Tales from Executable Ocean

realMyst as proto-Mudpie?

I’m obsessed with squeezing the last few tricks out of realMyst, so I occasionally spend an hour or so trying silly things. I’ve always wondered why there’s so much more stuff in the init.dat files that came with the realMyst demo than there is in the same files for the real game -- references to all sorts of behavior, and so on and so forth.  So I thought I would try the following: Copy the three dni files from the real game into the demo directory, and see what happens.  Maybe the demo exe file would mesh with the bigger dni files from the real game and voila!  We would be able to jump, swim, and shift in and out of third person mode!  

No.  You can guess what happens: The demo doesn’t run.  Cyan appears to have renamed a bunch of files that are in the dni files, so the demo exe program can’t find them.

BUT! In the process of doing this, I noticed something: The demo realMyst.exe file is WAY bigger than the game realMyst.exe file. Some of this comes, I think, from packing the dll files into the exe file (does that make sense? I’m not a programmer, so I’m guessing, but there are no dll files in the realMystTest directory, so they must be somewhere). But what else might be in there, I wondered. And I recalled something that Marack had posted in Rivenguild (which I use as a stupid realMyst trick). Marack noted that there were some extra references in the realMyst.exe file, which produce strange effects when you put them in some of the init.dat files. Awhile ago, I had tried to find those references in the realMyst.exe file but couldn’t; I suddenly realized that I had been looking in the wrong file. So I opened up the realMyst.exe (demo version) file.

WOHBA! A veritable treasure trove of strange and tantalizing references, many of which I believe are insights into Mudpie. None of them is earthshattering or totally new, but they give strong evidence to support some of the guesses we’ve been making based on Cyan comments. Now, it might be that all of them are just Plasma/Headspin leftovers, but I don’t think so -- there are too many references to actions and items that we’ve learned will be in Mudpie.  

So I've laid out lots of my discoveries below.  Some refer to things that are in realMyst, while others refer to things that look like they'll be in Mudpie.  On to the juicy stuff!

1) The Camera

realMyst is always first person – you see the action from the point of view of the player. We’ve been trying to find a way to get a third person view, and I think I know what it is, although it is probably crippled in the realMyst.exe programs. It is CamMode – here are some of the references that are in the exe file:

CamMode:FirstPerson
CamMode:LeftSideView
CamMode:RightSideView
CamMode:TopView
CamMode:LeadFromFront
CamMode:StraightBehind
CamMode:CloseBehindShoulder

I’ve tried putting those sorts of references in various init.dat files, but either nothing happens or the game doesn’t run.

2) More stupid realMyst tricks?

As I noted above, Marack from RG came up with two ways of adding something to the realMyst init.dat files and changing the game. One of these involves adding a couple of lines (actually, they are data for the exe file to use) in the game_init.dat file; the other changes a line in the win_init.dat file.

Here are all the references I found that can, it appears, be used in the game_init.dat file. Many of them are references that are already in that file:

textures
gravity
colorscale
ambientScale

camspeed

But there are others that look like they could, possibly, be added:

nowater
shadow
persp
light
lodall
lodcolor
camfovmult
fogcolor
fogdensity
fogdepth

lodall and lodcolor are the ones Marack used for the color trick.  lonelyto25 has discovered how camfovmult works -- you can take a look at the results in stupid realMyst tricks.  I’ve tried using some of the other ones,  but no luck. You need a 1 or 0 following the reference get the program to notice the addition, and in some cases the result is a total freeze.

For the win_init.dat file, Marack suggested substituting “firstpersondrunken” for “firstpersondeadcenter” – this gives the “drunken” stupid realMyst trick. Here are all the “firstperson” references in the realMyst.exe demo file:

firstpersondeadcenter
firstpersonclassicplus
firstpersondrunken
firstpersonnewmousenosteer
firstpersonnewmouse
firstperson

I’ve tried them all. “Classicplus” gives a zero dead zone (that is, moving the mouse always moves the camera view); lonelyto25 found that "firstpersonnewmousenosteer" makes the mouse become semi-transparent when you move it to the edge of the dead zone; I can’t figure out what the other ones do.

3) Multiplayer capability

There are several references to a multiplayer mode in the realMyst.exe demo file. I don’t know if this means that realMyst was playable that way (for Cyan) or whether that’s just left over from Mudpie practice. Here’s a few of these references, where %s is a stand-in for something like a player number:

multiplayer command %s
Adding Player %s to your game.
Player character %s is exiting the game

4) Mudpie actions

There are tons of references to types of movements, some of them very sophisticated. These can't be from realMyst, unless we really can bring life to Mr. m3dplayer.  So, can we say, Mudpie?

Simple actions

jump
windup
slash
fire
stab
strike
fall
push
airborn
grounded
stop
run
freefall

Complicated actions

climb_jump_off
climb_right
climb_left
climb_down
climb_up
climb_wait
crouch_up
crouch_down
get_up
back_up_fast
back_up
wall_collide
turn_right_fast
turn_right
turn_left_fast
turn_left
long_jump
short_jump
bwd
fwd
turn_right_rough
turn_left_rough
bwd_rough
fwd_rough

Swimming actions

splash_down
surface_jump
surface_wait
surface_swim_fast
surface_swim
dive_down
dive_wait
dive_swim
exit_water
enter_water
swim_turn_right
swim_turn_left
sb:Switch to surface mode
sb:Switch to dive mode

Actions using hands

rhandpickup
lhandpickup
throw_hard
throw_mid
throw_soft
switch_hands
put_in_right
put_in_left pull_out_right
pull_out_left
drop_right
drop_left
pick_up_left
pick_up_right
unclip_light
clip_light

Riding actions

RiderBrain
riding

5) Mudpie inventory

We know Mudpie will have an inventory. The following references give some substance to what it will be like:

Player_FlashLight_On
pouch
backpack
belt_clip_dummy
InventoryEquipItem
InventoryPutAwayItem
InventoryDropItem
Player_Inv_Delete_Item
Player_Inv_Add_Item
INV_ThrowThings
INV_LightLight
INV_LoadLight
INV_UnclipThings
INV_ClipThings
INV_ReleaseThings
INV_ShowThings
INV_HideThings

6) Firemarbles in Mudpie

There are no firemarbles in realMyst, correct? Well, there appear to be some in Mudpie.  Here are some references:

Firemarble absorbed
fmcollector

7) Brain, brain, what is brain?

There are lots of references to brains and brain states. I think this is the game’s way of telling the program how to perceive things, or how certain commands are translated into actions. For example, doing something while you are on land (normal brain state) might produce an action that is different from what would happen if you were swimming (swim brain state). Here are the different brain states:

BrainSetToDll
BrainSetToNormal
BrainSetToSwim
BrainSetToClimb
BrainSetToScarab
BrainPush
BrainPop
BrainTravelTo
BrainEndTravel
RiderBrain

Notice one that is in the middle: Scarab.  There are lots of Scarab references.  Dusante in the Mudpie Obsession forum suggested this might be a digger, or perhaps it's just a vehicle of some sort -- note the references to "get in", "turn left", "drive fwd", and so forth:

ScarabRoot..scarab_wait
ScarabRoot..scarab_get_out
ScarabRoot..scarab_get_in_right
ScarabRoot..scarab_get_in_left
ScarabRoot..scarab_turn_right
ScarabRoot..scarab_turn_left
ScarabRoot..scarab_drive_bwd
ScarabRoot..scarab_drive_fwd

 

Well, that's all for now.  If anyone gets any of these tricks to work, let me know and I'll add it to the eggsite.