[WIP] - Let's Link to Myst!

Indecom

Hey guys! I started a thread over on the mtbs3d forums while waiting for my Oculus Rift developer kit to arrive. I decided a few days ago that I would make one of my life long goals become a reality. I have decided to use my Rift to link to Myst Island from the classic game franchise Myst.

For those of you who aren't familiar, let me elaborate for you. The Myst series is all about teleporation and expoloration of strange, new, and often exotic worlds. And how this is done is by finding various books scattered about, hidden from plain sight that, once opened, display a small moving picture on the cover page of this book. And when you place your hand on this page, you are teleported inside the book to explore completely new environments. This is something that's not very far, in feeling, from experiencing truly immersive virtual reality, moving from one world, to another in a matter of seconds.

To paraphrase my thread at mtbs3d:
The goal of this project is to give Myst Island a facelift, and on top of that, to bring it to the next generation in terms of visual fidelity. I want you to be able to walk around Myst as it was when Sirrus and Achenar were children. Blue skies, birds chirping, buildings clean and new, fish swimming on the shore near the dock.

I'll be using this thread to post my progress along the way, from importing assets, to improving them, to generating the new terrain from the actual island model that i can paint grass and flora onto.

I intend this to be a freeware release that will ultimately be reliant on the player owning a copy of the one either realMyst, or Myst Masterpiece edition.

At the bottom of this post will be progress pictures from when I started two days ago, to where I am now.

What do you think of this venture, and what would you like to see?

if you have any comments on the legalities of this project, I intend to talk with the Miller brothers about this undertaking, and hope to gain their support as it's intended as a freeware experience with all new assets (derivative however)

Imported the island as seen in Myst V into blender, patching holes to create a new heightmap:


Imported the heightmap into the UDK onto a terrain that I can sculpt more detail onto:


Imported placeholder meshes taken from Myst 5 into UDK for placement of final structures and terrain manipulation:


Imported the rest of the placeholder structures, have a simple mockup texture applied to the terrain:


Begining to create new terrain textures, replaced texture on the mountain:

Armageddon

This is cool if Cyan World doesn't shut you down.

Indecom

Chances are once i've got something really nice to show off and a good pitch that they wont shut me down. They've given the Starry Expanse the okay to recreate the entire Riven in unity. So I should be good once i've got something to show is worth while.

shrogg

I'm a big fan of the Myst games and would love to see where you take this!
Good luck with it

Indecom

Thanks! I hope to at least recreate the majority of the island so it will be exploraby by the time my devkit arrives. None of the complex moving parts will be functional however, such as the giant tree will be static, and you wont be able to enter the library tower, and the hologram room will be blocked off. Might add all the rest of that stuff later on though.

Here are two of my new grass textures!

mr_ace

this is cool, i loved myst and it's atmosphere, I hope you do it proud

PHArt

Can't wait to see the next update on this!

Indecom

Hey guys thanks for the support! I'll be posting some more updates here in a few. gotta take care of some coding on another project then i'l begin working on some more textures

pixelb

I hope this works out. As a fellow Myst fan, the Rift's potential makes me drool, and of course I'd love to see Myst in virtual space. I doubt the Millers will stop you from trying, they've been supportive of (non-commercial) fan projects in the past. On the other hand, fan creators seem to be their own worst enemy. Of the attempted projects I've known, all have stretched on for years before inevitably collapsing. People underestimate the amount of time and effort it takes simply to recreate something.

But hey, so long as you're going for it, why not do the moving parts? It's just a little kismet and some custom materials, right?

Indecom

Hey guys heres another little update. Actually it's a rather significant one as i've migrated form using the old terrain format to the UDK's new landscape format which allows for sculpting erosion, and for blending textures based on a heightmap value so things like rocks can begin to poke up through my sand material. Very cool looking. Here's an updated screenshot featuring an improved rock material as well as the new sand material i've created. In this area i'll likely exchange the sand for a more moist dirt but it still looks good!



@pixelb: I might just end up doing that. This is my first actual UDK project and i'm learning it quickly enough so far. Perhaps kismet will be just as easy to learn

pixelb

By the way, how did you end up extracting models from Myst 5?

Indecom

Lol it was a complex process, I ended up having to downlod MOULagain, and drizzle, the file handler for it, which allows for converting myst 5 ages into uru online playable ages. There is an extension for blender call pyprp or something like that, which lets you import uru online ages into blender, so after converting the myst age to uru format, i imported the results into blender

Indecom

Hey guys here's an update. Been busy the past few days working on my commercial game so I havent had much time to work on this. However just in the past two days, off and on, I've managed to create my first ever speedtree, you can tell its noobish and totally temporary. I've managed to almost completely overhaul the spiral islands water shader i found on youtube to included better refraction, realtime fresnel reflections, realtime vertex displacement to simulate waves rolling up and down the beach, and added a few extra nodes to my landscape shader to simulate soaking up water along the shore line. Ive set up a proper udk dev environment for the project as well, which will allow me to customize gameplay controls, interfaces, and other things of that nature.

Also I got a disheartening letter from someone named Tom, over at Cyan who says that they arent handing out license for using Myst Assets in the way i've requested and that they are currently looking into the Oculus Rift as an interesting thing to integrate into their own projects. That's fine and dandy and everything but I dont intend to use their assets, just their likenesses. Its a strange email considering the fact that they gave the Starry Expanse the okay and i'm doing exactly what they are, only i'm not recreating the whole game. So I'm going to keep up work on this, and when I have something good to show off, i'm going to go over their heads and talk directly to the tinsel man and his brother with a proper pitch video.

Here's images!!!




(not bad for only having 1 week's experience with UDK, self taught!)

Madhatt3r

...are you still working on this?
I have a whole bunch of people on the oculus subreddit asking.

Indecom

Hey madhatt3r, yea I've actually just picked it up again. I was on hiatus for a while while I was working on another commercial project, but that's finished and awaiting certification in the Windows Store now so I've had some time to actually do something more. Here's what I've done yesterday, my version of the garden pool, inspired by the design from the first Myst, but with the same dimensions as the pool from realMyst:



What do you think? Crits and comments are beyond welcomed. I'm using this as a way to brush up on y environmental modelling and I can use all the help I can get. I plan to go all out next gen with this, while still staying within a fairly reasonable polycount (since i'm on a gaming netbook, clevo w110er essentially)

Edit: In case you don't know, I do have my rift now, and I spent a good 45 minutes the other day walking around on Myst Island in VR for the first time. I was too busy to do so before I finished work on my game. I have to admit, once i adjusted the player speed to more of a casual walk, it was a much bigger, more immersive, and amazing experience. The only issues i have with it right now are how the hell to "turn off" DOF in udk without disabling it. I basically require DOF in order to use the hmd warping, and with it toned all the way down, i get strange artifacts on distant pixels where they are trying to blur but just end up looking chunky and ugly. I'll post an example image in a few minutes.

Indecom

Hey guys here's the high poly on that pool:


I've got some questions for the more established environment artist on the forums. What's the best way to try and tackle texturing something like this? Would you go modular, dividing the pool into pie like slices?

Indecom

Hey guys, here's a pretty little gift for the users here who happen to own a Rift:

subspark

Damn fine rehash of Myst island.

Have you played Myst Online?

There are so many incredible sights and landscapes with conforming structures to be enjoyed. The art and atmosphere still competes with todays titles.

subspark

Damn fine refresh of Myst island.

Have you played Myst Online?

There are so many outstanding sights and landscapes with conforming structures to be enjoyed.
The art Cyan Worlds produces still competes with even todays newest titles. Highly recommended. Go check it out!

I've been wanting to remake Myst Online in a modern engine, namely Cryengine 3/UDK/Unity 4, but haven't come close to finding the right kind of folks to help put something both fun and pretty together.

Most seem more taken by laser cannons, zombies and orcs than the serenity and enjoyment felt while exploring and uncovering wild new places and characters.