for making a new, working shortcut at the bottom of the post.
Indeo Codec
The game will now run smoothly, but a lot of the videos will be broken. To fix this, you need to install the Indeo Codec (direct link or mirror). To run this properly:
In CrossOver Games, do Programs > Run Command…
Select the REALMYST bottle (or wherever you installed RealMyst to), type a ” into the Command box, drag your iv5setup.exe file into the box, and type another “. Something like this should now be in the box: "/Users/YOUR NAME HERE/Desktop/iv5setup.exe"
Run that sucker.
When it asks you what type of installation you want, make it a Custom one. Uncheck “Indeo Video 5 Web Browser Plugin”. You can leave everything else enabled, though I unchecked the help files, as well.
Get through the rest of the installer, and you should now be good to go!
The performance seems to be pretty good, a lot better than Uru in Crossover Games. Then again, realMyst has incredibly low minimum specs (450mhz Pentium II and 64mb of ram, d’awww), so that kind of makes sense.
Windowed Mode
Oh, and one other thing. There’s no “windowed” mode for realMyst, so if you want to run it in a window, you need to do the following:
In CrossOver Games, go to Configure > Manage Bottles.
In the Manage Bottles window, select the REALMYST bottle on the left. Then go to the Control Panel tab, select winecfg, and hit Launch.
When it launches, it will be an ugly Windows dialog. That’s ok, just navigate to the Graphics tab, and enable the first four checkboxes.You can also change the resolution of the virtual desktop (and therefore, the resolution realMyst will run at), but I usually don’t go bigger than 800×600, because it takes up too much space! You’ll also need to run realMyst Setup in order to change the resolution of the game to match the virtual desktop resolution, or it will stretch to fit.
That’s all it takes.
Troubleshooting
If (for some reason) the CrossOver shortcuts don’t work, you can do the following to launch the game:
In CrossOver, do Programs > Run Command…
Select the REALMYST bottle, or whatever bottle you installed the game to. Paste the following into the Command box, putting in your own name (and replacing the bottle name, if you installed it somewhere else): "/Users/YOUR NAME HERE/Library/Application Support/CrossOver Games/Bottles/REALMYST/drive_c/Program Files/Cyan Worlds/realMYST Interactive 3D Edition/RealMYST.exe"
Select Run. Happy Mysting!
When you’re done, you can press “Save Command to Programs Menu” so that you get a RealMYST shortcut in the CrossOver Programs menu, and you won’t have to do all this again later.
You can also run realMyst Setup (to change what resolution, etc it runs at) by using this command: "/Users/zib/Library/Application Support/CrossOver Games/Bottles/REALMYST/drive_c/Program Files/Cyan Worlds/realMYST Interactive 3D Edition/RealMYST.exe"
