Neema's Summary Part 3

Ok, onto Saturday... THE BIG DAY!!!

We all got up and met in the lobby about 9:45, went across the street to the Golden Griddle and went through our planning for the day... Folders to check, shirts to iron nametags on (and they came out really great!! Thanks Ayli for all your work, you were incredible!!! ) and general logistics to work out with the Mysterium crew.

My assignment was webcam coverage, so from the restaurant I went and got all the equipment and proceeded to the conference room where the Ubi presentation was supposed to be held. MrM3FaN came along for general assistance for me and the Ubi crew and good thing, I forgot to pack batteries for some of my equipment, so he was off and running to the local store for batteries! (Thanks MMF!) Got all the equipment setup and worked out the coverage with Kha'tie (at first we were restricted from showing any screenshots of what Ubi was presenting, so the camera was on the audience for the first part of the presentation ) Camera was setup, tested, and checked in with Tijara to confirm that we were live, which we were, and a cheer went up from the setup crew, Yay!!

Next thing I know it is 12 and people are starting to head into the conference room for the presentation. Now lets just say that the Mysterium crew was only expecting about 70 people to show up at most, from all the registrations that were taken, and close to 100 people show up!! :o This conference was bulging with people!!! The presentation started with coverage on Ubi, a walkthrough of the Myst IV develop team was shown and some screenshots of the up coming Revelations title were shown along with some rough drafts and some short movies of very early development. So far very cool. Then the actual demo of Myst IV was to be shown next and Kha'tie was able to convince the Ubi team to have the webcam coverage for the demo (wahoo!!!!) so shifting of equipment took place, quick change of camera position and we were off and running, right? Nope, the camera decided to lock up, the tilt on the camera refused to work and the camera was stuck in a downward pointing position!! (Time to start the hair pulling!!!!!) A quick reboot, manual repositioning of the camera to point at the screen, with the help of Christoph proping up the camera with plates and anything else he could find, (thanks for the help Chris!!) and we were up and running again!!!

We got some good screenshots uploaded but it was a constant battle to find the bandwidth to upload the pictures on the GoG website do to the excess demand on our site at the time (Tijara later informed me we had up to 120 users watching the demo!!! I was floored by that info!) but we got as much coverage as we could. All I can say about the demo is that I was quite impressed!! It may be a pre-rendered game but there was so much going on in each picture and the detail of each age was immense (and from what I have heard, each age is huge, bigger than anything we have ever seen before :o ) I got that old tingling sensation up my spine and I knew this was going to be an excellent addition to my Myst collection!! I can't wait for it to come out and hopefully the demo should be coming out soon, no definite date yet but they hinted that before the end of the summer (August perhaps) that the demo would be arriving.

Q&A followed the demo and we had a very good dialogue with the Ubi people, got some great, and open answers from them from everything including URU Live, D'ni history to Myst IV info. Oh for those that are interested, I asked if Myst IV would be release on CD or DVD and the "official" word is DVD (Two to be exact :o and it will be a hybrid PC/MAC so all our Mac user will now have a chance to play at the same time, Yay!!) so if you don't have a DVD in your machine, now is the time to get one!!! Machine requirements are about the same as Myst Exile from what they said, but you will benefit from a good video card in your machine with all the new interactive graphics that are included in each node of the game (it was very cool to see in the demo the interaction with the water, other elements like pots and pans on the wall and even animals!!! Interaction is one very large element in Myst IV according to the Ubi people) Even with the two DVD's, they did say there would be no swapping of discs (I am soooo glad on that one, nothing like interrupting the immersion in a game when you have to search for the next disc to insert!!)

Much clapping for the Ubi crew and their preso was over, break time for most before the start of the Fan Presentations, but not for the Guild of Greeters!!

To be continuted in part 4...