Which Ages have Day/Night cycles?

[Vector Cramp]

I've spent over seven hours playing rM:ME and so far I've only seen the time of day change in Myst and Channelwood. Do the other ages have Day/Night Cycles?

[Eat_My_Shortz]

Oh, I've just realised something: I think the day/night cycles are 24-hour cycles based on your system clock. I was wandering around Myst island for hours last night waiting for the sun to come up, and it never did. This morning, I loaded my save and suddenly it's daylight.

So, to answer your question (without having played them all), I think all of the Ages have day/night cycles (unsure about Rime), but they are very very long.

Honestly, I think this is a bad thing (assuming I'm right about this; I haven't properly experimented). I liked wandering around realMyst having the days pass by in a matter of minutes (typically 15-30 minutes for a full cycle). This means that if you only play the game at night, you'll only ever see night. Maybe the cycle is shorter than 24 hours, so it's out of sync with the Earth day. I'll have to experiment more. (I think that was the case in Eder Gira in Uru.)

[belford]

The sun moves in Mechanical, but I think it has a Teledahn-style horizontal orbit. So it never sets, but it can go behind clouds.

BTW -- I'm pretty sure the cloudscape is locked to the fortress rotation. That's a bug, right? :)

[belford]

Myst's day is definitely shorter than 24 hours.

[Eat_My_Shortz]

Wait, now it's night again on Myst?? I'm totally confused. I logged off when it was mid-day and come back an hour later, and now it's midnight again.

So either it's got a day/night cycle of about 2 hours (which progresses even when you're not playing) or I just experienced a strange bug where the time was inverted on my previous play.

So Mechanical doesn't have night? That's disappointing; Mechanical night time was really nice in realMyst.

[Eat_My_Shortz]

Just played Stoneship. It doesn't seem to have Day/Night cycles at all -- it's always night (or it starts out night and the night lasts more than an hour). That's quite disappointing. It's so dark and doesn't feel right. In Myst it was always day with an eerie yellow sky. In realMyst, the sky would change from white to yellow to black on about a 15-minute rotation, which was quite nice. RMME is just dark all the time

Also: Now I know something is buggy about the day/night cycle on Myst Island. It's been night time almost the whole time I've been playing. I've spent hours wandering around Myst Island and I'd say it's been daylight about a quarter of the time, and night the other three quarters. I just linked from Stoneship to Myst and it was just before dawn. I waited and watched the sun rise. Then I linked back to Stoneship, and from there, back to Myst (within a minute), and suddenly, it's the beginning of night time on Myst again!

Day/night cycles are cool but I feel like this game just wants it to be night time all the time! (Guess you gotta have some use for that flashlight!)

[KathAveara]

An observation: Within the Arctic and Antarctic circles, there are months when the sun never rises, and months where the sun never sets.

[Tai'lahr]

Are you suggesting that the nights are longer and the days are shorter in Myst because the Northern hemisphere is currently in the winter months?

[KathAveara]

It's a possibility.

[belford]

The sun and moon movement in Myst appears to be perfectly vertical from horizon to zenith. So it's not a "normal" winter daylight cycle such as you'd see on Earth.

(Similarly, the solar movement in Mechanical, like Teledahn, is perfectly horizontal.)

I think the time setting when you enter Myst is just buggy. But I haven't taken enough observations to be sure of that.

[matthornb]

Kudos to Cyan for all their fixes in the patch/update they've just released. For me at least, the game is running noticeably more smoothly.

Nonetheless, there are a lot of things that can still be improved, and day/night cycles in more ages, as discussed in this thread, would be a major example.

I, too, liked the atmosphere of the day/night cycles in Stoneship, Mechanical, and Selenitic in RealMyst. If Cyan can implement similar cycles for those ages in RM:ME, but make them more realistic (a bit longer, and more visually detailed) this time, they'd make RM:ME a much clearer improvement on RealMyst. I love the night in Channelwood in RM:ME; the large moon and the fireflies make it really something special. Channelwood in RM:ME is undeniably better than it was in RealMyst.

But, with RM:ME it feels like a few steps forward, and one or two steps back. You've improved so many things, but the loss of day/night cycles in Stoneship, Mechanical, and Selenitic, are a glaring area in which RM:ME is actually worse than the old RealMyst. It's among the list of negatives - flawed optimization at first release, $18 price, etc - that have caused a lot of reviewers to trash the game. One review site I noticed has actually posted a dismal 4/10 rating for RealMyst: Masterpiece Edition. Ouch.

This said, I think that RM:ME has the potential to become a fairly strong seller for Cyan, if Cyan will continue improving on it. Most of the complaints that have been raised regarding the game can absolutely be addressed. A lot of them, as of the first update, already have been! My advice: go through the list of complaints that you haven't already dealt with. Try to respond to them. Do what you can to clean up the game during the next month or two - and then maybe after you've made the game that much better, wait another month or two and then put the game on sale a few times, maybe a $15 sale, a $12 sale a while later, etc.

The combination of improvements to the game and periodic sales should win over a lot of people who have been cynical about RM:ME so far. There are people on Steam calling this a 'cash grab' but you can prove that you actually are committed to supporting the game and making it better I think that attitudes will become more positive over time.

[belford]

You've improved so many things, but the loss of day/night cycles in Stoneship, Mechanical, and Selenitic, are a glaring area in which RM:ME is actually worse than the old RealMyst.

I think you are speaking from inside a fan bubble. I bet no reviewers -- other than those on this forum -- have noticed that loss. The fact that the environments of the Ages are *qualitatively* different is a plus, not a minus.

Also: I suspect that the visual quality of Selenitic cannot be maintained with dynamic lighting. Not in this engine, I mean. The shadows in Mechanical and Myst are just not as gorgeous.

I agree that the overall visual quality is not up to modern gaming standards, and that hurts the game in the wider audience. But that seems to be a question of what Unity can support -- or whether Cyan spends the time to port the game to UDK. (And that's not what I want to see them spending time on.)

(* Footnote: Okay, I looked up some reviews and the day/night cycle thing did get noticed by some reviewers. Granted. But there was more grumping about the frame rate.)

[matthornb]

Interesting point of view - the idea that the absence of day/night cycles could be regarded as a positive insofar as it is different.

Yes, it's true that I'm a fan, and I am likely biased. Yes, it's true that players who haven't played RealMyst won't notice the difference in the day/night cycles. And yes, it is true that the #1 gripe about this release was clearly the poor optimization and framerate drops - that is the biggest problem, and it's one that Cyan is already starting to deal with (in the first update).

I'll have to think about this. Certainly others in this thread and elsewhere have described the day/night cycles as something they wanted to see, but it may be just something fans want due to their past expectations, and not something that would matter much to the new players who, let's face it, are essential to the game's success.

[Ehren]

But, with RM:ME it feels like a few steps forward, and one or two steps back. You've improved so many things, but the loss of day/night cycles in Stoneship, Mechanical, and Selenitic, are a glaring area in which RM:ME is actually worse than the old RealMyst.

The day/night cycles in the OLD RealMyst? They didn't even work! It was just glitched and stuck day all the time. This lack of the main feature is why I didn't like the first RealMyst. Therefore if this version has ANY day/night what-so-ever it's an improvement.

[Vector Cramp]

But, with RM:ME it feels like a few steps forward, and one or two steps back. You've improved so many things, but the loss of day/night cycles in Stoneship, Mechanical, and Selenitic, are a glaring area in which RM:ME is actually worse than the old RealMyst.

The day/night cycles in the OLD RealMyst? They didn't even work! It was just glitched and stuck day all the time. This lack of the main feature is why I didn't like the first RealMyst. Therefore if this version has ANY day/night what-so-ever it's an improvement.

What are you talking about? Every age except Channelwood and Rime had one that worked perfectly.