Myst: The Book of D'ni
Author: Rand Miller
Date: 1997-01-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Fiction; Science Fiction; Video Games; Science Fiction Fantasy; Adventure; Novels; Dystopia; Adult; Young Adult
Description: In this third powerful novel based on the bestselling CD-ROM adventure game, Catherine and Atrus return to the devastated domain of the fabled D'Ni civilization to fulfill their destinies and to try to begin again. There they find strange clues that lead them to one remaining hidden book--and the secret plan of the ancient D'Ni masters. 15 illustrations.
Publisher: Hyperion

IVEN

THE CREATIONS & INSPIRATIONS

4 2 \— 4 ne VOhhYS # ~<a — 7 # ¥ ¥

by Richard Kadrey Foreword by Rand & Robyn Miller ’ x “ “i a

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ESE lr cal =~ eee mies es

t was the end of summer igg1. Soldiers w ving the Persian Gulf. The Soviet

Union was taking it

p. And w ist received the funding for some

thing that we would call

We had it all planned out. The name had been chosen. The story was going

ymething about an island. The artwork would be hand-painted. The characters would be hand-animated. There would be no dying. There would be no “save e” function. And the player would be the Cor protagonist, having to rely on his or her own intuition to work through the Pretty good, huh? months into the project we realized that we had no idea what we were doine. Design, eraphics, animations, character development, scripting, editing sound effects, music, interactivity was all a mystery to us And this is how the creation of Myst became two-year periment. Ninety percent of our time was spent figuring out how to do things; the other ten per cent was spent doing them. So, by the end of it were actually incredibly surprised to encounter such success. Our experiment turned into a so-called “hit,” and we started thinking, “Hey, we actually know what we're doing! Let's make the sequel! It'll be easy! It wasnt Riven ended up being a mammoth undertaking, taking a team of over 20 people almost four years to produce. It has been the most gru

Se

eling, yet the most thrilling, creative experience of our

(UA Mn WA lives. And now, as we wrap things up, we once again begin to believe we know what we're doing. Strange

Yet. at the same time, it becomes apparent that we are only scratching the sur

face of this still very undefined medium

Miller Robyn Miller Richard Vander Wende

by Richard Kadrey Foreword by Rand & Robyn Miller es -

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A WELCOME BOOK

NEW YORK

Acknowledgments

The producers would like to thank all the members of Cyan, Inc., for their

extraordinary work to make this project happen. We deeply appreciate the efforts of Rand Miller, Robyn Miller, and

Richard Vander Wende to guide this book to its completion and for giving

us their time when they had none. Chris Brandkamp, whose knowledge, guidance, and advice was utterly indispensable, was a tower of strength. Without Chris, this book would

simply not have been possible. And to all the others at Cyan who worked on the creation of Riven, we

express our gratitude for allowing us to share, in this way, your incredible

experience.

Copyright © 1997, Cyan, Inc., Text and illustrations Myst, Riven, and Cyan are Registered Trademarks of Cyan, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. For information address: Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.

Produced by Welcome Enterprises, Inc. 588 Broadway, New York, NY 10012

Project Director: Hiro Clark Wakabayashi Designer: Gregory Wakabayashi Cyan Project Supervisor: Chris Brandkamp Hyperion Editor: Brian DeFiore Hyperion Assistant Editor: Mollie Doyle PAGE 1: In this scene from the opening of Riven, Sit is played ISBN 0-7868-6365-X by Rand Miller. f FIRST EDITION PAGES 2-3: View of the bridge connecting Book Assembly to Temple Island and the gold super fire marble dome. mnie! O 8 6 4 2 OPPOSITE: Underneath the superdome on Temple Island.

Printed and bound in Japan by Toppan Printing Co., Inc.

Contents

I. 6

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Myst Island.

Robyn (above left) and Rand Miller are the creators of the megahit Myst and its sequel, Riven, as well as of numerous other CD-ROM games for children. Their software company, Cyan, Inc., was established in 1987 and released its first game, The Manhole, the same year. This was followed by Cosmic Osmo

in 1989 and Spelunx in 1991.

While these games were well received, nothing could have prepared the Millers for the rocketlike success of Myst. For the millions who've played it, this view of the dock on Myst Island (opposite) is a familiar sight.

Balchmputeheet Rea frel has Sold 9.9 olillfofenpies you might expect to find the hottest action and explosions galore with heroes and villains of your choice duking it out—a diversion for kids, surely, to squander their time away

Not so with Myst

Released by Broderbund to no special fanfare in 1993, this grown-up

game of exploration and deep mystery is the one true phenomenon of the

CD-ROM entertainment world. It didn’t just blow the doors off the competi- tion; it peeled the paint, melted the chassis, and cut up the tires for sandals Myst remains so hot that in December of 1996 it set the record for the most copies of a CD game sold in a single month—more than three years later Winner of dozens of awards—including the Software Publishers Association's Best User Interface, Best Fantasy/Role Playing Game, and Critics Choice for Best Consumer Program—Myst has been acclaimed by all, including such non-techie publications as Rolling Stone and Newsweek. But more than any- thing else, it has been the intense buzz created by millions of fanatics con- sumed by the challenge of Mysr that has turned it into the Jurassic Park and Thriller of the CD-ROM game world

And now, Rand and Robyn Miller, the creators of Myst, along with new creative partner, Richard Vander Wende and a talented team of artists and programmers, have prepared to rock this world again with the release of the

long-awaited sequel game: Riven

S waliyal hss Ct. ae inl Th es chat th teok

wala mol he desTiaupe a4 Saoeie Jr wire fed Landed,

inte Thal, sin yan, of ge we aul fa gpradlall ie oe a y de ee aly Thal auch ae ve Stl tslans shaul hes and aif am dau a, Mm Myst hack Anh y Lm ag om il eae AE mivtn Ad allay, Ind! 40 a dot, y thal poh “94 y The snd voy mol 1 a Aun

—Atrus

Robyn and Rand Miller's first ideas for Myst were recorded on legal pads (left) and would become the inspiration for some remarkable images, including the view of the fountain in front of Myst’s library (above), as well as many unique puzzles. After noticing the toy ship submerged in the fountain, the player must first discover the related clue in the tower behind the library before he will

be able to figure out which three symbols (above) to press in order to access the Stoneship Age book.

Ww

Rough sketches and handwritten notes were made for all the Ages in Myst, including Stoneship (above), in order to develop the mysterious character and plot of each setting. Among other places to explore in Stoneship are the lighthouse and telescope plateau (above right), the submerged ship's darkened cabin (below), and the bedroom in which the “red” page
is found (bottom).

When Myst first appeared, it was hard to know what to make of it as a game. It was clearly something new, something no one had seen before. There were no guns in Myst, no overt violence, no time limit, and no score- board. You, the player, were literally dropped onto a strange island with no instructions and no apparent goal. There were no people, only artifacts in a weirdly beautiful landscape—a wharf harboring a sunken boat, a planetari- um, a library, a spaceship, a clock tower.

Instinctively, you asked the first questions without being prompted: Who created this island, what were all these buildings for, and why were there no people? And then you began to explore. The eerie music and sound effects that accompanied your every step only heightened the sense of mystery.

Myst was a game because it contained puzzles the player had to solve in order to learn anything about the island. It was a challenge that rewarded observation and brains over reflexes. Secrets were revealed through audi- tory as well as visual clues. Within Myst's dreamlike structures the player came upon smaller, but equally fascinating, objects and machines with dials, levers, and buttons that all had a reason for being there, that made sense only if the player could figure them out. The computer-generated images were not meant to dazzle so much as to create a mood and offer traces of the culture of the D’ni people who, we learned later, had created and populated this place. Playing Myst was less like hacking a computer game and more like wandering through a surrealist novel, one that didn’t have a comforting linear plot and a tidy end- ing where everything was revealed, explained, and set right. Sure, there was a story—a complex one of family passions and betrayal—but like the baubles of this unfamiliar culture that you encountered in the game, it hinted at even more perplexing worlds hidden beyond the edges of the game

The doors to these worlds, it turned out, were the

D'ni Linking books.

eee a

Among the original Myst team members, Chuck Carter (right) was responsible for creating roughly half of all of the visuals, a selection of which are seen on the preceding pages.

>

The sketches outlining Mechanical Age and the water pump in Channelwood Age (above) and final scenes from Mechanical, Channelwood, and Selenitic Ages (right, top to bottom),

14

Dividing the Ages between them, Robyn created the images for Stoneship
and Channelwood Age, while Chuck Carter designed Mechanical and Selenitic Ages.

or Rand dkae?R OGY nA LAND ‘Seid Liza bi Oa, Mrovidekl nib Rawly Macees

central motif of Linking books but the entire cultural foundation upon

which to build the story behind both Myst and, later, Riven. While they

had already worked out the basic for the first game, they had been lacking an overall vision that accounted for the existence of their imaginary island. When they learned about D'ni (pro- nounced Dunny) Linking books and understood their power to link to worlds in parallel uni- verses, they decided to incorpo- rate these special books into their game. Rand and Robyn knew from the beginning that the player in Myst would be able to visit other worlds, but early on this was accomplished through

magic paintings and then, later in

plot as well as the rudimentary gameplay

development, through ultraexotic machines. In the end, the D’ni Linking

books offered the most elegant device, for a number of reasons, the most

important of which involved the game's central figure, Atrus

Building upon their discovery

the Millers collaborated with a number of

others at Cyan, including Richard Watson, a programmer on Myst, to piece

together a detailed, but fragmented, chronicle of the D’ni civilization, involv- ing a record of some of the key events as well as their extensive language and writ- ing system. This would eventually lead to a series of novels being written with David Wingrove that featured the life and adventures of Atrus, his father, Gehn, and grandfather, Aitrus. The books also illumi-

nated the marvelous powers of the D'ni,

particularly their skills in bookmaking For most people, books are sources of learning and pleasant diversions. But for

the D'ni, they were an E-ticket on an

inter-dimensional bullet train. They didn’t just feel a connection to a world

they created in writing an “Age,” they could literally enter that Age by plac-

ing a hand on the “linking” page and physically transporting into It

The library on Myst

(above) contains mostly damaged books, except for a few that reveal important notes regarding the various Ages and clues to help the player reach them.

Another original member, Chris Brandkamp (left), recorded all the sound effects which played such a crucial part in bringing the game to life.

The D’ni Art of Bookmaking

Some of the basics of D’ni bookmaking are known, but the most important details have been lost over time. “Otherwise,” says Cyan pro- grammer and D'nj historian, Richard Watson, “we'd be writing our own Ages, rather than making games.” From the few existing records it appears that the D’ni have been using their Linking books for millennia, and that they linked to the Earth around 10,000 terrestrial years ago. Eight years after migrating here and establishing an underground community, the D’ni created their Book Writer's Guild. About two hundred and fifteen years later, they opened the Common Library of Complete Linking Books. But it was very recently on the D’ni timeline that Gehn began writing what would become Riven.

All that is known about the making of the books themselves is that the paper was made from a specific type of wood. The tree was cut down in a certain manner and immediately treated with chemicals. Next, the wood was finely shredded and boiled into pulp. Then, it appears the D’ni added more chemicals, along with some other form of organic fibers.

The ultimate process of how these books were made to function was closely guarded by the Bookmakers Guild. According to Watson, we can only guess at how they work, but it appears “the books are able to take advantage of the existence of quantum probabilities to link to other

quantum realities.”

On the desk in Gehn’s Age volumes were manufactured

in Riven (above), all the by the D'ni in ways known implements necessary for only to them. To the left is a writing an Age book can D'ni bookpress designed by be found. These special Robyn Miller.

16

tls Jue The shin am ~ Lf) poh Cinaleie aietmicak 7 f a rr thd ical carunl Kael pond Thuaugh aL. i ane “dahl doa Tye he

nigh an Che pas, Miedo Ta in faa age panei Dal waa «Ad, Then ithe a suckler uckiuan

)

luck, he flO Aanallf aucted santo Lhe Pt a Mg’) ty 4L Waa ad /

THe A! ak ley

Aual, Venvle 4nd his An

Tha wears of si fiber AL Tae. Aah smsLaml- he Aas A baad shfing AnaaLion. A; CL fll 4a The oe he Wil ileae Ve ke hl eeheladphdidy ‘ilging Lee Avail, de chin UM blechassl sgped ies

from Myst: The Book of Atrus

A closer look at Gehn’s desk reveals his golden beetle inkwell (top), his personal pen (above), and the special ingredient—in the glass jar on the right— which activates the D’ni ink (right).

17

Age or Linking books were magic tunnels or, if you're a SCi- \

ence fiction fan, wormholes. They could shoot you through both ess -

space and time, to any world you could imagine —and write down properly according to the strict D’ni rules and protocol. The D'ni had a han dle on the multi-dimensional nature of the universe that was way beyond our own knowledge of things. They understood that for every world we knew about in our universe, there were parallel worlds, hidden in a similar uni verse next door. Linking books were the passkeys to those worlds Creating these books was no easy task. The D'ni weren't zipping all over the multiverse with notes scribbled on cocktail napkins. Learning how to make a successful Age book required years of formal training and under- standing. Each part of the book—the paper, ink, and, most importantly, the words—was a separate micro-art. D’ni children studied for years and appren- ticed to experts in the bookmaking arts long before they would be allowed to contemplate writing their own Age books and traveling to those worlds

It is important to remember that D'ni Linking books didn’t create worlds,

they just allowed a person to go to places that

«ZZ om “fou _ eed amy already existed. When someone could write a Sli. / Sraw 40 book and link to the world of his dreams, it was

a-/

much. 1 Aungs sou wall very easy for him to develop a god complex, as if De ad) muir frat. TAunk »/ he were responsible for its being. This, as the first 4 a The rE it hart, novel reveals, was Gehn’s fate. In writing Myst THOME GLE ML The Book of Atrus, the authors also recorded the

wal he a “waste meD ‘key event that would connect the first game to m

ig oll yen Le mel the next. Atrus, we learn, was ultimately forced

—Gehn to Atrus

to trap Gehn in one of « ) NS a /) ay

his own Age books in

Aun ahiDavid. :

order to halt his father’s delusions of godliness. Aye

Af fy This Age, it turns out, is Riven. Itis also the place Ca 40k 1 90

where Catherine, Atrus's wife, has been secretly ‘

The Channelwood Age book (top left) from Myst. Rand and Robyn's early development notes (above) regarding the Myst library and the books found there: “Many books containing different ages (Mammoth Age, Night Age, Ivory Age). Most of these page of books are burnt but 4 remain. The remaining books are the

places you can still visit.”

In the final moments of Myst, the player links to an underground room in D’ni (opposite) unless, of course, he has been duped by Atrus’s deceitful sons, Sirrus and Achenar.

On the overleaf is a map discovered in Atrus’s journal illustrating the path he followed from D’ni to the surface.

ES BPE “0s dese.

) au can si hu in The LITA havin ofan vk

confined by their rebellious sons, Sirrus and caalid fi pawcaell A 8 Line sland 4 ”) Achenar. wrvkraly and play ged with Haus adLans. So ends Myst and Riven begins. Be ee ees Gein

> J

Wal nn ION WA PCEWL LE LALE Ll ALND: iy) ALTA YY DUAR) EA LAMA Alo BE wd) AWE LOL LIRA LS APO AION I Ay MOA bE ev’)

mis > rn) Wd Ad dad Phe OBES WEL Walid at Vo Vala’ SA DAAL PALLLAL hl Wand Soavhehy SAE a?

Lai n2att hauled Wis SAA DAL) Sane « ) nh Lvl «|

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ellen hid nol

Be PORN ANT SW BRAT

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Wed 1/26/94 5:34 pm Myat II information

ile t re man Father has one book which links to While there a y

additional Age recognizable structures Stole it }rom Atrus while he moved and objects in Riven, there Links to Dunny

are also some of the most Vou can go there for important clue

imaginative and eerie Age is in ruin images ever created, including the bulbous, podlike dome the rebels

use as a hideout in their

Goal is to get this book and to rescue Catherine and then jump into fissure

World changes as Atrus writes —Changes can not be observed

own secret Age (left).

Other ages to visit —Catherine is held prisoner in one Of these other ages She lives in a locked cage through

Riven would be an opportunity to create a game of epic proportions.

Besides their desire to tell more of the story, the Millers were eager to

which you can slide her the Equiquay book

—But you'll need an Equiquay book for yourself Catherine can tell you that the book

flex all the creative and technical muscles they'd developed during the long process of building Myst. With greater emphasis on story development would

come a more cohesive game design. On an artistic level, they would build on will be found by someone - their skills in developing environments— Atrus will be writing into the book in

SRT ae coloring, texturing, lighting, and animating

them—to produce a more impressive visual Jump into chasm to go to Dunny

—Catherine would go first. Father may meet you and challenge before you jump.

experience. And they would engineer a sounder game technically, avoiding, hope- Island people speak Dunny fully, the bugs that occasionally appeared

Linking books could be written into in Myst (in the PC version, for example,

Hegiaced when the sunken ship is raised, gulls fly —Must bring key. —Unauthorized travelers would be right through the mast). trapped. As Myst began to show signs of its phe- ¥ Richard Vander Wende nomenal success, the Millers had every e Fr M ‘ aT tQ. Riven reason to pursue their dreams for the sequel. They also had more capital to nd () lies' s em d ofm the end of support their software company, Cyan, and to hire additional people if need January, 1994, when they went on a road trip from Spokane to be. It was at a computer conference in California a few months later when Seattle. It was during this break that they finally had a chance to the Millers encountered Richard Vander Wende, who, among other compa- begin articulating the basic details of the story for the sequel game. In the nies, had worked at Industrial Light & Magic and Disney. Richard's keen eee ae — process of creating Myst, which had just been released the previous interest in Myst impressed Rand and Robyn, as did a portfolio of art that was Richard Watson ‘obyn's original notes on Big Cabos) reconicd November, Rand and Robyn had realized that their ideas were simply far too breathtaking. After talking with him for three straight hours, the brothers during a trip to Seattle in big for a single game, so they designed Myst to be open-ended. Myst's con- invited Richard to visit them in Spokane. While they immediately sensed the January 1994. Rough ; E - eM 4 ' i Parca Hatches of the clusion became more like an intermission in some larger and weirder play value of adding Richard's perspective and talents to their plans for the logcar ride (top), which than an ending. It simply screamed for a sequel, which they had every inten- sequel, it was important to explore a little further how their relationship takes the player betw i adi Book /Seabe “i pon of Lae would work. But after that visit, it was clear to them that he could fit right Jungle Island, and of the At this point, however, the brothers were so much more familiar with in. Once Richard agreed to join them, Riven’s creative team consisted of six {cana san their story as well as with the process of putting together a computer game people: Robyn, Rand, and Richard, plus Chris Brandkamp (who, in addition to Jat decorate the landscape throughout that they knew the sequel, known then simply as Myst II, could be much larger being Cyan’s financial officer and business manager, had recorded the tn and signify in scope than the original. They were reminded of the legendary British fan- sounds for Myst), Rich Watson and Joshua Alton Staub, the computer graph- iehn's brutal reign over A n i : Riven’s natural tasy writer J. R. R. Tolkein who, after writing The Hobbit to great acclaim, ics production director. With their combined skills and the money Myst was inhabitants. spent years researching and developing an anthropologist’s complete under- pumping into the company, they figured they could knock out Riven in a standing of his fantasy kingdom, Middle Earth, before penning his massive couple of years at most. trilogy, Lord of the Rings. For Robyn and Rand, Myst was their Hobbit, while They couldn't have been more wrong. Joshua Alton Staub

Robyn Miller fine-tunes one of the maps used to describe the physical layout of the

five islands of Riven.

— +

Robyn M

modeling system made famous for creating the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park

Finally, everyone realized that if they were all going to make it to the end, then

either Chris's garage would have to undergo an enormous remodeling job or a

new workplace would have to be found. Taking the plunge, Cyan broke ground

in June, 1995 for its own world headquarters just outside of Spokane, in near-

: ‘ a geno Tony Fryman rT by Mead. For the meanw hile, the whole team temporarily relocated to a vacant : : = =) 1 Ps ms Comfort World mattress outlet at a local strip mall. Then, slowly but surely, Cyan proceeded to put together the most talented team of artists and pro- Construction for Cyan’s “ y 7 lar office began in June, or : a ' ybyn, “We were well aware that all of new 5 grammers it could find. Says Rand and Robyn, F F minal “aa a our great ambitions for Riven were worthless if we could not assemble a team completed until the Chris 8. S a ; ; : a of likeminded people to help us create it. For us, the members of our team following year. The desig Ly VOT

of the building included

were vitally important.” While they might have tried to hire an army to build save Mystilke touches!

, Riven, the Millers were intent on maintaining a small, cohesive team in order including the stone and

3 brick arch (bottom, far left in photo), marking the

A year later, when Cyan finally moved into its brand new custom work- entrance, and the artists’

Na of hesreasdfis Rich hudl Vande? Wende shad iRudled to join

to keep control over the game's development and produce what they envisioned Riven's development team was that he, Robyn, and Rand got

pr Rie oa RS along well. This was important, since the Miller's knew that space, one that bore the distinctive stylings of Myst island, both in design and ny a’ jan, Inc., Jon s a

Sey if building Riven would be a multiyear project and that every- recall the days spent y

lounge in the building’s

lower level (inset) over eric . D'ni would have felt right at home), that original, and demented, which hangs a field of
materials (the D’ni v ¢
crammed into Chris one would have to work, if not practically live, closely

t 1 a0 : ‘ wo year dead e had long ago been abandoned Most of the team had now twinkling stars Brandkamp’s garage

together. Officially, Robyn and Richard were both directors, in the Hollywood (above) where Riven was started. Eventually, as sense of the word. They would make most of the aesthetic decisions that plans for the game escalated and members of L the company grew beyond ducer, which meant wearing every hat he could fit on his head to ensure the the capacity of their tiny office, Cyan turned in their thinking caps for some ager Tony Fryman, who did the hands-on project scheduling and management hardhats—momentarily—

and broke ground (below) Z methods and conditions. When Myst was created, it had been pieced together for a new company world

been working on the project for two years already, and

given the ever expanding scope of their ideas for Riven, would shape the overall look and feel of the game. Rand remained the pro- BAe ia’ cinply work foras long as it tock

Try four years production remained “doable.” He also worked closely with production man-

The lofty titles, however, don’t give a true impression of their working

headquarters. by the original members working in their separate homes and linked by what Chris Brandkamp was fond of calling “car-net.” Basically, if some- one wanted to show an image to another member of the team, he got in his car and drove over with a computer disk. Riven's big workspace upgrade occurred in early 1994 and involved every- one moving into Chris's refurbished, though still unheated garage. This got all the project's developers in one place, includ- ing Richard Vander Wende, who relocated to Spokane in September. By this time, Chris's garage was stuffed to the point

where it looked like a science fiction sweat shop

Originally, the Myst team thought it could produce Riven pretty much the same way as before—with a few artists and a bunch of Macintosh computers. But it was apparent rather quickly that their plans out- Stripped both their gear and their workspace. Robyn and Josh tossed their Macintoshes aside for $40,000 Silicon Graphics Indigo workstations, and a third one was added when Richard arrived. After researching their software options, Robyn and Josh chose to abandon Strata Studio Pro, the program used

to create Myst's graphics, and go with the more expensive Softimage, the

27 26

Rand and Robyn Miller at work in Cyan’s head- quarters in Mead, WA

h plan. three SGI Indigos

and the

The Temple Walk (opposite) on Temple Island sets the

Softimage software, Cyan ies

had invested around a quarter of a

mood for Riven’s imposing million dollars, giving them more computing \
landscape of natural and power than five Mysts would have required , ¢ man-made objects. The fire . j marble dome in the But everything about Riven was meant to be yt Xi distance is one of Gehn’s bieger than Myst—bigger, it turns out, than

key icons, as is his crest (right) which is found all

anyone on the team could have imagined

throughout Riven. From the beginning of the project, the design

Some Favorite Myst Comments:

1. After downloading the puzzle solutions from the net, | easily solved the game in 4, hours. Could you make the next one harder? —Al from Maryland. 2. Where do Atrus/Sirrus/Achenar eat/sleep/go to the bathroom? —Heather from Kentucky.

3. At this writing, it has been 2 years and 2 months since the group of us at the Rockmore Retirement Home started playing Myst. Is there more than just one island? —Belinda from Tennessee. 4. I’m left-handed. Is there a way to geta left- handed “grabbie” hand? 5. | feel kind of sad that Sirrus and Achenar got stuck in those books. Is there a way to, like, rescue them or something? Tell me they really didn’t get stuck in those books. —tric from Georgia. 6. You don’t really know me, but | want to work for Cyan. V'll lick stamps if that’s what it takes. —Karl from Missouri. (Cyan hired him.) team planned to accommodate to an even greater extent the two types of players who had been attracted to Myst: gamers and tourists. With gamers, it's fairly simple—they want puzzles to solve, the intensity of their addiction being a direct function of the difficulty of the puzzle. For these junkies, Cyan has provided not only more puzzles than in Myst, but harder ones as well. The real difference, however, ts that in Riven the puzzles are more fully integrated into the story and set- ting, a reflection of who made it and what it’s function might be. A puzzle encountered in one of Gehn's rooms, for example, would involve a complex machine, whereas some- thing found in the jungle village would have a simpler, more organic design

And the puzzles never scream, "Solve me, I'm a puzzle!” Like clues dropped into a mystery novel, they are woven delicately into the overall fabric of the game. The Gate Room in Gehn's Temple is a signature Cyan puzzle. It’s filled with enough eyeball-popping visuals to make you forget

that you're being subtly presented with a host of clues

N

ve!

and how to pass through it, and the character

ry sarnine ft he concerning both the room Nothing is insignificant

You'll find ancient D’ni script throughout

-

in Riven, including the the game. Not mere decoration, Cyan

and nature of Gehn, who created it

fact that the five incorporated the rigorous D’ni alphabet,

As for tourists, they prefer to wander around, taking in the fantastic

. | TEC grammar, and number system into the scenery, perhaps mustering up the wherewithal to solve a pu zle or two. In te rare gent st oe Myst, the point is reached fairly early where, if the player is going to move tree trunks with Cyan’s own custom D’ni font

on to solving the games real mystery, he has to figure out the tower rotation puzzle and gather the

clues that provide access to the four Age books

Many were stopped in confusion right there despite the fact that just before releasing the game the whole forechamber scene on the dock and the note lying on the ground were added to help lead the player to the tower The islands in Riven provide a far more expansive landscape through which to wander, where the player

encounters all kinds of rides—a submarine, logcar

and magnetic levitation vehicle—as well as plenty

of elevators, doors, and strange devices

The golden scarabs (right) resting on each of the columns in the Gate Room on Temple Island spread their wings to reveal peepholes through which a series of religious

icons are seen (all five of which appear below). The icons are clues to Riven’s story—if you can interpret them. The scarab reliefs are inspired by real beetles that live in the jungle and which

are an important clue both to the symbolism of the Gate Room and to understanding Gehn, who designed it.

Gehn’s crest (right) is found on the floor and door in the Gate Room. Composed of leaves, pen nibs, and book symbols, the number five plays an important

role and is a significant clue

_ The Power of Five a

ang D'ni. Five is jhout D’ni culture. Pay instance, their number system 2 based ona five factor and their days are divided into five
r pe segments. The importance of the number for Gehn is illustrated by his inclusion of it inhis personal crest— a five-pointed star—which he adapted m the symbol for "ni Writer’s Guild. The five arms star are actually

er repinder of os

pen nibs which point to five books, a

Gehn’s obsession wit

6 Riven “i

ene at aa _— iii

The D'ni symbol (above) for the number five.

3 room closely,

written, The Age is divided into five islands. There are five fire Raila bs niries, one on each island. The build- E ings and rooms designed by Gehn— including his lab, the office, and the temple gate root areal pentagon shaped. There are five guilds in Riven. Gehn’s obsession even extends to small, seemingly insignifie cant objects. There are five legs on the lamp stand on his desk and ma: within the big wheel on the boiler on Book Assembly sland, If you examine the Rivenese school- ind a five-armed, star-shaped fruit in y

a bowl on a table.

wee" the name of the Age, Riven, has five letters.

a a

From a visual standpoint alone, however, Riven builds on the oddly

-

And then there was the live-action footage to be integrated into the game. While Myst had small, nicely contained snippets of video footage showing Atrus and his sons, Riven called for a whole cast of actors to be shot on a soundstage using bluescreen technology and then digitally composited into the scenes, moving seamlessly in and around computer-generated sets and props. Every scene, object, character, costume, and sound had to work together, technologically and culturally. Complicating this was the fact that there are three main cultures featured in Riven: the D'ni, the jungle villagers, and the rebel Moiety, each of which are distinguished by elaborate themes and motifs

In the end, while Myst required only one CD-ROM to hold it, Riven would fill five. It contains five times as much computer and live-action animation as its predecessor and is constructed of approximately 4,000 individual

shots, compared to the 2,500 in Myst

The degree to which

Riven’s complex design surpassed Myst’s is clearly illustrated in a comparison of models from each game. The wireframe model for Stoneship Age from Myst

Robert Grace

(left) is not nearly as intricate as that of the Prison Island in Riven (below), which is so thick with detail in certain parts that you cannot even see through them.

entrancing surreal styling of Myst and then surpasses it in ways that will blow these tourists off their feet. With Softlmage software, Cyan’s computer artists were able to construct incredibly complex and refined computer models for all the game’s objects—everything from the largest islands and buildings right down to a machine's levers and tiniest bolts. Over these models the artists applied highly detailed and realistic texture maps, which are the skins the artists wrap around the models’ wireframe skeletons—like bark over a tree, if you will, or steel over a sub- marine’s frame. If done right, a player entering a scene might pause to wonder if this were actually a photo of a real place or object, not something contrived out of computer program code. "Total believability—that’s our goal,” says Robert Grace, a CG artist at Cyan. For the people

at Cyan, there could be no higher compliment.

But the Riven team’s ambition didn't stop at designing realistic scenes and objects. They wanted Riven to be alive. This meant not only creating fantasy flora and fauna for the game, but animating them as well. This added new challenges. It's one thing to animate the door to a wooden hut or a steel submarine, but how did one bring to life the wahrk, Riven's enormous whalelike ocean predator?

The tower rotation map in the library on Myst Island presented the first significant test of the player's puzzle solving abilities.

y

»)

Wy) an

Ve aa mL pula win, g| Li, Ww Ak Pye if , {

Gehn to Atrus ‘

The..story

fter their Seattle trip, Rand and Robyn hac », although details and

and game elements that would become River

names would continue to change right up to the very end. They first called the game Equiquay (the idea being that Riven had become a common linking port). Ultimately, they settled on Riven, the name for the island in Gehn’s fifth Age book, where Atrus previously conspired with Catherine to entrap his father, whose delusions of grandeur had made him ultimately dan

gerous to everyone. Catherine, unfortunately, has been tricked into return

ing to Riven by her sons, who were also seduced by the power of Age books

And she is now Gehn’s prisoner. Riven’s world is a collection of islands

Unlike Myst’s world, Riven is inhabited, both by forest-dwelling villagers and a rebel faction opposed to Gehn's heavy-handed rule. Even some of the most important goals of the game were clear from the start: the player had to entrap Gehn by enticing him with a false Linking book, rescue Catherine and

jump into the fissure of stars at the end. The added twist was that the Linking

book is stolen from the player at the very beginning of the re y = game and it's up to him to figure out how to get it back before i mil T4Ls. LG af Uhm. he encounters Gehn Tunas a of Then! The 4 aut There were, however, major differences and possibilities Link, ALi, heen “fa al Ou

4

discussed during the game’s early design phase. In Rand's pact Task. Ta nate Seger and

—

original notes, he wrote that Catherine was being held pris- gogutath Thin. 1a fll “eg The oner in another completely separate Age, but then the idea of LS wilh wa ly. Wl we other Ages was dropped because Gehn was supposed to be cam! awn and sarin, to Thal trapped on Riven without any books to write in or link z% Bai vl Sh, ie : Ds S ees So the story was confined to Riven’s five islands. Thal mf rel by (ARES Det oth Gehn and the Rebels worked from underground hideouts, A tk See l, PP

/

and instead of finding a Linking book to Gehn’s transdimen-

—Gehn to Atrus

sional pied-a-terre, players would have to find the secret

entrance to his lair. The fact that Gehn was conducting crude experiments in Among Gehn’s more diabolical structures is the Wahrk Gallows
give the impression that Gehn had not yet succeeded in creating an Age book onperite named for the skulls of the ocean

Eventually, the possibilities inherent in other Ages led the team to revive Sa oped well as for its purpose: to

his own bookmaking was a clear part of the story, but at first they wanted to

but was on the verge of doing so.

the idea and create a separate Age for Gehn, which allowed him to link back punish dissident villagers by lowering them into

a A the water and feeding ers by magically appearing before the villagers. This time, however, the them to Gehn’s hungry pet wahrk.

and forth to all of Riven’s islands and thereby underscore his godlike pow-

Rebels were also given their own Age, which Catherine had written for them

34

bs before being confined to Gehn’s Prison Island. This is where the player finds

’ ; her in the game if he can reach Gehn’s Age and use the Linking book tha, 7 goes back to the Prison Island. “There was even one design meeting where we considered making Catherine the bad guy,” says Robyn. "But we ie couldn't do that to poor Atrus. It is an example of how, when designing, everything must at least be seriously considered—if only for a few minutes,” As Riven's gameplay grew longer and more complex, the team needed a way to keep a record of all its Paths and possibilities. While an author might write an outline or a film director might use storyboards, the Riven team relied primarily on maps of their world. “The maps are essential and a perfect vehicle for creating the broad

strokes of world design. By using them you can see the entire basic design for the world in one glance,” Robyn says. And with so much of the story dependent on the physical layout of Riven, the maps became the best way to track the evolution of the game.

The initial game design meetings involved Rand and Robyn, Josh Staub, and programmer Richard Watson. When an element either of the story line

Flow charts (below) tracking Riven’s gameplay were crucial tools for keeping track of the mindboggling array of possibilities and were subject to constant revision and improvement.

These two maps reveal the
physical changes made to Temple Island after the decision was made to relocate Gehn’s golden
superdome from Book

Assembly Island (see maps
on opposite page) to

Temple. The pentagon-
shaped room with the
golden scarabs, which was
formerly the island’s main | structure (left, at center), now became the massive dome’s entrance gate | through which the player
must figure out how to
pass to access the dome.

or having to do with an object was changed, Robyn would simply erase the part of the be = pencil-drawn map and E draw in its replace- ment. "There was an awful lot of scribbling, scratching, and erasing at those first meetings," Robyn recalls. "But by the end of a few weeks we had recorded the basic game play for the world—though it wasn't too pretty.” Later, when Richard Vander Wende joined the Riven team, he and Robyn continued working with the maps to evolve Riven’s world. This resulted in a smooth and logical gameplay, but it also doomed them to redrawing their tattered maps on a regular basis, "Which was always a pain," Robyn says, but a necessary one to accommodate their ambitious world building—and rebuilding—efforts. "In one massive session,” Robyn explains, "we moved the gold super fire marble dome from the Book Assembly Island to the Temple Island and moved Gehn’s map room from an underground cavern on the | Temple Island to the lake on the Survey Island.” | In addition to the maps, which helped the creative team keep track of the

37

A complete overview (below) of Riven's five islands dated May 1994. Clockwise from top left, the five islands are Book Assembly, Temple, Prison, Jungle, and Garden/ Survey. At this point, the superdome that would dominate Temple has not even been created.

38

physical layout of Riven, large reams of gameplay flow charts were ore uced

that clarified the specific actions and outcomes the player might follow and how they all connected and led eventually to the game's conc lusion, Tt s Ms

number of possibilities was Staggering, but it was the process of continual daily reviewing and revising the step-by-step gameplay, in addition to the m

aps that resulted in a carefully crafted and well organized game Complicat ¢ Ing this picture was the emphasis placed on understanding the manner in wh F Ich the player reacted to certain situations, objects, and puzzles. In many cas ases,

concept illustrations for buildings and objects were accompanied by 8a game

Sen

REE PE

~~

notes that fleshed out these reactions and tested whether or not they felt right or natural

Once the first maps and flow charts were in place, the Riven team took the next step and conducted some simple testing to see how well their game played. In this early, primitive pre-digital experiment, they walked all the members of the company through the maps, explaining what the players would hear and see along the way. Right away, it was obvious that there was one big problem in the game: the Garden Island. Nothing important hap- pened there. It seemed to have no purpose and was “a bit boring,” according to Robyn. As with the D'ni, if there was a contradiction or something unsta- ble in what was written into an Age book, it was a matter of rewriting it to make it better.

Garden Island was eventually revamped in complete fashion by Robyn and Richard. The formal English gardens that gave the island its name disap- peared and were replaced with a sparse, arid landscape. A lake was added to an elevated plateau, and this is where they placed Gehn's map room. The

whole concept for the island took on a more sinister air. Renamed the Survey

Island, it became Gehn’s control center, from where he could keep an eye on

One of the initial constructions for a Garden Island in Riven included some formal English style gardens (above) and were reminiscent of his designs for Myst. Along with Richard Vander Wende’s help, Garden became Survey Island (right) and the sight for some newly designed structures, including the Map Room,

that were more appropriate to Riven’s evolving style.

39

activities all over Riven, including the villagers

Catherine, and the shifting, tectonically unsteady islands themselve In keeping with the physical storytelling style

that led them to mapmaking rather tt outlining

the team had been working on designs for environments from the earliest stages of the project. In its first incarnations

ven bore a strong resemblance to Myst, with neoclassical

Concept for the wahrk

architecture and graceful gazebos dotting the landscape. Then (above) desloned by

Richard Vander Wende arrived and proceeded to turn the Richard Vander Wende

on its head. “At first, Richard’s suggestions and ideas were a bit

unsettling,” admits Robyn. Even by the end of 1994, the original

team had outlined a good chunk of Riven and didn’t want to make changes without good reasons. Richard had them

He wanted the visuals to tell much more of a story than we knew visuals had the power to tell,” Robyn explains. “Richard wanted to see the characters in every single minuscule ele- ment that was in the world.” Richard demonstrated this idea by first designing the Wahrk Throne Room, which became part of the newly renamed Survey Island Originally the room was a closet in which the player would learn D'ni color symbols on some jars of chem- icals,” says Robyn. But Richard pushed for more depth He wanted the room to reveal something about Gehn’s character, not only in the room's purpose, but in its look and feel

Instead of a dull closet, Richard came up with

a gigantic, oppressive space where a throne sat atop a pinnacle in front of an enormous win dow. From here, Gehn could meditate while watching his pet wahrk feed. The rooms baroque Victorian fixtures were worthy of a meealomaniacal Captain Nemo. And the room accomplished the same purpose as the closet

but in a more interesting manner. A player

could learn the necessary color codes by

experimenting with the mac hine Gehn used to

The Wale Sie Roget bY on seale; and. purposeful feed the wahrk. Using this dynamic storytelling technique itself is an indication o dram
atic ligh — ] } ters t nhabit

; se he i the settines reveal more about the characters that inhab

how far Riven's designers which reinforces the sense

have come since the Myst of power wielded by Gehn them—and in a more subtle way days, in terms of its

than would have been possible through the Gehn's throne in concept

sketch (top) and in its

asR ' ; pees > | iven's overlord. game's original design, and certainly more elegantly than if the information final form as seen in the awesome design, emphasis

ere simply stated in words. The real impact, however, was to make the game (above)

player more involved with Riven s world

“after Richard created the Wahrk Room, | suddenly became meee interested in this cinematic and meaning-driven approach to naa interactive world,” Robyn states. The team was impressed enough _ . : he
design and approach to immediately incorporate it into Riven - a 20

through the entire game and redesign it according to these cinem atic p ‘ ¢ rine}

ples. Now, the villagers are defined by the earthy, organic atmosph Sphere of
their environments, structures, and tools, the rebels by their Afr : Alrican-
inspired idols and weapons, and Gehn by his ornate Victorian mechan anical

devices

Concept art and final images from the game reveal the organic, natural styling behind the design of the tools, structures, and totems related to the

jungle villagers, whose primitive state contrasts sharply with their ruler’s obsession with powerful machines and intricate devices.

Gehn’s architecturally ornate elevator on Survey Island (an early version at left and the finished design above) is a good

example of how the artists

designed Riven’s environs

and the objects in them to reflect the characters

associated with them.

While Gehn’s objects tend to reflect his taste for industrial beauty and a certain opulence—as in the exquisitely designed music player found in his office (below)—there are also several items which incorporate materials

from Riven’s natural environment and are designed to reflect his attempt to dominate his surroundings, including

this wahrk tusk lamp (left), which is used to light a desk in his lab (below left).

The rusty fire marble domes which dot Riven’s landscape evolved out of some early gazebolike structures with columns that were more in the style of Myst’s structures.

When the visuals were estab- lished as a key tool for revealing character as well as story, the per- sonal tastes of the artists became secondary. For instance, Gehn's signature constructions in Riven, his fire marble domes, were orig- inally gazebos. Why? Because there had been similar struc- tures in Myst and during the early design phase, Robyn had naturally gravitated to the original game's visual style Under Richard's questioning, however, it became clear that they didn’t fit in with Gehn’s psychology. A brutish and showy man, Gehn would want some- thing imposing to show off his strength and feed his ego. While their main purpose was to protect the Linking books that connected Riven to Gehn’'s Age, their visual relation to their creator's personal tastes—and to the mas- ter puzzle behind Riven—was another equally significant feature While the gazebos were lost, this method opened up the game to other interesting visual possibilities. The Victorian look of Gehn's environ- ments fit both the D’ni’s aesthetics and technology and, according to Robyn, "seemed about as far up the technical food chain as Gehn could climb considering that he was exiled in a fairly primitive age, with few tools to work with.” The Victorian motif gave Robyn and Richard license to design some exquisite objects and scenes, such as the Lava Room on Survey Island, the Mag-Lev vehicle and the beetle- I adorned Gate Room on the Temple Island. This desire A. to make an area or object reflect personality was om also the key to creating the map room on

Survey Island when it became clear that the

44

The inverted half-dome design for the office in

Gehn’s Age is clearly related to the fire marble domes in Riven, since itis through these domes that Gehn’s Age is reached. This unique “open” shape is used to catch rainwater in this very caustic Age.

island’s formal gardens didn't contribute to the game.

What Richard's method did, finally, was solidify a process that had been at work within the team since the beginning. Riven was never a game that could be written down and locked into place in one shot or even two. It needed room to breathe, grow, and expand as the story and gameplay grad- ually developed. Richard's character-driven design method gave the Riven team the approach they needed to continually shape their imaginary world, adding depth and excitement to the game.

Richard explains it simply: “To construct a believable world, you have to

evolve it.”

To open the dome itself, the player must press the button on top of the rotoscope at the exact same time the correct image is seen through its eyepiece (left and below). Accessing the Linking book to Gehn’s Age within (bottom) requires entering a combination to release the external lock.

Hand-drawn sketches of an early version of the the entrance to Gate Room _office in Gehn’s Age
on Temple Island (above), showing a complete globe a lamp incorporating the before it was cut in half five pen nibs from Gehn’s (below).

crest design (right), and

C aa p n creating a complex game such

as Riven—a fantasy world of %, =e) buildings, machines, and objects all interrelated by

the puzzles and solutions ies

that slowly bring the story into focus and carry it

forward—the design team was faced with a task that would have impressed the D'ni themselves.

In a computer-generated universe, nothing is taken for granted. Every object—be it an island, a stone building, a leaf, or a rivet—must be care- fully thought out and articulated, not only independently but in rela- tion to everything else. If there was a bowl of fruit ona table, would it hold apples, oranges, or some exotic fruit? If there was 4 Victorian-style lamp, would it's base be brass or iron? Would
the pens on Gehn’s desk resemble anything we've ever seen before or be completely imaginary?

48

Drawings of the rebel- made scythe-like weapon (right) and of a walk with lamps found on Jungle Island (below).

In Myst: The Book of Atrus, Gehn describes D'ni bookmaking to his son Atrus as follows, “It takes a great deal of work to create an Age. There are special formulas you have to follow, precise laws to obey.

. it is not simply an Art, it is a science—the science of precise description.

“When we begin, there is nothing,” Gehn goes on to say. “It is... uncreated. But as soon as the first
word is written—just as soon as that first character is completed, the last stroke set down upon the page—then a link is set up to that newly created world, a bridge established.”

The Riven team, like the D'ni, began with a blank page but immediately began filling it with concept designs for all
kinds of stuff. "Robyn and | produced sketches for nearly
every object in the game,” says Richard, “although most of the time they were quite rough. We'd usually only develop an idea on paper until we felt we had enough information to communicate that idea to the person who

would be building the computer model.”

Inside the huge pod where the rebels hideout

in Rebel Age is the village of miniature pods used as huts and connected by suspended catwalks (below). Unfortunately,

Mek ae

' t Lait

this is one of the few times the player is not able to explore further as it is only visible through a panel on a door which doesn’t open.

The concept art on these pages reveal how every single aspect of Riven's imaginary world was worked out in sketch form before modeling began, including all the natural flora, machines, and devices ranging from lamps and magical imagers to valves and boilers, and the details of entrances and

passageways.

In several locations about Riven, Gehn's small hand- cranked imager (above) will be noticed. Depending on the imager, a different “home movie” is seen: in his bedroom Gehn can play a scene of his wife; in the schoolroom it delivers a greeting from Gehn to the children; in the Temple Room, however, this very large imager actually projects live images of Gehn from his office.

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Many of the concepts for machines or devices, such as the book drying press (above) and the imager in the Temple Room (left)— were accompanied by handwritten notes that detailed the specifications for the design, the function of certain objects and parts, as well as the type of styling and look the artists wanted to achieve, including comments on how shiny or rusty the metal should appear or how worn or aged a piece of wood might be.

Bret St. Clair

The first step in creating any scene is to try out different designs for the props. In the case of Gehn’s magnetic levitation car, lead designer Richard Vander Wende produced a number of rough sketches (top right and above), then refined the car's design (right) before handing things over to computer graphics artists,

The most important issues to determine first involved what the object would be and how it fit into both the game and the Riven world. One of Riven's most interesting creations is Gehn’s magnetic levitation car, which was designed by Richard and built by computer artist Bret St. Clair. Not only was the Mag- Lev a tasty piece of eye-candy, it was a good example of how thoroughly the designers had imagined Riven and the characters who populated it. A transporta- tion system built by Gehn would naturally have to reflect what the Cyan team knew about D’ni science. As Richard explains, "the D'ni favored raw forms of energy, such as magnetism. It was a quick clean propulsion system and fit in both with their technology and the D'ni’s refined aesthetic sense.” For Richard, the Mag-Lev car was also an interesting design opportunity. Richard continues, “when the player enters the depot, it’s empty. He pushes a button and this thing—this deluxe ele- vator—comes gliding in. It rolls around, settles itself and swings open the door, beckoning the player to enter. This is essentially the mechani- cal version of the Wahrk. | wanted it to feel alive.”

The Mag-Lev car was also typical of the multistep

process the team used to complete each final image

First came the basic design, for which Richard drew inspiration from Victorian-era steam locomotives and pictures of weird, bulbous World War I] air- planes to come up with a transport system that would make Jules Verne drool. He made numerous

drawings until he was satisfied with the overall

concept. Then he handed his sketches and a set of detailed specs over to Bret St. Clair. For the artist, the image's specs were every bit as important as the illustration itself. In this case, they told Bret not only the dimensions of the craft, but how the objects moved, which parts were animated, and what materials each section was made of Using Softimage, Bret began by constructing a wireframe model in the computer. The frame functioned as a skeleton upon which Bret could then build the final image. Once the,model was basically complete, Bret added shaded surfaces to the frame's contours so that it looked like a ghost of the final image. At this stage, the overall shape of the car was reviewed for its basic integrity and faithfulness to the design. After consulting with Richard, Bret applied actual textures, called color maps, to the surfaces of the model, drawing on Cyan’s vast library of custom textures made from photos of all kinds of surfaces—metal, stone, fabric, wood. These photos had been scanned and modified using Adobe Photoshop to create texture maps which the artists could stretch onto any object in a scene

Once Bret applied the metal and rust patterns to the surface of the car and added animation of the side door sliding open and shut, he placed the image

into it’s proper scene. To create the setting for this indoor docking station,

Using Softimage software, computer artist Bret St. Clair constructed a wireframe model of the complete scene, including the car (top) which could then be previewed as shaded polygons (above) in order to review the overall design for any changes the designers might want to make before taking the next steps,

Textures for all the surfaces are chosen from Cyan’s library of custom textures Each texture is then applied to its designated surface. In this case, the metal (below left) and rust is applied to

the car and the rock (below right) to the cave walls. After making final touch-ups on the textures the scene is previewed again using simple ambient lighting (right).

Bret, along with Tony Davidson, went through the same process when build

ing the car: receiving a basic design, creating a wireframe model of the entire

layout, and covering it with surface textures. With all the elements of the

scene combined, the design team previewed the scene with simple, ambient

lighting Once they were satisfied

view from which the player would see t

ing to create the right atmosphere

with the “camera angle,” or the point-of- re shot, the next step was to add lieht-

Riven's images were as elaborate as movie

sets and requil ed just as much effort to light for proper effect

None of these steps happened quickly. The finished image of the car took

about three weeks to create, with the dock and the Mag-Lev tracks requiring

another month, Since the design

team knew that the computer modeling

would often take weeks to complete, they frequently skipped the early pencil

sketches of their images and started creating digital versions as soon as they had a basic idea of the design They knew from creating Myst that no matter how carefully an object was planned, once it became a 3-D computer graphic, issues and prob- lems would appear in its construc- tion, or changes to the story might affect its role or function. In fact, Gehn's Mag-Lev system itself was first conceived as a more interesting and exciting substitute for a series of bridges built by Gehn that, in the game's early stages, connected all the islands to one another. It was quickly obvious, however, that it took an extremely long time to get around this way (they were really long bridges) and it would be pretty dull going for the player (click, click, click, click) every time he wanted to move from island to island. Later still, once it was decided Gehn could bounce around Riven’s islands via his Linking books, the Mag-Lev ride was limited to serving only three out of the five islands, while all that’s left of the bridges is the one connecting Temple Island to Book

Assembly Island

Tony Davidson

The last step is to light the scene for the right atmosphere. It’s common for each of Riven’s images to have as many as 40 ray traced light sources; this particular one has 42. A SGI Challenge L server cooked for about four hours to render the final high-resolution image

(left).

Josh Staub explains, "Once we got the SGI computers, we thought all our problems were solved, that they could render anything and everything we wanted.” The computer artists often discovered, however, that when their images hit a certain : ] level of density (or num- ( - " ber of polygons), even ‘ase Cyan’s brawny new SGI Challenge L server could e not handle them. Some- 4 Rj ae ea times the problem was the design, but often — 42 it was the gear itself. They were simply asking nan f too much of both the hardware and software Even with the two SGI servers—one running with 2 gigabytes of RAM and the other with es 4 gigs of swappable RAM for a total of 6 giga- _— bytes—it was still taking hours upon hours to A design sketch for the

huts found in the village render some of these extra-dense scenes.

on Jungle Island, including In addition, the Softimage modeling program appeared to have an upper some variations on the entrance doors, one with Gehn’s crest burned into

and PRESTO!—everything comes to a screeching halt. Add to this Cyan’s dis- the wood (far left).

limit for how many polygons it could stitch together in a scene. Hit that limit

covery that SoftImage contained some subtle bugs

that would crash the system when the software was Models, has th. ces i working on a really big-time image. But all was not of the Rivenese village

on Jungle Island lost. Enter Cyan’s CG technical director Karl

designs, equipment failures, delays, and cost-overruns, so too did Kabove)iare'3:p wireframes over which

ust aS massive building projects in the real world © thhaWehefe4

Stiefvater. He was Cyan’s star SoftImage debugger,

Riven's construction. You just don’t build a world without cracking a writing patches to get around the software's glitches,

textures, shaders, and

few mountains lighting are added to and one of their experts on figuring out model design

The Riven team's ambition pushed its technology to the limit. In their Soe a problems realistic images seen é

quest to create a fantasy world that was both spectacular and believable, in the game (below). There's an art to computer graphics that isn't

they designed each scene with tremen- always obvious. A truly fine computer artist creates

dous complexity and depth. The exterior scenes consisted of all 3-D modeled objects—dozens of them in every shot. These objects were built in much the same way as the Mag-Lev car and the other major images: a polygon at a time. In some of Riven's scenes—especially on the Jungle Island—the thicket of poly- gons is so dense and tangled that it looks like an explosion in a wire hanger

factory.

the maximum effect with the fewest polygons. It's a subtle kind of minimalism, one that rewards the artist who can learn to best use thousands of poly- gons instead of hundreds of thousands of them Fortunately, many of the scenes that were too com- plex to render properly could be fixed by simplifying them, i.e., lowering the number of polygons.

The trees on Temple Island, for example, were very complex and detailed models. Since they were designed and completed early, the first tendency of the artist who was assembling a scene on the island might be to drop in one

of these complex models, even if the trees were only visible from a great

As Cyan quickly found out,

you can never have enough raw computing power. Three SGI servers were set up to run continuously in order to render the thousands of images in Riven.

distance. In computer terms, this meant that even though the trees might be a speck on the screen, the SGI still

had to render the full and

Robin Foley

very complex model. For many scenes, this was simply a waste of time and

meant that there was just too much information for the system to handle.

For these situations, the design team developed a compromise. They built

scaled-down versions of some of the more

complicated and frequently used models. It

was frustrating aesthetically. In the case of the

trees, Robin Foley had modeled a lifelike 3-D

version of them, and the artists would have

preferred to use that as-close-to-perfect-as-

they-could-get version as much as possible.

The full version was smooth and lifelike

whereas the simplified model was always

faceted—its edges covered with the tiny

shark-fin ridges that are a dead giveaway for a

computer graphic. But most of these images

were small enough that the facets wouldn't be

visible to the naked eye, and therefore drop-

ping in a simplified version of the model often

meant the difference between a scene that

rendered and one that didn't.

Polygons weren't the only thing the Riven

team had to worry about when it came to

rendering. Each scene required properly

In order to save time in rendering, several versions of a model with varying complexity were created and used accordingly. The two models of the trees (left top) on Temple Island, for example, illustrate the differences in complexity of the inner structure. Depending upon the scene, Cyan would use the simpler model (on right) when less detail was

organized schematic flow charts that verified for the computer system how

an object in a scene related to each of its parts and to other objects, which

needed and the more complex one when very fine detail was required. The same two models are shown in shaded and partially colored form (left middle). In certain cases, an image might contain examples of both kinds of models (left). Note the tree in the background (simple model) and the one in the foreground (complex model). Schematic flow charts created in the software to track the hierarchical relation between every scene, object, and detail, including animations, were the blueprints for analyzing the structural integrity of the image. They were also the bane of the CG artists existence, as the extent of detail and the ongoing changes made to these details often caused massive headaches when they had to doublecheck the charts looking for answers to problems in rendering the images. The flowchart shown here is from Jungle Island and ends on the very last detail of a section of a board secured

by a screw (below).

objects had animations attached and what parts of those objects actually moved. These schematics proved to be a headache through- out Riven's design. "You should take a look at some of our schematic flow charts—some of them are crazy,” says Richard Vander Wende

Schematics look like family trees, with related objects grouped together in order by branching lines. While the software automati- cally built a default schematic as a scene was constructed, it wasn't necessarily correct and it was up to the artist creating the scene to go in and check it. If the hierarchi- cal list wasn't just right, the image wouldn't render. Just as they might have to rework a scene to decrease the number of polygons, sometimes an artist would have to modify a seemingly finished scene to correct the logic of the schematic

Perhaps the most novel challenge to the Riven creators was the modeling

and animating of organic forms. In Myst, these had been limited to a few

59

butterflies and sea gulls, but in Riven there were plans for beetles, frogs,

birds, fish, fireflies as well as newly imagined beasts, including wahrks and

sunners. The artists, many of whom had relatively little

erience with com-

puter animation, were now faced with constructing wireframes for animals

that had to move ina lifelike fashion How could they create these models and not have them look like computer- generated sock puppets? SoftImage provided the technical answer, but not right away.

When the artists began creating the first models for Riven back in 1994, their best option was to build them out of polygons, which are point- or coordinate-oriented and have straight edges and flat faces. A model made up of polygons can be made to bend and turn but if its meant to simulate the motions of a real animal, the effect will be a slightly robotic one at best. Eventually, Softlmage released a software update that vastly improved its other option, called a patch. Patches have spline-based surfaces and these can be made to bend, curve, expand, and undulate—in a word, to behave in more responsive and “organic” ways. Richard Vander Wende compares creating a patch object to working with "virtual" clay. It allowed him not only to mold soft, lifelike shapes, but to

animate them in natural ways.

By constructing the sunner models with patches instead of polygons (middle), the CG artists provided the proper flexibility in order to

The sunners (left and opposite) are one of Riven’s original animal creations. They were inspired by both a pelican and a penguin but owe a lot of their design, by Richard Vander Wende, to a combination of a plesiosaurus’s body and the whalebone mouth, used for sifting plankton, of a baleen whale.

create a realistic living- and-breathing creature (in shaded polygon stage above) and to animate it to move in believable ways.

in¢ Mad [Ap Maesealtave a word—wabi—that refers to the deliberate imp J é ere

fection in any piece of art that marks it as a human creation. The prol Ob-

Original photos of all lem with computer graphics is that they don't have wabi. so artist SO artists

Becret rece ech have to go in and trick the software into making a perfect cre the one below of a very .

rusted mining drum, were shot during a trip to New Mexico and made up a vast library of textures.

ation seem imperfect and more lifelike

One of the ways to create lifelike computer images is to cover them te realistic textures. It doesn't make sense to draw a 3-D image of a tree A rs pixel when you can simply model the tree's one

line in polygons and wrap it in a texture map

These maps are like computer wallpaper made from, in this case, a photo of real tree bark While still designing Riven, Robyn, Richard, and Josh traveled to Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, and shot hundreds of photographs of every sur- face that caught their eye: aged wood, rusted and corroded metal, natural rock, plaster, and adobe. Back in Mead, every print was scanned into the computer, creating a library of surfaces

to choose from. The New Mexico shots became

the basis, according to Robyn, “of 95 percent of

all the textures you see in Riven."

On the Trail of Textu res “The idea behind the trip to Santa Fe was to go to a place where every- * ° In Santa Fe, New Mexico thing had been modified by an environment that we thought was like

5, - oe the environment we were imagining for Riven,”

says Richard Vander Wende. By the time Robyn Miller, Josh Staub, and Richard returned to Spokane, they had shot hundreds of photographs of surfaces, “We came back with so many that it was a little difficult sorting through them,” Robyn says. While they spent a lot of time examining the

local adobe structures, colorful rock formations, everywhere, some chance finds added to the

metal yard down by the train tracks in Albuquerque—something we hadn't anticipated,” . Richard says. Virtually all of their metal textures

came from this one site, everything from the

62

and the dried animal bones that seemed to be |

excitement. “We stumbled upon this great scrap ‘

lumpiest rust to barely tarnished iron. }

The sequence of images below illustrates the step- by-step process used by | the CG artists to apply
textures to the modeled
objects in the game. In this
case (top to bottom), the
first step produces a
straight scan of Richard

Vander Wende’s hand,
followed by a version
manipulated in the
computer, and finally the
image itself which
incorporates the final

texture into the bed cover.

In order to create the floor for this elevator (right), the CG artists started with scans of photos of a steel grate and a corroded strip of metal (above). They texture map (top right). spent as much time as This map was then applied necessary retouching the to the surface of the images in the computer to elevator model, giving the

produce a satisfying object its finished look.

Of course, creating a digital tree isn't as simple as “gluing” a scan of some bark to a computer model. Cyan’s artists would spend hours customizing all their textures by modifying the scanned images in Photoshop, where they aged, weathered, recolored, and tiled to greater size many of the images, producing textures that achieved a heightened sense of digital reality as opposed to a purely photorealistic one. The unique textures—their colors and tones—are one of the distinguishing features underlying the Myst “look” that so captivated its audience. In one case, a texture was derived from a truly innovative source. When confronted with designing a leatherlike cover for the bed in Gehn’s room, Richard began by considering the idea that leather on Riven would not be leather as we know it. With that in mind, he pro- ceeded to scan his own hand and retouch the image into the final color and texture

you see in the game shot.

tion to a map of a surface texture several other specially created

-d to an image, giving it its three dimensional appearance

t

) which simply applies color to an object; a bump map, which adds olor mat ¢ VE at

irreevularities to the surface, creating all manners of impressions: grooves

of course, bumps; a specular map, to indicate specific

racks, ridges

object, say a round ball; and a reflec

areas of lighted highlights in a given tivity map, which tells the computer how where, and to what degree light is

reflected from the object's surface

As the artists became increasingly adept at creating and applying these

> . >» Michae > maps. they found that in certain cases the right use of one or just a few ol ichael Bostick View of Catherine's prison t and save time in the process from the top of the stairs

{ | i offe the maps could produce a complicated elec ae ‘ leading to the elevator

the bark

Though it looks as three-dimensional as any of Riven's other “sets

of the giant tree stump on Prison Island, built by Tony

Davidson and Robin Foley, is a great illusion, since it Is achieved from a simple bump map and color map app ied over the smooth object. On its own, a bump map looks like a

gray-scale version of the full image The different levels of

eray—all the way from dead black to white—correspond to

the relative depths of an object's surface and tell the com-

puter how high or low, in a physical sense, to render differ

ent parts of the image. The lighter the area the higher that

part appears. By exaggerating the light and dark areas on the

giant tree’s bump map, Robin created the impression of deep grooves and cracks, giving the wood and rock a petrified prehistoric feeling. “If you use a bump map right, it can trick the eye into seeing more detail than is really there,” says CG

artist Michael Bostick

Prison Island in Riven is the stronghold where Catherine is confined. The prison itself sits atop a massive tree that has been hacked off at its base, no doubt for Gehn's bookmaking experiments. The core elements of the design for this wretched outpost are seen here, including the color (above right) and bump maps (below right) applied to the shaded model (far right). The finished design appears on the following spread.

66

7 Reka

A simple comparison between the texture map for a brick covered wall in Myst (near left) and for the one on the boiler in Riven (left) reveals a multitude of differences in the design of the two games. For example, the Riven map is many times larger, and so is repeated less often, and the detail is phenomenal, right down to the uneven mortar job applied to the bricks.

SAAT OREN

See

nye?

Concept designs for the huge boiler on Book Assembly Island. The sketch at right is closer to the final design seen in the game.

ws

As with every other aspect of creating Riven, resources and computing power allowed the designers and artists to push to rather extreme levels of detail and uniqueness in creating the textures to be applied to the models. In Myst, the surface of a tree, for instance, was com- posed of a small section of barklike texture repeated as many times as need ed over the model of the tree. With Riven, in addition to creating much larger maps, a texture composed of seemingly repetitive materials would, in fact, consist of an untold number of uniquely customized surfaces. The boiler on Book Assembly Island, which Gehn uses to turn trees into pulp for paper, is a case in point. A look from closeup on the catwalk surrounding the

boiler reveals that in every place careful thought has gone into designing the

textures that cover the model. Levers are not just metal colored. They have

grunge on them and are worn down in the appropriate places from years of handling. The bricks are pocked and discolored-
all of them differently! And the assortment of drips,
smears, and corrosion that have been applied to the
metal pipes and plates is, simply put, excessive

But Cyan wouldn't want it any other way. They
want the player to experience this boiler as if it

were real.

Well over forty separate texture maps were used to create this closeup shot of the boiler. While many of the surface effects were achieved with a single map, as with the rubber boot on the left, the appearance of the metal handles and the pipes, for example, were the result of combining a number of textures together.

| f you look carefully at the lake near the boiler on a 5 adders

you will notice that the color and opacity of the water changes depend ing upon Its depth as well as your anele and distance from it. Take a look

at the ¢ hute that brings logs down to the massive chipper next to the

boiler

Again depending upon your anele of vision, the light elares off its metal surface in ways that subtly recreate how light actually reflects off shiny surfaces

To make a good looking metal,” explains Riven's computer graphics tet hnical director, Karl Stiefvater, "the artists must do more than just paint a realistic texture. A texture will look good only from one partic ular anele, in one particular lighting situa- tion. Change the environment and thesuntacenviliiiootvenviont of place.” In certain instances, Riven’s artists did not fully antic

ipate these moments. The submarine on Jungle Island, for exam-

ple, was originally designed for an underwater shot where the metal surface was obscured by the effects of the water, but the moment the Karl Stetvatey sub was placed in sunlight, it's surface simply fell flat Compared to the riv eting, brightly lit scene surrounding it, the sub looked as if it had actually

been painted, cut out, and pasted into a photograph. To overcome the limi-

There are many images tations of the basic texture maps Cyan's artists utilized custom “shaders,” in Riven where the

The log chipper on Book Assembly Island (seen . 3 ‘ which are special programs that produce all kinds of vivid and highly realis-

above in its final form

underwater terrain is

defined by accurately
meviiele ineoncect tic natural effects. While many software packages come with a number of reflecting the effect of built-in shaders, they were often disappointing to Cyan, falling far short of water's transparency

| depending on its depth
the standards they set for Riven Instead, they turned to Karl to design cus-

sketch) is designed to
chop down the trees for ; (see below). These touches pulping into the paper tom shaders that would create the effects they wanted are part of the many

| Gehn uses to make his separate details that add

version of an Age book. Of all the natural effects computer artists have been recreating in recent

up to Riven's entire world years, with varying degrees of success, there is perhaps no harder one than coming to life visually. water. In Myst, the illusion of
water was limited to the flat
plane, a color and reflectivity |

| map, and a bump map With

ti - Riven, all that would change. Karl -s a. 6 created three special water ‘ a \ shaders for the new game: the se The realistic fl i “oc " \ W alistic flaring of light object looking flat and ocean” shader simulated realis- dh i- / i off the metal chute of the ordinary and an image F 7 | = { chipper was created by that stands out for its uc, adjustable waves over large % AV IL, applying a custom remarkable illusion of bodies of water and had a vari- 2 | designed shader program. reality. A comparison of able = z } ; DEAT 4 These programs were used one view of the chute a OODIESODUON; tnceawatel throughout the game to with the shader applied shader modeled the physics of " produce natural lookin (above) and without (top) i g : the reflective, transparency, and effects and were the speaks for itself. Aiinencebetteenian coloration properties of water;

Without any of the custom shader programs, the surface of water would look like a mirror with no ripples or waves (above). While a bump map for water, such as the one below used for the original Myst can add some of the

impression of water's

natural look, it has a very limited effect.

aioe 7 Pat = Naar

—

and the “submerge” shader provided the underwater depth fading effect, in which the vertical light falloff from the water's surface is taken into account When used together, particularly for underwater shots, these three shaders produced extraordinary results The custom shaders really saved us,” Says Robyn. “We could never get the water right with the shaders we started with. But once Karl wrote one that worked, we kept asking him to do others." In all, Karl developed two dozen shader programs for Riven, with effects relating to landscapes, mist, lighting, water, and various materials. He has since left Cyan to start his own 3-D graphics software firm, Lume, Inc., specializing in—what else?—custom shaders By combining shaders with the texture and bump maps, Riven’s artists were able to create all kinds of startlingly lifelike scenes involving effects that mirror what you see in the real world. While it assumes a knowledge of the physical properties of all kinds of materials and the effects of light, cre- ating an effective shader program must take into account the intentions of the artist as well. "Making a good shader requires the cooperation of an art- minded and a science-minded person,” Karl says, summing it up. "The art- minded guy paints the scene and determines what it should look like; the

science-minded guy writes the shader that makes it happen."

This underwater shot of the swimming sunners demonstrates the results produced by the three water shaders developed by Karl Stiefvater.

The Ocean shader creates the impression of ripples and waves on the water's surface and adds the highlights of light caused by reflections

The Water shader handles the water's reflectivity, transparency, and coloration in relation to the varying distances from

the camera,

The Submerge shader produces the falloff effect of light as the distance

from the surface increases.

nee all the objects for a particular image were desib nee, ah dic én. structed and the basic scene assembled, the next crucial step involved determining the quality of lighting. Because the game's settings were so elaborate, they were as challenging to light as a real movie set. Cyan’s artists used light—both natural and artificial—to establish mood, to accentuate or obscure objects, and to add the final layers of detail that would visually sell a scene. Apply the lighting in the wrong way and the scene would be robbed of its realism The interior of Gehn’s temple on Temple Island was lit by Tony Davidson in the most powerful fashion to create a mysterious, almost claustrophobic atmosphere. The game's shot of the room is dominated by a backlit stained glass window bearing his crest. The window isn’t simply lit—the light appears to burn through the glass, creating a halo of glare that scatters around the glass in the most realistic way. The light even cuts into smaller bands as it passes through the bars of the imager situated in the middle of the room When it came time to light the scenes in the villager’s school room underground on Jungle Island, Josh Staub began by setting up individual lamps at intervals throughout the room. Rather than a single point source shining in a focused direction, a sphere of sources, like a bulb, was arranged within each round lamp. Because of the dark ani- mal patterns applied to the surface of the lamp itself, the software knew to cast strone,

crisp shadows in crisscrossing

Gehn's Temple Room in wireframe mode (below), with the various light sources, indicated in red, set in position around the room. In its fully textured state and the lights turned on, the room has a cool and gloomy cavernous feel (bottom left). With all the final effects in, including the glare shader (bottom tight), the flat quality of the light has been transformed to heighten the contrast between light and dark and

to concentrate attention on

the stained glass window

patterns against the walls but without taking into account the balancing and diffusing effect of the various lights upon one another. To achieve a more realistic effect, a technique called area lighting was used to create a proper

balance. The soft, blurred shadowing now generated by the lamps around

the room enhanced the setting’s cavelike feel, which was the intention in

the first place

To produce an extremely dramatic effect in a scene, Rivens artists

resorted to a classic technique of the theater: the spotlight. For instance, in any of Gehn’s fire marble domes—good luck opening one!—your eye Is powerfully drawn to the Linking book resting on a pedestal at its center by from above. A shot like

the intense spotlight shining straight down

The village schoolroom

on Jungle Island with and without area lighting turned on (above and top). In the center of the scene between the lights stands one of Gehn’s imagers. When cranked, the player views a recorded image of Gehn delivering a formal greeting to the students.

While the exterior scenes in Riven offer grand and imposing spectacles, the interior shots—including inside a fire marble dome (right), Gehn’s lab on Book Assembly Island (below), and the tunnel to the Wahrk Throne Room on Survey Island (bottom)—are just as beautifully crafted and are distinguished by a power- ful sense of what lighting can do to create drama, draw a player into the surroundings, and lead him

towards a destination.

this employed far fewer light sources, but it required the artist to wield a delicate artistic touch along with knowledge olf the software to specify just how much of the scene would be dominated by the dramatic ray traced spotlight and how much detail would remain barely visible in the background

In spite of the ability to play with dramatic effect and the tone of artifi cial light, or to create natural light streaming through a window, it's quite difficult to light an indoor scene since it requires the manipulation of as many as 20 to 50 light sources. An outdoor scene, by contrast, is much easier. Yet, it still demands an accurate eye for what appears to be natural sunlight. The degree to which sunlight, in a given situation, can be altered is very slight. It's simply going to look real or it won't

Riven’s sunlight, in fact, was composed of four separate lights. For the sun itself, there was the sin- gle extremely bright light that pervaded the entire shot. To balance the raw strength and color of this main light and to keep a scene from bleaching out, a combination of tone lights were added: a blue one to

add color to the light and some coolness to shadow

The telescope on the fissure plateau in concept form (left) and in a series of the same shot (right) with the different lights that make up sunlight turned on, From top to bottom: main sun light only; blue light only; two bounce fill lights only; and the final game shot with all three lights turned on \ simultaneously. While the . blue and fill lights are by themselves extremely subtle, they are still an

integral part in creating a realistically lit scene.

areas along with two separate fill lights placed at opposite ends of the shot, below the plane of the surface. These fill lights pro- vide warmth to the main light, reduce its bleaching effect, and create the impression of light reflecting into areas hidden from the main light’s path. This helps illuminate some of the detail in the darkest corners and crevices which otherwise would disap- pear into blackness.

Lighting Riven’s thousands of shots, whether indoor or out door scenes, required hours of careful set up and review. The

brilliant natural effects were achieved not only with custom

designed shader programs but also by Cyan's decision to render every single shot with ray tracing, a method that actually traces the paths of light from their sources in a given scene while calculating the vari- ations in shade, color intensity, and shad- ows produced as the light passes through and around objects and reflects off differ- ent materials. Typically, Riven’s scenes each contain up to 40 or more ray traced light sources, all of which had to be calcu- lated separately by the computer, requiring massive amounts of power—and time—to calculate the true shadows, reflections, and refractions ray tracing provides

“Some cheats are possible,” says Josh Staub. “But nothing substitutes for

ray tracing. The final results are almost always worth the effort.”

72

Bo

Two views on Survey Island reveal opposite ends of the island's perspective. Position "A”, as indicated on the map (opposite far right), offers a view of the island looking through the bladelike rocks toward the plateau’s face. Position ‘al je is on the overlook and gives the opposing view with the rocks in the far distance.

e SCene..&. SHINee a technical achievement in computer artistry and the finepoints of modeling frames for objects and designing surface textures and shader programs to reflect hyper-reality. It is very easy to focus exclusively on the cool factor of what you see and to overlook what is the underlying key to the success of these games: they are story driven. What really sucks the player in is that there is a deeply felt purpose to playing the game

The fact that the creators have gone to such lengths to develop a plot that is interesting and which ties in to their development of D'ni culture and
history is still, however, only one part of the game's design. What the game as a whole—must do well is to combine the separate fea- tures of story and computer artistry in a smooth and seamless fashion. More than any other aspect of the game's construction, the scene planning and relation of scene to scene as the player moves is the single most crucial element to bringing the whole show off. If what you see as you click and turn your way around—and the way you see it—doesn’t subtly reinforce your emotional and psychological interest in the story, then the game would disconnect into a fragmented miasma of neat but

ultimately lifeless images

| a | ' | 4 , | /

or

The key for Riven was an acute, often exaggerated, sense of visual conti- nuity. “That and a lot of visual cheats,” says Michael Bostick. What you see— the “camera eye,” in movie terms—is often distorted. While the camera floats about six feet off the ground, which is similar to how movies are shot, fre- quently your field of vision is much wider than it is in the real world Furthermore, when the camera makes a ninety-degree turn, it actually takes several steps back at the same time to give the player the widest field of vision appropriate to the shot. In many cases, if the camera eye's pivot point did not move back, the player might find himself staring at a wall from six inches away To achieve continuity and allow the player to keep track of where he is in a given moment, each scene always includes some overlap from frame to frame so that the segments of each turn are visually related. The use of per- spective, as well, has been altered in ways to enhance visually what you might only understand physically in the real world. When walking down stairs, for instance, the camera is angled steeply down toward the direction of movement to oversimu- late the sense of forward motion Normally, your eyes would stray around in all directions while your feet carried you down To compensate for the fact that in designing shots separately, often by separate artists, the scale of the surroundings might be different from one view to the next, a virtual stand-in—a six-foot tall computer-generated dummy—was employed. This non-union guinea pig was perfect for dropping into scenes to make sure that all the props and sets were in proper scale and that the eye line the artists were using for the scene matched with the eye line from the

previous scene, It would be pretty jarring to see

B82

When turning left or right from, in this case, the middle shot from a scene on Survey Island, the game’s designers have made sure to connect similar visual information at the sides of the adjoining shots, so that the player can set visual landmarks and maintain a sense of where he is at any given turn.

Cyan’s own virtual stuntman—known as Harold—was frequently dropped into scenes to check the scale of objects as seen from various distances as well as the camera’s eyeline to make sure it was the same height as Harold’s line of sight.

Jeremy Engleman

the world from six feet off the ground in a hallway and suddenly find your- self eight or ten feet in the air after entering a room. It would also not make very much sense if the player having, say, moved a lever in one shot, turned around in another only to find the lever back in its original position. Because

the player can ch

ge things in the game, the designers went to some extra-

ordinary lengths to make sure every possible combination of events was

included, so that there would be no break in continuity

This series of images (from

top to right) follows the path down to the sunners lagoon on jungle Island. Approach too fast or make a noise and those sunners will take right off, which is too bad since they provide

an important clue.

While the transitions between scenes is important for main-

taining a concrete sense of place and perspective in the play-

ers mind, it is equally significant as an opportunity to create

dramatic tension and heighten the emotional response of see-

ing. Riven takes full advantage of these moments. A good exam-

ple is the walk down to the sunners lagoon, mode

ed by Jeremy

Engleman, on Jungle Island. You begin in daylight by moving

down a set of stone stairs cut through a solid wa you progress, the rock walls climb higher arounc

almost feels as if you are in a cave. The light t

ll of rock. As you, until it

vas vanished;

sounds have deadened. The sense of the island as a whole has

diminished to this claustrophobic crack in a ¢

ense slab of

granite. Then, barely visible ahead, a crescent of light shines

faintly around a bend in the path. The light begir

through the gloom. The sound of wind and water sl«

1s to pull you

»wly sharpens

Gehn's Wahrk Totem is meant to keep away the villagers, who have a great fear and respect for the sea creature, and to guard the entrance to Gehn's secret underground on

Jungle Island.

B4

Suddenly, the scene opens up into full daylight. The broad expanse of the lagoon is directly below you with two enormous sunners catching some rays on the rocks just above the

breakers. You're in the open again, able to

see and breathe, the tension broken = ;

The transitions between shots were 7 y designed to enhance moods in other ways As part of the creator's intentions to blend story, character, and set- tings more finely, you are keenly aware on a grand scale of how

things change when moving from an

environment dominated by one char- acter to a setting related to another Gehn’'s domains, for instance, have a brutal aspect; the objects are hard edged, often chaotic. The wahrk tusks standing like grim sentinels and the rock slabs like giant knife blades on his Survey Island stand out in stark contrast to the softer look of the Rivenese village on Jungle Island. Even the Rivenese’s decorations, such as the wahrk totem, blend into their environment in ways that Gehn's would never do. Without overtly stating it, these sets tell us a lot

about the characters that inhabit them: Gehn imposes

Handle opens

BRIDGE TO SUPER DOME

Door

door "4

av

E

2

Rotate button

ENTRANCE

MAIN

Gate Room

Rote button

Closeup views of the

watch, opened and closed, found on the table beside the bed in Gehn’s Age (top). The maplike carvings on the watch’s metal surface were inspired by ideas about where the D’ni civilization may have once lived.

PATH TO SIDE ENTRANCE OF SUPER DOME

Handle opens door "3

Rotate button

CAVE

While the movement through Riven is often guided by a clearly defined path there are many places where figuring out where to go and how you get there is No easy task. The Gate Room on Temple Island is a perfect example. A schematic (above left) reveals that the room is five-sided with two inner doors and three peep holes. And, it rotates. There are five entrances each with a door (labeled 1-5) anda rotate button. Entrance 2

has a handle that opens

the inner “grate” door at entrance 4, and entrance 4 has one that opens the inner door at entrance 3. The objective is to rotate the room and gain
access to either the
bridge or path that leads

to the superdome. The three smaller schematics (above right) show the rotated position of the room with arrows indicating your position while the view to the left of each shows what you would see.

his will on his environment, while the Rivenese—along with the rebel Moiety—have learned to live in harmony and blend more with their sur- roundings

By providing carefully selected opportunities to focus up close on smaller details—as intricately designed as the larger views—the creators have gone even further to produce a more intimate level of involvement than achieved by simply passing through a larger field of vision. As in Myst, it is often possible to peruse through the drawers of a desk, open a box, or turn on a gizmo without it being essential to progressing through the game or solving the final puzzle. Everyone now knows, of course, that to leave anything unexplored might mean overlooking some important clue, But the rewards in Riven are often in what is merely a small detail that has nonethe- less been conceived as intricately as any of the larger landscapes or objects On the bedside table in Gehn’s bedroom, for instance, the player will dis- cover Gehn’s timepiece—one of the most interesting items in the entire game. Besides being beautifully crafted, it has been animated to slide open at the player's touch, revealing another layer of detail in its splendid design

As the watch closes, it does a slight roll, as if your hand had just brushed it

Bs

On top of all the complex and extended animations Riven's artists produced for the game, they also took the time to include a number of small touches that added a significant measure of reality to the scenes. Particularly with an

inanimate object, including

(above, left to right) the submarine, the bridge on Temple Island, and the pistonlike device in the superdome, the merest shake, vibration, or flexing was enough to bring it to life and keep the scene from seeming superficial.

B86

motions—rolls and undula- tions—added to _ objects that reflected a sensitivity to natura physics—all intended, as Robyn puts it, "to keep the scene alive.” This is where their deci-

Jord Wad Wey peidnihg, Rand, Robyn, and Richard were clear they were going to raise the bar on the quality of animation the player encountered in Riven. As with Myst, the designers would do what they could afford to do, and whereas before the animations of doors opening and levers flipping had a slight crudeness to them, now everything would swing, rotate, flip, depress, and rise up in smooth, gliding motions. And to keep all of Riven's environments as dynamic as possible, as many natural effects would be animated as time would allow—wind rustling through leaves and waves rippling across water—not to mention that there would be live ani-

mals as well. On top of everything, there would be a wealth of subtle

sion to create the game using SoftImage really paid off. "It’s an all-inclusive environment,” Richard says. “You can go straight from modeling to lighting to animation.” In Softimage, the designers could build any object to be animated using the Same process they followed for a static model: constructing a wireframe skeleton, covering it with a variety of texture maps and shaders, if neces-

sary, and setting the lights. With a finished object or scene, the animation

was then added and locked into place

This series of images of the animated elevator on survey Island suggest its breathtaking visual impact: the gradual increase of chain movement, the elevator spinning around as it rises out of the water, and

the dramatic flash of light reflecting off the door panel as it opens—all as subtle ripples and reverberant drips of water breath life into this

inanimate object.

Tim Greenberg

While many at Cyan had plenty of experience making doors swing open buttons depress, and elevators ride up and down, the creators had set themselves some pretty high goals for animating the organic forms in River And animating organic forms is notoriously hard. Machines move in repeat- able, predictable ways, but the human eye is very sensitive to unnatural motion in something that's supposed to be alive. Patrick Faille animated Richard's wahrks, modeling their movements to Richard's strict require- ments after studying videos of whales. Eric Vignola ani- mated the sunners, endowing the strange sea creatures with some of the birdlike qualities that were their origi- nal inspiration. In creating and animating all of these odd creatures, it was not aesthetic reasons alone that inspired the artists. Consistent with the game's overall design, Riven’s animals provide major clues to solving certain puzzles. The sunners’ throaty bark, for instance,

is a sound the player must remember in order to connect

B87

: The froglike Ytram : E rl 4 (below) is another of Riven's original creatures, | | In keeping with Riven's “I A z emphasis on revealing f | (i se th E — T character elements, the : ook : %s Ytram serves a very f © I special function, at least 1 ‘se for Gehn. Using the iH = Rec elaborate trap (seen in \ . concept form and final | \ design), he captures the | \ Ytrams and distills them

| into a purified juice which i | | \ he then smokes in his 4

is ———— signature fire marble pipe.

Several of Richard Vander _ The carnivorous wahrk

the sunner to a revealing piece of information. Getting close enough to hear Wende's concept sketches for the Ytrams (below).

(fully rendered in the top image) prowls the them, however, is another one of those typical moments when you have to ee eee figure out how to do it because those big swimming birds keep disap- Moby Dick—waiting for I Gehn to toss him scraps. pearing if you're not careful. canst a include Richard Vander Wende’s sketches (left), a

wireframe model (top

The submarine ride on Jungle Island, which allows the player to travel around the bay, is one of the game's major anima-

tions. It combines both moving organic and inorganic inset), and several shots

forms and represents the massive team effort that pata sequence rendered in shaded polygons for

checking (right).

went into making Riven work. “The submarine is one of Gehn's funkier inventions,” says Richard.

"It moves sluggishly around the bay floor, sort of

B9d 88

The concept sketch for the submarine (below) found on Jungle Island appears almost unchanged in the final scene from the game (bottom). The only features added were the handles.

like a cross between a fork lift and an old railroad hand

cart.” Originally, Robyn and Richard had intended to cre- ate a boat, but subjecting Gehn to the whims of wind and water seemed out of keeping with his control-freak personality. Richard changed gears and designed a crude submarine, which he handed off to Robin Foley and Bret St. Clair for construction. Tim Greenberg and Bret built an elaborate model of the bay floor for the sub to move through, and Tim went on to animate the ride itself while Bret animated the swaying move- ment of the underwater plants

Not everything that you see moving in Riven is animated, however. For certain scenes, where they felt they could get away with it, programmer Mark DeForest used a programming trick known as a runtime effect. As

opposed to animation, a runtime effect is a small program written to

90°

Once inside the submarine,

the player follows a path underwater around the lake to the schoolroom, guard tower, Wahrk Gallows, and repair depot. Along the way, the player is treated to a watery adventure that includes passing through these strange columns of air generated by thermal heated gas rising from the

ocean floor.

manipulate the background pixels in a scene. A number of these were used throughout Riven to add movement to images that would otherwise have

been static. The twinkling of fireflies, the buz of blackflies, the random

va

tremors that signal the slow breakup of Riven’s islands, and, most notably

the movement of most of Riven’s water are all runtime effect animations

Runtime effects were used instead of full animation to create the swarm of buzzing blackflies in the clearcut

forest (above), which are just visible as specks against the sheared off

tree trunk; for the dance of fireflies in the dark, dense jungle (right), and for the surface movement of water, as in this image from the village lake on Jungle

Island (below).

&

Mark DeForest

9

shop for fabrication

The digital video sequences in Riven are a combination of computer graph- ics and live action shot against blue stage and screen and filmed using the Ultimatte video system. For the live action portion, as each scene was set

up and rehearsed, Richard and Tim

viewed the action on a monitor while

the Ultimatte software simultaneously stripped out the blue screen sections of the frame and replaced them with the actual computer graphics developed pclae Sree
for the sequence—all in real time! This allowed them to work quickly and
efficiently to adjust the blocking of the scene and the placement of props. As
with lighting a scene completely in the computer, extraordinary time was The stage crew prepares to

f ilm one of the scenes with spent matching the lighting effects on the stage to the conditions of the com- fi f

Atrus’s wife Catherine, puter graphics setting. Angles were checked, shadows were accounted for, played by Sheila Goold

and the quality of light itself was calibrated like a fine instrument to make it (left).

a seamless match The filmmakers setting up

Certain scenes were more difficult than others. Upon linking to Riven, the to shoot the cage (below) which springs up

player is rudely greeted by a cage of bars that imprison him. These bars, in fraprisoning: the player

) . nN fact, are both CG and real. After they rise up trapping the player, they upon his arrival in Riven. n creating the few sequences in Myst t NVE.. e (& ] O change from CG to real because moments later a guard

people, the Miller brothers resorted to the most affordable actors avail- Richard Vander Wende steps into view and approaches the cage. For this live able: themselves. Robyn played Sirrus while Rand had the dual roles of eee cone is eft) action portion of the scene, real bars were included
and Tony Fryman (bottom ps the brother, Achenar, and the father, Atrus. In Riven, Rand is back as Atrus, right) coordinate the action because the guard bumps into and reaches through but this time there are many more scenes depicting real characters. Atrus, involving Gehn’s guard them and also in order to produce the proper shadows

(played by Vicente Ramos) : : : , Gehn, Catherine, a guard, and an assortment of rebels and Rivenese are all Renildlcnnikestonnthe actor and reflections. The guard grabs the Linking book the

caught up in the action. who played Gehn, looks on. player received from Atrus and steps back, but he is

All of these segments were shot on video and composited along with the suddenly darted and dragged off stage. A rebel computer graphics into the game. Richard Vander Wende spent three weeks appears and picks up the Linking book. He pulls a directing the video shoot at the PVR studios in San Francisco with Tim lever and disappears. The cage begins to descend, and

Greenberg acting as assistant director. Getting to that point, it is at this moment that the bars change again to CG

however, involved ten months of prep work. Richard and Tim co- If CG artist Michael Sheets has done it right, the

player won't even notice

scripted all the scenes, sections of which had to be translated | into the D'ni and Rivenese languages developed by Richard The conde wisn tiaiecanm Watson for the game. Once actors were cast, they had to learn
their parts phonetically. Additionally, the scenes had to be

blocked out on the computer, so that the actors movements could

(left) and snatches away the Linking book the player has carried with him. Only the bars, the book, and the actor are real. Everything

be accurately staged to fit the shot. Finally, they needed an y

; : ' else is a computer assortment of costumes and props, including bolos, Gehn’'s dart-

generated effect.

gun, his fire marble pipe, the guard’s knife and sheath, a small rebel knife, Rand Miller, known to

. F n millions as Atrus, dons and a scythelike rebel tool. Richard and Robyn designed these props at Cyan Se teae aie’ spectacles In and then handed their detailed specs to the Seattle Opera Company's prop order to reprise his role.

oS 92

The computer-generated setting for Gehn’s office (top left) and the live- action film of Gehn, shot through a real set of steel bars (top right), is combined to produce the final sequence of game images showing Gehn in his office (above). John Keston (below) prepares for the scene in Gehn's office. In his hands is the rifle pictured at the top of the opposite page. From left to right, Rand Miller, Richard Vander Wende, and Tim Greenberg

observe the action.

If something could not be set just right, there was always the option of tweak- ing it in the computer later in the process, perhaps adding some _ additional lighting or shadows that werent but should be there. In one case, it was not a blocking or lighting issue that called for some creative retouching. Rather it was a problem created by scripting the scene in Gehn’s Age without any cuts. John Keston, who played Gehn, found it dif- ficult to act the long scene out in a completely satisfying manner from begin- ning to end. Being digital artists, however, the Cyan team resorted to "morph" editing, using Elastic Reality software to combine their favorite parts at points where Gehn was basically in the same position in two differ- ent takes. He simply morphed from one portion of one take to another in the same sequence. As easy as Ultimatte was to use, however, it didn't solve all of the artists’ problems when it came to combining video and computer graphics, particu- larly when the graphics involved animation. At another point in the game, as the player is making her way down a stone corridor toward the Wahrk Throne Room she sees one of Gehn's ministers duck into a side tunnel. If she chooses to follow, she eventually catches a glimpse of him inside the Mag-Lev car. Simple enough except that the car then turns 180 degrees and speeds away. This meant that not only did the animators have to place the actor in the car, but they had to match the speeds of the actor and the car animation as the vehicle turned. To do this they placed the actor on a turntable and lined him up in a set of cross- hairs which they could use later to place him properly in

the computer-generated car. The turntable with the actor

Gehn’s flintlock-style rifle (above) and the rebel

throwing knife (right) were two of a number of props that were actually made according to carefully detailed specifications.

Tony Fryman—production manager, frisbee golfer, and (far right) occasional scribe.

This shot from an animated sequence in the Mag-Lev depot on Survey Island (right) involved carefully compositing live action and CG effects in order to produce the impression of the car turning and speeding away with the scribe visible through the windshield.

was then rotated at an approximate speed to match the rotating of the car This still left one other problem. The Mag-Lev car has a wind shield. How do you stick a real actor behind a computer-generated glass window? The answer, it turned out, was simple: the glass was rendered as a completely separate shot and applied on top of the image of the minister in the car, keeping intact the shot of a real person behind the illusion of a window Cyan's desire to incorporate more live action in Riven than in Myst was not meant so much to dazzle people with technology. Rather, it was that they wanted to draw play- ers into the game more deeply y by making their interactions with characters integral to the story's progress. Just as a player's powers of obser- vation pay off in being able to figure out which objects, animals, and sounds are important when solving puzzles, so, too, do they pay off in being able to watch and listen to what the characters are doing or saying. But like the objects, the words can be rid- dles, too. At the beginning of the game, Atrus warns you to watch out for the conniving Gehn. When you meet him, however, Gehn acts contrite and rea- sonable. One of these men is clearly not being entirely truthful. But which?

And in what way? This is the extra layer of complexity the video footage

adds to the experience of playing Riven

95

The Basics of D’ni Grammar (research by Richard Watson)

D’ni is not an Earth language, but because the D'ni are so similar to humans physically and mentally, their language has similarities to some of our native tongues.

D'ni is often compared with Hebrew, since the two languages have similar characters and sounds. But there are many differences, with the most obvious one being that D’ni is written left to right, unlike Hebrew.

The D'ni alphabet has 24 characters, but there are more than 24 consonants. These are

created by adding indicator marks to a letter. For instance, the character for a “v" sound is

the same as the character for a “b,” only the “b” has a dot over it. Generally, any consonant

In the village schoolroom The writing at left translates

on Jungle Island the D’ni as “The Rules of Gehn: Gehn D’ni writing is found in without a dot is a fricative, meaning it's produced by air passing continually between the tongue and lips. i h IIs is our master, es in Riven, . 4 5 ‘
alphabet lines the wa aster, Gehn created many Pag sare A consonant with a dot over it contains a stop, meaning that the air is cut off. In the case of a dotted “v,”

(above) and phrases are us, Gehn defeated Atrus.” including inscriptions on

the canopy of Gehn’s the air is stopped by the lips. By adding indicators to their vowels, D'ni’s six vowel letters are expanded to

found on chalkboards. writing desk (above). eleven vowel sounds in their spoken language. D'ni follows a familiar noun-verb structure. Adjectives follow the nouns they modify. Adverbs follow the verbs they modify. Quantifiers such as “very,” “extremely,” and “really,” which add emphasis to

phrases, are indicted by numbers from one to twenty-five. The higher the number, the stronger is the

D’ni Language and Writing 101

While Gehn may seem altruistic by having the village children schooled in the language and writing of the D’ni, he is, in fact, preparing

emphasis. For example, the phrase “! am a little tired” in D’ni becomes, “I am tired to two.” “I am very

them to one day write Age books for him, which he will use to quench his thirst for millions of worlds to rule. At the same time, he is subtly tired” would be, “I am tired to twenty.” To exaggerate something, the D’ni would use a number over

reinforcing his domineering control over the villagers. Most of the words and phrases taught to the children are specifically related to twenty-five. “I am incredibly tired,” in D’ni could be written or spoken as, “I am tired to thirty.”

Riven, the jungle habitat of the villagers, and their ways and lifestyles. But there are other words he includes that refer to his obsessions, There are a number of important prefixes and suffixes in D’ni. Verbs use a suffix to indicate both num-

his private domains, instruments of pain and punishment, and mythic figures of death. What the children really learn is to fear Gehn and to ber and person (this is similar to Spanish). For example, the D'ni word for eat is “rees,” which is the form it

obey him. The Wahrk Gallows toy, used to teach the children the D’ni number system, is a grim reminder of what happens to those who takes when you say “I eat.” The suffix “en” is added to indicate that he, she, or it eats, “rees-

en.” “They eat” uses the suffix “eet,

mw me we

rees-eet.” “We eat” uses “et,” “rees-et.” “You eat”

choose not to. Following is a selection from Gehn’s D’ni Primer, including the word in D’ni, its phonetic equivalent, and a basic definition of

(singular) uses “em,” “rees-em.” “You eat” (plural) uses “tee,” “rees-tee.” You can change

the word and what it relates to: this phrase to a command by adding the additional suffix, “ah.” To order an individual to

The word “five.” With Gehn’s obsession with the num-

L ) /y vaht ber five, it’s not a surprise that it is the first word in his

primer.

eat, you would say, “rees-em-ah!” Verbs use a prefix to indicate the past, present, and future. To say that you have finished

eating, the phrase is “ko-rees.” To say that you are currently eating, the phrase is, “do-rees.”

o) nf) toe atierah Literally “Great Tree.” This is the name of the large To say that you will eat later, the phrase is “bo-rees.” Other forms of the suffix are: y Y 1, K p trees that grow on Jungle Island.

This is the name for a small plant of Gehn’s Fifth Age.

WWD yer-tis Its yellow berries contain a neurotoxin, which the vil-

lagers use when hunting for food.

On Survey Island the kodo (past progressive): kodo-rees (1 was eating) base of the Map Room is le (perfect): le-rees (I have eaten) adorned by D’ni writing

carved directly out of the metal shell of the bodo (future progressive): bodo-rees (1 will be eating)

kol (past perfect): kol-rees (1 had eaten)

domelike structure. boko (future perfect): boko-rees (1 will have eaten)

bodol (future perfect progressive): bodol-rees (| will have been eating)

The Dome Towers. Gehn warns the pupils not to LQ dash in

approach his fire marble domes. Other common prefixes are “re” for “the.” The D’ni word for “book” is “kor,” so to indicate “the book,”

the phrase is “re-kor.” The word “and” is “ga,” so to indicate “and the book, you would say “ga-re-kor.”

"The one who brings death.” The “Grim Reaper” of the Suffixes can indicate ideas such as plural and possession, To make a noun plural, add “tee” to the end,

W2LKlLn mahn-shooth Fifth Age. Legend says that anyone who sees the “Death

The word for “books” is "kor-tee.” To indicate possession, add the suffix “okh,” which roughly corresponds Bringer” will die before the sun sets that day.

to “of.” The phrase "Gehn’s book,” in D'ni is structured, “book of Gehn,” and is written, “kor-okh Gehn,”

Gehn’s cane is known by the villagers to be a weapon An adjective, such as “garo” (“mighty”), can be changed to a noun with the suffix “th,” as in

LL heek of death. Gehn puts this word in the primer to remind

~ the kids who's boss.

- 7 The name of the pillars in the Wahrk Lake. Villagers are Zt VLA) uhg-raht hung from these pillars and fed to the wahrk as a form

“Garoth” (Mighty One). You can change the same adjective into an adverb with the suffix “sh,” “garosh,”

as in “mightily.” There is also a special set of characters called the "Garo-hevtee,” "Great Words.” These symbolize

i rtant ideas of groups of words. . of punishment. impo i f groups of

é 9.7

d s far as the computer is concerned, en, enn

creators—the objects, landscapes, animations, textures, shaders,
and lighting effects—are just a bunch of programming equations What turned all of these numbers into the state-of-the-art graphics a player sees when he slots the game disk into the computer drive is the software that “rendered” each image pixel by pixel. Rendering is not to be con- fused with actually “creating” the image, since all of the work of designing models and coloring, texturing, and lighting them being done by the CG artists is what adds up to the final image you see “Rendering,” says Josh Staub, Cyan’s CG production director, "is simply our saying to the computer, ‘Okay, show me what it looks like."” And this is where it could get very frustrating, since rendering each of Riven's 4,000 images—every single one with that RAM-wrenching, time-chewing option called ray tracing—often became an exercise in computer Russian roulette, never knowing which file might be sent down the rendering queue only to be shot down by its own internal complexities. Over the course of building the thousands of models and scenes for Riven, the CG artists of Cyan naturally developed an affinity for spotting the situations and problems that would be better to avoid when it came time to rendering, but it was never an easy task to strike the right balance between clean, efficient rendering design and the extreme artistic demands they put upon themselves. For Josh, "The key is to cut corners in ways that don't affect the quality of the image.” In every stage of the process, the artists resort to “previewing” as a way to view a model or a textured polygon without actually having the computer render it. In this way, they could move as fast as possible, making quick edits and tweaks before choosing to render that particular stage of the shot. If they were working with an object, they didn’t bother including the setting behind it until it was necessary. And if the resolution appeared low and the edges of things a little jagged, they knew it would be crunched up later when, in the final stage of rendering, anti-aliasing is applied. Along the way, the artists maintained a close eye on the problems that might be developing in a scene, While in certain cases the software itself threw in its own bugs, it was usually a case of too many polygons or textures—or a combination of several things—in the shot. When Jason Baskett was modeling and con-

structing the jungle scenes, he had to deal with an enormous amount of

98

Rendering is nothing more than a computer command to “show what the image

looks like” on screen.

Considering how long it

could take to render some

of Riven’s gargantuan

shots, section by section

(above), it was also a

good time to make some

phone calls or eat some

lunch.

Jason Baskett

Gehn’s writing desk (detail

above) would probably have died in the rendering stage if the designers had chosen, arbitrarily or not, to place one glass in front of the other, requiring massively more computing power to ray trace the light paths properly.

geometry, often well over a million triangles or polygons per shot. Says

Jason, “Some scenes were so large that simply opening them would take as long as forty-five minutes. In fact, for each shot, | would have to hide every object that wasn't seen in the frame. Otherwise, the computer would not have been able to render them.”

Perhaps the most grueling situation, however, involved the choice to ray trace every image. When the computer has to trace the paths of light through, around, and off of objects, accounting for the effects of refraction and reflection, the possibilities can approach the absurd and perhaps doom the image to a never ending hell of trace time. Gehn’'s desk in his office, for example, has a number of glass props on it. While the artists chose to drop a bone stirrer into the glass of liquid—and have the computer render the refraction effect—they stopped at having the two glass objects overlap each other. They are separat- ed, in fact, by the merest fraction of an inch. Overlap the glasses and the light would have to be traced through the glass, through the liquid, through the back of the glass, through the second glass, through the liquid—(stop!). There are, it seems, limits as to how far even Cyan was prepared to go to make Riven look as spectacular as it does. In the beginning, the Riven team thought it would create and render the whole game with the three original SGI workstations. By the end of production—after reality had settled in hard, and early—Cyan had invested in four massive SGI Challenge servers to do the rendering. With all that hardware, the process could still be painfully slow. Depending on an image's intricacy, it could take anywhere from thirty minutes to four hours to render a single Riven image. Toward the end, when time was running out, shots were carefully analyzed for their impact on the rendering process before they were allowed to be sent on to the servers. In fact, the task of creating the final rendered images for Riven was so large that Cyan considered sending their files off to be finished at a profes- sional “rendering house.” None of the shots they sent out for testing, how- ever, produced satisfying results. “They didn’t have all the software we'd built for the project, like our custom shaders,” Robyn says. In the end, rather than compromise the look of even a single frame by letting someone else handle the job, Cyan cranked up their servers, letting them cook away 24

hours a day, seven days a week, until it was done.

99

Sou a. challenge of creating an interactive

Mike Salvatori (left)

and Marty O’Donnell, in addition to Broderbund’s Tim Larkin (not shown), produced the soundscape

for Riven.

For Gehn’s Mag-Lev car (above) Tim Larkin mixed together—among other sounds—servo, power seat, and window motors with a bunch of “clicks” and “kachunks” to bring an otherwise silent door to life. For the sound of the cage rising and lowering in Gehn's office (right), Marty and Mike used a chain on pulleys, a winch, a submarine hatch, a nail scratching a gong, and, believe it or not, a twisted scream. The elevator ride underneath Survey Island, which leads down to the so- called Lava Room (opposite), required a symphony of sounds including metal doors shutting, gears whirring, water dripping, and all the hums and echoes reflecting the enclosed environment.

fantasy world is devising sounds for places that have never been seen before and for object and things that don't exist With Mysr, the job of creating all the sounds for the game had fallen to Chris Brandkamp, who, with no experience designing sound effects

resorted to an assortment of “special” tools—air guns, recycle bins, straws

metal pipes, and wrenches, among others—in order to produce well over a hundred individual sounds that helped to distinguish Myst’s supercool

ambiance. “Quite an experience,” Chris recalls, chuckling at the thought that he will forever be remembered as “the toilet bubble man

For Riven. however, there was so much more sound needed to ac¢ omplish than in the first game. Exactly what kind of noise does a sunner make when it’s stretched out on a rock? And what would be the background noise of a jungle full of metallic beetles? For these and other effects, Cyan turned to experienced sound designers from around the country. Marty O'Donnell and

Mike Salvatori worked out of a studio — FP = wen en ane PT)

in Chicago, while Tim Larkin was |

eH

uM Wt

|

based at Broderbund in San Rafael

. near San Francisco. Their collective . i = }

job was to create Riven’s soundscape There are two basic types of st sounds in the game: animation and ambient. The first type accompanies the dozens of mechanical and organic animations in Riven—from the simple click of an elevator button or the electric hum of Gehn's Mag-Lev car to the breathing of a sunner. Ambient sounds are the noises that lie in the ground of each scene. They’

the sounds you may not even notice unles re paying close attention And that’s part of the idea. The trick for a sound designer is to come up with ambient sounds that are inter- esting, but not distracting. And whe
the sounds fit the object properly, they subtly imply details hidden from view. Gears rumble to life and chains rattle when an elevator emerges from

the water in the underground foun-

tain room on Survey Island. And in Gehn’s office, there are distinct mechanical clanks and whirs in the cage as it is lowered and raised, hinting at intricate mechanisms secreted in the floor and walls.

When done right, ambient sound, in particular, can define a landscape and establish the mood. Often, in some of Riven's less populated environ- ments, "Nothing is specifically happening to cre-

ate sound. But you want to create an ambiance to

If the player listens carefully as he moves through the different areas on Jungle Island— from the sunners lagoon (left) through the clearcut forest (below) to the

make a player feel a certain way,” says sounds designer Tim Larkin

The Jungle Island, for instance, is divided into three main sound areas. There's the beach where the sunners doze on rocks at the edge of the water

There's the clearcut forest, where Gehn has had the trees hacked down to

jungle itself (bottom)—he will notice the varying ambient sounds that signal the individual mood and character of

each environment.

provide paper for his book-fabricating experiments. And there's the jungle itself, luxuriant and home to a complex ecosystem. Each of the three areas js dominated by basic tones and a mood. The beach is a warm and invitine place, with the sound of waves and gentle tufts of wind. The clearcut forest is dry and harsh, dominated by a thin breeze and the brittle sound of cicadas and crickets. The jungle is the opposite, full of the lively sounds of insects

and birds and warm, lush breezes. Each environment has several layers of

sounds, all in repeating loops of different durations. Even if you spend a lot

of time in one environment, you're not likely to hear exactly the same arrangement of sounds twice

Often, the sounds in Riven are combinations of other sounds. Tim Larkin based the sound of the Survey Island elevator on the rattle of San Francisco's cable cars. He created the sunners unique bark by mixing a wal- rus’s roar together with hippo and rhino grunts. In fact, Tim, Marty O'Donnell, and Mike Salvatori were constantly creating brand new sounds for the game. They sampled sounds from their own environments and recorded sounds from sample libraries, then used samplers and software, such as Macromedia's Deck, to digitally chop the sounds into small pieces and combine them in new ways. Most of the major sounds are made up of between 18 to 20 separate elements. Even the small sounds, such as the click of a button, can combine six to eight elements. After mixing them together, the sound designers then stretch the sound's duration, lower or raise its pitch or combine it with other sounds. This way, even an utterly ordinary

sound can be transformed: Tim's son's Big Wheel tricycle becomes the sub-

tle roll of Gehn’s fire marble domes and a carpet being dragged across a table evolves into the sound of the sunners breathing. Almost none of the sounds in Riven were recorded straight and dropped into the game without

some alteration.

"You would have heard it before,” says Tim. “And that’s dull.”

Tim Larkin

The sounds for the pot- belly stove (below) Gehn uses to fire up his Linking books in his office were created Mike and Marty by “simply” mixing metal plates scraping, squeaks from rusted handles, and gas hissing with some fireball and lava bubbles thrown in (the latter made for one very hot recording session at Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano). Even for simple objects such as a lever (below left), producing a believable sound requires an assortment of ratchets, squeaks, and scrapes.

103

M hile Riven's environments are defined by the 0 USIC

enhanced by sound, the emotional center of each place is often revealed through music. Each of Riven’s settings as well as its main characters has its own theme, all composed by Robyn Miller, who used his experience as the composer for Myst to expand and deepen the sonic possibilities of Riven. In all, he created close to two hours of original music

for the game

"Usually, coming up with the basis for any of the

themes is the hardest part, the part | struggle over,

: f 1 to the action on a video monit ntil he fo some- The Rebel Linking Room trying to arrive at something which is emotionally movie: he improvised to a d oru e found some @ Rebel Linking

. bove). right for a location or character,” says Robyn thing he liked. Then he refined that to fit the time and action of the scene kebave) 2 é ara ,” says

"With an interactive world, such as Riven, this Almost all of Riven's music was composed and performed in Robyn's stu-

process is even more difficult, because the piece dio in the basement at Cyan’s offices. He worked with a Korg Trinity and a

: - t ; /ision softwar a Macintosh usually has to remain somewhat generic. It can't Yamaha VL-1 synthesizer and Opcode's StudioVision software on a Macintost

say anything definite about a person's character or But, says Robyn, “my favorite instrument was the Yamaha VL-1.” This synthe-

motives. It would be much easier to tell the player sizer uses “Physical Modeling Synthesis,” meaning that if you play a flute

Robyn Miller composed

(with music) that, ‘The person who made this room is a really bad guy!’ sound, you're not just calling up a tone which is electronically similar to a Riven’s music on a Korg

Instead, the music must say things like, ‘Isn't this room a mysterious place? flute, but a digital model of the physical characteristics of a flute as a eae

It feels both bad and good. It feels slightly tense, yet slightly calming.” player blows across its mouthpiece. In fact, there's a tube built into the Budieuiion software and a Riven’s defining musical motif is Gehn's theme. Originally composed for instrument which musicians can blow into, literally controlling the sound of Macintosh computer.

the Wahrk Throne Room, Robyn felt the piece was too strong for the loca- the instrument with their breath, just as if they were

tion. He heard in the song something larger than any one place and ulti- playing a real flute.

mately decided it made a definite connection to the man who dominated Simulating the sounds of real instruments and mod-

Riven’s world. Although you don’t hear the complete song until you meet ifying them to a degree which results in a sound never

Gehn in his Age, the piece is all over the game. On the Jungle Island, for quite heard before led Robyn to weave music into instance, the Rivenese village is repre- Riven's story in ways that created additional layers of

sented by music that’s largely percus- meaning to settings and characters. When the player sive, yet underneath it, Gehn’s theme arrives in Gehn’s Age and begins to explore his office,

is woven in as a sign that he wields he comes upon a bassoonlike D'ni instrument hanging

considerable influence over the on the wall in the bedroom. Robyn was inspired to cre-

In Gehn’s bedroom (above) one finds a trove of ate this imaginary instrument after producing the

personal artifacts as well as

villagers

For the most part, Robyn sound for it first. You hear the sound when you turn on

his musical instrument (left), which sounds like a Gehn's music player

cross between an oboe and And the song you hear a soprano saxophone.

worked from the game itself,

epee

watching the animations and Tavsvvay i

scenes unfold on screen and is meant as a record-

ne FOE ein eer |e Ile pera:

composing accordingly. For the Catherine on Prison Island ing of Gehn playing (far left).

sequences which involved live this instrument. Gehn,

actors composited into Riven's Robyn would like us to

computer graphic world, he understand, may be a

wrote using a method many brute, but he has a

composers use when cre- human side as well

ating the soundtrack for a

1Oo4

The Rebel Age.

Jungle Island, Riven’s largest piece of geometry, consists of nine areas the player can visit: the jungle (above), the clearcut forest, the village, the sunners lagoon, the east path, the south path, the beetle pool, the school- room, and Gehn’s area.

LUT Sala a a

AYMLITIN Ny Hy Dai 2

yal Cal teadt GV Ride $s ein bly Peat dith aye is perhaps no other com-

pany on this planet where you can apply for such a job. What else would you call the task of putting together a computer game that’s a megagigabyte puzzle all its own of 3-D computer images, animations, sounds, music, and video? Led by Riven’s CG production director, Josh Staub, the World Assemblers, as the designation implies, were responsible for reviewing all the separate elements that had been created individually—checking their integrity and technical aspects— and assembling them into massive scenes. These scenes would then have to

be lit, tweaked some more, and finally rendered. This stage of the process

logically occurs toward the end of the produc- tion, although it began well over a year before the game was complete, as certain portions were finished before others. With so much focus on designing the separate shots themselves, it is quite a different skill entirely to then step back and visually analyze a world of shots and calibrate their relation to each other. As Josh points out, one of the things you notice about Myst, if you look closely enough, is the distinct differences in visual styling from Age to Age, which reflects the fact that different artists worked on different parts of the game. While Riven would follow the same path—in terms of many artists designing dif- ferent parts of the game—the need and desire for a world without inconsistencies and contradictions, in any form, was so much greater. What everyone had learned was what the D’ni knew only too well from

their experience in writing Ages: that “contradictions

One look at the model of the jungle on the opposite page (the shaded polygon and fully rendered versions are shown top and above) suggests why the huge and intricately conceived island was sectioned off into many separate pieces in order to be designed and then rendered.

A concept sketch for a path in the jungle (below).

109

can destroy an Age. Too often they simply make it break apart under the

strain of trying to resolve the conflicting instructions.” Resolving the conflicting instructions was the goal for Riven’s World Assemblers. With the indoor scenes, it was easier because these models were much smaller and more manageable. Outside, however, there was often a much larger view that included most of a given island or location. Or the sequence of shots might include two completely separate scenes (a scene being one part of an island, say, as opposed to another). The problem encountered here might be too much geometry, in which case a shot wouldn't render. Many of the game’s models, for instance, were so large and complex that they were split into pieces early in the process in order to deal with them at all. The Temple and Jungle Islands, the biggest ones in Riven, remained whole only as far as the basic model with shaded surfaces and models of a few of the major objects dropped in. After that, they were chopped up, remaining that way throughout the production. Even so, some of these pieces themselves were monsters to deal with as they still contained millions of triangles and thousands of textures. Riven’s artists were also careful to design transitions between scenes to provide moments where, if

the player turns around, a bend in the path or wall will obscure the land-

119o

By definition World Assembly presumes there will be parts of a world, however many, that need to be assembled into a complete game. Ironically, when the process of creating these parts begins, it is whole but then it becomes divided in order to make modeling, design, and rendering its parts more efficient. When Josh Staub began laying out Temple Island, for example, he began with a two dimensional gray-scale map. The shades of gray, like a bump map, corresponded to the varying topography. The colors were added to help Josh keep track of different parts of the landscape that, because of gameplay, needed to be the same height.

Everything in Riven—from the largest island (below) to the smallest object (right)—was modeled and finished in exactly the same way—with pain- staking attention to detail.

Using Softimage, Josh transformed the gray-scale map he created of Temple Island (opposite) into a three dimensional model (two views above) that included the main objects. To check the basic design of the island—its look, the structure, its proper relation to the gameplay— finished elements were added and the image rendered in low resolution form (right). Once checked, the island would then be chopped up into as many as 60 to 80 pieces for the artists to begin designing the detailed exterior scenes around the island.

scape behind it. This way, they don't have to include the model for that land-

scape in the shot. In fact, they looked to

create these transitions wherever possi- ble, without it becoming too obvious Conversely, there were also areas where the view is so wide that a number of different shots had to be rendered and then composed to pro- duce a single image. According to CG artist Jason Baskett, "the area surrounding Gehn’s throne on Jungle Island required four different shots to be taken for every single frame the player sees.” In this case, each composed and rendered image required a shot from the jungle model, the clearcut model, the pit model, and the throne

model.

Quite often the problem would be an aesthetic or gameplay one. Camera angles were repeatedly checked. The color and texture of similar objects were reviewed in case the different artists work- ing on them had chosen slightly different texture maps to apply. And lighting was examined to make sure even the most subtle changes were designed to be there and not due to error. It could be as simple as someone forgot to turn on the blue or the fill lights. When it came to changes in the gameplay itself, it was a much greater headache to keep track of all the consequences to shots, especially when different scenes might share views of an object or setting. If something was changed in one scene

and could be seen from another, it had to be changed in that scene as well.

Ev

For a variety of reasons, but all having to do with the evolution of Riven's gameplay design, there were a number of concepts for rooms—including an

early version of Gehn’s lab

(top) as well as a room for the elevator on Survey Island (above)—that went through major design overhauls due to changes in the story or character development.

e ntela pa-

nies will go outside
to the general pub- lic to test their products looking for responses, Cyan, for the most part, relied on its own members to screen Riven and work out all the kinks. Every

month, throughout the process

of designing Riven, production meetings were held in which the main members of the team would discuss sec- tions of the game, which they had spent some time reviewing before the meet- ing. Each person would come prepared with his own “gripe stack.” No doubt most of the major changes that occurred to Riven during its devel- opment were caused by the developers themselves. The effort to relate story and character issues while designing the game result- ed in a continuous refining of elements in which details were dis- carded because they no longer applied, made sense, or related to the situation. The consequences of these refinements, however, were not insignificant. Whole portions of islands had been designed and rendered and then dropped-from the game due to some basic changes in the story. Complete objects and buildings were cut out after new developments in a character had made them obsolete. This was perhaps a price paid for their particular production approach, but a satisfying experience would probably not have been achieved any other way, and no one clung to any- thing, no matter how complete or special, if it no longer belonged. When near the end Cyan would finally bring in people unfa- miliar with the game, they would test it in much the same way that studios test movies: monitoring people's reactions as they went through the experience. In their case, the audience was usually people they knew from Myst's testing days. Cyan was most con- cerned with the story and visual content of the game and with ease of understanding one's way around. To start, one of Cyan's team, often Rand or Richard, would set up their tester with a working copy of Riven and watch from behind as the person played. “We would take notes as they went,” explains Rand. “We wanted to know what works. What engages them? What do they miss?” The smaller stumbling blocks that popped up were usually dealt with easily during the test. For example, if a player clicked on a certain spot in order to move forward but nothing happened, it was clear that

the "hot spot” wasn’t large enough and others might have the same problem.

Since Rich Watson and Ryan Miller programmed Riven in Hypercard, it was a simple matter to punt ha few key strokes to call up the particular stack for that shot, make the adjustment, and resume the game,

The biggest concern was seeing where players went off-track or became frustrated with the puzzles, After each testing session, the team would com- pare notes and discuss whether any changes were necessary to accommo- date what they'd observed. It was important to see any problem occur repeatedly with different testers before Cyan contemplated going back for major revisions to the gameplay. They had already spent years developing it, reviewing and refining it, so everyone was fairly certain the game was close to being complete. But just in case a problem with a puzzle, for instance, did come up and could not be ignored, there was usually a simple option. The

best place for adding information and clues to help the player solve puzzles

were the various journals discovered lying about throughout the world. In Myst, the very first note you find lying on the ground on the path near the Ryan Miller planetarium was never there until just before the game was released and it was clear testers were having problems figuring the tower rotation conun- drum. Dropping notes around and adding clues into journals allowed for the maximum amount of information to be conveyed with the least conse- quences, and certainly avoided having to go back in and restructure the

puzzles themselves. ef £A ; Y & Gehn’s Effigy Fa > ‘i

In designing Riven, Cyan went to extraordinary

Hlensihs to accommodate every conceivable move ay rs might choose to make, including the possi- bility of their wandering back to places already "ie

visited. A game that did not reflect the whims, as
well as the logic, e real world would seem

‘incomplete, as if doors to rooms had been built
but the ‘rooms forgotten. But mer allowing the “4 * u
a ube poe enough. In

certain in cases, events that occurred the first time

syouldl make no sense if they occurred again. al to the Rebel Age is one of those instances GoOny. x where the first time the player approaches Gehn’s effigy ( (above), he is darted by Bee and hauled off to a cell. From there ‘ei ack to Riven. But if the player decided to link Bagaln Bo the Rebel Age—perhaps

| the game continues and the player makes his bisa 5 ie efiy, which hes some intexgsting “ ’ festooned along its sides, like the b

just to check out once more some of the wildes' knife represents a rebel who has

in the game—he is free to exami

he “focuser,” a device made from a

er to operate ere the eee to ink back to

si] Pu

On these pages are the D'ni symbols for the numbers one through ten.

A view of the Wahrk Gallows on jungle Island

(left).

es, &.Payotfs

ative team had to devise not just a coherent story
for the player to follow, but a series of puzzles that escalated with the narrative, while also fitting seamlessly into it-°A good puzzle doesn't feel like a puzzle,” explains Robyn. “A good puzzle should be perfectly melded into the world and into the story. It should be invisible and intuitive at the same time it should not be a chore. A bad
puzzle was the maze in Myst.”

The problem with the maze encountered in Myst's Selenitic Age was that its solution was based on matching sounds to their corresponding directions, not on mapping out all the possible routes until the right one was discovered, as most players believed. But in a labyrinth, choosing a path based on sound isn’t an obvious or intuitive answer. In the end, what was supposed to deepen the experience of the game became

an exercise in frustration. In Riven, the puzzle masterminds were

ih" &_~—Ss Careful to a fault to avoid this predicament. Rather than create a

Z | series of disconnected challenges that eventually led to the con-
clusion of the game's mystery, they carefully constructed a web

} of riddles that intérrelated story with settings and characters
a This web was then spread across Riven’s five islands and the player thrown into the middle of it

One of the game’s main mysteries involves
deciphering D'ni number symbols. Do this and

ye all of Riven's other major puzzles become

True to Gehn’s cruel concept sketch on nature, he has reinforced opposite left and above the power and brutality of | and right in final form) his rule over the villagers on his favorite method by basing the design for of punishment—the
the number toy (in Wahrk Gallows.

solvable: accessing the Rebel Age, opening Gehn’s fire marble domes, and releasing the lock under the tele- scope on the fissure plateau. The symbols are learned in Riven not by read- ing them in some journal left for the player to find, but by having the player interact with a diabolical child's game found in the villager’s schoolroom on Jungle Island. Based on one of Gehn's preferred methods of commanding obedience—feeding troublemakers to the wahrks—the small wooden device can be operated to lower a tiny figure into the jaws of a toy wahrk, The D'ni number symbol that appears on the side of the toy corresponds to the num- ber of steps closer to oblivion the hapless wooden victim falls. In this man- ner the symbols for the numbers one through ten are learned What is dis- covered later, however, is that certain puzzle codes that have to be cracked are based on numbers higher than ten. The player will have to determine for

himself what combination of symbols make up those numbers.

Where else would you learn the D'ni number system besides a school? The number toy is visible sitting on a table in the left of the image of the village schoolroom (above).

Around Jungle Island the player finds these small carved eyes that rotate to reveal a number written in D’ni (right). It's up to the player to figure out which animal is connected to that

number.

Armed with the knowledge acquired in the schoolroom, the player can make sense of the puzzle related to the different fauna encountered on Jungle Island where the villagers live. Wandering around, the player will find five small revolving orbs with eyes that reveal a num- ber, written in D’ni of course, on the back of each Alone the numbers mean nothing, but what the player

has to observe is that in the area of the orb is a clue to

a corresponding animal. The clue is usually in the form of the animal's shape, which is subtly woven into the surroundings. There is one, however, that relates to the sound you hear in the area of that particu-

lar orb, and this is perhaps

the hardest hint to catch.

[t's not only a question of On this page are various

paying close attention but concept sketches for the symbols of animals that of having heard the sound pope intel inatelsland. before and being able to Discerning the hidden

shapes or presence of these

identify it. If the player

animals in the settings around the island (left) is part of the puzzle guarding the Rebel Age.

116

has come upon the sunners lagoon and met these strange creatures, then the clue can be understood. But this is where Riven's creators have once again made the game reflect real

life. Those sunners are sensitive animals and will disappear

ina flash unless they are approached with caution. The first time the player appears at the lagoon, he will no doubt bumble forward and

frighten the sunners away He will have to go off somewhere and then make

his way back to see if the sunners have returned. If the player never approaches close enough, he will miss a critical piece of information

Once you have gathered all the clues to the animal puzzle and the rebel tun- nel has been found, it is possible to access the Linking book to the Rebel Age. It is there the trap book that was mysteriously stolen from you at the start of the game is returned. And you definitely want this book if you plan to meet up with Gehn in his Age. Getting your hands on the Linking books to

Gehn's Age is, perhaps, Riven's ultimate

challenge

Once inside the rebel

tunnel on Jungle Island, the player is confronted by a ring of columns,
each bearing a different animal symbol (above). Press the right symbols— in the right order—and the watery force field guarding the stone vault dissipates to allow access to the Rebel Age book (left and below).

At the heart of the puzzle involving the fire marble domes distributed

over Riven’s islands is the game's great stumper, dubbed “the waffle iron” by

ts creators. Just to get access to the waf- fle iron, you have to solve another of Riven's puzzles: a color conundrum that

draws you all over the place in search of

clues. In keeping with Gehn’s obsessive nature, the key number in Riven is five It's in Gehn’s crest, which resembles a five-pointed star, in the number of

islands in the game, and even in the num-

ber of letters in the game's name. What you will also quickly observe—and be drawn to—is that there are five metal domes in

Riven, one on each island. Each rusty globe has a correspond-

ing color, which is seen on a revolving

symbol built onto the surface of each dome. The sig- nificance of this simple collection of colors isn't obvious until you've passed successfully through the Gate Room and gained access to Gehn’s massive golden fire marble dome on Temple Island. There

lies the waffle iron.

118

The Prison Island fire marble dome (above), one of Riven’s five small domes protecting Gehn’s Linking books. From an overlook on Survey Island (left), a layout of the five islands can be seen.

Entrance to the Map Room on Survey Island (below).

A,

The puzzle was named for its shape and function. A metal plate attached to a giant piston clamps down on top of another plate. These plates have grids with round slots, similar to the dimples on a waffle iron. In order to get the device to work properly, you have to place five out of six available colored marbles in the correct slots on the bot- tom plate. The slots number 25 by 25 for a total of 625 positions and over 93 trillion possible combinations. On first impression, the puzzle seems impos- sible, but if you've paid attention, it's flawlessly logical Riven has five domes and each dome has a color. Knowing that gives you the correct set of marbles. But where to put them? Gehn’s Survey Island pro- vides a clue to the answer. From an overlook on this island you can observe a rough map depicting all five islands. You will notice—but not until you've encountered the waffle iron—that the map corresponds to the shape of the grid in the iron. Each island in the map has been subdivided in a manner that is also reflected in the grid. The key point is determining the position of the domes on each island, which is learned by a different means. Place the right marbles in the correct slots representing these positions and you will have, essentially, thrown the switch. The power in the large dome will be activated, which in turn channels energy to J,

each of the smaller domes

A,

Inside the Map Room (above), the player can examine 3-D maps of each island to discover an important clue to solving Riven’s master puzzle.

The “waffle iron,” in

concept sketch above, is housed in the superdome on Temple Island and is approached down a narrow passage (left).

19g

The walls on the sides
of the waffle iron are inscribed with the various motifs from Gehn’s crest, including the number five— a subtle reminder that only five of the six marbles are needed to solve the puzzle. The closed device (above) and the fire marble grid revealed (right).

, a)

Cad Gehkn bull whey). ke Chef wig AL puncghs, Ehty 1 L / /

kali gushes

a/ /

/

// Watd —gaadibde ln have teoncleed The

nil Koa Wald phd del /

/

eo inLerulaZal fa

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from Mryst

hf rn y 7 CONGO NMA anle a OMEN iilwerk

ha pCa from

/ / hath Akin ay

4aiga. Oa «a waa, "ha /

( and Th flawa

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y/ aud ml 4 = singde solulie d. /

The Book of Atrus

The domes require power for a particular reason: Gehn is a

lousy writer. His Linking books, which are hidden in the domes

don't work on their own, so in his usual blunt way, he's come up with a hack to force them to work: raw enerey. Once the

domes have been powered up, it's

still necessary to unlock them using a code that is found in a

journal somewhere on Riven, and

this cannot be done unless the D'ni number symbols have been learned. If

you can open the domes, you will not only be able to access the books that

A 25-by-25 slot grid (above),

six marbles, and a whopping 93,850,000,000,000 possible configurations confront the player who, if he has been paying attention throughout the game, should know exactly which marbles to choose and where to place them on the grid. If he succeeds, then Gehn awaits him in his Age (below).

transport you to Gehn’s Age, where you finally meet the man who rules this world, but you will have solved the game's central puzzle relating to every smaller poser, mystery and character quirk you've encoun- tered in your wanderings

But if you think that is the end, then Cyan says guess again Reaching Gehn's Age is merely the setup for Riven's finale, which can involve three possible scenarios, not all good. Each one requires the player to return to the fissure plateau and open the combination lock under the telescope. Once again, the code is in D’ni and is found somewhere on Riven With these endings, the creators of Riven have made sure their fans, after the many bleary-eyed hours it took to get there, would not be disappointed And just in case anyone thinks he can figure out this final code and reveal it to others by, say, posting it on the Internet and blowing Riven for everyone, then the Millers have thought of that, too. Every new game of Riven will gen- erate a different combination code. If you want to discover those endings,

then you'll just have to play the game

The office in Gehn's Age (above and opposite), his sanctuary from Riven. The rooms, including the bedroom (not shown), are among the most richly detailed of Riven's interior scenes, providing insights into Gehn’s character that suggest he is perhaps slightly more than the demented god-of-his-own- creation he appears to be.

Bwithe Naiwen WasNawt the shélves Itheantelhatteen haise@bn com-

puter games across the board. Like Myst four years before it, Riven breaks new ground in the thoroughness of its vision and the extravagant devotion that its designers gave to its completion Riven is something of a text book on how to make a successful game. It takes time, imagination, and money, of course, but it also requires drive and vision—and even the madness to let that vision take you where it wants to go, In the case of Riven, Rand and Robyn Miller, Richard Vander Wende, and the rest of the Cyan team chased their vision across four years of dreams, wrong turns, rendering problems, system crashes, and simple hard work Riven isn't the end of the story. Though the game sets new standards for the rest of the competition, so did Myst when it came out. As sexy and sophisticated as that first game appeared, it seems a bit crude now in rela- tion to its sleek, younger sibling. Someday, something will come along to make Riven look dated—probably something from Cyan itself. But that doesn’t alter the fact that Riven is a singular moment in computer game develop-

ment. All games involving imaginative worlds will be measured against it

Most will come up way short. How many of them will have been visualized as deeply? How many will feature the quality and Imaginative use of sound and music? How many will develop a fully functional alphabet, language, and number system to be incorporated into the game?

It’s clear that part of the strength of Riven comes not just from the skill and integrity of the artists who worked on it. Riven is the result of a process Like the D'ni, the Millers and the Cyan team have dreamed a small universe and conjured it into being by imagining the thing and writing it down. Like the D'ni, they walked the path that led to their dreams becoming real, even

if the process wasn't the easiest, fastest,

<= > rke as artis A or most logical. They worked as artists, lrhind the

not as programmers or game hackers, and

Linn Wid

a larae Jum aLanding

/ AUN, am Thu pak dna alfe af whieh Wiad /

shows in each frame. / / / it sho Yikneeul The alhowlli of 2 Hat. hal ailhotTe, As Rand Miller humbly says of Cyan, / / y = ” wilh GQ ha. A, damsel head and “L4 Jansleas henses, "We make links to other worlds oy ij Va) was wnnislakahh. SD waa Oekn Do they ever fm Sy a ye 7) modal lo Aynal/ “Ll Tha wadnea of Ve f , 49) as af vy) f / Gein 4a pind Un how mdr alhtsr wands haa

f hi (aT has Nias awh Lingle (a) how tof

/ 4

414M Wd

Thal”

fi « ”» ' Mt a gad ¢

from Myst: The Book of Atrus

126

In a rare moment, when not at their computers banging away, all of Cyan’s creators, inventors, craftsmen, assistants, and disk golfers gathered under the sun on the company’s back patio. Notice all the smiling? This particular day happened to be “Movie Day,” a special occasion when everyone at Cyan would shut down and go see the latest special effects blockbuster.

Designed and directed by Robyn Miller and Richard Vander Wende

Produced by Rand Miller Production Manager: Tony Fryman

Lead Programmer and D'ni Historian

Richard A, Watson CG Production Director: Joshua A, Staub

CG Artists/Animators: Jason Baskett, Michael Bostick, Tony Davidson, Jeremy Engleman, Robin Higgin-Foley, Robert Grace, Tim

Greenberg, Joshua A. Staub, Bret St, Clair

CG Technical Director: Karl Stiefvater Shaders by Lume, Inc

Additional CG Animation: Patrick Faille, Eric Vignola

Compositing and Additional World Assembly Michael Sheets

Effects Programming Engineer: Mark DeForest

Post Production Engineer and Additional Programming: Ryan Miller

Gameplay Design: Rand Miller, Robyn Miller, Richard Vander Wende, and Joshua A. Staub, Richard A. Watson

Sound Design: Tim Larkin

Sound Design and Live Action Foley and Mix Martin O'Donnell, Michael Salvatori, O'Donnell/Salvatori Music, Chicago, IL

Music composed and produced by Robyn Miller Music Sampling Engineer: Chris Brandkamp

Live Action Segments written and directed by Richard Vander Wende and Tim Greenberg

Gehn: John Keston

Catherine: Sheila Goold

Atrus; Rand Miller

Nelah: Christine Steel

Gehn’s Guard: Vicente Ramos Moiety Prisoner: Ernie Whitecloud Leira (Keta): Kate Vander Wende Village Boy: Micah Biggs

Gehn’s Scribe: Tony Fryman

Girl in Jungle: Sydney Wakan Moiety Scout: Ryan Miller

Live Action Filmed by PVR, San Fransisco, CA

Voice-Over Talent Catherine: Rengin Altay

Assistant Production Manager: Bonnie Staub Systems Administrator: John Biggs

Additional Production Management: Dennis Leahy

CREDIT

CG Technical Assistant; Eric Arnold

All journals (except Catherine's Journal) written by Richard Vander Wende and Tim Greenberg

Costume Designer: Catherine Hunt

D'ni Background Model (from Myst): Chuck Carter Gate Room Illustrations: Richard Downs

Gehn's Age Sky: Matte World Digital

Wigs: Joyce Degenfelder

Costumes made by Kauffman—Davis Studios, Seattle Opera

Prop Construction: Seattle Opera

Additional Props: Gaye Gardner, Robert Bovil, Cour Dain, Joseph Fisher, Studio 7

Casting Assistants: Ryan Miller, Belinda Hunt, Kinslee Miller

Additional Cyan Support: Chris Brandkamp, Al Carlson, Heather Ferguson-Gady, Byron Heinemann, Belinda Hunt, Mark Klammer

Thanks to

Everyone at Broderbund, especially Dennis Leahy and Laurie Strand

Everyone at Sunsoft, Inc., especially Mr. Masami Maeda and Mr. Kiharu Yoshida

The original Myst team

John Miller/Symplex Systems

Kass Kapsiak

Rhode Island Historical Society

The City of Santa Fe, New Mexico Net-Tel/Wes Morris

Extra Special Thanks to: The Cyan team. Your efforts have been super- human. Thank you for caring about this project!

The families and loved ones of everyone closely associated, for living through the dead- lines with us.

Extra, Extra Special Thanks to:

Debbie, Kinslee, Kerryn, and Kara Miller; Beth, Alexander, Grace, and Abraham Miller; and Kate, Helen and Evie Vander Wende. “We love you and couldn't have done it without you!”

Robyn and Rand would also like to thank their parents, Ronald and Barbara, for their remark- able emotional and spiritual support and for their unfailing love.

And Richard would like to thank Garry and Evelyn (his parents). "| owe everything to you

(but don't worry, I'll pay you back some day).”

ie ee ————————————

PVR CREW

Director of Photography: Steve Kotton Live Action Production Mar

ger: Renee Jensen Assistant Camera: James Pusch

Gaffer: Mike Van Dine

Grip: Alex Robinson

Ultimatte Operator: Sprague Anderson

Audio: Robert Tachories

Videotape Operators: Wayne Cory, Jeff Piccinini Make-Up: Nancie Marsalis, Joeann Edmonds Wardrobe Assistant: Pamela Buss

Live Action Continuity: Pat Burke,

David Van Woert

Video Tape Editor: Michael Albanese,

Aldo DiVergilio

Assistant Video Tape Editor: Vince Oresman Digital Video Capture: J. Anthony Ruffo, Derek Gatlin

Operations Manager: Steve Manke Post-Production Coordinator: Laurie Lamson

Voice over Engineers: North by Northwest Productions

Additional Sound Design for O'Donnell/Salvatori Music: Paul Heitsch, John Binder, Mark Devos, Brian Jennings, Sean Richards, and Jeff Krajewski (courtesy of Fuse Music and Design, Chicago, IL)

BRODERBUND DEVELOPMENT TEAM (Macintosh and IBM Platforms)

Senior Production Manager: Dennis Leahy Production Manager: Matt O'Hara Executive Publisher: Laurie Strand

Application Programmers

Lead Programmers: Ben Ceschi, Allan Young Programmers: Ed Rose, Frankie Ford, Samir Ramji

Programming Directors: Jeffrey Charvat, Grace Kim

Tools Programming

QuickTime Programmer; Mike Foulger

Systems Programmers: Glenn Axworthy, Scott Henderson, Bob Gulian, Michael Zacks Production Tools Programmers; Esteban Ahn, Andrew Kay, Peter Van Gorder

Installer Programmers: Kent Daniels,

Fred Campbell

MMX Programmer: Davis Frank

Sound Processing: Brian Walker Additional Sound Processing: Ralph Marsh

Special Effects Masking: Hendryk Lasak Additional Special Effects Masking: Sue Roehm

SUNSOFT DEVELOPMENT TEAM

(All Other Platforms)

Product Manager: Shigeki Shimizu

Chief Designer: Yumiko Ueno Programmers: Masahiro Imaizumi, Takashi Nakata

System Engineer: Akihiro Asada

General Manager: Kiharu Yoshida Special Thanks: Masami Maeda, Shizuya Furukawa, Masato Kawai

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FPT $45.00 CANADA $61.00

hen Rand and Robyn Miller decided to create Myst, a CD-ROM game
featuring a visually entrancing world and a non-violent, cunningly
devised labyrinth of a story for players to get lost in, they figured their main reward would be a job well done. They had no idea that it would make history as the most successful multimedia computer game ever sold. Now, with the release of Riven—the sequel to Myst—eager fans old and new will be astounded to see the Millers’ latest creation—an even larger and more Staggeringly beautiful world that storywise carries on where Myst left off. In From Myst to Riven: The Creations & Inspirations, these fantasy game worlds are brought to life in a way that has never been seen before. Rand and Robyn, in addition to Riven's entire creative team at Cyan, Inc., have opened their doors—and minds—to allow a unique behind-the-scenes look at the making of a phenomenon. Including insights into story development and D'ni mythology and featuring every stage of visual and technical development, as well as the cutting-edge computer graphics that are seen in the games, From Myst to Riven illuminates in rich detail the inner workings of the inspired minds responsible for what critics have called a “contagious . . . multimedia

sensation.”

Rand and Robyn Miller are the founders of Cyan, Inc., an independent software company located in Mead, WA. In addition to Myst (1993) and Riven (1997), Cyan has produced several innovative children’s computer programs: The Manhole (1987), Cosmic Osmo (1989), and Spelunx (1991).

Richard Kadrey has written about emerging technologies for Wired magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, and for the Whole Earth Software Catalog. He is the author of The Covert Culture Sourcebook and Covert Culture 2.0. He is currently developing an internet-related project for MS-NBC.

“€ * 11/97

. ISBN 0-78b8-b3bS-X

; 54500 > 29 \ P 7 9 636

Copyright © 1997, Cyan, Inc. Produced by Welcome Enterprises, Inc. ‘ Printed in Japan