Cyan released their second realMyst preview today, and it looks awesome! Thoughts?

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Conterintuitive controls and no visible day night cycles... Looks like a bust to me.

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You beat me too it Ahlisendar, I was just going to post this, although I have to agree with Adam on this one, the controls still seam completely counter intuitive. It's like your driving RealMyst but with your hand, it makes no sense! With you hand on the screen to walk and move it's very hard to see what you looking at you would have to keep takeing your hand of the screen to see what you looking at *. Also as said in the first thread, RealMyst without day/night cycles is FakeMyst.

RealMyst for iOS looks really nice - the water effects are noticeably better, among other minor improvements.

I hope that Cyan Worlds will implement the day/night cycles in a free update sometime after release as that's something a lot of us would like to see. That said, the real appeal of RealMyst - what makes it RealMyst and not FakeMyst - is the fact that it is in realtime 3d, and you can walk around to nearly any position in the gameworld... you're not limited to a flat slideshow interface with predefined images.

As for the interface... it seems okay to me, given the nature of the platform. Not good, exactly, but not especially bad either.

I'm not ready to call this a bust just yet; if they release it on enough platforms - not just iOS - and add a day/night update soon after the initial release, and price it reasonably, it could still become a successful app. Also would be a good idea to have a free Lite version out there, as with the old Myst app... If they do all that, they could very well still have a hit on their hands.

I can't say that I agree that the controls are completely "counter intuitive", but having to block the screen view when traveling isn't optimal.

A pair of invisible "thumb sliders" at the lower left and right sides of the screen would serve better for forward, back, and turns, and then make use of the angle sensing feature to adjust your view up and down. Just a thought, but then, part of my work involves designing human-machine interfaces...

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Wow! Likey... For what it's worth, I'm highly impressed to finally see Myst in HD.

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TOC#60089 DI#132103 MOULa is

I've been thinking about 3D movement on iPads, in relation to a game idea.

What I'm sure of -- after trying a few -- is that invisible sliders and joypads *really don't work*. You can't see them, you can't feel them, and therefore you lose them. Visible sliders and joypads are nearly as bad, because you're looking at the scenery rather than the controls.

What I've come up with (not yet tested) is quite similar to this, actually. I don't think putting your hand in front of the screen is a big deal. I have several touchscreen-toys where your hand is constantly on the screen; you wind up unconsciously shifting it out of the way of whatever you want to see.

My slightly different idea is "one finger to turn, two fingers to walk." That way you can walk forward by keeping two fingers near the *bottom* of the screen, which reduces the obstruction even more. But, as I said, I haven't tested it yet. One of these weekends I'll fire up Unity and give it a try.

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What about a system like Myst 5 where you can optionally use predetermined nodes(but there are a lot more oft them) or move around like you do in the video(players choose).

I mostly use a Targus stylus with my iPad so it would be interesting to see if using that made much difference in movement with this.

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*jaw drops*

That control system is super awful. What could've been quite decent and possibly awesome (well, if they didn't rip out day-night cycles, anyways..) is just incredibly meh.

I watched the start of that video and was like how is anyone really meant to control that? Some of the puzzles in realMYST required a fairly precise degree of timing, too. Hell, the original realMYST was criticized because that timing was too close... That control system is going to make it even worse. Ugh.

That looks /painful/ to play. Who the pants thought such a control system was a good idea?

kaelisebonrai wrote:

That looks /painful/ to play. Who the pants thought such a control system was a good idea?

It's Cyan!!! That instantly makes it teh awesum!!!!!11111

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Tomala wrote:

kaelisebonrai wrote:

That looks /painful/ to play. Who the pants thought such a control system was a good idea?

It's Cyan!!! That instantly makes it teh awesum!!!!!11111

Ah, I have confidence they'll get it right. Why all the complaints? IT'S MYST IN HD!!!!! Actually, the iPad 3's resolution is beyond HD. EVEN BETTER!!!

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TOC#60089 DI#132103 MOULa is

I'm not complaining, I'm just stating my opinion which is what was asked for. On that note I will add that graphically it's really amazing and this would be an excellent release for personal computers but for iPad I still can't get "past" that my hand would be in front of the screen most of the time.

Quote:

What about a system like Myst 5 where you can optionally use predetermined nodes(but there are a lot more oft them) or move around like you do in the video(players choose).

I think that's a great idea, and I sincerely hope they do that.

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