having read through these seven pages with no obvious solution to this lock up problem, I'm just going to add my name to this list of disappointed purchasers of Myst 5. I'm running a G5 Dual 2 gig with dual monitor, and I like to play myst between work, so there is no way I'm going to reconfigure my system for this game.

One final thought is this a realtime, real life Myst puzzle?,.... surely they wouldn't?

Anyway MYST 5 is now sitting on my shelf as a reminder not to buy another ubisoft game.

I totally agree with you, kh.raddy. No more Ubisoft games in my shelf.
No solution to this issue since I opened this thread back in september and send many emails to ubi "support"...

If you're running the game with a dual-monitor setup, unplug one of the screens before playing the game, because Myst definitely does NOT like dual-monitor setups (I believe that's actually stated in the readme, too).

Balls. Wish I'd found this thread before buying the game!

To be fair to the delopers, it must be at least partly a driver issue -- it simply shouldn't be possible to crash the whole machine from a non-root process

(17" PB with ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 here)

I made it through a large portion of the game, but am now experiencing the same "hang" issues described in this forum. I work for Apple Retail and will pass the word around so that maybe this game can get taken off the shelf.

I was actually able to finish the game after I set the Video Options to the lowest settings. Not the greatest resolution, but it seemed to work, although I never really played Myst for more than 2 hours at a time. ???

quote:

Originally posted by peterjeshua:
I made it through a large portion of the game, but am now experiencing the same "hang" issues described in this forum. I work for Apple Retail and will pass the word around so that maybe this game can get taken off the shelf.

I'd prefer it if you'd pass the word around to maybe kick ATi in the pants to get this fixed, personally...

"I'd prefer it if you'd pass the word around to maybe kick ATi in the pants to get this fixed, personally"

Will you please stop with this theory ?
Dozens of games work really well with the same drivers, so it's not like every single game crashed the same way.
It's NOT the drivers. PERIOD.

quote:

Originally posted by Alahmnat:
I'd prefer it if you'd pass the word around to maybe kick ATi in the pants to get this fixed, personally...

See, this is where I'm not completely sure it's an ATI problem. Once I turned down the in-game settings and then cranked-up the settings using ATI's ATI Displays control panel (which works even with OEM cards), the game played perfectly and looked gorgeous. This tells me it's more of a problem with the game. I'm no ATI fanboy by any stretch, but I'm just not convinced it's entirely an ATI problem.

That said, it's definitely a problem everyone (except the consumers) seems to be ignoring. Frankly, I don't think we will ever see a patch or any sort of fix. Myst V was the end of the line for the series. I don't think any of the creators have any ambition to fix a dead horse.

OK. I've read all the back and forth, and like the rest of you, I'm screwed. The question now is, How do we make sure Ubisoft DOES hear about this obvious problem? Do any of our moderators have ANY better access to tech support, or should we ALL send e-mails detailing our problems. Even if it's not all their problem, they're the ones with direct access to ATI and/or Apple. Or maybe they just don't care. If so, I'll make sure that I return this game and not buy any more games they come out with.

Unfortunately, from the sound of things I've been hearing from the remaining forum managers, future support for Myst is basically being ignored. Were it not for Cyan's having made EoA cross-platform in the first place, I somehow doubt it would even be available on the Mac at all, because there are absolutely no plans to do anything with any of the Myst titles to add support for 10.4.x (which IMO is a bit of false advertising as the requirements merely state "10.2.8 or higher"), nor are there any plans to make any of the apps into Universal binaries so they'll run natively on new Intel-based Macs. Unfortunately, with Cyan's time being fully devoted to staying in business and working to try and re-start Uru Live, I don't think they have the time to write a patch for the game right now either.

quote:

Originally posted by nealhbuck:
OK. I've read all the back and forth, and like the rest of you, I'm screwed. The question now is, How do we make sure Ubisoft DOES hear about this obvious problem? Do any of our moderators have ANY better access to tech support, or should we ALL send e-mails detailing our problems. Even if it's not all their problem, they're the ones with direct access to ATI and/or Apple. Or maybe they just don't care. If so, I'll make sure that I return this game and not buy any more games they come out with.

I sent an email to Ubisoft. They replied it wasn't their problem. I then emailed ATI and they replied it wasn't their problem. I looked for an address to send an email to Apple but could only find a feedback form. Sent it through that but never got a reply. They do say not to expect a reply though.

Like Mahaps said though other games work perfectly well with the same drivers. All of a sudden Myst V doesn't so it's ATI's or Apple's fault? Come on...

As nealhbuck says, we've been screwed out of $60...

The fact that some OpenGL games work doesn't mean it isn't ATI's fault. It isn't that simple. OpenGL is a complex API that can be used in all sorts of ways. Some games may simply do things in a slightly different order, or they simply don't use a particular feature of OpenGL.

From the descriptions of the problem it seems that this MUST be ATI's or Apple's fault because it should not be possible for a normal user-mode application to cause this sort of crash.

ATI is trying to wuss out and not support the Mac. They have a reputation for crappy device drivers that often crash. THEY need to fix things and as Mac users we need to put the pressure on them to do so.

The reponse I just got from Ubisoft reads as follows:

There are no known issues with OS 10.4.X. However, there are driver problems with certain Radeon video cards that are not caused by the game. We have referred these problems to ATi for further review. There will not be any patches released for this product.

By the way, I have not actually purchased the game. I was planning on it, and then I stumbled across this issue.

Does anyone know if any new drivers have helped this, or anything?

My specs:
OS 10.4.5
1.67 GHz processor
1 Gb RAM

ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
128 MB vram

Anybody have news on this situation?
Basically what I'm getting at is whether or not I will be able to run the game.

I apologize for my slight incoherency - I'm normally more literate. I'm a bit distracted at the moment.

I plan on soon both attempting to contact ATI's support and Ubi's phone line.

I'm also fairly inerested in how swpalmer hacked his installer.

quote:

Originally posted by rolandoftheeld:
I'm also fairly inerested in how swpalmer hacked his installer.

Are you referring to PC version WILL run on Mac?

Well, I gave up trying to play it on my iMac G5 w/Tiger. However, I've installed it on my 12" Powerbook G4 w/Jaguar and it's playing fine, so far. Of course, I have to play on minimal settings, but since it's on a laptop screen, it's not so noticeable.

Hot damn, Heimdall, you're the man. Have other people reported this as working?

I'd still really like to have the Mac native version, though. I'll use this method only if all else fails. I have not yet contacted ATi or the Ubi phone line, but I plan on it sometime today. Later though. I have two midterms today... ugh.

Anyway, I forgot to mention that I'm running a Powerbook G4. I don't know if that means anything, but I've noticed that the majority of people who have said "this runs fine for me" have been using powerbooks.

So, again, thanks for the heads up, Heimdall.

I'll be back later with an update on my "tech support" progress.

I had this very same problem (original post in this thread) on the Intel iMac.

Someone suggested I set all Game Video settings to minimum, which I did.

I set all sliders to left as far as possible, and unchecked the boxes for shadows, reflections, etc.

Worked like a charm--had no more freezes in the game at all and it played pretty well after that simple modification.

When you lauch the game and get to main menu-there is an 'Options'. Click that and the first page should be Video settings.

That's all it took. Good luck!

PS: I am using a new Intel iMac with OSX 10.4.6 and 512 MB, and had no real problems playing the game after changing video settings.

Before that-I had terrible freezes with the main direction arrow, and the first Esher video. Entire screen would just freeze, couldn't use any keys or mouse at all. Sound kept going for awhile-but couldn't even turn off computer from button on back!

Had to completely reboot from power surge strip on floor. Every single time.

Sounds similar to your problem-try resetting the Video Options to minimum, it worked well for me.

Also can see my thread for "Intel-Freezes"

Having experienced the Myst V freezing bug and fooled around with the fixes suggested on this thread I have found that the problem centers on anti-aliasing with my system:

OS X 10.4.7

CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.0)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 2 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 1 GHz

ATI RADEON 9650

Overriding the Myst V antialiasing setting by activating the FSAA(Super) option from within the ATI Displays Utility eliminates the problem even with all the video settings from within Myst V set to their maximum settings. On the other hand, with the option set to FSAA(Multi) Myst V invariably freezes up during the initial Yeesha/Esher monologs even with all the video settings from within Myst V set to their minimum settings. I would surmise that when not overridden by ATI Displays Myst V uses multi-sample anti-aliasing rather than super-sample anti-aliasing. There seems to be some sort of incompatibility between OS X Tiger, ATI RADEON ( chip and/or drivers) and Myst V involving multi-sample anti-aliasing.

Anyway, I would suggest that if you are having the freezing problem you try the following:

1. Launch Myst V and set all the video options to their minimum settings.

2. Download and install the ATI Displays Utillity.
Apple Download Page

3. Launch ATI Displays and create an Application Profile for Myst V.

4. Select the FSAA option and set it to read FSAA(Super).

5. Set the value for FSAA to either 2x or 4x. (I find 2x still leaves noticeable artifacts)

6. Launch Myst V and set the Video Quality, Texture Quality and Anisotropic Filtering to your taste.