Let's imagine: MYST on the Lynx

[JagChris]

The source for the Jag version is out there in the wild. I'm trying to recover my copy from an old Dropbox account.

 

How feasible would this be? Does the Lynx have the power to do any kind of FMV? Any ways found to get 256 colors in the screen?

[+Stephen Moss]

You could probably produce something similar in terms of genra/play style but I would think the smaller display would make it hard to locate some of the switches and other items if trying for a verbatim copy.

 

Others here are better qualified to answer in regards to FMV, personally I doubt it, not enought storage space on the cart, remember MYST comes on a CD where you have copious storage for the all cut scene data.

 

Again, other here are better placed to comment on the 256 colours, although I would think that depending on the screen you could probably get more than 256 colours by pallette switching but still limited to 256 total at any one time, the question is is it really worth it?

If you take the standard 10 coouors used in the resistor colour code then you get about 28 shades of each (255/9 as I don't think you can get shades of Black), if you were to place all the shade of a particualr colours side by side visually you may only notice any real change says every 4 or 5 shades so 256 colours is probably sufficient for most things.

[JagChris]

21 minutes ago, Stephen Moss said:

Others here are better qualified to answer in regards to FMV, personally I doubt it, not enought storage space on the cart, remember MYST comes on a CD where you have copious storage for the all cut scene data.

Thanks for your thoughts. Remember we're in the modern age of SD cards and BennVenn El Cheapo etc. The cart space thing is a different ball game now.

 

the screen size and resolution would be a problem. Would it be worth it? Who knows. Maybe we can ponder that here. 

 

[LordKraken]

Getting more than 16 colors is achievable, as a couple of people already showed in a couple of games and demos... Now you CANNOT do that with any image out there. The image needs to be created in a certain way since you cannot have more than 16 colours per line. 

 

This would be a LOT of work to just get one image taken from Myst to display nicely on the Lynx. And the games is made of hundred of screens... If I would take on that challenge, and considering that Myst screens are made of different tones of just a few colors, I would try to simply convert them to 16 colors, using dithering. I think the result would be decent.

 

Now as for having movie, with standard cart, I think you can forget about that. At Lynx Screen resolution, on a 512k cartridge, you can store maybe up to 100 images. That would be 10-12 seconds of video.

Edited March 18, 2022 by LordKraken

[Ninjabba]

To port a project like Myst to Lynx sounds like a madman's quest. Straight up downsampling the pre-rendered backgrounds will probably look ugly and will need to be retouched manually to make it look convincing for the Lynx screen, and then there are the 1000 other challenges to work around.

 

I've been toying with the idea of having an adventure game with pre-rendered 3D backgrounds for a while (been reading some detective/scifi books that get me inspired), which then would be of course optimized to render for the Lynx. At least you get the freedom of tweaking a result until it looks crisp for that little screen.

I would still not use a first person view like in Myst though, to simplify the project scope.

Edited March 18, 2022 by Ninjabba

[Flojomojo]

At it's heart, MYST is a HyperCard stack and the gameplay could be realized in static screens like Deja Vu or Shadowgate. 

 

Most people would say the high resolution (for the time) rendered graphics are the reason to play, and I don't disagree. A "demake" that distills it down to just the puzzle-hunting would really boil it down to the fundamentals. 

 

Ever play the GameBoy Color version of Dragon's Lair? Digital Eclipse redrew key frames of the animated cartoon in a highly simplified style, leaving nothing but the Simon-like gameplay. It's hilarious. 

 

Before it was ported to iPhone, I toyed with the idea of using RPG Maker to construct a tile-based, 2D version of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, so it would play like a SNES Final Fantasy game instead of the 3D game from Xbox. It would lack the graphical charm, but the story and statistics could easily be moved over. 

 

I think it's interesting to rethink media in different ways. Usually it's done by adding on lots of fancy graphics and chrome, but stripping things down to just the component elements can be cool too.

 

That said, I would never play MYST on Lynx, but I'd enjoy looking at the screenshots. 

[PFG 9000]

It's an interesting thought, and I can't offer any insight on the technical side of the discussion.  But the draw of Myst, at least when it was still relevant, was in searching the beautifully detailed environments for clues or points of interaction.  People would talk about this new game where they noticed new details every time they played.  Those beautiful details were a massive part of the appeal.  I don't believe the heart and soul of the game would survive if it had to be scaled down to work on the Lynx, even if the game was technically playable.

[Flojomojo]

I don’t disagree with you — but MYST is a really clear example of style over substance, especially since the style looks so dated nowadays.  
 

Think “Shadow of the Beast,” which was a real Lynx game, cut down from the Amiga original. It was dazzling back then, but very few people liked it for the gameplay and hardly anyone would want to play it today. 

[JagChris]

48 minutes ago, Flojomojo said:

Think “Shadow of the Beast,” which was a real Lynx game, cut down from the Amiga original. It was dazzling back then, but very few people liked it for the gameplay and hardly anyone would want to play it today. 

From what I've seen its considered a must have by most I've seen these days. 

 

One even saying Psygnosis improved the gameplay from the Amiga version. I've never played that version though watched videos of it. 

 

I think the Lynx version is beautiful. But hard as nails for me.

 

But a little OT.

Edited March 21, 2022 by JagChris

[Lostdragon]

5 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

I don’t disagree with you — but MYST is a really clear example of style over substance, especially since the style looks so dated nowadays.  
 

Think “Shadow of the Beast,” which was a real Lynx game, cut down from the Amiga original. It was dazzling back then, but very few people liked it for the gameplay and hardly anyone would want to play it today. 

It's cut down in terms of missing the flying section and ending screens, the EKG life meter replaced by a health bar.. but it's not a cut back version per say. 

 

The running animation frames have been increased, there's some nice scaling effects, level design/layout  has been redesigned with new traps and features. 

 

Bosses redesigned/replaced.. 

 

Enemy A. I  tweaked, you now have a basic inventory system. 

 

 

But... the games flawed core mechanics still come through, sure in the Lynx version you get the gun far earlier than the Amiga original, but it has limited ammunition and it's the only means of defeating the Hydra, use the ammo up before you reach the Hydra, you can't kill it. 

 

 

There's also no password system, a massive oversight for a handheld title, but, once you know what your supposed to do, you can complete the game in under an hour. 

 

 

It's a fantastic showcase for the system, just as the Amiga original was for that platform, but no matter how you dress it up, it's an extremely shallow game. 

 

Myst was another product of it's time, relying so much on  it's high definition visuals. 

 

Trying to recreate it on the low resolution, limited colour range screen of the Lynx would be a proverbial fools errand, better to simply design an adventure well suited to the system and with far more depth. 

 

So many FMV games really suffered on the Sega CD as the system just wasn't suited to it, poor resolution, only 64 colours on screen, 128 I believe with clever coding, but you still had a grainy, pixelated mess. 

 

 

 

[Lostdragon]

On 3/18/2022 at 9:39 AM, LordKraken said:

Getting more than 16 colors is achievable, as a couple of people already showed in a couple of games and demos... Now you CANNOT do that with any image out there. The image needs to be created in a certain way since you cannot have more than 16 colours per line. 

 

This would be a LOT of work to just get one image taken from Myst to display nicely on the Lynx. And the games is made of hundred of screens... If I would take on that challenge, and considering that Myst screens are made of different tones of just a few colors, I would try to simply convert them to 16 colors, using dithering. I think the result would be decent.

 

Now as for having movie, with standard cart, I think you can forget about that. At Lynx Screen resolution, on a 512k cartridge, you can store maybe up to 100 images. That would be 10-12 seconds of video.

I think Roadblasters used something like 24 colours? 

 

Lemmings used different palattes for it's split screen mode. 

 

 

Awesome Golf used a lot more than 16 colours for it's title screen. 

 

Maybe if someone wanted to experiment with FMV on a standard Lynx cart, it could be used for an intro sequence? 

 

 

Always remember these 2 late MD games  for the intros and they had great games behind them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TheDevil'sCompass]

Here's an example of a Myst demake. This one is for the Apple II. The LoRes graphic screen (40x48 and 15 colors) was used. I'm not a fan of this since you pretty much have to know ahead of time what you are looking at to decipher this demake. However, it does give an idea of what a demake could look like.

Apple II "Mist" Demake (deater.net)

 

Here's the author's analysis of the various graphic modes available to the Apple II. None of the resolutions match the Lynx's 160x102, but it's food for thought. The Apple Double Hi-Res screen of 140x192 with 15 colors and the Apple IIgs' Super Hi-Res screen of 320x200 with 4096 colors are the only ones that I'd really consider useable.

Apple II "Mist" Graphics Tradeoffs (deater.net)

 

I was never really a fan of this game, but the draw was definitely the visuals.

[LordKraken]

2 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

I think Roadblasters used something like 24 colours? 

 

Lemmings used different palattes for it's split screen mode. 

 

 

Awesome Golf used a lot more than 16 colours for it's title screen. 

 

That's what I'm saying, it's doable and many demos as well as a few games already did it.

 

The problem is that you need to put a lot of love and care for every single screen (although you could automatized that with scripts I imagine). It would also produce a lot of extra data (one palette per line or so) multiplied by the hundred of screens the game contains...

 

Not imposssible, but not the funniest thing to work on, and that for a game that is not all that great in the end.

 

edit: Thanks for the link to the Apple II demake. This is a nice effort but let's face it, it looks horrible! I'm guessing the apple II has a fixed palette so that was to be expected. The Lynx would do much better since the palette can be created from 4096 colors, so you end up with screens that are easily recognizable.

Edited March 21, 2022 by LordKraken

[Lostdragon]

11 minutes ago, LordKraken said:

That's what I'm saying, it's doable and many demos as well as a few games already did it.

 

The problem is that you need to put a lot of love and care for every single screen (although you could automatized that with scripts I imagine). It would also produce a lot of extra data (one palette per line or so) multiplied by the hundred of screens the game contains...

 

Not imposssible, but not the funniest thing to work on, and that for a game that is not all that great in the end.

 

edit: Thanks for the link to the Apple II demake. This is a nice effort but let's face it, it looks horrible! I'm guessing the apple II has a fixed palette so that was to be expected. The Lynx would do much better since the palette can be created from 4096 colors, so you end up with screens that are easily recognizable.

The other factor is, when the clever commercial coders were getting more from the Lynx, there was a far bigger market/audience for their efforts, than today's Retro/collectors market. 

 

 

I don't follow the Lynx demo scene, but it struck me somewhat i could count the number of commercial games that used more than 16 colours on the fingers of 1 hand. 

 

 

It reminded me of why Comlynx support was dropped from various titles, devs just couldn't justify the resources needed to include it, as so few users would use it. 

 

Just because the potential is there to do something, doesn't mean it's a great idea to attempt it. 

 

Are we going to see suggestions for the 7th Guest on Lynx at this rate? ?

[LordKraken]

To me the bigger problem when porting that kind of game is the extra coding for all the little puzzles...

[JagChris]

That Apple II demake is interesting.

[PFG 9000]

14 hours ago, TheDevil'sCompass said:

Here's an example of a Myst demake. This one is for the Apple II. The LoRes graphic screen (40x48 and 15 colors) was used. I'm not a fan of this since you pretty much have to know ahead of time what you are looking at to decipher this demake. However, it does give an idea of what a demake could look like.

Apple II "Mist" Demake (deater.net)

 

Here's the author's analysis of the various graphic modes available to the Apple II. None of the resolutions match the Lynx's 160x102, but it's food for thought. The Apple Double Hi-Res screen of 140x192 with 15 colors and the Apple IIgs' Super Hi-Res screen of 320x200 with 4096 colors are the only ones that I'd really consider useable.

Apple II "Mist" Graphics Tradeoffs (deater.net)

 

I was never really a fan of this game, but the draw was definitely the visuals.

Whoa, that's a really cool project!  I can't see anybody having any sort of success navigating that port if they weren't familiar with the original though.  People constantly get stuck while playing the versions of Myst that don't make your eyes bleed.  Those visuals aren't going to do the gameplay any favors.  I think a Lynx port might look slightly better if it pushed the handheld to its limits.  But it would be equally unplayable. 

 

Thanks for the links - that project perfectly illustrates the challenges a Lynx port would face.

[LordKraken]

14 hours ago, PFG 9000 said:

Thanks for the links - that project perfectly illustrates the challenges a Lynx port would face.

I can assure you that a lynx port would still look much much better  

[TheDevil'sCompass]

11 hours ago, LordKraken said:

I can assure you that a lynx port would still look much much better  

The best way to find out is to actually do some examples. Or you could've looked at the 2nd link that I provided and you'd get a good idea of where a Lynx conversion would actually be. Because I can assure you that the Lynx conversion would not be as good as the Apple IIgs Super Hi-Res screen that has a higher resolution (320 x 200) and 256 on-screen colors from a palette of 4096.

 

Here are some quick examples I did using a photo editor. The original photo from the game along with two 160x102 versions. One has 16 colors and the other has 32 colors since I can't find how far you could actually push the Lynx in regards to maximum on-screen colors. 

 

 

 

[LordKraken]

I was referring to the actual existing apple II port, obviously...

 

As you can see in the different rendering tests from deater.net, the hi-resolution/hi-color version takes 32kb per image. So I don't know what the reasonable size for an Apple-II game is, but 100mb+ probably isn't. In other words, it's like making a single image hi-color conversion for the lynx and telling the world that the game can look like that. In theory yes, but in practice very unlikely because of other factors (production time, data size, etc.)

 

12 hours ago, TheDevil'sCompass said:

Here are some quick examples I did using a photo editor. The original photo from the game along with two 160x102 versions. One has 16 colors and the other has 32 colors since I can't find how far you could actually push the Lynx in regards to maximum on-screen colors. 

Not the best image to test, try with more constrasted pictures and you will see that converting them to 16-colors does not give very satisfying results on most of them. Still better than the apple-II hand drawn conversion though  

Edited March 23, 2022 by LordKraken

[TheDevil'sCompass]

21 hours ago, LordKraken said:

I was referring to the actual existing apple II port, obviously...

 

As you can see in the different rendering tests from deater.net, the hi-resolution/hi-color version takes 32kb per image. So I don't know what the reasonable size for an Apple-II game is, but 100mb+ probably isn't. In other words, it's like making a single image hi-color conversion for the lynx and telling the world that the game can look like that. In theory yes, but in practice very unlikely because of other factors (production time, data size, etc.)

 

Not the best image to test, try with more constrasted pictures and you will see that converting them to 16-colors does not give very satisfying results on most of them. Still better than the apple-II hand drawn conversion though  

If higher contrasted images are going to give worse results than the example I did, how exactly is that a good thing for the Lynx? Your first post on this subject mentioned downsampling the image with 16 colors, exactly like my example image. Are you saying this can't be done on the Lynx? If not, why don't you show us a good representation of a Myst image that is doable on the Lynx.

[+karri]

I also had a go with the image. Here it is in 160x102 resolution but scaled up to 320x204 with no interpolation.

Just a bit added kontrast and posterisation before converting it to indexed 16 colours image.

[LordKraken]

Try that one if you dare

 

 

3 hours ago, TheDevil'sCompass said:

Are you saying this can't be done on the Lynx? If not, why don't you show us a good representation of a Myst image that is doable on the Lynx.

It is doable of course, the discussion is purely about what quality we could expect from it. And while "true color" images are possible on the Lynx, it would required a LOT of pre-work and additionnal data. And what I was trying to say was that the image you picked give relatively good result when you convert it to 16 colors. Other can be trickier like the one I just posted above

[JagChris]

Well this was more of a fun thought experiment but perhaps the engine can get used for something more manageable.

 

However Dropbox tech support won't respond to me.

[agradeneu]

Not a good choice of a game for the Lynx. First, it's on 1000 systems. Second, its not that great. Third, it's surely not a great game for a handheld console that lacks a mouse.