The Starry Expanse Community

Just found this: http://mystarchive.com/rivenil/mistakes.html

What will you guys do about all the mistakes in Riven, particularly the Survey Island maglev height problem? In Riven the maglev arrives at the same elevation that the elevator top floor is at when its supposed to be way lower close to sea level. This seems tricky in a fully 3d realtime environment, assuming you don't create sub-levels to the Age.

The Starry Expanse team should use the best assets for the game

I was about to post about this, but then I noticed that this thread was made months ago.

Anyway, Shady Paradox did a live stream of the game recently, and he pointed out that going downward in the elevator takes you above sea level, while an upward flight of stairs takes you under the sea. He suggested that Starry Expanse take a look at it and proposes his own idea for a solution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZglI6oFvUZk

It's been a while since I played Riven, but I don't see any inconsistencies here. As I understand it, none of the paths are below sea level. The water that you pass through in the golden elevator is not part of the sea, it's a small indoor "pond" that's suspended by heat, and the elevator goes through it for aesthetic purposes. And the large window where you can call the wahrks looks out into a fish tank as far as I know, on top of which is the linking dome and the Riven map. Those are quite far above sea level, and if you ask me, there's enough room to fit the large wahrk window under there.

Survey Island has a lot of weird geometry going on. Sometimes the interior doesn't even fit in the exterior shell of the island!

Thanks for the video link, Daikun. We're well aware of this problem and we do have several plans for how it may be solved. As you guys know, we're dedicated to reproducing the environments of Riven as much as possible so we don't take significant changes (like an additional staircase) lightly. That said, there are subtler ways we may adjust the environment to reduce this problem.

I totally forgot I posted that video.
You're welcome.

I suppose they could make the elevator not actually effect your elevation. As much as one would like to believe that it's a perfectly consistent world which would be able to piece together on a map 100%, games have to take these kinds of measures all the time - try fly mode in the original realMYST to see what I mean! Other fixes might require other, more drastic changes which would be much unappreciated and, quite honestly - most players will not notice the inconsistency. I sure didn't on my Riven playthrough.

I think a good policy on these things would be that if it turns invisible in some shots, stop it from turning invisible at any time.