Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Riven

.

I have pretty much given up on my online class.  Too frustrating. 

It's one thing to work hard and be rewarded with success, and quite another to work hard, only to be continually blind-sided by stuff I was somehow magically supposed to have known, though it wasn't taught..................  College has changed, a lot, if people are expected to give correct answers for stuff that wasn't in the course materials, when examined on what they know.................



Let's go do something productive, for a change!  How about a walk through some parts of Riven?

I love how all this stuff looks.  It sounds interesting, too...........  Ocean waves, mysterious music, animal sounds of various kinds.......



Having walked most of the way across the bridge, above, we look left toward the island where we saw the big sea creatures, before.  Note all of the small stuff sticking up out of the water; it's significant.....

That little gold hut sort of thing, below, is where we arrived on Riven.


We have now walked through the gold dome, and are looking out at the island from which we looked over rocks at that open and spacious view of the ocean in an earlier post.



Looking back at the gold dome.  See what I mean about liking to look at this stuff?


Most of the way across, looking back.........



See the dome, upper left?  And straight ahead is the island where we saw the sea creatures.  We are heading down steps and pathways....



Here's a better view of the dome, and that other island we visited before.



We're going to ride in one of these conveyances.   They zoom along on tracks -- which are some of the things sticking up out of the water between the islands.


Wheeeee!



You can see these rock(?) formations on the right side of the island we're heading to in the image above.



Having walked through the rock formations, we look back.....



Same island; up higher, looking down at the rock formations, and back where we came from (see the gold dome, near the horizon, at the right edge of the image?).



This is a map of the various islands in the game.  The upper one to the right of the crack is the one with the golden dome.  The one below it is the one where we saw the sea creatures.  We're on the lower left one now.

The tan square-with-other-shapes-filling-the-square (bottom, middle) is a control.  When you push one of the shapes down, gel rises up from the corresponding island on the map.  You can see it, vaguely, on top of the island with the open space in it, as distortion in the pattern of holes in the top.  If I were to push another button, the gel on that island would go down, and the gel on the island whose button I pushed would rise up.....


This control has effects in another place, too, which is important for solving the game.



Cool stuff to look at and listen to, excellent rides, interesting places to explore, puzzles to solve....

How come they don't make games like this any more?

.

No comments: