With the PC version of The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails releasing soon, we thought it would be useful to provide some information on what you can expect from this release.
For us at PH3, this is the first time we are porting a game which originally released for a very low-tech -- by today's standards -- platform. This makes some things easier, especially in terms of performance, but it also has some unique challenges e.g. in using some old-school rendering techniques. It's also the first time that we have worked on a game with fixed camera angles, which was particularly challenging in terms of supporting the Ultrawide 21:9 aspect ratio.
Graphics Options and Improvements
Compared to some of the other Falcom games we worked on recently, like Ys IX, there are not all that many options which make sense for this game. It uses a lot of 2D sprites by design, which means that e.g. attempting to shoehorn more advanced lighting into it would clash with the original art. As such, we focused on providing the following:
- Arbitrary rendering resolution support -- of course. This also meant fixing some texture seam issues which would become apparent at particular resolutions.
- MSAA anti-aliasing up to 8 samples. Since the game uses a very traditional forward renderer, MSAA can be used at relatively low cost (but you might not want to run 8xMSAA on an integrated GPU), while providing excellent edge anti-aliasing.
- Unlimited draw distance. The original game has quite limited draw distance for some objects and enemies, which really isn't necessary on any current PC. As such, we've made the draw distance for both essentially unlimited in this release.
You might have noticed that this list does not include arbitrary framerate support. The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails is an old game, and was designed entirely around a fixed frame rate. We had already started to invest significant effort into rewriting several aspects of the game to accommodate arbitrary and variable FPS, but had to shelve this goal for now. As such, the game will be limited to 60 FPS.
Input
Regarding input, we support full rebinding of all actions, with a primary and secondary binding option each. As you can see in the screenshot above, we have also added extra bindings to e.g. navigate to specific menus instantly when playing with a mouse and keyboard.
We fully support Mouse/Keyboard as well as controller button prompts, with the latter coming in Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo varieties. Dynamic prompt switching based on inputs is supported, but can be toggled off in the settings as well.
Since some parts of the game benefit greatly from analog 360° movement, we have also included a mouse movement option. This works similar to e.g. older Falcom PC games, where you hold a mouse button to move in the direction of the cursor relative to the main character. This option is off by default but can be enabled in the menu.
Ultra-wide 21:9 Aspect Ratio Support
Usually, supporting ultra-wide aspect ratios in games is primarily UI work, making sure that all the HUD elements are positioned nicely, and also that no effects or cutscenes break -- and fixing or pillarboxing those that do.
However, since this game uses fixed camera angles and was built specifically for 16:9 aspect ratios, supporting 21:9 without showing many unfinished or "missing" parts of maps was a larger challenge. In order to address this, we implemented a new system of per-map camera constraints, which try their best to keep the camera away from missing parts while still showing a wider field of view whenever possible. Note how Nayuta is not standing in the center of the screen in the image above -- the camera stopped scrolling to the side here to keep the map in frame. Since even this system has limitations, only aspect ratios up to 21:9 are fully supported. (The game will still render at wider ratios, but you might see some missing geometry at the sides on some maps)
PS4 Update Content
After we started working on this port, some updates for the PS4 version were released. In addition to various bug fixes, the following new features were included:
- Improved texture assets, in particular higher quality character textures.
- A toggle-able High-speed Mode.
- A special Time Attack mode.
Out of these, both the improved assets and high-speed mode will be available in the PC version at launch. The TIme Attack mode requires some more testing, but we will try to make it available shortly after the release.
Conclusion
As always, I particularly want to thank all of the great QA testers involved with this project. Without them, the release would certainly be a lot less polished and stable than it hopefully turns out to be.
- Peter "Durante" Thoman, CTO, PH3