I actually didn't play Riven until about 5 years ago, when it came out on iOS (I played Myst on CD as a kid). Learning the game's number system was a fascinating exercise that I don't think I've ever had in any other game.
Basically, in your explorations you eventually happen upon a small empty one-room building, which (if you look at the arrangement of desks) you can deduce is some sort of schoolhouse. In that room you'll find a mechanical wooden-and-string toy on a table. If you interact with it, the symbol on the base changes, and the toy performs some sort of action (I think dropping a weight) some number of times. From that you can deduce that the symbols are numbers, and the toy is for teaching what number each of the symbols represents.
If you're playing correctly, you've got some scratch paper handy (I used a drawing app) and you can write down each symbol and what number it corresponds to. And you'd better do this, because you're going to see a lot of important numbers in the game, and this is the only way they are written.
Towards the end of the game, you find a journal from one of the characters, which is written in English. However, when referring to the Age (the game's term for different worlds) that they've gone to, they use these numerals. If you've done your homework, you'll know that they've named their new world "The 233rd Age".
The toy you're referring to is a model of the wahrk gallows you encounter in the Jungle Island lake. It's implied that it's used to execute/sacrifice prisoners by feeding them to the carnivorous Wahrk that live in the lake -- the "actions" you're referring to are discrete steps of lowering the prisoner to be eaten!
The numeral system is really interesting in its own regard, too. It's written as base-25, but each digit is composed of two base-5 subdigits superimposed on each other at right angles in a square frame. (The subdigits are all designed in a way that makes this unambiguous.) For example, 0 is an empty square and 1 is a vertical line, so 5 is written as a horizontal line, and 6 is a cross.
The game uses 5 as an "arc number" -- Riven is the "fifth age", the main game area consists of five islands, many objects and locations in the game are five-sided, and the game was originally distributed on five CDs -- so it's only natural for the number system to operate on base-5 as well. :)
There's also an alphabetical writing system present in game, but it's used with a constructed in-game language (not just a cipher for English text), so players aren't expected to understand it.
Yea. I liked Myst, but Riven is where I gave up on the series. I did complete it, but it was a long time ago and I remember giving up on puzzles and looking up a lot of hints.
Also the font for the books in Riven were terrible. I could read all the Myst books. They were relatively short and it was a neat device to learn the story. In Riven, they were painful to read and there were so many books everywhere.
I even bought a copy of Exile used at a bookstore for like $5, but never played more than 10 min of it. I would have liked to have finished the series, but Riven kinda was an example of why the entire 90s/early-2000s adventure game genre (Sierra, LucasArts, etc.) failed. LucasArts probably had the only games that were not over challenging and that could be solved with just time and persistence. Everyone else relied on sales of hint books (and no one wants to use a hint book; you want to figure it out for yourself).
The new era of adventure games fixed a lot of this. Telltale and Quantic Dream used their adventure games more to push story (not a lot of "puzzles" in the traditional sense), but there are others with a decent mix of story and puzzles.
A great example of the two game building attitudes in a single game is Broken Age. The first half: amazing. The puzzles were fun but not over challenging, the story drew you in, the graphics were beautiful and the characters were relatable. Part two: stupid-insane-difficult-terrible puzzles, story went to crap, didn't care what happened.
What's really interesting to me is how the numbers are encoded when they get larger than 25. The game requires you to understand the basic pattern of system in order to generalize from numbers in the schoolhouse (1-10) to the numbers required to complete the game (1-25 at most). But even understanding this, there is something off about how this Age number is written: just reading the numerals, it appears to be written as "98rd". But what the game doesn't explicitly tell you is that the number system is actually in base 25! So, "98rd" is actually "9*25 + 8"rd, or "233rd", making the grammar work out.
As an added bonus, the whole number system is base 25 (logical, since there are symbols for 1 - 25), but this is sort of an easter egg that you don't have to know to beat the game. This is hinted at in an English journal that mentions an age numbered "<Riven symbol for 233>rd". If you assume incorrectly that it's base 10, it'd read "98rd", which sounds wrong.
I wonder if they ever playtested a base 25 puzzle and judged it too difficult.
One of their newer games, Obduction, also has an alien number system. Each number is represented as paths on a 3x3 grid, and you're given access to what's essentially an oracle for the system in order to learn it. Throughout the game, the numbering system is used to control alien machinery to solve various puzzles.
Deciphering it made for a reasonably fun exercise, and I wish more games had puzzles like that.
Sort of side note, but some IT systems do in fact need to deal with 25 hour days, due to daylight savings time. If your system deals with schedueling electricity production, you may need to accept that one day a year may only have 23 hours while another have 25.
It's usually easy to relegate yourself to the issue of various periodic measures being some crazy human duration long and just writing the software to use a common date/time library and live with it.
Harder are the moments when you actually care if one time has longer seconds than another due to leap seconds or smearing over the day to spread out a leap second.
It's really just easiest if you take nothing for granted, and even assume that clock-cycles aren't of a fixed duration but of a given quanta of work.
I always solved this by setting my systems to a time zone without DST. Since I am in California, I always use Arizona time. 9 months of the year it's the same as mine and the other 3 I can easily subtract 1.
That is absolutely beautiful and one of the kinds of things I'd love to have for my Shelf of Interesting Items.
I have two older brothers so growing up I was exposed to a ton of stuff way outside my age range (but I credit a lot of my success to this). I played countless hours of Riven when I was 9 or 10. I really didn't get far at all. But I am still wildly proud of figuring out their numerical system using the fish game. Watching your clock flooded back deep memories about that.
I continue to crave games that make me feel that way. Outer Wilds (not Outer Worlds) is the closest since.
> Oh and before I forget – don’t ever give up on your electronics projects just because they seem too hard. I started trying to build this clock nineteen years ago [...]
As an aside, this is the best explanation I've seen for what numbering systems are:
> First up, a little primer – the digits used in the Myst games, aka D’ni digits, are a base-25 numbering system. This means they count up using symbols like [1], [2], [3], [4] … [22], [23], [24], [1][0]. That is, what they call “10”, we call “25”
Sort of related question. I have an old clock with a 3 inch clock face that I want to change to be digital.
Does anyone know where to get a 3 inch round led/lcd display (ideally that can be attached to a Raspberry Pi)? I've looked online and they are either crazy expensive, a round display on a square back, or I have to buy 1000 of them.
In my experience, the WWVB signal can be hard to get, especially inside of buildings. Its going to depend on where you live though. However, if you have Internet access then NTP is going to be very reliable. I'd go with NTP over WWVB for reliability.
Uehreka|6 years ago
I actually didn't play Riven until about 5 years ago, when it came out on iOS (I played Myst on CD as a kid). Learning the game's number system was a fascinating exercise that I don't think I've ever had in any other game.
Basically, in your explorations you eventually happen upon a small empty one-room building, which (if you look at the arrangement of desks) you can deduce is some sort of schoolhouse. In that room you'll find a mechanical wooden-and-string toy on a table. If you interact with it, the symbol on the base changes, and the toy performs some sort of action (I think dropping a weight) some number of times. From that you can deduce that the symbols are numbers, and the toy is for teaching what number each of the symbols represents.
If you're playing correctly, you've got some scratch paper handy (I used a drawing app) and you can write down each symbol and what number it corresponds to. And you'd better do this, because you're going to see a lot of important numbers in the game, and this is the only way they are written.
Towards the end of the game, you find a journal from one of the characters, which is written in English. However, when referring to the Age (the game's term for different worlds) that they've gone to, they use these numerals. If you've done your homework, you'll know that they've named their new world "The 233rd Age".
duskwuff|6 years ago
The numeral system is really interesting in its own regard, too. It's written as base-25, but each digit is composed of two base-5 subdigits superimposed on each other at right angles in a square frame. (The subdigits are all designed in a way that makes this unambiguous.) For example, 0 is an empty square and 1 is a vertical line, so 5 is written as a horizontal line, and 6 is a cross.
The game uses 5 as an "arc number" -- Riven is the "fifth age", the main game area consists of five islands, many objects and locations in the game are five-sided, and the game was originally distributed on five CDs -- so it's only natural for the number system to operate on base-5 as well. :)
There's also an alphabetical writing system present in game, but it's used with a constructed in-game language (not just a cipher for English text), so players aren't expected to understand it.
djsumdog|6 years ago
Also the font for the books in Riven were terrible. I could read all the Myst books. They were relatively short and it was a neat device to learn the story. In Riven, they were painful to read and there were so many books everywhere.
I even bought a copy of Exile used at a bookstore for like $5, but never played more than 10 min of it. I would have liked to have finished the series, but Riven kinda was an example of why the entire 90s/early-2000s adventure game genre (Sierra, LucasArts, etc.) failed. LucasArts probably had the only games that were not over challenging and that could be solved with just time and persistence. Everyone else relied on sales of hint books (and no one wants to use a hint book; you want to figure it out for yourself).
The new era of adventure games fixed a lot of this. Telltale and Quantic Dream used their adventure games more to push story (not a lot of "puzzles" in the traditional sense), but there are others with a decent mix of story and puzzles.
A great example of the two game building attitudes in a single game is Broken Age. The first half: amazing. The puzzles were fun but not over challenging, the story drew you in, the graphics were beautiful and the characters were relatable. Part two: stupid-insane-difficult-terrible puzzles, story went to crap, didn't care what happened.
smrq|6 years ago
What's really interesting to me is how the numbers are encoded when they get larger than 25. The game requires you to understand the basic pattern of system in order to generalize from numbers in the schoolhouse (1-10) to the numbers required to complete the game (1-25 at most). But even understanding this, there is something off about how this Age number is written: just reading the numerals, it appears to be written as "98rd". But what the game doesn't explicitly tell you is that the number system is actually in base 25! So, "98rd" is actually "9*25 + 8"rd, or "233rd", making the grammar work out.
phillco|6 years ago
I wonder if they ever playtested a base 25 puzzle and judged it too difficult.
QuinnWilton|6 years ago
Deciphering it made for a reasonably fun exercise, and I wish more games had puzzles like that.
mrweasel|6 years ago
mjevans|6 years ago
Harder are the moments when you actually care if one time has longer seconds than another due to leap seconds or smearing over the day to spread out a leap second.
It's really just easiest if you take nothing for granted, and even assume that clock-cycles aren't of a fixed duration but of a given quanta of work.
jedberg|6 years ago
Waterluvian|6 years ago
I have two older brothers so growing up I was exposed to a ton of stuff way outside my age range (but I credit a lot of my success to this). I played countless hours of Riven when I was 9 or 10. I really didn't get far at all. But I am still wildly proud of figuring out their numerical system using the fish game. Watching your clock flooded back deep memories about that.
I continue to crave games that make me feel that way. Outer Wilds (not Outer Worlds) is the closest since.
jf|6 years ago
AceJohnny2|6 years ago
Wow. That's motivating!
maest|6 years ago
> First up, a little primer – the digits used in the Myst games, aka D’ni digits, are a base-25 numbering system. This means they count up using symbols like [1], [2], [3], [4] … [22], [23], [24], [1][0]. That is, what they call “10”, we call “25”
Mathnerd314|6 years ago
cialowicz|6 years ago
amenghra|6 years ago
jedberg|6 years ago
Does anyone know where to get a 3 inch round led/lcd display (ideally that can be attached to a Raspberry Pi)? I've looked online and they are either crazy expensive, a round display on a square back, or I have to buy 1000 of them.
I assume I'm just not googling right.
derekja|6 years ago
brailsafe|6 years ago
0xdeadbeefbabe|6 years ago
annoyingnoob|6 years ago