Aliens: Redacted REDUX - Reviving a game with extra flair

well...it's been quite a long time since my last blog post, and to be honest, it's been a long time since I've had time to dedicate to my passion. However, it's how the kids say these days "we are so back".

After a few personal issues that have sprung up in my life over the last year or so which has effectively halted all of my spare time to dedicate to game dev. I find myself with more free time and have been drawn back to my creative endeavour.

You will have noticed that I announced a new project in the last blog post, and while that was the plan at the time, and while I am still planning on moving forward with that project I felt like I needed something a little smaller in scope in order for me to shake off the game dev rust. It seemed only logical that I remake my most popular game to date, Aliens: Redacted.

With newer versions of the game engine releasing and bringing with it some added features (such as the ability for normal and emissive textures) and with more knowledge about the scripting language allowing for more complex systems to be created it felt like the perfect opportunity to implement some of these new features and create the game that I originally envisioned when I started to create the project in the first place.

Where to begin...

It's always hard to figure out were to start when attempting to remaster a previous game and I felt that instead of just jumping into it feet first it was best to play the previous iteration and have a frank discussion with myself about what I like and don't like and what I can improve in the remaster. I created a graphic shown below that split the changes into 3 categories. 'Graphical & Sound', 'map' and 'quality of life'. The graphic below shows the initial changes that I would like to make but of course, when I come to be in full development, some changes may be added on top of this initial list.

It's the looks that count...

One of the most crucial changes that I wanted to do going into this remake was to update the textures, models and sprites. One of the newer features on the engine was the ability to use Normal and Emissive textures on all walls and floors.

The image below is an early look at these changes, although only subtle you can see the differences when normal maps have been applied to the textures. The light reflects more realistically from external light sources and throughout the whole of the level I believe that the player will be able to see the differences between the original and the redux, hopefully for the better.

Differences between the original and the redux with both normal maps and emissive textures applied.

You can notice the change more with the emissive maps applied, it instantly makes those parts of the textures pop and shows that this is an actual spaceship that you are traversing. This is only the first step to the changes that I would like to apply to the remake and I will hopefully be able to share more and less subtle transformation images once these have been applied in the future.

It's not only the textures that are being overhauled, the plan is to also update the weapon sprites so they are more crisp and defined. The GIF below shows an early attempt to update the M41A rifle with more HD sprites. The plan is to also update the reload animations for all weapons as the reloads in the original iteration was severely lacking.

Updated M41A with cleaner and less pixelated sprites

So this is all that I have so far! There's a lot of stuff planned that i will hopefully get to soon and will be able to share more on what aspects are being updated and what brand new aspects are being added.

Stay tuned to the website for more updates and thank you so much for reading :)