(YouTube link in case the above video doesn’t work for you)

We started with planing the design – specifically, how could we make a unique approach to this cake, so it wasn’t just another iteration of Myst island. That’s when I had the idea to show a cross-section of the island to display the subterranean caverns. Meka loved this idea, and with his background in architecture, he was well equipped to visualise the final product.

As a way to take stock of what ingredients are available to make this edible diorama, we took a few trips to different stores to find the best ingredients for sculpting and cake decorating. The grocery store had a decent selection that would have been fine, but the trip to a specialist cake decorating shop had fantastic things such as bronze food paint & powdered food colouring.

The making process begun with choosing an appropriate scale to make the cake. Using a 3D model of Myst Island, we found a size that would allow Meka to sculpt the smallest models we wanted to include, as well as considering how much fruit cake we can realistically eat (side note: this is Australian-style fruit cake, which is far more edible & tastes far better than its international counterpart). The board is around 600mm by 300mm, or around 2′ by 1′. I then printed out scaled drawings of the plan view of the island for Meka to start sculpting. Being able to consult these wireframe images, as well as measure dimensions straight off the 3D model, was super handy to make sure everything was scaled correctly & in the right place. Sculpting all the individual buildings, trees & artefacts took many days of fiddly work until we had the majority of the chocolate and sugar cake toppers finished.

2 days put from the deadline, the cake sculpting began. A copy of the island plan was made on baking paper, which was used to make approximate placement of the landscape, contours, buildings & the dock. Again I was in charge of scaling the elevations of the landscape, while Meka’s sticky but far steadier hands sliced away at the cake.

Once we were happy with the overall shape of the island (taking into consideration the underwater portion of the island that Meka approximated), the cake was generously drenched in rum so that it would stay preserved for weeks. There was also the added bonus that the rum helped pull the crumbling cake together after much cutting & piecing together.

It was now time to put on some top soil. A thin layer of brown fondant was stretched across the fruitcake & massaged into shape. The rock portions of the island were painted with a palate of royal icing in different colours to approximate granite, and a layer of moulding chocolate put on the cake board, ready for the ocean water (a mistake we would soon find out) The tricky job of making the sectional view of the internal chambers took a little planing & creative licence. As many Myst fans may know, the chambers don’t exactly fit in the island faithfully, and to make a clean section, a small amount of artistic license was required.

Grass made of crushed digestive biscuits mixed with shredded coconut was applied to the appropriate areas. The buildings, pathways, stairs, ships, pillars & trees were positioned and blended into the landscape, before a dam of packing tape & cardboard was constructed around the cake ready for the sea water. The ocean water was made with agar powder, water, sugar & flavouring, which was cooled to 40’C/105’F before being poured around the cake. The underwater chocolate & the fondant of the island began to dissolve in the agar, even though the jelly was hard. This was not a major problem as the colour stayed in the jelly, and the dissolving fondant dripped slowly, which we continued to mop up.

After removing the jelly mould, the cake was almost done, but there was a blank space on the side where the island was cut off. Meka had a plan for this – literally! He drew out the plan view of the island, as though Atrus was still in the process of writing the island into existence. It was finished with a chocolate version of Atrus’s quill and ink, along with his memorable words.

Aside from some small amounts of armature wire to hold up things like the trees, everything else in this cake is edible. Most importantly, most of the sculptures are chocolate-based instead of being fondant-based, so it actually tastes good too (eg the quill is entirely white chocolate). And now that it’s finally done, it’s time for us to enjoy some cake after staring at it all week! *nom*

The post Myst Island Cake appeared first on Realm of RIUM+.

The Myst Book

It seems to be pretty well made. It’s bigger than mine/Cyan’s book, but I kindof expected that might be required to make the ink well parts fit. To try and compensate for this the covers are thinner than the original, which I think is a fair compromise. I need to point out that the outside cover has been made with a lot more detail than is immediately obvious – this thing’s been constructed in enough layers to impress an ogre. There’s the plain bare cardboard, which is most easily visible through the infamous damage notch on the left. Then there’s the dark brown leather/cloth layer on the left side and on the two corner triangles, which has had both a bit of a shine and a rough surface added to it that roughly matches the shine & feel on the original book. On top of this is the main central texture as a normal paper print, and on top of that are sections that have been raised/embossed, and on top of that are sections that have been gilded. Some of the damage marks on the book aren’t just in the image’s print but are actual cut-out holes where one layer gives way to show a lower layer, which I think is all pretty darned cool. This applies to both the spine and the back of the book too – speaking of, the back of the book is what the back of Cyan’s actual book looks like; for once it isn’t just a mirror of the front texture like it is in all the games!

Speaking of just the front texture, it’s a bit different to what was shown in the Kickstarter. The Kickstarter version was a blend between Cyan’s actual well-worn physical prop book and my own replica, whereas this final version is mostly like Cyan’s one (and for what it’s worth my one was supposed to be my interpretation of what the Myst book might’ve looked like when “brand new”, mostly because luck meant I found a copy of the right book in near-perfect condition, which is why it had no damage). There’s a couple design points similar to mine – for instance the font used for the raising/gilding looks like it’s been modified a little from the original MYST font to straighten the serifs a little, the same as I did, which makes it look better when embossed or raised. The main image is also darker than Cyan’s actual physical book, and has had more damage added to it than Cyan’s book actually has, particularly around the edges. It’s worth mentioning here that back in 1993 Cyan did scan their physical prop book to use as a texture, however back then they modified that image so it had less damage in-game vs what it had in real life. This makes one more version of what this book is supposed to look like, and when you add in how it looked during Myst 5 I think I’ve lost track of how many different versions we’re up to now. 😛

The original 1993 version of the Myst book 3D model as shown in Strata

Because I knew people would ask, I took a few photos comparing the Kickstarter Myst book to my replica Myst book so you can see the size difference. I also took a few photos comparing it to the original book Cyan used as the Riven descriptive book (The 1954 printing of the 1951 edition Webster’s Unified Dictionary & Encyclopedia if you’re curious). Turns out it’s much closer in size to Riven’s descriptive book than Myst’s linking book!

The LCD & Electronics

The book has been enlarged but the linking panel LCD has been kept the same size, so it looks a little smaller than it should be. However it’s sized so that on the lower tier versions the images on the game disc sleeves can be the linking panels themselves, so it’s not like they could’ve made the sleeves much larger. Its colours are bright & vibrant, its got a pretty fantastic viewing angle, and its brightness level has clearly been tuned so it looks “right” for normal indoor brightness levels – as in, it looks close to a window to another world and not a brightly glowing LCD, and it photographs very well. The video plays automatically when you open the book, which is cool, and the battery level indicator displays momentarily in the top right, which is nice I guess but I wish there was some way to turn it off. In case you’re wondering, it’s got a standard 3.7V 800mAh 2.96Wh Lithium battery inside which charges from the included USB cable at 1A. The best way to store this battery long-term is to leave it at around 50% capacity, which isn’t too hard to do given the book has a battery level indicator. Loading alternate videos onto the book seems like it would be easy but I haven’t tried it to see what formats or codecs it can handle. I like the “hidden” button markers that are smudges on the page, they’re sneaky. The speaker in the top right is a bit quiet, a bit tinny and seems to be peaking a lot – I haven’t pulled apart the electronics yet but I think it’s because it’s hidden behind the front paper. There’s only so much you can do when a speaker is obscured like that. I suspect a few holes in the paper would improve the audio quality but pulling that apart is another job.

From personal experience I can say that there aren’t many options for suitable LCDs around the right size with the right specs for a linking panel. Particularly if you want 15,000 of them, and you’re not willing to spend $80/panel. For reference the LCD for my Myst book cost $140USD, and that’s for just the raw LCD panel itself without the driver board, embedded computer to feed it content, battery, charging circuitry, etc. Cyan only charged an extra $70 for the tier with all the electronics, so to pull that off at scale their choices would’ve been limited and I’m super impressed they managed to do it on such a comparatively tight budget.

Now, the content on the book. First off – the original classic Myst intro has been re-rendered at 30fps at the resolution of the book, so it looks amazing! 😀 The other content on the book is a bit of a mixed bag and honestly feels a little like they got half-way through making videos for it when they hit the deadline and abruptly stopped. There’s no videos from Revelation or End of Ages, and only a single video from Uru. You totally need to check out the Uru video, UruFly.mp4 – I don’t want to say any more, just play that one and enjoy! Cyanlogo.mp4 looks like a re-rendered version of Cyan’s original 1993 logo just for this book – the blurred text at the end is different but the model is the 3d model is the original one, and it’s crisp like it’s been rendered at the right resolution. There’s plenty of classic Myst, realMyst Masterpiece and even re-rendered classic Myst flyby videos, Sirrus/Achenar/Atrus videos, Riven flybys, and even Exile flybys (even if they are weirdly labelled “Energy” “Jnanin” “Life” and “Matter”)… But no Revelation or End of Ages. It’d be cool if Cyan offers a few flybys from the missing games for download in the future, but who knows if that will happen.

The “extra storage” section contains a bunch of high-res images in here which make me completely drool – I don’t know which have been re-rendered and which are from their archives, but a 4000×1000 pixel panorama of Gehn’s Age is beautiful, Gehn’s Stained Glass is something I don’t remember seeing before, and the 3692×3075 Channelwood photos are so clear I wish I could be there in person.

I hope I don’t get in trouble for sharing this, but it’s located in the book’s readme file, you can find it yourself by literally just searching myst.com for “myst” and 10,000 people are about to know this URL when their books arrive sooo I figure it’s gonna be public soon anyway – you can download a copy of all this from https://myst.com/mystbookfiles/. Get on it and enjoy those high-res images & exclusive re-rendered videos!

I don’t know the full capabilities of the video player but as a data point for you, the main video is an mp4 file with the video in H264 AVC encoded at Level 3.1 complexity, 800×480 resolution, 30fps, ~2367kbps, while the audio’s AAC, 44.1KHz, mono, ~125kbps.

The Inkwell & Pen

Oh man. This thing is gorgeous. My expectations have been completely blown away. It’s made of what feels like clear-coated brass, and there’s over a dozen separately-cast parts to this thing that have been assembled together into sub-pieces ready for your final assembly via the included screwdriver & two screws (I had four screws; I guess extra in case you lose some). It feels solid & heavy, it feels well machined, and above all it feels well made. The D’ni writing is cast into the actual mould instead of just engraving it. The legs are held on magnetically (which makes the legs handy to use to simulate closing the book while it’s open – the reed switch is in the middle center right). The top has a small plastic bottle hidden inside it to hold the ink (which you can access & completely remove via a screw on the beetle’s underside). And there’s even little rubber feet on the bottom of it – five of them, in fact – which wasn’t necessary but goes to show that every part of this had thought put into it, not just as a quick throwaway thing.

Assembly is pretty easy – the parts are all keyed so they can only go together one way. There’s only two screws involved, both different sizes, and that’s it. But just in case you can’t work it out there’s some instructions included too (the oil smudge on the front page didn’t come with it, whoops). The whole thing comes in a form-fitting foam box to keep everything in place & protected during shipping.

Speaking of the foam box, I’m pretty sure the inkwell is the reason why the book had to be enlarged. Here’s a side-on view of how some of the inkwell pieces fit inside the box. There’s not much width left over. I’m sure some clever 3-dimensional stacking arrangement would’ve been possible, particularly if you’re re-using some of the empty space from the other box, but that would’ve made it all so much more complex than it already is.

Finally, the dip pen. This looks like a standard pen with a beetle/ink nib marking on the sheath. It’s subtle, but shows that this is a custom part too and not just something they grabbed off the shelf to use unmodified. The included replaceable nib is a #5, because of course it’s that number. If you’re having trouble finding the pen, look below the flap on the bottom edge of the book.

Overall, I gotta say that I’m pretty happy with these rewards. It definitely feels like I got my money’s worth, and the end results are higher quality than anticipated. I’m one satisfied backer!

The post Myst 25th Anniversary Kickstarter Book & Inkwell Rewards Review appeared first on Realm of RIUM+.

It’s no surprise where part of the idea for a Myst book with a screen inside it likely came from. To quote Rand Miller (Cyan’s CEO and Atrus actor) from the Kickstarter Live AMA, “we’re doing a book with a real linking panel because we’ve wanted one ever since RIUM+ did his”. There’s nothing much I can add to that quote, really. 😛 I plan to do a full teardown & comparison of Cyan’s one once mine arrives (UPDATE: teardown & comparison blog post here!. For what it’s worth though, based what specs I’ve seen so far their implementation carries my personal tick of approval – it looks like it will do a fantastic job and make a beautiful product for a reasonable price.

But that’s not what this post is about. This one’s about music. It’s been over a decade since I last played the piano so I’m a little bit rusty, but I’ve dusted off the old skills for a very special purpose.

In honour of the Myst 25th Anniversary Kickstarter, I decided to transcribe & play a piano rendition of Cyan’s logo music!

(YouTube link in case the above video doesn’t work for you)

It just so happens that 10 Instrumental covers is one of the #Myst25 Community Goals. And I have word straight from one of the people managing the Kickstarter’s community goals that the Cyan intro theme music counts. As such, here’s the files so you can play it too!

Cyan Logo theme PDF
Cyan Logo theme MusicXML
Cyan Logo theme MIDI
24-bit 96KHz FLAC of my piano rendition

A couple notes on these (pun intended) – both the chord complexity and their representations are sitting in the middle between being perfect representations and being easy to play. By this I mean that I’m skipping a few notes from the chords as I wanted it to be reasonably easily playable on an actual piano, and the timing in the sheet music isn’t 100% spot-on because doing that was far more complicated to describe & decipher than I thought was worth it. Feel free to adapt this to a different instrument, add or remove notes for your own personal style, or fiddle with the timing in the midi file if you’re only intending digital playback.

Play on! 🙂

The post Cyan logo music played on the piano appeared first on Realm of RIUM+.

(click to embiggen)

This is a “working” replica of a Myst linking book. It’s made out of a copy of the same book Cyan originally scanned as a texture reference.

Inside the book is a full desktop computer, completely self-contained without any external wires or hardware. In the above photo, the embedded screen isn’t just showing a still photo or a video: it’s running a full copy of realMyst PC edition. On board is a copy of all the Myst games. It’s fast enough it plays all of them smoothly (even End of Ages at ~30fps). You play the games by touching the touch-screen.

(click to embiggen)

The book in question is Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Volume LIV, Issue 312, December 1876 to May 1877 (roughly equivalent to an antique Reader’s Digest)… 140 years old & still in this condition. Finding the book’s exact edition is difficult – my years of research have revealed what looks like at least 14 different bindings of the same book. But there’s lots of close matches that appear on second-hand auction websites.

Unlike Cyan’s well-worn copy, this one is almost pristine. The cover has been beautifully restored & the cracked hinge has been repaired. Custom embossing dies were made for the individual MYST letters, then the embossing was filled in with 24-carat gold paint.

(Yes I essentially destroyed this book to convert it into a Myst linking book, but I like to think that it’s cooler now. At least 20% cooler.)

(click to embiggen)

Inside the book is a full, hand-assembled desktop computer. The space inside is tiny, nearly half the size of a netbook, so I spent a long time sourcing the absolute smallest parts you can buy that met all of my requirements. It’s a 3-dimensional electronics version of Tetris – this is what it looks like with both the motherboard & battery removed, plus with everything installed.

Technical Specs:

• The screen is a 640×480 5.0-inch LED-backlit display. This provides 1:1 native pixel mapping on the original versions of Myst, Riven & Exile. There’s a matching 4-wire resistive glass touch-screen overlaid on top as the main input method, which updates at 160 samples/second with a touch resolution of 2048×2048.
• The power supply is a 3-cell Lithium-Ion battery capable of delivering 60A of current (but the book uses nowhere near that much). The power supply converts its voltage to the 12V & 5V required by the computer. Power consumption is around 12 watts & the battery life is around 1.5 to 2 hours.
• The CPU is an Intel Z530P running at 1.6GHz, and the GPU is an Intel GMA500 chipset capable of running DirectX 9.0C graphics. The system has 1GB of RAM (less RAM = less power consumption & heat). The motherboard was a custom order from Broadcom’s Advanced Research division.
• The system is entirely passively cooled and waste heat conducts out through the book. The CPU & GPU hover at 48°C. The only way to deal with heat in this book is to just avoid creating it in the first place, so all the components are ultra-low power.
• The Operating System (Windows XP) & all software are loaded directly from a 32GB CompactFlash card that reads at 22MB/s.
• Included software is Myst Masterpiece Edition, realMyst, Riven DVD edition, Riven Elementary, Myst III: Exile DVD edition, Myst IV: Revelation, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst & The Path of the Shell, Myst V: End of Ages, The Manhole Masterpiece Edition and Crowthistle. Bonuses include a copy of the Book of Atrus e-book, plus shortcut copies of some extracted Myst Island flyby videos/linking panel images. Also, when you first turn on the book a video automatically plays featuring Atrus writing at his desk, then he looks up at you & mouths the words “who the devil are you?”.

For those whose eyes just glossed over reading all that, consider this – it can run Half-Life 2 at a 30fps+ & it contains the best editions of all the Myst games plus some extras.

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Also included are some additional props – a blank white page and a blank blue page. These were sourced from additional copies of the exact same book Cyan used as a texture reference, meaning they’re as “proper” as you can get. With the book’s red interior lining, this makes a complete set of the three page colours used in Myst. They are their original hues & have not been dyed, so the blue is slightly more turquoise & the red is slightly more brown than they appear in the game. You can’t be too picky with original 135-year-old paper hues.

(click to embiggen)

“And it was real.” – Catherine, realMyst trailer

(YouTube link in case the above video doesn’t work for you)
What’s more, when Cyan decided to create their new high-definition 3D re-release of realMyst Masterpiece Edition, their original book texture was too low-resolution and their original prop is in very poor condition. So, they used a scan of my book for the in-game asset of the Myst book and as a basis for the red & blue linking books. Which would make this not just a fan-made replica Myst book any more, but now the actual real Myst book. You can see it in the intro video below, plus my name has been added to the opening credits.

(YouTube link in case the above video doesn’t work for you)
For more information on its construction, view my presentation video or the presentation’s slides.

For sale. $15,625 (1000 in D’ni numerals).

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