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How Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM | War Stories | Ars Technica

Ars Technica

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  • Recommended by 4 people: 4 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2020 to 2023.
  • Presented by Rand Miller, co-founder of Cyan Worlds
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 6 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

1.9M views6 years ago4 recommendations

Game developmentHistory and cultureGame programmingPostmortems and making-ofHistory of computing

Rand Miller recounts the technical challenges of developing Myst using HyperCard and compressing its assets to run on early CD-ROM drives.

Cyan Worlds co-founder Rand Miller goes behind the scenes of the development of one of the best selling PC games of all time, Myst. The HyperCard-developed title ran into some snags when trying to run on the CD-ROM format. "I had a really powerful Mac, with a lot of memory and a lot of hard drive space, and we were still working in mud," said Rand, discussing the game's performance early-on. Rand and his brother, Robyn, compressed the image and audio data as much as they could so the game could run smoothly on 1x CD-ROM drives. Connect with Ars Technica: Visit ArsTechnica.com: arstechnica.com Follow Ars Technica on Facebook: facebook.com/arstechnica Follow Ars Technica on Google+: plus.google.com/+ArsTechnica/videos Follow Ars Technica on Twitter: twitter.com/arstechnica How Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM | War Stories | Ars Technica

Why it's here

4 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as a fascinating look into retro game optimization and the constraints of early CD-ROM technology.

nodesocketon Hacker News • Recommends

On “How Prince of Persia Defeated Apple II's Memory Limitations [video]”

Related, the video How Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM1 is actually more fascinating and entertaining in my opinion. 1 link to this video

anonsivalley652on Hacker News • Recommends

On “HyperCard: What Could Have Been (2002)”

The game Myst was originally written in HC, and a game engine (Mohawk) had to be written for Windows to provide similar functionality in order to port it. There's a documentary about it: link to this video Definitely one of the rare indie game success stories. They really poured themselves into making it as awesome and expansive as technology would allow. IIRC, they're still writing games for fun.

clusmoreon Hacker News • Recommends

On “When Douglas Adams wrote about Hypercard”

If you want to hear more about this from the man himself, Rand Miller has a great video with Ars Technica: link to this video And extended edition: link

rideontimeon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Demoscene accepted as UNESCO cultural heritage in The Netherlands”

CD-ROM didn't make Myst a no-brainer, as Rand Miller discusses in this excellent Ars Technica piece: link to this video More info in the extended cut starting at this timestamp: link

gdubson Hacker News • Mentions

On “Beyond Cyberpunk: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to the Future (1991)”

I love the artistry and creativity around the HyperCard community. Years ago I stumbled on this (wonderfully dorky) episode of Computer Chronicles, that focuses on HyperCard: link I love how the used-car salesman created his own application to help potential buyers find the right car. This was truly the “bicycle of the mind” era for computing; the user base was fairly self-selected, and people wanted to take full advantage of this new tool. 1. The range of HyperCard was pretty amazing — famously, Myst was originally created with it: link to this video 1: link

gwabon Hacker News • Mentions

On “I found a 55 year old bug in the first Lunar Lander game”

One of the creators of Myst (Rand Miller) credited the original game with being why he got into game development in the first place 1 Myst inspired many people to go into computer science and game development as well, so it's interesting to see how much of a snowball effect this Lunar Lander game had 1 link to this video