Dear Community,
Today, we invite you on an exclusive journey behind the scenes of our remake. Let’s start with a look back:
In June 2023, you experienced an initial prototype on Proxima Island, developed in a short time by a small team. Despite its imperfections, this prototype was a crucial springboard for engaging with you and understanding your expectations.
This prototype was built using Unreal Engine 5, with an almost manual reconstruction of the island. Faced with the challenge of replicating this method for a larger world in a limited time, we opted for a complete overhaul of the game, based on new foundations. But what is the nature of these new foundations?
The answer lies in the work of Sébastien Viannay, a developer on the original games, as well as the mobile port. It was during the work on the latter that Seb developed a small tool to setup the pathfinding – that is, the ability to tap a point on the screen and have Twinsen follow that direction. This tool interprets the original game’s data to reconstruct the level and identify obstacles.
This tool opened a new world for us: using the original game’s data in a modern game engine. In practice, all the game logic (quests, dialogues, levels, even animations) is in the form of data. By importing it into a new engine, we can not only faithfully reproduce the game but also reinvent it.
The only hiccup in this story? Seb developed this tool on Unity 😅. After attempting to transfer this tool to Unreal, we made the strategic decision to migrate to Unity during last summer.
How We Are Developing the Remake
Our adventure thus continues on Unity, leveraging the original data. Here are the key steps of our project:
- Transposition of the Original Game into Unity: Our goal is to preserve the essence and logic of the original game. One of the major challenges lies in adapting the original scenes to geographical continuity, an aspect we will detail in a dedicated article.
- Drawing Inspiration from the Unreal Prototype to Perfect Twinsen’s Movements and Controls: We aim to enhance the gameplay experience while remaining true to the original.
- Enriching the Narrative: We plan to adjust certain sequences of the game, such as reducing the repetitive back-and-forth between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
- Reconstruction of the Islands in 3D with a New Art Direction: We are reimagining the islands to offer a unique visual experience.
- Recreation of All Characters and Animations: Each character and animation will be redone to meet our current quality standards.
Importing Original Data into Unity
In the video below, you will discover how the import of a scene from the original game is reproduced in Unity. Please activate subtitles to understand what hides behind the hood.
In this video, we are showing the tool we developed to import the data of the original game. We don’t use the original textures in the final game. It’s only to help us in our development.
In our next article, we will explain the challenge of geographical continuity.
See you soon!