Dear community,
It’s time for us to share one of our biggest challenges with this remake: outdoor geographic continuity. What are we talking about?
Remember: in the original game, the exteriors were divided into “cubes” for technical reasons (memory, performance, etc.). Four “black borders” defined the limits of each cube. At certain places, it was possible to change cubes. This system is difficult for players to understand today and was already abandoned in 1997 for Little Big Adventure 2/Twinsen’s Odyssey. Our vision for the remake? To merge these cubes to create a more immersive open world. Easy, right? Well, not exactly. There are 3 major difficulties:
1/ Joining cubes… that don’t fit together
Some cubes respect the geographic topography and can be correctly merged. Example: Brundle Island.
Some cubes are logical and go together, but have an altitude difference that creates a problem. Example: Citadel Island. How to manage the altitude difference between the 2 cubes?
Some original cubes simply do not connect at all. The biggest example is Principal Island. Some cubes negatively impact the cube next to it. On Principal Island, the building of the HQ prevents visibility of the Twinsen character when one wishes to go to the library. Here, we thus need to shift the library cube to keep the path readable.
What happens if we unite the cubes of Principal Island?
- A path is missing between the library and the military camp
- The HQ hides part of the path on the 3 cubes next to it
- The old town hides part of the path from the military camp cube
Obviously, we cannot leave Funfrock’s HQ as is in a game with continuity. Transforming it into a real building worsens the visibility problems on the adjacent cubes. It’s a real puzzle!
We decided to create new spaces – internally called “seams” – to join the cubes in a more organic way.
2/ Replacing black borders with content
Once the cubes are united, we need to find a graphical way to replace the black walls with content. In the Proxima Island prototype, we simply placed trees, but it’s not always that simple.
3/ Story coding
We’ve talked about the tip of the iceberg. Let’s move on to the submerged part. The original code is based on cube logic. When loading a cube, the code checks what you have in your inventory to define the state of that cube. The NPCs’ routines also start at this moment. What happens when the cubes are united? The routines start when you arrive on the island (and not the cube). The most complex case: when you are in a vehicle (the tank in the Hamalayi and the bulldozer on Polar Island). Here, you change cubes while in the vehicle. Seb tore out the last hairs he had 🤯.
Another example: to give a sense of life in the original game, you could meet the same NPC several times in different cubes of the same island. For example, you meet the hair dryer salesman several times on Citadel Island. By uniting the cubes, we end up with… multiple hair dryer salesmen! We need to keep one and create a new routine for the character so that he traverses the equivalent of several cubes from the original game.
The most complex case is when a character follows Twinsen from one cube to another (e.g., the rebel lapichon in the Hamalayi). Physically, these are different NPCs, reset at each cube change with their own code. Again, we had to be clever to make it seem like it’s now the same one following you from cube to cube!
The most frustrating
We believe geographic continuity is one of the changes that will allow the game to be discovered by the largest number of people. The most frustrating thing for us is that even you, the fans, won’t notice it. Our memories have built an idealized version of the original game that was a true open-world. To succeed, we have to do better than your memories 😅
In my childhood memories, I always believed I had a gun that shot red lasers in Little Big Adventure 2/Twinsen’s Odyssey… but no!
We hope this significant change will allow you to relive the emotions of your childhood… without realizing it 😃