Revelator 6.1

by Ron Hayter
mystrevelator@mac.com

Revelator n: One who makes a revelation; a revealer.

Introduction

Revelator is a free Java application that extracts sounds, movies, pictures, and subtitles from the data files of Myst IV: Revelation. Sounds, movies, and pictures can be extracted from the Myst IV demo, too. Revelator can also extract the player's in-game snapshots and journal entries from saved game files.

(If you want the sounds, movies, and pictures from other games in the Myst series, try Riveal, my other free extractor.)

There are two versions of Revelator, one for Mac OS X and the other for Windows. Being a Java application, it requires version 1.4 or later of the Java Runtime Environment. Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), 10.4 (Tiger), and 10.5 (Leopard) have the JRE built in. For Windows, you may need to download and install the JRE, which you can get from http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp.

Download Revelator for Mac OS X.

Download Revelator for Windows.

Running Revelator

Mac OS X version:

• Double-click Revelator.
• It will ask you to point to the folder where Myst IV is installed. Normally, this folder is "/Applications/Ubisoft/MystIV". Alternatively, you can choose one of the game DVDs. To get everything, you will need to extract files from the two DVDs individually.
• Then, it will ask you where to save the files.
• Next, you can choose whether to extract music, extract dialogue and other sounds, extract movies, extract pictures, or extract subtitles.
• Click the Extract Files button and, after a lot of disk activity, you should have many ".ogg", ".wav", ".bik", ".png", ".jpeg", ".tga", and ".txt" files.
• When you click on the Extract Journal button, you will be asked to choose a saved game file. Revelator will extract your snapshots and journal entries, putting them into an HTML file in the extracted file location.

Windows version:

• First, install Java if you do not already have it.
• Second, make sure that "Revelator.jar" is downloaded intact and not split apart. WinRAR seems especially keen to expand ".jar" files.
• Third, check that Windows knows that ".jar" files should be opened with the Java Runtime Environment. The Windows Explorer should describe "Revelator.jar" as an Executable Jar File. If not, shift-right-click on "Revelator.jar" and choose the Open With... command. Pick "javaw" from the list of programs. (You may need to use the Other... button to find "javaw.exe". It will probably be in "c:\Program Files\Java\jdk 1.5.0\jre\bin\" or something close to that.) Be sure to check "Always use this program to open these files", then press OK.
• If all goes well, double-clicking "Revelator.jar" will start Revelator.
• It will ask you to point to the folder where Myst IV is installed. Normally, this folder is "c:\Program Files\UBISOFT\Myst IV - Revelation". Alternatively, you can choose one of the game DVDs. To get everything, you will need to extract files from the two DVDs individually.
• Then, it will ask you where to save the files.
• Next, you can choose whether to extract music, extract dialogue and other sounds, extract movies, extract pictures, or extract subtitles.
• Click the Extract Files button and, after a lot of disk activity, you should have many ".ogg", ".wav", ".bik", ".png", ".jpeg", ".tga", and ".txt" files.
• When you click on the Extract Journal button, you will be asked to choose a saved game file. Revelator will extract your snapshots and journal entries, putting them into an HTML file in the extracted file location.

Notes

Revelator can extract sounds, movies, and so on from the data files on your hard disk. Alternatively, if you do not have a full installation of Myst IV on your hard disk, you can extract from the game DVDs. Disc 1 has the music, dialogue, and sound effects. Disc 2 has almost all of the movies and all of the cube pictures. The other pictures and a very few movies are on Disc 1.

Many of the extracted files have names that include letters and numbers like "w1_z02_n030". The "w", "z", and "n" mean "world", "zone", and "node", and each is numbered. Within each of the 5 five main worlds (or Ages), there are 4 to 8 zones, and each zone contains 10 to 30 nodes.

The sounds in Myst IV can be roughly categorized as music, dialogue, and sound effects. The music files have names that start with "mu_", and the most interesting music is in Ogg Vorbis format. There are a couple of songs which are unique to the Myst IV demo. Most dialogue is also in Ogg Vorbis format. Sound effects are usually in WAV format.

Any audio application should be able to play the WAV files.

To hear the Ogg Vorbis sounds, you will need to use a music player that understands that format. If you install the Xiph QuickTime Components available at http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/download.html, all applications that use QuickTime (iTunes, for instance) should be able to play these music files. To listen to the music on an iPod, you will need to use iTunes to convert the files to AAC or MP3. You might want to also convert the WAV files to reduce their size.

Here are those music files from the game that correspond to the soundtrack CD:

Thanks to Eric for compiling this information!

I recommend buying the Myst IV soundtrack CD.

Peter Gabriel's song Curtains is not on the soundtrack CD but it can be found in the file "MU_Menu-1.ogg". There is also an instrumental version of the song in "MU_SA_03_PG_Instrumental.ogg", and "MU_SA_03_PG_edit.ogg" is a shortened version of the vocal version.

To play the Bink movies, you will need a player. RAD Game Tools has players for Mac OS X and Windows at http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm. Note that the movies are silent. Pairing each movie with its soundtrack is left as an exercise for the reader. :) Here are some of the pairs to get you started (thanks, again, to Eric):

There are several kinds of pictures in Myst IV. A few are in TGA format and they are the fonts used in the game. Many others are in PNG format: textures, masks, game interface elements, and thumbnails. The thumbnails have names like "w1_z01_n040_normal.png" and are used for zip mode. It is interesting to compare the thumbnails in the Myst IV demo with the final versions; you can see some very early renders of Haven, Spire, and Serenia in the demo.

If you choose to extract cube pictures, you will have a huge number of JPEG images for the hundreds of nodes in the game. Each node is a cube and your eyes are at the center. The six faces of the cube (front, back, left, right, top, and bottom) are each made up of a grid of 6-by-6 images, a total of 216 images per cube. The Myst IV engine warps the faces of the cube mathematically into the interior of a sphere so that you can look around freely.

Early versions of the subtitles can be extracted from Disc 2. However, the version 1.0.3 update of Myst IV replaced the subtitles, so it is better to extract them from the data files on your hard disk.

An extracted journal can be viewed and printed from any web browser. In the browser, all pages of the journal are displayed within one window but, when printed, each page is put on its own sheet of paper. Printing in landscape orientation produces the best results. For the full Myst IV experience, you will want to install a hand-written font, either Revelation 2, which is at http://members.shaw.ca/zebedee/images/REVELATI.TTF, or Susanna, which is at http://members.cox.net/srikandi/Uru/SusannaFont.zip. For Mac OS X users, the built-in Sand font looks quite good.

Copyright (c) 2004-6 Ron Hayter. All rights reserved.