Update: Riven X 0.8.3 is now available.
Riven X 0.8 is a massive release, with nearly every puzzle in the game implemented and a long list of improvements and bug fixes to the engine. See the release notes for all the details. I know it’s been a long time coming, but I think you will find it to be the strongest, most polished release yet. I’m also hoping it will resolve a number of graphics issues some people have been seeing on older hardware as well as on Intel graphics hardware.
I now turn my attention to a short list of remaining puzzles and core game features to essentially complete the game. This work will be released as Riven X 0.9, which aims to be a completely playable from start to finish version of the game. I expect this work to take around a month and a half. Once Riven X 0.9 is out, I will advertise the beta a little bit more to gather as much feedback as possible to make sure Riven X works great on as many configurations as possible. The 1.0 release cycle will thus focus on polish, bug fixing, interface and installation improvements, packages, and all the things one must do for a final release.
Finally, thank you to all of those who have tested Riven X so far and contributed feedback or bugs. Your help and support is greatly appreciated.
Now go on and give Riven X 0.8 a try!
Download Riven X 0.8.3 (4.0 MiB).
-
Awwwwesome! Updating QuickTime right now so I can give it a swing! Thanks for all your hard work on this!
-
Just ordered Riven from Amazon so I can try out 0.8
Looking forward to the final release of Riven X!
Thanks Jean-François!
-
I downloaded it, and everything seems to work perfectly!
-
Wicked! The Fire-Marble puzzle works now! I can continue! XD
What a timely release. Excellent work!
-
Really nice work. Grafic glitches are gone. At the first look a really good release.
-
Sweeeeeeeeeeet!!! loving the work you’re doing!!! Grafic glitches are gone here too! can’t wait for the finish…
-
Thanks so much! Fabulous.
-
Thank you very much for continuing to develop this!
I have one small ‘feature request’: the original Riven allowed you to skip movies by pressing the space bar. It would be nice if Riven X allowed you to skip movies as well in some fashion (the specific key isn’t important).
Thanks for the good work!
-
This is so awesome. I discovered your Riven X project quite by accident, and it’s just fantastic. It really gives me a warm feeling… very nostalgic… just great.
I have the 5 CD version and it’s asking me to reinstall my CDs to the hard drive again. I see all the CD files are still in the user:Application Support: Riven X folder… so I’m wondering do I really have to re-install? or is there’s another option?
Again… thank you, thank you, thank you.
-
David: movie skipping is planned for the final 1.0 release.
-
David B.: I changed how Riven X keeps track of editions in 0.8 and will likely do so again before 1.0 is released. During beta, I make no guarantees not to force re-installs or not to break anything, so yes you have to re-install. Note however that there will not be any duplicate data, the old files will be overwritten.
-
@Jean-Francois Roy: Great!
-
Thank you SO MUCH for your continued efforts on this project. I really can’t even express just how much it means to me to be able to play Riven again on my current computer—I haven’t been able to for years, and have kept trying now and then each time I upgrade my system, but always to no avail. Exploring Riven again after all these years is like getting to take a stroll through a favourite childhood haunt.
One minor issue I’ve discovered with this version, though—I can’t go into Fullscreen mode, and can only play the game in windowed form. Should I submit a bug report about that, or do you already know about it?
-
Alex: Fullscreen will be implemented in the final 1.0 release of Riven X, due later this summer.
-
Excellent! Thanks so much for clearing that up for me. And once again, great work! ^_^
-
Totally awesome. Riven is positively my favoritest game ever. When this is done, you should talk to Cyan about working with them to create the iPhone version, since you’ve essentially already done the hard part.
-
Apparently I can’t edit my comment, but let me just say that this is making me cry, playing this game again. Thanks so much. When 1.0 comes out, I’m going to play the game slowly, solve the puzzles with no hints, savor every screen, read every word of the journals…and then do it all over again 10 years later, after I’ve forgotten everything.
Of course by then we’ll need it ported to OS XI…A few things:
–In the observation room with the cage that comes down over you, that movie turns green (as does the switch on the left.)
–The installer just installs the files without giving you an option of where to put them (where does it put them??) I’m using the DVD version. -
Hi Jean-Francois …
The sound in Riven X 0.8 is so awesome I decided to start a new game as opposed to continuing with the 0.7.3 games I saved (and still have). Thanks for your great work !!!
Jim
iMac 2.93 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, QuickTime Pro 7.6.2, NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 with 512 MB VRAM
-
Jean-Francois, thanks so much for undertaking this. It’s ironic to think that the most high-tech forms of art are inaccessible to people just 12 years later.
I rediscovered Myst while watching my girlfriend play it for the first time on the iPhone and we want to play Riven together (I played it in ‘97). Should we wait for version 1.0 to experience it fully?
-
Yes, unless you are willing to put up with bugs and an incomplete game, I recommend you wait for the final release later this summer.
-
Now testing 0.8.1
-
Dear all, 0.8.3 is working very well. I’ve been able to get as far as Gehn’s gaff and from there to see Catherine and back again: but, the game doesn’t like it much and crashed shortly thereafter. But, it can be done. I’ve also completed all the other available puzzles. And also been able to access the Rebel age and get my book back.
I’m really looking forward to seeing this in full screen, although I suspect it may appear a little pixilated. Any chance of customising the stretch? If you know what I mean.
-
i’m playing Riven with my boyfriend for the first time (ever!) we just finished playing Myst. So I’m not really sure what’s missing, or what the bugs are/what is left out in the “developmental” version. I have the latest download available on this site, and i’m wondering, with the game file that I saved while playing this version, will I be able to open this file in the final 1.0 (or 0.9?) version? will I have to start all over? does the version “upgrade” play smoothly with the saved game file from the previous “version”?? i hope i’m making sense here.
Thanks!!
-
Great news !
Sadly, I can’t anymore test it on my dual G5 as it died a few weeks ago. But I still can test it on my new Intel based comp.
Keep going, Jean-François, you’re making a real good work, and thanks again for your effort.
-
I make no guarantees that saved games or anything else done by previous development versions will be supported by the next development version or the final version. So my recommendation is for you to wait until the final 1.0 release later this summer.
-
Runs perfect. Very, very, very good work. Thank you Jean – it’s a pleasure to enjoy this game again. I don’t know why Cyan has never revived it – but you do a great job. I’ll post Bugs if I find them – until now there is nothing I can find. The problems from the last version are completly gone (even with the german version). No glitches, no pixel errors in the videos – amazing. Thank you again!
-
Jean- excellent, thank you so much! I have saved games from the OS 9 version, but I’m not able to open them in Riven X 0.8.3. Any way to convert them? I’ve run the OS 9 version on my MacBook Pro Intel using COI Classic-On-Intel “Chubby Bunny.” That runs fine, and can open the saved games. Thanks!
-
I didn’t even know about COI! Kind of puts the whole purpose of Riven X into question, although given that the project is almost done, it would be silly to stop now. In any case, I don’t have any plans to support saved games from the original engine, but if it’s not too much work, I’ll try to support that in the final 1.0 release.
-
Classic-On-Intel (COI), nicknamed “Chubby Bunny” runs on SheepShaver, a PPC emulator. Chubby Bunny is a pre-packaged SheepShaver with a Mac OS 9 ROM (~for “testing” purposes only). (Otherwise you need to provide your own ROM from an older machine.)
I’ve installed COI and played Oxyd and Riven successfully. It runs a nice OS 9 machine in a window. I could copy an entire backup of an old OS 9 machine, System Folder, Applications, Files, and all. It handles peripherals like CDs and printers well. I don’t know how it handles Internet. I find it very stable.
You can get COI here:
http://homepage.mac.com/jlg/COIV4.0.1.zip
This is from a user named Jon that apparently contains a newer version of SheepShaver than the COI 4.0.1 available on the torrents.There’s a bit of setup, but a guide comes in the .zip.
A blog about COI and SheepShaver:
http://www.macwindows.com/OS9_on_Intel_Mac.htmlYou can also find COI on various torrents. I found mine using XTorrent.
Here’s another link:
http://www.torrentz.com/5ea0627a0820340faf6daa25b7f30c6b43d3f4f7You don’t need to use Chubby Bunny (but it’s easier), you can set up your own emulator using SheepShaver directly.
Here are some links for SheepShaver:
http://sheepshaver.cebix.net/#download
Setup guide for OS X:
http://emaculation.com/doku.php/sheepshaver_mac_os_x_setup
Some help on SheepShaver here:
http://gwenole.beauchesne.info/en/projects/sheepshaver/help -
This is incredible! Riven runs PERFECTLY on my Mac! Thank you so much for doing this. Continue your great work!
By the way, is there a possibility to increase the resolution of the game? The fullscreen would be less pixelised then…
and the game would be even more intense! It would really interest me…
-
I can’t run Riven using “Chubby bunny” or my own build of a recent SheepShaver snapshot.
Something to do with quicktime, I think. But I’m not sure.
Either way, the reality is that SheepShaver doesn’t provide 1/100th of the convenience Riven X should provide.
I just wish you’d hurry up with the fullscreen. I literally CANNOT stand trying to play/test the current Riven X on my 30″ cinema display.
-
Marshall: I know what you mean, I’m developing Riven X on a 30″ Cinema Display as well. Fullscreen is just not a priority right now, with critical puzzles of the game still not done. Gotta keep priorities straight :p
-
Hello!
I was thrilled to find this site! I’m an English teacher and this summer I discovered Tim Rylands (http://www.timrylands.com/html/myst.html), who uses the Myst series to teach creative writing. I found an old copy of Riven and am now using Riven X to install it and try playing. I plan on using it in class around November, and it looks like you’ll have 1.0 out by then! This is so COOL!
Thank you so much for your work!
Meg
-
Jean-Francois,
Thanks so much for taking on this epic endeavor! MYST pretty much changed my life when it first came out and I never had a chance to play Riven. Thanks again so much
J
-
This is a super cool project! I’m so glad that there’s people who actually care about this game. I installed the original DVD edition and tried to run it, and got a window with nothing but black. Is this a Quicktime problem?
-
Seth: Please file a bug report at https://bugs.launchpad.net/rivenx. Make sure to attach a complete system profile, which you can generate via About This Mac -> More Info.
-
I have been waiting for this for years – but it was worth it!! Riven is better than ever!!!
Unfortunately I have come across a major problem: Quite often there are just multi-coloured vertical stripes instead of the well-known frames (seem to be somehow correlated to animated water in the pictures). As long as you don’t have to find a lever, this is ok; otherwise progressing gets difficult. Anybody seen the sam effect?
Could it be a problem of the installation? Thx for all replies!!
-
rivenfalcon: Please file a bug at https://bugs.launchpad.net/rivenx. Make sure to attach a complete system profile, which you can generate via About This Mac -> More Info, as well as the version of Riven X you were using and the name of the Riven edition you own.
-
How do I save games? btw this is awesome.
-
goofy: File menu -> Save or Save As… I will be improving the saving mechanism in Riven X 1.0, including an auto-save feature.
-
Yeah! Can’t wait to try this. I’m running Snow Leopard (no QuickTime 7, but X), so I’ll let you know how it turns out.
-
Charles: Riven X works fine on Snow Leopard. Do note that Snow Leopard still has QuickTime 7, which Riven uses because QuickTime X doesn’t support the video codec (Cinepak, an old legacy codec) used to encode Riven’s movies and doesn’t have a public API that allows developers to integrate it with OpenGL rendering (QuickTime 7 does however).
-
Quicktime 7 Player (at least, and probably some old codecs) are not installed on Snow Leopard by default, and are also not on my system. However, Quicktime X has apparently the basic QuickTime 7 engine built-in along the new X software, so it seems to work fine without having to run the optional QuickTime 7 installation on the Snow Leopard disc. Good news, since I already know installing QuickTime 7 will mess up some of the other third-party codecs’ (especially their file type associations) I’m using, like Flip4Mac.
All in all, it works great so far, and clean video.
-
Charles: the optional install is only for QuickTime *Player* 7. QuickTime 7 (the underlying technology) is always installed, and is the reason why Flip4Mac and Perian work with the new Player, which can handle both modern movie files using the optimized QuickTime X path as well as legacy content using QuickTime 7. Some very old content, like QuickTime VR files, require the old player.
-
My bad. Need to read up some more on Snow Leopard then.
I will now post in the 0.8.3 discussion, since I have a few issues to discuss related specifically to the game.
Comments are now closed.
45 comments