Part 2: LP Conditions and Myth Resources

The Conditions

All right... is everyone on board? Let me make a few comments about this LP then.

Myth has an infamously difficult campaign, or at least reviewers said so at the time. It has a wide range of difficulty levels though, which affect the number of Dark units in a mission, the relative toughness of Light vs. Dark units, and sometimes parts of the mission scripting. Here's my shot at characterizing what you need in order to beat a campaign mission on a given difficulty level:

• Timid: You must be able to select your units and tell them to attack the enemy units. That's really about it.
• Simple: Requires basic camera control, occasional formation use, and recognizing major combat mismatches.
• Normal: Requires good situational awareness and camera control, use of appropriate formations, and learning the various unit matchups.
• Heroic: Requires excellent awareness, mastery of formations and camera control, and good unit micromanagement.
• Legendary: You rock at this game... and you've practiced the mission a lot.

Your choice of difficulty level might of course need to be adjusted down if you're trying for zero casualties or some other difficult condition. Adjust up if you're playing in a co-op group that works well together (Legendary was pretty common for this). Adjust up if you really lean on Myth's save-anytime feature and the ability to pause the game in singleplayer.

I will be playing on Heroic difficulty with no pausing (except in the Tutorial). I also will not cheese the savegames; I'll take a savegame at the end of each mission, and possibly to split up the longer missions when they go over 20-25 minutes of gameplay, but normally that should be it. Although I reserve the right to take a savegame if faced with some absolutely unbelievable B.S. situation.

I will not be guaranteeing zero-casualties missions, just a good competent playthrough (I hope).

P.S. There was a persistent urban legend (?) that the difficulty setting affects unit toughness in competitive multiplayer. I can't tell that there is any truth to this; I believe that the difficulty option is available in competitive MP only in case mappers want to trigger different unit mixes or scripting bits based on that.


Get on the Myth Train!

If you want to play Myth:TFL but you don't own it yet... what should you do? There are several options, but let's start with something counterintuitive:

• The Myth:TFL demo is still out there on the net, but I do not recommend it. The TFL demo is only available in a somewhat old version that has all the problems of Myth:TFL that I will describe below, plus a bunch of unique problems of its own that are annoying on XP and fatal on Vista. I don't think it will work at all on Mac OS X. Sometimes "free" is too expensive.
• As for the full version of Myth:TFL... it's what I'll be playing for the singleplayer videos of this LP, for authenticity, but I'm hesitant to recommend it either. When fully patched it works in XP and Vista, but it still has quirks in both its graphics and audio. (Don't know about its OS X behavior.) I'm fixing these in editing for the LP videos, but you probably don't want to put up with them, especially in multiplayer.
• So I'm actually going to recommend Myth 2! If your Myth 2 is fully patched up-to-date, then the gameplay physics/rules of Myth:TFL are available as an optional "TFL Gameplay" mode, and you can freely download ports of all of the original Myth:TFL campaign and multiplayer maps (as well as some of the popular third-party maps). You won't get the animated cutscenes in the campaign unless you already own Myth:TFL and transfer the correct files over, but you'll get the mission briefings and the actual gameplay.

There are in fact many small differences between the original and Myth-2-ported versions of TFL, if you want to open up gamedata editors and poke around, but in practice everything is close enough that even really picky obsessive co-op players from TFL are happy with the port.

So then your best options are listed below. You should be able to find new or used copies of these products at online game stores, eBay, Amazon, etc. With some minimal looking around you'll find at least one of these products dirt-cheap.


Myth: The Total Codex
This is a bundle of Myth:TFL, Myth 2, and a good third-party expansion/campaign called Chimera. This is the way to go if you'd like the choice of both the original and ported TFL experiences.


Myth II: Worlds
This is a bundle of Myth 2 plus some other maps, conversions, etc. Most of the extras should be freely downloadable elsewhere, although by now some of them might be getting hard to find.


Myth II: Soulblighter
Myth 2 by itself. No frills or extras here, but honestly the non-Bungie stuff in the other bundles is only gravy.

Note that the Myth games have crossplatform play, so regardless of whether you prefer to run it on Mac or PC you'll be in the same player pool as everyone else. Once you have made your acquisition, be sure to go to Project Magma and get the latest patch for Myth:TFL and/or the latest patch for Myth 2. You don't have to apply any other patches before applying these. If you're using Myth 2, also pick up the ported TFL campaign and TFL multiplayer maps there. If Project Magma happens to be down, then you can get these downloads from this archive (may be out of date).

The Project Magma patches are absolute must-haves in general, but I should emphasize that you especially want to patch Myth 2, just in case you ended up with a CD that has the very first version of Myth 2 on it. The original version of Myth 2 had an uninstaller bug that could delete everything in the folder above the Myth 2 installation. (Oops.) You shouldn't ever come across a new copy of Myth 2 that has this problem, but if you get a used copy... anyway, the patch fixes that among many other things, so patch up.

If you want to host games and you are behind a NAT setup, then you'll need to configure your router to forward TCP port 3453 to the system where you are running Myth. (Same port for Myth:TFL or Myth 2, by the way.) The PortForward website has instructions about that if you need 'em.

Tip for Vista users running a fully patched Myth 2: If the "Servers..." button on the Multiplayer screen is greyed out (you need this to select your matchmaking lobby) then try running Myth II.exe as Administrator. Once you do that and set your server preference, you can then run Myth II.exe normally (non-Administrator) in the future.

Finally, note that there's a Myth starter guide webpage out there for step-by-step setup assistance and some game tips. I haven't examined it closely but it looks like it could be really useful.


Myth Resources

Here's a few other Myth links to keep you fat and happy.

• Project Magma, if you haven't picked up on this by now, is the source of the current Myth patches. It also hosts other interesting downloads from the same creators.
• Mariusnet is the current hub of the online multiplayer community for all Myth games. If you create a forum account there, you'll also obtain an account on Mariusnet's "metaserver", a matchmaking lobby that the Project Magma patches give you access to. (You can also play there as an anonymous guest.)
• The Tain is where you're likely to find just about any Myth-related file.
• The Myth files of The Underdogs clan will have it if the Tain doesn't!
• myth.bungie.org is a mostly-inactive fansite these days, but it remains a useful archive for FAQs, tips, story speculation, etc. (Spoilers ahoy.)
• The Wikipedia entry for Myth is truly a labor of love. (Spoilers ahoy.)