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Game Design Theory / Redoing graphics on an old Win98 Game

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Recreating an old PC game
8
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Joined: 31st Jul 2015
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Posted: 31st Jul 2015 18:47
Hi all,

I am noob to all this, I am looking to redo the graphic textures on an old 98 game. The game is no longer owned by any one and to me it is a great classic.

What would be the best software to do this I have tried UDK but does not accept the files that are current for the game.

Is it possible?

Titanic Adventure out of time.

Please help!
Latch
17
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Joined: 23rd Jul 2006
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Posted: 26th Aug 2015 03:20 Edited at: 26th Aug 2015 03:29
Looking at the game images, this seems to me to be a rendered game. What I mean by that is that all of the scenes and images, were 3d images that were rendered completely in a modeling program of some sort. These movies and images were saved as files that are triggered to load, display, and/or play when certain clicks are made or certain events take place. My impression is that short movies of the renderings and image stills are used along with coding to create the game.

This suggests that there's no rendering engine and it's not a true 3D game. It is a game that displays its environment in 3D, but it isn't creating the images/scenes in real time - that work was all done ahead of time.

If indeed it is short movie clips and image files, you'd have to find out the format of each. From there, you need a program that can play back and display the files. You also need to sort out the audio files in the same way. The trick here is that to save space, loading time, or to add some kind of proprietary management, the files may be coded, encrypted, or compressed in a way that makes them incompatible with standard video, image, or music programs. You amy need custom code to 'unlock" them.

That's just the basics. To create the game you'll need methods, programming, etc. to trigger events, movies, pictures, sounds, etc.

It would be pretty challenging. If you can get your hands on the source code (the programming language it was written in and the original code), you might have a better chance.

It doesn't matter what engine you use because you are going to have to put in a lot programming work either way. It's not just graphics, it's coding logic that will drive the playability and events. In my opinion, if you can decipher the graphics and the sound from the original game and port them out as usable files, something like DarkBASIC could do the job of piecing it all together into a game - a lot easier than some gigantic gaming engine like UDK.

It would still be quite a challenge though.

Enjoy your day.

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