Life after Mysterium
Every year after Mysterium, the team takes a bit of time off as a breath of fresh air after the mad dash to complete our demo in time for August. That brief period of exhalation has been thoroughly enjoyed by each and every one of us, and it is now safe to say that we’re back to work.
After our success with last year’s goal, we have decided to split our team into three distinct groups. The first group, which is the majority of the team, is focusing on finishing up the Village Basin area that we showed off at Mysterium. This includes completing the unfinished assets as well as fixing any remaining glitches and generally fine-tuning the engine.
Meanwhile, two of our artists are off blazing new trails for the project. We’ve discussed our camera matching process in the past, our technique of getting 1:1 geometry based solely on images from the original game. Matt, our expert camera-matching guy, has already begun to apply this technique to the rest of Jungle Island, which is the first stage in expanding our in-game area beyond the Village Basin. In these screenshots, you can see our progress on matching Gehn’s throne and the upper walkway in the forest (the line overlays are our work)
(The image is somewhat high-resolution, may load slowly)
Once areas are fully “matched”, we create very simple stand-in geometry for the area, so in-engine work can begin before the final assets are completed, or even started. The stand-in assets are then replaced, one by one, with final art, until the area is complete. This is the state of the 233rd age currently – it is fully blocked-in, and Kelly, one of our amazing artists, is beginning to create detailed assets, based on the blocking geometry.
Here you can see one of the elements she’s working on, albeit still in an early, unpolished phase:
We’re very happy to be back to work – as nice as a break is every now and then, we all love working on this project, and are excited to be able to show you guys some pretty cool stuff in the weeks and months to come.
September 25th, 2014 at 11:23 am
First ! Beautiful as always
September 25th, 2014 at 2:28 pm
That’s awesome! Keep up the good work, I look forward to this fantastic remake!
September 25th, 2014 at 6:10 pm
As usual….IMPRESSIVE!!!
September 25th, 2014 at 9:39 pm
Every time an update is posted, my excitement levels triple! :} GREAT WORK!
September 26th, 2014 at 11:09 am
All the new stuff looks great, you guys have made tremendous progress. Very impressive. Quick question though, hopefully this won’t sound too snippy – do you guys believe the switch to Unreal 4 will be the last engine change? I know with a long term project like this, it’s tough when new tech comes out before the project is finished. The temptation is always there to move to the next best thing.
September 26th, 2014 at 11:19 am
Yes, at this point we have settled on Unreal 4 as our engine. We have no intention of changing again.
September 27th, 2014 at 5:44 pm
zib, are you guys still looking for recruits? I was just on Polycount.com today and some of the artists are amazing! Riven is all about texturing and lighting imo and the guys there never cease to impress.
Also will Robyn Miller let you use his soundtrack? It was one of the best parts of Riven.
…and by the way I’m still hoping down the road you guys can add an explorable Tay. I think it would be a shame to remake Riven and not correct the biggest fuckup Cyan ever did (well, it was really the lack of development time mind you). Ever since I saw that box have I longed to explore that hive. The same way realMyst had Rime, perhaps the hive could be added after the the initial visit where you regain your trap book. Maybe as some kind of DLC even or maybe an added section of gameplay which requires you to go there to retrieve something for Catherine. Please consider it. I’ve been waiting 17 years to see Riven redone with the hope that we might finally see more of it.
So far everything looks great!
September 30th, 2014 at 12:23 pm
+1 on exploreable Tay (and 233), even if it’s just to leave the prison to walk around a bit . I’m really hoping that the 3D movement will allow us to go outside areas that were originally blocked.
September 30th, 2014 at 1:23 pm
Invisible walls really suck. I took a game design class where the professor said that you should never use a blocking volume or invisible wall to encourage gameplay. Meaning if you don’t want your character going somewhere, block it off with physical objects or a story reason like a crumbled wall. Invisible walls only piss off the player. I’m hoping we can wander more freely around jungle island’s more open spaces and between the trees in the jungle area. It is realRiven after all.
Oh and thanks for the Tay +1. We’ve waited so long for the possibility of there being something new in Riven let aalone resolving that anticlimax of the Hive that appeared on the friggin box.
October 2nd, 2014 at 7:57 pm
Im against an explorable tay, it could never live up to what we all imagine it to be. And it is a prison after all. And you would also have to have a lot of npc’s walking around. Im all for using the crystal imager to power up the burnt book in ghens lab to have a new age to explore.
October 21st, 2014 at 5:32 pm
Was Tay originally meant to be explorable but cut?
October 21st, 2014 at 5:36 pm
Yes, and this is going back to comments Rand and Robyn made many years ago. Essentially there were supposed to be five ages including Tay, 233 and 234. Cyan was already behind schedule by ’96 and decided to scrap that content for time.
October 27th, 2014 at 9:20 pm
Interesting. Are there any conceptual sketches left over?
October 27th, 2014 at 10:03 pm
Not that I can think of. Although much of the Riven concept art was done pretty roughly and most of it isn’t released.
September 27th, 2014 at 6:08 pm
Impressive as always. Making that jungle must be hell. Or maybe not so much once you have some assets you can cover the map with?
Anyway, I hope UE4 gives you a really good version of the light color contrast and intense shadows
September 27th, 2014 at 6:19 pm
Will the Original music and sounds from Riven be used in this Remake, without being altered in anyway?
September 27th, 2014 at 7:09 pm
Looking great so far, nice work!
October 4th, 2014 at 7:32 pm
Looks like Unreal 4 has free educational licenses now for schools.
https://www.unrealengine.com/education
October 4th, 2014 at 10:05 pm
From http://www.pcworld.com/article/2690711/exclusive-preview-this-is-obduction-cyans-spiritual-successor-to-myst.html: “There’s a very strong The Room-esque presence in Obduction—you can now pick up, rotate, and interact with objects in the environment[…]. “It’s the kind of stuff that you wished you could do in Riven when you’d pick up the stuff on Gehn’s nightstand,” says Anderson.â€
That does sound pretty cool. Will we be able to interact with objects like this in realRiven?
October 5th, 2014 at 7:16 am
I think that would only be possible if, after making the game, Cyan colaborated, gave them the system they made etc.
November 27th, 2014 at 1:12 am
We actually haven’t decided that yet. Back in the beginning we had concept art for a “detailed object view” that would let the player pick up essentially any object, and rotate it around 360 degrees, zoom in and whatnot…
My personal suspicion is that Riven just has too many random trinkets (some of which are important, many of which are not) to make them all “inspectable”. If everything was able to be inspected like that, you might start ignoring the important objects because so many of the viewable objects are just function-less.
An important part of Riven’s design is that the player be directed toward the important bits (i.e. things that help them progress in the game). This was accomplished in the original through careful choice of camera locations, selective interactivity, etcetera. In the more unrestricted environment that is realRiven, we don’t have the ability to force certain aspects of the game like that, so we’ll need to experiment to see what’s workable and what’s not.
November 28th, 2014 at 3:55 pm
I personally think that being able to pick up any object (including many useless objects) is a fantastic idea. It would force the player to stop and really think about what they are trying to accomplish.
I’m sure it would also give the game a whole new level of depth and detail which would make it even more immersive than it already is.
But that’s just me, I’m no game designer so I can’t really argue.
October 14th, 2014 at 11:58 am
If Cyan could provide the team with all original models used in Riven somehow it could save you tons of time! I’m not sure if it’s plausible but certainly worth negotitating.
October 21st, 2014 at 2:08 pm
Curious about this as well, seems like it would save a lot of time.
October 21st, 2014 at 2:10 pm
Also the textures. Nothing says Riven more than those Albuquerque textures.
October 17th, 2014 at 8:07 pm
Have you guys thought of possibly starting a kickstarter?
November 23rd, 2014 at 10:01 pm
I’d support Starry Expanse on Kickstarter!
November 27th, 2014 at 1:04 am
Thank you! It’s great to know we have such awesome followers.
November 27th, 2014 at 1:02 am
We currently have no plans for a Kickstarter… That said, it’s not outside of the realm of possibility!
October 22nd, 2014 at 9:51 am
October update ?
October 26th, 2014 at 10:37 pm
Soon to be November update.
October 25th, 2014 at 7:21 am
I hope we get to see the beautiful blue sky as close to the original as well. It made the game so much more immersive for me. Keep up the good work! I’m really looking forward to this!
November 11th, 2014 at 11:57 am
Playing Riven with Oculus Rift and Omni Virtuix would be the most amazing experience ever. Omni Virtuix fits to every game, so noe extra work to be done there.
November 13th, 2014 at 5:40 pm
You guys still alive?
November 20th, 2014 at 5:33 am
November update ?
November 20th, 2014 at 11:45 am
Soon to be December update.
November 24th, 2014 at 1:49 pm
I guess the project is dead.
November 25th, 2014 at 1:10 am
Seems like it. 🙁
November 27th, 2014 at 12:37 am
We’re still alive!
November 28th, 2014 at 3:28 pm
Yay! Good news!
November 26th, 2014 at 2:14 pm
Haha, there have been plenty of times in the past where they have had three month or more breaks between updates.
November 27th, 2014 at 2:15 am
I know, but apocalyptic comments are always a good way to get a little “we are still here!” response 😀
November 27th, 2014 at 12:54 am
Nope, things are still chugging along. Those of us in school find ourselves constantly distracted by it this time of year, however. We’ll definitely post something by the end of next month (if not sooner).