#linkingbook

Further progress on Labyrinth Age. Been experimenting with lighting effects to gain the old retro style seen in the original Myst, along with the creepy aesthetics of the Basement Maze from the 7th Guest. As you go towards the center, the light colors change from white to yellow, followed by orange, then red.

Pardon the static, something’s not right with Blender’s rendering. Minor issue, fixable.

This is one of several of K’nehtis’ interactive D’ni museum exhibits, meant to teach humans about his culture if anyone were to see its gallery on Sanctuary.

This exhibit would show the difference between Linking and Descriptive Books, with the former selected and lit. An imager in the back shows a video sequence of what kind of book it is. With K’nehtis being a very technical artist and inventor, it looks very precise.

These are some new renders for the updated D’ni museum, now meant to be a structure on the main Age. The central room is to be a dedicated exhibit to the Art and its elements, much like Gehn’s Gateroom on Riven. The last image will be where models of each of the five “Legacy Ages” will be shown, which have to be consulted for clues to access them. Note that the red one already has its model in place, being a simple maze.

If you examine the first two images, you may also notice the D’ni math machine here as well as a greeting sign nearby.

One thing that I haven’t fully decided on is how this game’s interface will work.

To clear something up, I honestly detest the current graphics of today’s 3D games; Often they are so bright and unrealistically lit that the realism is actually lessened than shown, compared to the photorealistic, but prerendered graphics of earlier games, including Myst itself. Furthermore, making a game realtime3D somewhat reduces the “point+click” aspect over all.

My ideal environment would be the graphical style of Riven, or something close to that, with a viewpoint that could take in as much detail as possible without sacrificing clear navigation.

In a nutshell: A non-clunky freeroaming interface that allows close-up still shots of detailed areas and puzzles, and cursor-controlled interactivity, without the oversaturation or distortion from Unreal 4′s default graphics.