an extremely underrated 2 hour interview with robyn miller by [email protected] several years ago

they provide a walking tour through several of cyan's early titles such as the Manhole, Cosmic Osmo and Spelunx. a live art director's commentary.

what i love the most is how much robyn makes it clear how these games were never built for "gamers" as we understand them now. robyn played very few games, and wasn't familiar with genre expectations.

he and rand just focused on making games that let the player explore a world at their own pace, and all else is secondary to exploration and discovery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kX5E7yOHJg

#cyan #myst #retroGaming #win31 #macintosh

Ça fait un moment que j'ai fait les jeux #Myst, mais l'envie de lire les #livre est toujours là. Donc voici Le Livre de Ti'ana avec la rencontre entre Anna et le peuple de D'ni. Je l'ai bien dévoré. 😁
https://yaone.fr/myst-le-livre-de-tiana/

#blog

okay so i found something pretty awesome

the 3d scenes in Myst were all built using a mac modeller/renderer called Strata Vision 3D. i bought a boxed copy of this program with the intention of trying to recreate a model or two in the game, using the original renderer.

the box came with an extra disc - a library of shapes and textures. i noticed on the inside flap of the cd that it apparently included textures from Myst!

unfortunately, it turns out the disc was a demo. you browsed through the library until you found something you wanted, and then called a 1-800# to buy a serial number. you could enter the serial number and instantly have access to that texture.

unfortunately, no one has ever figured out how to crack Strata Clip 3D, and i couldn't figure it out today either.

fortunately, some creative digging turned up the Myst textures. they've been hiding on a Warez cd from 1996 for the past 30 years.

i just managed to load the program into system 7 and it's all there. these are the original textures used to render some areas of Myst. i still need to install Strata Vision to test them out, but afaik this is the first time these original textures have been seen since.

#macintosh #vintageApple #myst #retroGaming #win31

this is not well known, so i thought i'd share this -
way back in 2020, ars released a short interview with rand miller about myst and the challenges of the cd-rom format. it's mildly interesting, but obviously cut from a much larger tapestry.

they eventually released the full, 2h interview with rand, but very few people saw it. in the extended version, he talks about the very early days of working with HyperCard, from the Manhole to Cosmic Osmo to Spelunx. he goes into obscene amounts of detail with the constraints of working with HC and 80s/90s macs, writing custom XCMD and XFCNs, building in 3d with StrataVision, and using Debabelizer to build palettes.

he does an amazing job of explaining what the constraints were for computing in that era. for anyone curious about what it was like making games in the 80s/90s, i can think of few other interviews that express the realities and joys of working in confined space so well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qxg0ykOcgM

#retrocomputing #macintosh #vintageApple #hypercard #myst #riven

https://blog.fr.playstation.com/2026/05/07/les-remakes-de-riven-et-de-myst-sortent-sur-ps5-le-19-mai/

#PlayStation #PSVR2 #PS5 #CyanWorlds #Myst #Riven

Myst and Riven Launch on PS5, PSVR2, and Xbox Series on May 19

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://noisypixel.net/myst-riven-ps5-psvr2-xbox-release-may-19-2026/