How Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM | War Stories | Ars Technica
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters point to it as the first-person story of how Myst grew out of HyperCard and fit on CD-ROM, especially in threads about HyperCard and retro game constraints.
What it is
Myst co-creator Rand Miller recounts how the HyperCard-built game struggled to run on 1x CD-ROM drives. He and his brother Robyn compressed image and audio data heavily to get acceptable performance. Part of Ars Technica's War Stories series.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2020 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec nodesocket · 2020-03 · on “How Prince of Persia Defeated Apple II's Memory Limitations [video]”
Related, the video How Myst Almost Couldn't Run on CD-ROM[1] is actually more fascinating and entertaining in my opinion. [1] [this video]
Recommends anonsivalley652 · 2020-02 · 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: [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.
Recommends clusmore · 2023-01 · 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: [this video] And extended edition: [LINK]
Recommends rideontime · 2023-07 · 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: [this video] More info in the extended cut starting at this timestamp: [LINK]
Cites gdubs · 2020-04 · 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: [this video] 1: [LINK]
Cites gwab · 2024-06 · 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] [this video]