Myst Patch 2.0 (26/10/2024)
Hello, everyone! Myst version 2.0 is here with some big stability updates, tech-adds, improvements, and more to make your experience playing Myst even better.
Before we dive in, we’d like to thank everyone for their support in playing this remake of Myst since it came out over three years ago. Everyone’s purchase of Myst has directly contributed to helping us update Myst over the years to make it a better experience for everyone, especially as hardware and operating systems evolve, which is a very tricky thing developers have to deal with. We are proud to be the kind of company that continues to maintain its games for as long as we possibly can!
This update is a beefy one, and we’ve tried to consolidate it as much as we could to make sure you all know what to expect. Let’s do this thing!
Engine Upgrade
First things first: We’ve upgraded Myst from using Unreal Engine 4.27+ to Unreal Engine 5.3.2. Doing this has resolved a WIDE number of stability issues related to the game running on various platforms.
Visual changes/stability: The newer engine has resolved a lot of flickering texture issues we saw come up on lower-end hardware especially. There should also be some slight improvements in lighting, reflections, and more, despite not using all of the bells and whistles in UE5 (no Lumen, no Nanite here in Myst… yet!). HDR support changes: HDR has better support on all platforms now.
RHI support changes:
- Windows: DX12 support is now a requirement for playing Myst on Windows. Engine support on this RHI is much better here moving forward, and it enables us to get rid of most shader compilation hitches when you move around the game.
- Mac: Metal 3 RHI support has been added. This is enabled for the M3 family of chips on Mac. Device support changes:
- Windows: Nothing is changing here, actually, other than adjusting our minimum specifications to require DX12 (see above).
- Mac: We are increasing our MacOS minimum requirement from MacOS 11.6 to MacOS 14.5. VR:
- We’ve officially moved to using OpenXR in Myst! This brings stability improvements, more generic launch options (see below), and a more flexible environment for our VR users.
- Were you tired of the trillion VR launch options we had? We were as well! There’s now a single launch option and it should work for all officially supported headsets in Myst (and maybe even some unsupported ones, since it’s still using the OpenXR backend).
- In-line with Meta’s official support drops, we are dropping official support in Myst for the original Rift headset and Quest 1 through Quest Link. We are also dropping official support in Myst for the original Vive headset. This doesn’t mean that you CAN’T play Myst with those headsets, it just means that we are unable to give official support for them anymore. This statement also applies to WMR headsets, of which we only supported the HP Reverb 2 previously, but we will unfortunately no longer be able to officially support it, especially because of Microsoft’s own announcements to deprecate this support on Windows. Note however that now that we have moved to OpenXR, it is very possible that folks will have an even easier time playing Myst on unsupported HMDs. Performance changes: “Mileage may vary” based on your machine. We’ve seen areas have both increased performance on some hardware, and decreased performance on some hardware. We recommend toying with the existing & updated Supersampling options to see what works best for your machine and your preferred playstyle. Online Subsystem improvements: Achievements now work in Myst on GOG!
Content Changes
Ray Tracing Changes
This is a big one…
We’ve got two things to cover, the first being that we continue to support ray traced reflections in Myst on Windows, and that you’ll find many of the ray traced reflections to be improved in multiple areas.
Second, we’re excited to offer Myst with support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing, now available on Macs with the powerful M3 family of chips. This is a part of the patch you are receiving today!
It has been very hard to find out in any of our research if Myst is, in-fact, one of the first titles with hardware ray tracing support for M3 chips to be released (maybe it’s the first Unreal Engine title with this support?). Let us know if you know! We want another excuse to celebrate our hard work on this patch over here.
UI Refresh
We’re happy to introduce a cleaner, more usable, and much nicer looking version of the menu and general UI for everyone in Myst. For those who have played our remake of Riven, you may find some similarities between the two. Here are some of the improvements our new menu in Myst brings compared to the old one:
- New cursor options have been added, and the default cursor has been switched to be the hand cursor. The default cursor size has also been modified to accommodate this change. This will override what folks currently have set in their cursor settings as we believe it is the best default experience for folks moving forward.
- The graphics settings menu is now much clearer on which settings need to be “Applied” and which ones will Apply automatically.
- Updated naming for “Gameplay Context Subtitles” to “Sound Context Subtitles” for clarity
- There’s a “Help” sub-menu now, and you can find the game’s version number there, in addition to “Teleport to Safe Spot” when you are in-game, should you need it.
- The controller/keyboard diagrams are now much clearer and scale better for a variety of screen sizes instead of being baked images. It will also properly detect the kind of controller you are using. Note that a couple of bindings may have changed – in particular the screenshot binding is now “x” instead of spacebar, and the PC VR bindings for the menu now encourage the use of non-system bound buttons to open the menu if necessary.
- The resolution scale setting will now be much clearer as to what the acceptable resolution scale range is between 2D and VR.
- A Gamma settings menu has been added that all users will be prompted with when they start up the game for the first time (or if they have not previously configured the setting through this menu, which should be just about everyone right now!).
- A “UI Volume” slider has been added to the audio settings menu to quell anyone who abhors sounds playing while they click around the menu.
- The default font used in Myst for subtitles and other in-game UI has been changed to be more readable and aligned with the general style Myst already has.
- The credits formatting has been updated to be more readable., and new folks who contributed to this patch have been added to the credits as well.
Updated Supersampling Options
- All Supersampling options have been updated to newer versions to bring you even better performance and visuals in Myst based on your hardware’s needs.
- MetalFX is now the default Supersampling option on Mac.
- FSR has been removed as a Supersampling option on Mac.
- DLSS is now allowed to be used in VR if you have compatible hardware.
- DLSS is now the default Supersampling option on Windows if you’re running the game with compatible hardware, regardless of whether or not you are running the game in VR.
General Fixes
Global
- Added in movement tutorials for Vive
- Better support for Dualshock controllers added
- (SPOILER) Fixed incorrect translation of a Polish clue to get to the Selenitic Age
- Saving and loading while music is playing in an area now has better persistence when loading back into those areas
- Fixed some textures flickering if you stand too close to them on certain quality settings
- Fixed haptics not working in some areas
- Fixed unexpected lighting changes occurring when moving between various areas on Mac
- Fixed some items appearing outside of their drawers when you load into the room the drawers are in
- Added water splashing sounds when walking over puddles in Stoneship
- (Mac only) Fixed crash or hang that could occur on startup of the game when you had AirPods as your current audio device
- Lighting on AMD Macs has been improved in certain situations
- (GOG only) Achievements now work
VR only
- Fixed player height changing unexpectedly when teleporting into certain areas
- Fixed sound context subtitle for the water flowing in Channelwood not following the player properly when on a Vive HMD
- Fixed the in-game menu not showing up in front of the player when in particular areas of the game
- Fixed backward movement spamming if you hold the thumbstick down
- Fixed a crash that could occur if you leave one of the brother’s rooms in Stoneship while holding a page
- Fixed random occurrence where you could completely lose your teleport stream and not regain it until restarting the game
- Fixed the water splashing effect for the gears raising on Myst Island looking differently in each eye
- Adjusted the VR bindings in some circumstances so that the menu can be opened on non-system reserved buttons
Patch 9 (17/01/2023)
Fixes
- Fix for Legacy Navigation mode inadvertently causing players to disengage with puzzles while in puzzle engage mode.
- Fix for the Quick Travel on Ladders setting causing you to feel a bit shorter than usual when you descend a ladder in VR.
Patch 8 (07/10/2022)
Features
- (VR only) input from HP Reverb is now supported in Myst.
- You can now access the photo album from the main menu, not just from the in-game menu.
- Myst is now running on Unreal 4.27, which comes with various rendering and performance improvements.
- 17% decrease in game size on disk.
Fixes
- Fix for the speedy achievement not firing off when it should.
- Fix for parts of Myst Island being hidden or made visible unintentionally when running into particular areas/walls.
- Fix for the player getting “snagged” on collision when walking around some corners, especially in VR.
- If you press the ‘P’ key (shortcut key for photo album) and you don’t have any photos to view, we’ll let you know that you don’t have any photos to view before you see an empty photo album.
- Fix for the door levers in Stoneship sometimes being unliftable in VR.
- The generator in Stoneship is now prevented from accumulating in negative amounts, which now prevents players in VR from thinking the generator is broken if spun the wrong way.
- Fix for the mazerunner glass windows not rendering on low & medium effects settings.
- (SPOILER) The white page will now no longer appear from a marker switch on very random occasions that you flip the switch up.
- (SPOILER) The fireplace book will no longer flip to the correct page one Brothers’ speech too early.
- (SPOILER) Fix for the fireplace sometimes spamming a loud sound when you open it, leave the library, and return to the fireplace.
Some more notes:
- There was a legitimate issue with the Speedy achievement that we did solve, and in the process of fixing that, we verified that the Bob achievement has worked (and continues to work) as it should. If you are having trouble attempting to achieve the Bob achievement on Windows (achievements are not yet supported on Mac), spoilers ahead: Please verify you have rotated the island in Mechanical enough to see the skeleton when engaging with the spyglass in Sirrus’ throne room.
- There is not currently a diagram for Reverb controllers, but you can use the Oculus controller diagram as reference in the meantime.
- Although our support for WMR is only in the form of Reverb controllers at this time, we’d love to hear from folks who have other WMR devices if Myst is now more playable on their device.
Some more features we’re looking to add:
- Subtitle size changing ability for 2D mode.
- Subtitles for Classic Videos. This is going to take some time as this will require some time to write up the timing + words in the format Unreal Engine prefers, and put that text through another localization pass for every language we support.
Patch 7 (16/12/21)
Features
- Clickable regions on most interactables have now been sized-up a bit to make it easier to select things in the world.
- (Oculus HMDs only) Timewarp performance improvements have been made.
Fixes
- Fix for some translated text overlays not appearing if going from System Language → some language in the menu → back to System Language when your machine OS is using a language other than English.
- Various performance improvements made.
- Fix for parts of Myst Island being hidden unintentionally when running into particular areas/walls.
- Various performance improvements have been made.
- (SPOILER) The white page will now no-longer clip through the arm in the marker switch it comes out of.
Patch 6.1 (10/11/21)
Fixes
- Fix for some translated text overlays not appearing if going from System Language → some language in the menu → back to System Language when your machine OS is using a language other than English.
Patch 6 (05/11/21)
Features
- Russian & Polish localization added. Witamy na wyspie Myst… Добро пожаловать на остров Мист …!
- New “Engage Sensitivity” slider added to controls settings menu. This decouples the regular cursor sensitivity option from how sensitive your cursor is in engage mode, and vice-versa.
- Added a “Gamma” slider to the display settings menu.
- Added a “Delete All” option to the photo album, for all of you who want an easy way to clean up the photo album.
- ‘P’ key now allows you to open the photo album directly. Same with the left face button on a gamepad.
- Some performance improvements to AMD FidelityFX FSR on Mac.
Fixes
- Added black plane to prevent folks from seeing the sky when looking up the elevator shaft in Mechanical.
- Fix planetarium music sometimes cutting out when pressing the planetarium puzzle buttons too many times in quick succession.
- Fix for some command-line overrides for windowed, fullscreen, etc. not applying when starting Myst with custom command-line overrides.
- Controller support for Mac is a bit more robust now.
- (SPOILER) Fix for crash occurring on some Macs with Intel GPUs when linking to D’ni.
- (SPOILER) Fix for Sirrus’ and Achenar’s hair looking a bit swimmy on Mac during end-game sequences.
Patch 5 (04/10/21)
Fixes
- Renamed keys to WASD on French keyboard diagram
- Localization fix for objects not localizing correctly when “system language” is selected in the language options, or the OS language is set to something other than English. This fixes situations like Atrus’ note to Catherine sometimes not showing the correct translation.
- Fixed fish schools disappearing at fairly short distances in Stoneship
- Fix for the red page missing when going directly to the red page in Mechanical
- (SPOILER) Fix for white page turning invisible if loading a save game with a marker switch holding out the white page
Patch 4 (11/09/21)
New Features
- Generator room lights now turn on like the original Myst did when you enter the generator room. CA-CHUNK, CA-CHUNK, CA-CHUNK! (if you're an OG Myst fan, you could probably "hear" that)
- Due to popular demand, we’ve added a motion-controller-locked movement orientation option for VR gameplay. There is now a selector in the main menu for how you’d like to lock your movement orientation as such, instead of a single checkbox for whether or not you’d like camera-locked movement. Note that we have temporary localization in for this new menu setting right now and will be working with our localization partners to make more official adjustments.
- There are now bats that fly through the Selenitic tunnel when you turn the lights on for the first time. Spooky!
Fixes
- Fix for Channelwood spiral staircase tree having its bark look separated from the middle of the tree when on Low effects settings in 2D, or Low or Medium effects settings in VR.
- Fix for in-game photos sometimes looking oddly cropped if you take an in-game screenshot while engaged with a puzzle or the library bookshelf.
- Fix for the Stoneship beacon light on the top of the lighthouse not being visible while the player is under the umbrella.
- Fix for the half page in Stoneship being completely black when held at particular angles (it should be a bit brighter now in those circumstances).
- Fix for the half-pages being torn on the same side regardless of which side (front or back) you’re looking at. We had a good laugh about that one.
- (SPOILER) Fix for the fireplace code reminder videos not playing when in Classic Videos mode.
Patch 3 (04/09/21)
New Features
General Fixes & Improvements
- (SPOILER) Fix for the white page disappearing from D'ni when the player opens + closes the menu it’s floating in the air.
- Fix for the channelwood spiral staircase door locking you out from middle level on a revisit of the Age if you pulled the lever more than once while it was opening the first time you visited that age
- Fix for some pickupable objects in Mechanical caches being invisible when you open the menu + close the menu while inside of the cache.
- Fix for the music volume not being set on startup after setting it to 0 in a previous game instance.
- Fixed some LOD pops on Myst Island.
- General performance improvements for users with M1 Mac laptops.
- Fix for the elevator blocker lever in the Mechanical Age being unresponsive sometimes, or flipping back to a position you did not intend for it to.
- Numerical elements on clocktower puzzle gears have been darkened so that they are more readable at lower resolution scales.
- Fix for being able to use the fortress rotation controls while inside of the elevator in the Mechanical Age.
- Fix for some items spawning outside of the drawers on save/load.
- Changed the colors up on the pipe controllers in Channelwood so that the levers have a more interactable appearance.
- Fix for the fog showing up in ray traced reflections.
- Fix for the player being able to pick up a book in VR and 2D when the bookshelf in Myst Library is open.
- Fix for the ceiling fan and linking book in Stoneship ship becoming visible when stepping to the end of the plank on Myst Island.
- Fix for softlock in Mechanical on the second floor when being booted from the elevator.
- Fix for main menu scene not being reachable from logo scene if there are no audio devices available, or music is set to 0 on gamestartup.
- Prevent player from being able to change walk/run mode while in Cyan Logo scene, and if it can't change walk/run, prevent the notification from showing at all.
- Added a “fail” sound for Myst Island tower elevator if the player tries to move it without the door closed.
- Added a “fail” sound for Channelwood elevators if they are powered but the player tries to move it without the door closed.
- Linking books can now be used to link by clicking on any part of the panel page, instead of the book closing if you press the white space below the linking panel.
- Fix for disengage from Myst Island bookshelf not working if you previously disengaged from reading a book with the left mouse button.
- Fix for some interactable cursor offset issues after going up or down a ladder.
Patch 2 (28/08/21)
- Players playing Myst with Ultra Wide monitors can now interact with parts of puzzles that were previously cut off.
- Stoneship lighthouse crank will now auto-crank about a third of the way just by clicking on it. This should alleviate some confusion about the crank being unable to charge the generator.
- Removed hover tooltip about ladders for "textures" in graphics settings menu. Turns out ladders and textures have almost nothing to do with each other... weird!!
- Fix for input placement on elevator rotation puzzle in Mechanical.
- Fix for imager room door occasionally trapping players when it opens as people leave in 2D and VR. Someone needed to just come and grease that thing!
- (SPOILER) Fix for white page and other pages on Myst Island not appearing when you complete the game and start a new one within the same game instance. For all you folks trying to accomplish the "Speedy" achievement, this one is for you!
- New optimized DLSS binary to get better performance from Myst.
Patch 1 (27/08/21)
- Fix for Index HMDs sometime showing black screen if exiting the bounds of the intro logo sequence
- Fix for mazerunner not being able to be used at certain locations in the maze
