Hi folks,

I have noticed lots of people having problems with installing Myst IV. I've managed to install it on my MacBook Pro, both under OSX and Windows XP. Each had its quirks, and I still can't patch the XP installation. I will share my experience, and perhaps someone can help me with patching and widescreen :-)

On the PC:

As soon as the installer asked for, and I mounted, DVD2; I got the 'string undefined error' which refers to a file called something like Data4.mvb in the common/english folder. After some trial and error, I found I could only get the installer to quit at that point and leave the files installed so far in place by bringing up the task manager and forcing the installer to 'end task'. I then tried to manually copy the data4.mvb file from DVD2 into the common/english folder that the installer had created on my drive. I got an error saying I couldn't do it (some permission problem, despite me being administrator). PC boffins may know how to over come this. Not being a PC boffin, I accessed my XP hardrive from my Mac, and was able to copy the file (as well as the other video files on DVD2 to the right place. Going back to XP, Myst IV now launches (from the Myst4 application in one of the installed folders) and I played a few scenes into the beginning. So far, so good.

When I tried to patch the XP installation, however, it says it can't find the games directory and aborts the patch. Is there a way to manually patch? Do I need to patch anyway? Perhaps people could tell me what folders and files I'm meant to have in the game directory - perhaps I need to copy over more stuff manually from DVD2?

I also used the instructions here (http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=400102&f=580100736&m=2671059622) to enable windowed mode and thus expanded the window to fill the screen at a higher resolution than the previous maximum of 1024x768. However, is there a way to make the title bar on the window disappear, so you aren't distracted from the gameplay?

On the Mac:

On the new intel Macs, the installer just quits. From the Ubi forums, I worked out that you have to:
- drag the installer application from DVD1 to your hardrive;
- Open the Terminal application
- Type 'cd ..' and press return, then repeat a couple of times, until typing 'ls' and pressing return shows that you are in your main directory.
- Then type 'cd *folder*' and press return, then repeat until you're in the Myst 4 directory where the files are. I know there should be a quicker way, but this is the only way that worked for me, eg. 'cd Ubisoft' return, 'cd Myst4' return.
- Then you actually 'cd' (change directory' into the Myst4 application itself by typing 'cd Myst4.app' or whatever it's called.
- Inside the application there are various files, and you type 'chmod a+x Myst4' which modifies the permissions in some way.
- Then double click on your modified installer application and installation goes fine.

The 1->1.03 patcher also worked fine for me. However, Myst IV on the Mac has much slower scene transitions. On the G4 Mac, it's about 2-4 seconds per scene, and on the intel Mac running Rosetta emulation, I found it to be closer to 5s per scene. So I look forward to playing on the relatively speedy XP installation.

Again, I also used the widescreen instructions above on my Mac install (control click on your Myst 4 app, show package contents, drop in the game.dsc file) and expanded the window to fill the screen at a higher resolution than the previous maximum of 1024x768. The biggest problem though is you get your usual mouse pointer and the hand pointer, and they move at different rates, so the game is essentially unplayable.