On the Subject of the Oculus Rift
We’re hard at work on the next big Starry Expanse announcement, but we wanted to take a moment to address a question that has come up a lot recently, the Oculus Rift. For those of you who are not aware, the Rift is an upcoming head-mounted virtual reality display, specifically built for video games. It blasted through its Kickstarter campaign, raising over 900% of its original goal (that’s over 2 million dollars!), and is now well on its way to becoming a reality. It is backed by a lot of really big names, like Valve and Epic games, and already natively supports Unity and the Unreal engine.
So naturally, everybody wants to know – will The Starry Expanse support the Rift?
Our answer to that is, unfortunately, a vague one. We here at 59 Volts all agree that the Oculus Rift looks pretty dang cool. Playing our game on a head-mounted display as great as the Rift promises to be sounds like a dream – Myst is all about immersion, and what better way to immerse oneself than through VR?
At the same time, as much as it pains me to say this, our game is far from being complete. Like, still a few years, at least. With that in mind, we’re unwilling at this time to commit ourselves to supporting anything beyond what we’ve already promised – that the game will play on a standard Windows computer, or on a standard Mac OS X computer.
To be clear: this is not to say that we will not support the Rift. In all likelihood, we will ultimately do what we can to support the Rift. But we’re not promising anything until the game is a lot more complete.
Thank you to everyone who has contacted us about the Oculus Rift, we hope that this is enough of a satisfactory answer. As always, stay tuned for more updates about the project soon!
February 8th, 2013 at 12:44 pm
A few YEARS?
February 12th, 2013 at 5:46 pm
Thanks very normal for game development
February 12th, 2013 at 8:15 pm
2 to 3 1/2 years tends to be the norm. As far as I know, this has already been in development for three years, so to hear that it’s going to take at least 3 more is rather disheartening.
February 12th, 2013 at 8:25 pm
Keep in mind that 2-3 years tends to be the norm for triple-A game development studios. We are a very small band of volunteers, mostly students, who are spending as much of our own time as we possibly can.
It took Cyan many years to make the original Riven, it’s going to take us a lot longer. We wish this were not the case, but it is. Stick around though, it’s gonna be great. 🙂
February 12th, 2013 at 9:14 pm
But
I don’t wanna wait for our lives to be over.
I want to know right now when will it be?
I don’t want to wait for our lives to be over.
Will it be yes or will it be…sorry?
doo-doo-oooh
doo-doo-oooh
doo-doo-oooh
February 8th, 2013 at 8:23 pm
let it take as long as it has to, you can’t rush something like this, its going to be epic
February 8th, 2013 at 9:42 pm
Wow this looks amazing, I sure hope one of the myst games if not realRiven gets made for it
February 8th, 2013 at 10:41 pm
Do you ever worry that by the time you’ve finished the game, the first graphics you finished will be outdated?
February 8th, 2013 at 10:58 pm
Constantly! 😀
February 9th, 2013 at 1:09 pm
This is off topic, but what did yall think of riven for ipad? I think it kinda falls short of the dvd rom version becuse of more compressed movies, no water effects, and no way to play in windowed mode in its original resolution, cyan said it was going to be in a higher resolution but i dont think it was.
February 9th, 2013 at 1:19 pm
I can only speak for myself, not the team as a whole, but personally I enjoyed Riven for iPad. I definitely missed the atmospheric effects (water, fireflies, etc), but if you really need to play Riven now, it’s a pretty good version of it.
On a technical note, it is definitely not a higher resolution than the original game. In fact, in some areas it is significantly more compressed than the original. Still, it is much higher resolution than Riven for iPhone, which was nearly unplayable.
February 9th, 2013 at 11:45 pm
I heard rand say that he had riven at a slightly higher resolution than the original, but ive read another chogon post saying that the resolution was locked in at 608×392, does anybody know the truth?… Maybe by “slightly higher resolution” he just ment less compressed,
February 13th, 2013 at 9:19 pm
Yall should try to get robyn miller to join the team now that he’s finished making the immortal augustus gladstone
February 13th, 2013 at 10:40 pm
You sure he doesn’t have other things on his schedule?
February 14th, 2013 at 11:18 pm
I dont know, but what could be more imortant than this? And hes the type of person that wouldnt be happy with it nomatter what unless he was involved. my real wish would be for robyn, rand and ryan to join in and work on this together like the good old days
February 26th, 2013 at 7:23 pm
No offense meant towards the original poster, reading complains about minor things like development time makes me kind of smile. 🙂
When you think about it and go backwards a little, a few years ago when you asked a Riven fan the question : “Do you think there might be, one day, a realRiven ?” everyone would sigh and answer : “no chance, not gonna happen, it’s only a dream”. Nobody can say they had even the smallest faith that it would actually happen. I mean, Starry Expanse is a very unlikely saviour for all of us. What were the odds ? Minimal, I think.
Of course, nothing is complete, but they look pretty serious 😉 and now that they got Cyan’s agreement, we are breezing a nice fresh air of hope.
February 28th, 2013 at 7:35 pm
Playing riven, the most atmospheric game ever made, with occulus rift will be a life changing experience. Please make this a reality, even it takes 5 years! Thank you!
March 13th, 2013 at 10:57 am
What you guys are doing is great, no matter how much longer it takes. I know it will be 100% worth it. And everyone out there needs to keep in mind that these guys are doing this for free. The donations they receive go to developing the project itself, that’s it.
I for one am very excited that some serious Rivenites (like myself) are taking that awesome world and it’s experiences this seriously! I applaud them and would love to be one of them.
Keep doing that you’re doing guys!
March 17th, 2013 at 11:08 am
Sorry to say this but unless this game goes to Kickstarter it will most probably never be made. Ive watched too many amateur projects like this fade away and i dont want to see the same happen to this aswell.
PLS make a kickstarter campaign.
March 20th, 2013 at 5:59 am
We’ve discussed doing a Kickstarter or similar (perhaps Indiegogo) fundraiser. It’s definitely a possibility.
March 17th, 2013 at 11:24 pm
Just to put a voice out there while this topic is still under consideration: if you decide to go down the Oculus Rift route, please also consider some sort of stereo 3D support. I’m one of those suckers who has a 3D monitor, and I’m really excited by the prospect of being able to revisit these worlds.
April 21st, 2013 at 9:38 pm
I would pay into a kickstarter
April 21st, 2013 at 9:39 pm
Is it not possible to get the original 3d model files from Cyan Worlds along with textures etc?