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macnbc posted:Fact: Cosmic Osmo is Cyan's best game. It has singing pineapples and milk cartons, and your spaceship shoots q-tips. QED. Nah you're wrong. Riven is their best game.  I'll fight you irl over this. But yeah I'll try out this game soon enough. Looks nice.
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Aug 30, 2016 11:55
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God drat this game was fun. Though I feel a bit like there could have been more towards the latter half of the game.  The red herring made me laugh, I had already lowered the stairs before putting in the right code to make the stupid thing drop.
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Aug 30, 2016 12:16
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Beat the game last night and I'm really torn on what I think of it over all. Just remembered this morning what was the deal with this note http://imgur.com/a/ahWj5 Was that a hint for something?
Amcoti fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Aug 30, 2016 |
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Aug 30, 2016 12:50
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Atomicated posted:Beat the game last night and I'm really torn on what I think of it over all. Just remembered this morning what was the deal with this note http://imgur.com/a/ahWj5. Was that a hint for something?
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Aug 30, 2016 13:39
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They released a new patch on Steam a few hours ago -- it seems to be a more tested version of the one they had to roll-back. http://steamcommunity.com/games/306760/announcements/detail/892098524080466930 I think some loading times have improved. Still quite long though, so I can't say for certain. I never had the other issue, of being stuck in the starting loading screen, and my saves seem to have transfered ok in the new build. I think my photo collection became corrupted or something because when selecting some thumbnails I get the picture next to the one I clicked on -- annoying little bug when trying to revisit pictures of what I suppose are clues for the puzzles. One main issue, which was also an issue for me in Riven (and Myst IV to a lesser degree), is that the "handwritten" notes are difficult to read. I mean, other games tackle this, by giving the text transcribed in a clear font (of maybe adjustable size). Here, again, I'm straining my eyes just to read a few pages (thank God nothing the length of Catherine's diary so far!). Other than that, and the occasional Unreal Engine stuttering/camera glitches. I'm enjoying the game so far. I think I've progressed somewhat, and they really got right the feeling of huge scale, especially in some specific locations. I am sort of stuck on a bunch of puzzles, and I may have to re-tread my steps all around for missed clues, levers and paths. I like the music too, although I haven't found a track that stands out from the rest, and I would like the music to play more often even if it was more subtle; as it is it sometimes seems to trigger non-deterministically/randomly.
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Aug 30, 2016 14:03
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AbstractNapper posted:I never had the other issue, of being stuck in the starting loading screen, and my saves seem to have transfered ok in the new build. I think my photo collection became corrupted or something because when selecting some thumbnails I get the picture next to the one I clicked on -- annoying little bug when trying to revisit pictures of what I suppose are clues for the puzzles. This was always a problem with the game, the pictures you take are randomly corrupt and won't open. Use Steam for screenshots. John Murdoch posted:One question: We very definitely finished Kaptar, but there's a locked door If it hasn't been made clear yet, to open the door just go down from that room into the chamber with all the buzzing insects, face the way you came down and go left following the wall. It's an entirely useless shortcut, but that's what it is.
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Aug 30, 2016 16:09
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Atomicated posted:Beat the game last night and I'm really torn on what I think of it over all. Just remembered this morning what was the deal with this note http://imgur.com/a/ahWj5 Was that a hint for something? Pretty sure that was a hint for the gauntlet sphere maze puzzle.
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Aug 30, 2016 21:23
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Speaking of Riven, are there any high quality completed let's plays of it? I wanted to play it myself once upon a time, but getting it to operate reliably on my computer was more difficult than any puzzle.
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Aug 30, 2016 22:28
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jon joe posted:Speaking of Riven, are there any high quality completed let's plays of it? I wanted to play it myself once upon a time, but getting it to operate reliably on my computer was more difficult than any puzzle. I was surprised to find there's no entries of it in the LP Archive. It is on GOG though and they're pretty good at updating games to be supported properly if you want to play it yourself.
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Aug 30, 2016 22:37
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macnbc posted:I was surprised to find there's no entries of it in the LP Archive. It is on GOG though and they're pretty good at updating games to be supported properly if you want to play it yourself. There was a really nice goon LP about a year ago, but there was much suffering of the LP curse and he only ended up getting about 1/3rd through the game.
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Aug 30, 2016 22:48
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I quite enjoyed this LP of riven.
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Aug 30, 2016 23:04
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The GoG version of Riven runs completely fine right out of the box. It looks like utter poo poo, but I had no problem getting it to run just the other day.
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Aug 30, 2016 23:25
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This game looks really interesting, but the minimum requirements list a Geforce GTX 660 and my card is a GTX 560 Ti. Has anyone tried playing the game with a card in that range (or lower)? I'm not exactly a stickler for high graphics settings.
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Aug 31, 2016 04:57
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:This game looks really interesting, but the minimum requirements list a Geforce GTX 660 and my card is a GTX 560 Ti. Has anyone tried playing the game with a card in that range (or lower)? I'm not exactly a stickler for high graphics settings. I played fine with a lower graphics card on the lowest settings, with occasional stuttering (most noticeable on load screens despite having the unofficially recommended SSD. If any part of the game is non-negotiable, it's downloading it onto an SSD. Otherwise, expect load times measured in minutes.)
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Aug 31, 2016 05:34
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jon joe posted:If any part of the game is non-negotiable, it's downloading it onto an SSD. Otherwise, expect load times measured in minutes.
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Aug 31, 2016 12:38
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Not from Goons but if you want somebody who LPed all of the Myst games and actually know some poo poo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM02NHqeejo He also has an okay voice so that's a +.
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Aug 31, 2016 12:46
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Michaellaneous posted:Not from Goons but if you want somebody who LPed all of the Myst games and actually know some poo poo: Agreed. Sven, really knows his Myst/ D'ni mythology and his playthroughs are not blind. As someone who has played all of Myst titles, and read the three available books (the third book significantly dips in quality, btw), I still learned quite a lot from his commentary, observations and speculations. I'd still recommend to people to go through (or at least try) Riven by themselves first.
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Aug 31, 2016 13:26
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MajorMarcus posted:Are non-SSD loading times that bad? I installed on an SSD, and it still seems like it takes too long to load. I originally installed on my regular drive before going back and installing on my SSD. SSD was about 30 second loads. The HDD was 2 minute loads.
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Sep 1, 2016 00:36
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Re: The maze puzzle. I really wish I knew ahead of time that you only need to make a single 90 degree path to reach everything. 
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Sep 1, 2016 00:46
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I finished the game at 18 hours -- much of that was me trying to return (and properly align) spheres to their original world, like the stone bridge sphere in Kaptar and the three intersecting spheres from Maray. I got stuck for a while at one place because I was focusing on exploring all of Hunrath and trying to find a way to the tunnel on the opposite side of the river and the wall passage on top of the waterfall, but those are available only later on in the game, and so I completely missed that setting the door panel for Maray's first door to zero had an effect on the door. I had then put in "1" and it changed the door (leaving it still blocked), so I thought I had to find another panel... And the final bridge puzzle in Maray where the control panel had some extra set connections did not make much sense. I solved it similarily to the rest, but I could not see why one solution worked and another didn't... Was it the point of it just to use the fact that a "2" setting works also? Anyway, some of the story stuff felt rushed, especially towards the end -- but, on the other hand, it was nice to see / discover what other story points mentioned in letters and diaries were actually about, and I thought Cyan did a pretty good job there. I also thought that the man in pod 222 was CW for some reason. I am probably THAT bad with faces. It didn't make much sense that the man in the "bunker" in Hunrath would be a Mofang, speaking with an accent and fluently, with a few weird/unusual sentences here and there, but I thought that the Mofang trying to pose as the "Mayor" was already established by then -- it was obvious from his first transmission --. I had also already decided that I would not connect CWs cable to the battery, because he was being too weird about it, constantly mentioning it and, for some reason, not being able to check it himself (although later on he DOES connect it himself)... It was a weird mistake to make in retrospect since, as it turns out, CW's character was Robyn Miller. This final "inconsistency" (CW being able to set the cable by himself) along with a few others -- some stuff would be clearer if Farley or CW bothered to be a bit more to the point about what was happening and why, some puzzles could be solved or circumvented if my character could do some climbing or jumping-- were a bit annoying. Also a bit annoying, leaving that poor Villein to probably die instead of being able to move -or at least try to- move the stuff that he was trapped under. I still wish they did a few more things with the story, and the Soria world. Maybe add a few more diaries, have some extra characters, do something more with the plot thread of rescuing the Mofang fake-Mayor (I had no idea where he supposedly was.... under water?... I was just following the (only) path the game allowed me to, and then found him dead after a kind of off-screen encounter with Villeins. Was it a coincidence that he was apparently running to trigger the bomb at that specific moment when I was approaching? Why the scheme to try to get me to help him (I think he probably wanted me to think bad of the Villeins and maybe kill/attack any that I find in my path, thus helping him or something)? Was he the last one of the Mofangs? Did I free him from some prison or set this final encounter in motion with my actions somehow? Loading times were bad, but (maybe after the first patch?) they were better in some specific parts in the later game, where it counted. I had a few crashes too, 2-3 "Fatal errors" and one DirectX related. Also, apparently my shadow kept returning even though disabled in the settings, and it is a known issue that the in-game photos navigation is buggy. The soundtrack ended up not making a big impression for me. It was there and not too obtrusive, but nothing outstanding (nothing close to Riven's, original Myst's, Myst III's, or URU's OSTs). The game overall was very good. It's way better than what I'd expected to come out from a Kickstarter and Cyan after a "dry" Myst V. I would recommend it to someone as a Myst-like for the creators of the Myst series. It contains lot of fan service too, for fans of the original series, and mixes various elements from all of those games (you even get vibes from Myst III that Cyan didn't develop). A few questions - Was the world outside the Maray sphere, the Kaptar world? I thought it was the Arizona Desert, but apparently that was outside the Soria world... - Could I have prevented the destruction of the pod next to the bomb in Maray? If so, does that teleport to any new place in Soria? - How was the ping-ponging of the bombs supposed to work... I think the letters imply that the one to trigger the ping-pong would survive, but that seems impossible given how the bomb triggers with proximity. AbstractNapper fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Sep 2, 2016 |
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Sep 1, 2016 08:32
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AbstractNapper posted:
Some answers: Yes, you can even see temples from certain viewpoints (like around the waterfall behind the maze) Probably not. The idea is that the person remaining behind stands in the corresponding sphere connecting to Soria and waits. When the Mofang triggers the switch, the remainer will get ported out. So they just switch it back immediately. In the case of the Kaptar one a beetle is used (hence the scale, which has an insect impression). Maybe they break the connection after porting back too? PlaceholderPigeon fucked around with this message at 10:31 on Sep 1, 2016 |
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Sep 1, 2016 10:23
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that was really good, but i still kind of feel left out of the "real story". the game gave me enough to make a decision that led to an ending that appeared to be good, and i guess it achieved its purpose there... but for all the setup of the infiltrator, nothing came of it or had to be decided. it seemed like the number puzzle with the 'object' 'storage' near the end was totally peripheral and didn't impact the ending at all also i don't give a hot gay gently caress about base-4 number grids and i didn't feel bad about looking up all the answers to those puzzles also gently caress the gauntlet, i turned my graphics down to 640 and low just to not punch through my monitor over the load times on a fast SSD. i guess my brain reccomends that was a good, relatively unspoiled / unguided couple days there
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Sep 2, 2016 03:51
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Yeah it really feels like things sputtered out at the end. My main complaint is that it feels like the overall density/pacing of the game was a little off compared to their previous ones. Lots of [PUZZLE] - [EMPTY BUT PRETTY PATH] - [PUZZLE] kind of pacing, though maybe playing in free movement mode amplified that problem. I'm sure the previous games had some of that (I can think of a few examples off the top of my head) but it felt more prominent here. It also ends up intersecting with all the backtracking and busywork stuff in a bad way. Definitely a good game despite all that, though. And being able to play another Myst game with my dad means a lot. 
John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Sep 2, 2016 |
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Sep 2, 2016 05:12
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jon joe posted:I originally installed on my regular drive before going back and installing on my SSD. SSD was about 30 second loads. The HDD was 2 minute loads. Wait what? Holy poo poo I never realized people had it that bad. I've got it installed on a HDD and saw load times of about ~20 seconds from button press of a swap seed to free movement. Only explanation I can think of is that I have a metric shitload of RAM and the game files are being cached. I'd have never had the patience to complete "that puzzle" if each transition was 2 minutes. Loved the game but the drat base-4 panels nearly derailed my playthrough. I still don't understand how those things work or how you're supposed to figure it out beyond blindly trying different combinations and noticing patterns. No other puzzle I can think of in the Myst series required that. ffguy fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Sep 4, 2016 |
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Sep 4, 2016 00:12
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ffguy posted:Loved the game but the drat base-4 panels nearly derailed my playthrough. I still don't understand how those things work or how you're supposed to figure it out beyond blindly trying different combinations and noticing patterns. No other puzzle I can think of in the Myst series required that. I assume you mean the bridge stuff in particular, since you're given a translation machine for the number system itself and can learn from there. There is a logic to the bridges, and ways to glean that logic, but the game does fumble it. I think part of the intended idea of it is the doors in Maray, most importantly the very first one you have to overcome to even get into the meat of the area, work on the exact same principle as the bridges. Problem is, it's super easy to use dumb lizard brain human logic and draw the fourth spoke to create an X, which the machine will auto-correct to 0 (or you just intentionally set it to 0 because it's not a big leap to guess that it might disengage the door) and you'll learn nothing from it. And in fact, every single device, IIRC, is either totally off or fully engaged, so there's never a chance to get even a small hint about what's going on without deciding to mess around on your own. And heck, just due to the way things are laid out, you might not even fully connect the doors to the bridges or simply forget by the time you get to that point. To explain it directly: Each of the five pieces of the bridge(s) correspond to the five digit places allowed by the panels. In any given place zeroes do nothing, obviously, ones will create a skeleton framework which can't be crossed, twos will create the base blue block, and threes will add the stone adornments. On the one hand, it's arguably helpful that there's actually two usable states for the bridges so your margin of error is larger, but on the other hand, it probably can also add to the confusion when the incomplete "2" pieces are valid when it feels like they shouldn't be. I do think you'd get at least a decent inkling towards the solution just by inputting numbers you already know, even just inputting 1-8 would elicit a useful response. But even with all that said, I do feel there's another simple flaw in that between the learning machine itself and previously using it to learn a door code in Hunrath, the average player is far more likely to assume "oh jeez I must have missed a note or a journal or a message or a clue somewhere that gives me The Very Important Bridge Code" where in reality, the bridges work off of a completely different concept. Essentially a binary on/off thing, just in base four instead. There's definitely a gap there that the game could do a better job of explaining. When I was solving the puzzle myself, I ended up having the right idea, yet it felt like I was brute forcing it.
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Sep 4, 2016 02:26
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Goddamnit. I kept translating straight back to base-10 and never really looked at the base-4 representation. No wonder I couldn't find a pattern..
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Sep 4, 2016 03:20
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ffguy posted:No other puzzle I can think of in the Myst series required that. I think by the time you visit Maray, you are supposed to have figured out the Villein numeric system (actually their symbols/ digits) with the machine in the garage, and the nearby note. There is also another copy of that note, I think it the mayor's basement, with some of the typed numbers spelled out for you. I had already figured how it worked before finding that second note. In the spirit though that Cyan seems to love these kind of puzzles that can confuse you or you need to work to figure out their "mechanic"/internal logic, the numbers in the paper are not very helpful (they could have added there some of the more helpful values like 0, (1, 2, are there) 3, 4, and then maybe a 16, 64, 256, and 1023 (the max for the big panels). There is also a segment in that note about single digit panels; though this was confusing for me (I think the sentence itself was making little sense), and it took a while to find the one that controls the first door in Maray. And again, although I knew about the system and the panel's auto-correction, the single digit panel was confusing. For some reason, it didn't immediately "click" that the value there was a "3", or how you put a "1" and "2", and after it did I failed notice the change between "2" and "3" (the door like the bridge floor tiles remains solid and just some decoration changes, and I probably wasn't looking directly at the door). I noticed the change for the "1" value but I thought I had tried the "0" and nothing happened -that I noticed-, so I didn't immediately make the connection that the panel values controlled the door states (that there were more than 2 states controlled by that panel). This is at least partially my own fault for making false assumptions and not being quite observant. Iirc, Farley's notes about communication also point out that the Villeins made these panels to allow other species to control machinery etc or something like that. AbstractNapper fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Sep 4, 2016 |
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Sep 4, 2016 06:38
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AbstractNapper posted:This puzzle is almost a direct copy of a similar puzzle in Riven. It's also a bit easier here, because there are more blatant clues about how it works. Is it? I remember Riven's base-25 puzzles to be relatively simple because each digit could be decoded individually and were always presented as a sequence. A document clearly laid out how the symbols are constructed and after that it was easy so when you found them in the world you could easy say "Alright five symbols, five numbers. I need to find something that requires a 5 number combo". Contrast that with Obduction, where you have to spend a not-insignificant amount of time messing around with a clunky interface to figure out the rules for multiple digits. And even then correct solution to the bridges (as I understand it, I brute-forced them) is to try values without prompting until you work out how the base-4 digits are related. The puzzle would be vastly improved IMO if there was a scrap of paper or something in Maray that hinted towards the solution; the bridge panels are far too prone to brute-force to leave it be. Went back and destroyed all the message emitters they mayor had made hoping for something to change. Nope. That should have been some kind of trigger condition for a different ending, as if the Mofang hid some failsafe weapon in the crystals or something.
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Sep 4, 2016 08:47
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ffguy posted:Is it? I remember Riven's base-25 puzzles to be relatively simple because each digit could be decoded individually and were always presented as a sequence. A document clearly laid out how the symbols are constructed and after that it was easy so when you found them in the world you could easy say "Alright five symbols, five numbers. I need to find something that requires a 5 number combo". Hm, this is not how I remember it. Maybe it's been way too long since I last played Riven, and I first had to solve that puzzle when I was quite young. But I don't remember a document clearly spelling out the symbols for you. There were clues like I think page numbers, and the school classroom toy (which I think I didn't get its purpose on my first playthrough, not at once anyway), and some instances of the number symbols here and there, but I distinctly remember figuring out about the rotation of the 1-4 patterns by myself. And that (the rotation thing) is very similar to the base 4 system of the Villeins. The Rivenese system is base-25, because each of their digits can cover 0-24, but I never really thought of it that way (especially since my younger self was probably oblivious of non-base 10 systems back then). And I think I always thought that "5" was more of a clue about how things worked in Riven. Their numeric system is essentially the same 4 patterns (I don't recall if the 0 symbol ever came up in Riven; I vaguely recall some inconsistency about it with URU) rotated and combined (overlayed in Riven) to produce a new number (up to 24 and then you have to add another digit). And it's the same logic (for me at least) here with the Villeins panels. The same 4 patterns (I include the zero pattern because it is part of the digits construction here, and their placement and combination determines their values. And the garage machine actually shows you the valid combinations (via autocorrection) and the corresponding value for anything you try to put in. And it works both ways (from Villein to base-10 and vice-versa). That is way too many clues than what I remember getting in Riven. (I distinctly remember being so ecstatic when I put that combination to the domes and it worked, because it seemed such a long shot (...partly because of the sticks and notches mechanic of that panel too ) ) AbstractNapper fucked around with this message at 09:38 on Sep 4, 2016 |
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Sep 4, 2016 09:26
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AbstractNapper posted:This puzzle is almost a direct copy of a similar puzzle in Riven. It's also a bit easier here, because there are more blatant clues about how it works. It's way easier than the Riven one because you don't even have to actually know what numbers any of the shapes you can make with the panels correspond with. You can get by just fine as long as you understand the logic of how digits are constructed with them in that each node on the panel can only be connected to a maximum of three other nodes.
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Sep 5, 2016 05:28
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Crossposting from adventure game thread: AV Club has a new interview up with Cyan's Rand Miller talking Obduction, Myst, and adventure game design in general. He also talks about what his favorite puzzle in Myst is, even though a lot of people hate it. That loving mazerunner.
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Sep 11, 2016 13:40
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Interesting that he says Maray number puzzles used to be more complex and that they toned them down. It's too bad, I'd really be interested to see what they were like before Cyan changed them.
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Sep 12, 2016 04:09
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Just finished this after ~10 hours and I thought it was mostly great. My biggest complaint is (late game thing) the 222 pod thing near the end. I bullshitted my way through the bridges without actually understanding the number system and then found myself locked in a place where I had to actually understand it without any way back to the learning machine in the garage. Also one question about something I didn't find any use for, curious if I missed it or if this was useless. What is up with the garage camera feed in the top of the tower? I never saw anything happen on that screen but I assume it has some purpose.
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Sep 12, 2016 09:09
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Still haven't finished this. I stopped when I came to the maze and realized what a pain in the rear end that will be. How much game is left after that? I'm thinking about looking up the rest on youtube, I just don't think I can ever muster the energy to subject myself to the running around and load times ahead of me.
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Sep 12, 2016 10:51
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Not a whole lot after the maze, though depending on how thorough you were in Hunrath you might have to go on one last excursion with the cart to kick off the endgame. Half an hour to an hour at the absolute maximum, I'd say, give or take how much time you need to complete the final puzzle, load times, etc. This spoiler will come in handy if you do decide to press on through the maze: John Murdoch posted:Re: The maze puzzle. I really wish I knew ahead of time that you only need to make a single 90 degree path to reach everything. John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Sep 12, 2016 |
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Sep 12, 2016 11:20
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GhostDog posted:Still haven't finished this. I stopped when I came to the maze and realized what a pain in the rear end that will be. How much game is left after that? I'm thinking about looking up the rest on youtube, I just don't think I can ever muster the energy to subject myself to the running around and load times ahead of me. For what is worth, they have optimized the loading times around the maze area, so the back and forth from Hunrath to Maray are quite faster than the typical loading times between the spheres . That is to say, that this was "optimized" like this since release. I am not sure if a patch improved things further. As for how much game is left after that... not much. Although it's the point where a few things in the story come together and make more sense..
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Sep 12, 2016 11:21
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