Missing - the Intro movie to Riven

[Kero]

Shorah all -

I have the 10th Anniversary DVD Edition of Myst ME/Riven/Exile. I recently tried installing these on my Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit Laptop. All three use QuickTime 6.3. Exile installed fine and I have had no problems with the movies in it. Riven install seemed to be ok - until I started the game.

A picture of Atrus in K'Veer flashed on the screen and then I found myself in an unbarred Riven trap cell. I poked my nose out of it - looked around - found the Riven guard at the bottom of the cliff. In other words I completely lost the details of the introduction movie. I'm sure you know the ones I'm talking about.

My question is - is this something known to happen when you install Riven on Win 7 (64)? Does it happen with only the intro movie or will this happen with all the other QT movies in the game? If yes - then the game is borked and can't be played. Unless anyone knows of a fix?

FYI: I decided not to install Myst Masterpiece because I already have realMyst (purchased online at Big Fish Games) and I know it works just fine.

Kero

[Magic88889]

Quicktime issues are a GIANT problem with both Myst and Riven. There are some huge compatibility problems with all of it. I've seen some people post workarounds, but to be honest with you, they all sounded overly complicated and as far as I could tell, never worked 100%.

My advise to you is to repurchase them from either gog.com or Steam. I did that years ago because I was having the exact same problem, and haven't had a problem since.

[AlanD]

That does sound like a Quicktime issue.

Are you sure it is using Quicktime 6.3? I've seen other commentators say that this particular edition uses 4.1.2... In particular this 4-page thread


http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/65 ... ters/page3

Where wstrohm sorted out his issues by installing Quicktime 4.1.2, and the core of the solution is the file quicktime.qts, which he got out of the Riven Vista patch which is still available at this site http://www.gamefront.com/files/8014203/ ... sta-Patch/

Put the quicktime.qts file in the Riven folder - wstrohm reports that this did the trick for him. Recommendations for the compatibility tab are as follows:

- Run in Windows 98/ME compatibility (essential to avoid black screen and then crash to desktop)
- Disable visual themes
- Disable desktop composition
- Disable display scaling on high DPI settings - very important (leaving this one unticked seems to cause all the crashes)
- Run this program as the administrator

from this page http://www.mystcommunity.com/board/inde ... cl-64-bit/


In addition, on multi-cpu machines, the earlier versions of Riven require you to take this additional step: As soon as the program starts (i.e. while Atrus is talking to you) alt-tab out, run task manager and set the affinity for the riven.exe process to just one cpu. If you don't the game will freeze.

I don't think you are seeing this problem though.

Incidentally, with the 10th anniversary DVD you have a 32-bit installer which gets around the problem with earlier versions of Riven, that they only have a 16-bit installer which plain refuses to work at all on Vista or Windows 7....

I hope this is of some use to you. As I've said before, I have all the Myst-universe game editions that I originally purchased installed on this Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit laptop and running successfully, so I know it can be done

[Vector Cramp]

My advise to you is to repurchase them from either gog.com or Steam. I did that years ago because I was having the exact same problem, and haven't had a problem since.

My advice is to get the gog version as Steam's has a glitch in a certain area where it warps you to a different place when you try to turn around in the caves.

[korovev]

You can also run it with the latest daily build of ScummVM. I’m not sure if I can post instructions or a link here (though it was mentioned in the MOULa forum a few years ago).

[Kero]

Thank you all for your responses.

@AlanD - yes the version of QuickTime that was installed is 6.3. Says so on the disks and on the QuickTime player that was installed. Which is kind of funny - I installed Myst III first and no player - as far as I know - was installed. When I started playing the game, everything - movies et al - worked fine. I took this as a go ahead to install Riven since it used the same version of QT. Thinking that all the necessary files had already been installed for Myst III I declined the installation with Riven. So you might understand my surprise when I got the "Riven cannot run because QT files are missing splash screen", when I started the game. Back to the DVD and click on Install QT 6.3. The full QT player and its files were installed in my SysWOW64 folder (not the System 32 folder it was supposed to go to). I thought I had done something wrong when I discovered this so I de-installed then re-installed, this time making sure the path was to the Sys 32 folder. Everything still wound up in SysWOW64 - go figure.

Bottom line - I do not have access to QT 4.1.2 so wstrohm's solution is not available to me. I did look into getting the GOG's Riven but a number of negative reviews vis-à-vis the mediocre resolution of their compressed version sort of put me off taking that route. I'll admit I'm a bit spoiled. I first played the newly released Riven on a Mac Quadra - talk about breathtakingly gorgeous!! In 2003 I got my PC desktop so I could play URU. When the 10th Anniversary set came out I got it so I could play Myst and Riven on a PC. My Mac has since gone to that big computer haven in the sky and my PC desktop is showing its age (kind of like me ). Which is why I was hoping to transfer all my Myst games to my "newer" laptop. Oh well - 5 out of six ain't bad. I'll just keep playing Riven on my XP PC until she passes on. Maybe, by the time she does a workable solution will have been found.

[AlanD]

Kero - you don't need a complete install of 4.1.2, just the quicktime.qts file that is contained in the zipfile from the Riven Vista patch from the Gamefront page.

Download Riven_Vista.zip, use Winzip or whatever to extract just the QuickTime.qts file and put that in your Riven folder. That is the only bit of Quicktime that Riven DVD needs

Put it this way, I've used the analogous fix for both Myst ME and Riven CD on my machine, which has QuickTime 7 installed.

[Kero]

YES - /me pumps her fists into the air -

I did what you said AlanD and it WORKS

I was even able to uninstall the QuickTime player (don't need - didn't want) and everything still works.

Six out of six working Myst games on my Win7(64) laptop and you are looking at one very happy old lady - Thank you very much. With MOULa down for awhile guess what I'll be doing with all my retirement free time -

[AlanD]

Thanks, kero, that brought a big smile to my face. It is always good to know that a fix has worked and been appreciated, and also we now have extra confirmation that the process works on different machines. Quicktime has a distressing tendency to be sensitive, especially the earlier versions, so this is all very valuable.

I searched around when I first got a Windows 7 machine to see how I could install the Myst games that I had originally purchased, gathered information and experimented until I had all seven games (Myst 1-5 plus RealMyst and Uru PotS) installed and working. Riven CD is the most difficult. Recently there have been several questions posted on these issues so I dug out my notes

I still like Riven the best of all the solo Cyan games - later games have better graphics but lack the grand setting of the Riven landscape and the feeling of immersion that comes (I think) from the full live-action cast.

Lets hope that the Starry Expanse guys get all the help they need to finish soon

[korovev]

For anyone who would like to try using ScummVM: here is how to add Riven to the ScummVM Launcher (you’ll need the development build, not the stable one) and here is the list of the required datafiles.
The game is launched from the ScummVM Launcher; saving and loading is done with ctrl-F5, and you can skip videos with escape.

[Agesage]

You can also run it with the latest daily build of ScummVM. I’m not sure if I can post instructions or a link here (though it was mentioned in the MOULa forum a few years ago).

Wow! Riven runs great in ScummVM. Even the journal works now. No more flipping back and forth to reach the right page. Only one "small" problem... The menu doesn't work, so you can't save/load. Or am I missing something?

EDIT: Yes I missed something. You can save/load through ScummVM's own menu.

[korovev]

The only bug I’ve found so far is at the back end of the prison cell secret tunnel, in front of the sea where, if you turn, you see the ‘sea effect’, cannot walk, and if you turn again end up back at the entrance.

[Agesage]

That's actually a bug in the Steam version of the game. I tested them both, and the GOG version doesn't have that bug.

The only glitch I've seen so far is some horizontal lines in one of the Sunner animations. I haven't finished the game in ScummVM yet, so there may be more. But from what I've seen, this is the way to play Riven right now: Buy the GOG version and use ScummVM.

[korovev]

And Myst ME as well

By the way, is RivenX unmaintained now?

[Agesage]

Never heard of RivenX, I'm a PC-only guy. But I found some interesting ScummVM stuff on the Steam Riven forum. I quote:

Be aware that playing Riven with ScummVM is not perfect (this is why I'm still looking for solutions to get working animations and seamless transitions between still images and videos):
- when you turn left/right or look up/down in Riven, there is a little transition effect missing in ScummVM emulation
- ambiant sounds are supposed to fade in/out when they start/stop, with ScummVM emulation when you leave a room and reach the outside, the indoor ambiant sound will stop and the outdoor sound start without fading out/in. This is more annoying that you might imagine
- sometimes ScummVM internal save mechanism crashes

What ScummVM does:
- no more random crashes (well, ScummVM does occasionnaly crash when you save)
- all animations are played and well placed on screen (perfect integration in still images)
- you can turn pages in Atrus' diary one by one

I can confirm the sounds don't fade out. Ahh this game deserves so much better than the half-broken editions available now. If the source code is still available, how hard could it be to recompile the game for modern PC's? They got it working on iOS!