Vapourware Twinsen's Little Big Adventure - reboot from original creators

[vota DC]

LBA3 Aeneid.....I mean if 2 was Odyssey....

 

[Cazzeris]

Already they don't know wtf they're doing

 

[LESS T_T]

At least good things came out of this, they open sourced LBA 1 and 2. https://blog.2point21.com/p/devlog-releasing-lba-open-source

Time Commando will be open sourced too.

Devlog#2: This week we are releasing…
LBA1 and LBA2 engine source code!

Hmmmmm Assembly code, so fancy !
We've been quite busy during the previous month! I know you probably want to read about us actually MAKING THE GAME! But we’re not quite there yet

After our “LBA returns” announcement beginning September on Twitter, the community response was truly amazing. We anticipated a bunch of cool reactions but not so many and not with so much love and support!!!!

Again, thank you.

So, what have we been up to since our last talk?

Going a little bit deeper into the rabbibunny hole...
The past couple of weeks, while preparing some Time Commando builds for GoG, itch.io and Steam, I’ve discussed with people close to the original games, being either the programmers working at Adeline Software or the game creators themselves. I also started talking to fans that initiated personal or community projects during the past years.

And I had an epiphany. So dramatic … *insert roll here* **even if the title already gave me up but … hey… **

The programming work done by the original teams is not only tremendous but exceptional for the time. It can’t be kept on old CDs in suitcases in the programmers' homes (*wink* Didier ).


Cloud in the 90s…
This codebase can benefit developers as a source of knowledge / education, Little Big Adventure fans or retrogaming communities.

And then, just like that, we decided to OPEN-SOURCE THE CODE OF LITTLE BIG ADVENTURE ENGINES AND TOOLS that have been trusted in our hands, so it can outlive all of us, somehow.

Our objective is to preserve those pieces of technical mastery and true groundbreaking vision. We also want to give back to the LBA community who kept cheering on the games during all those years.

I'd like to invite all fans to keep expressing their passion for the game through different means. We're especially excited about bringing modding capabilities in the future!

Follow the github links to check how you can contribute.

LBA1 engine on github

LBA2 engine on github

For each game, there is:

• An “historic” repository where only ex-Adeline developers or myself will contribute (if we forgot a file or a mention somewhere),
  
  
• A community repository that is open to pull requests
  

We also invite the community to contribute to the general “engines” documentation.

Engine and tools documentation

If you want to discuss our projects in general or the open source specifically, we opened an official Discord server.

Our Discord Server

By the way, this code was never meant to be seen by anyone outside the Adeline Software team. The source we are releasing is mainly untouched (only the developers names were removed) including bad french, variable names in “frenglish” and some comments that are just too funny not to share. Enjoy


One of my favorite comments. I laughed for 10 minutes straight. I guess you need to be french with a very special sense of humor to laugh but … well …
read infos
test if object has anim
no toobad bye


It’s over… What ?!!! already ?!!
This compression method is stupid !
But it works !


Let’s sound the situation with a little *chbooing*

I’m so grateful for...
I am very thankful for the people helping me recover the source code and working on those files : Seb, DBug and Vincent.

Not forgetting Didier Chanfray for driving 2h30 to my place with the famous “suitcase” full of CDs and Frédérick Raynal for his true passion for technology.

I want to thank both of them for their trust in me with this initiative!

Lastly, cheers to Alexandre, Adrien, the good people from ScummVM and our french friends from the M05 association who were kind enough to answer my questions!

And next ?
In the future, we also plan to release Time Commando engine code. Stay tuned !

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Man, I wish someone would make a build of the first LBA with normal save system, not this autosave bullshit. And without damage from wall collision (like in LBA 2).

 

[Neuromancer]

Man, I wish someone would make a build of the first LBA with normal save system, not this autosave bullshit. And without damage from wall collision (like in LBA 2).

From what I read, there is a new version on Steam (Enhanced Edition), that already removed the retarded wall damage from LBA 1 and had some other improvements.
Unfortunately, that never made it to GOG...

 

[Terra]

PS1 version had quicksaving anywhere and no wall damage iirc.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

Man, I wish someone would make a build of the first LBA with normal save system, not this autosave bullshit. And without damage from wall collision (like in LBA 2).

From what I read, there is a new version on Steam (Enhanced Edition), that already removed the retarded wall damage from LBA 1 and had some other improvements.
Unfortunately, that never made it to GOG...

Yes, but LBA 1 EE also has a retarded mobile phone interface and the mouse controls. Call me a retrograde, but this is too much change for me, I love the original tank controls. Although I wouldn't mind if the controls were brought up to LBA2 level with a separate button for use/talk in any mode. And the interface is objectively ugly.

There is also a much more conservative Windows port of LBA1 which allows to turn off the wall collision damage, but alas it doesn't have quicksaving. Also, I don't know if it works on Win 7-11.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

They've been trying to get LBA3 green lit ever since the second game.
Also time commando aged very poorly so it'll be nice to see it get some love.

 

[PlanHex]

The wall damage is part of the charm.
It's hilarious that running face first into a wall damages you and bounces you back.
If a game did that nowadays that feature would be called a brilliant satire of video game mechanics or something.

 

[kain30]

LBA 1 and 2 are my favorite childhood games!! I can´t wait for a LBA3!!!!

 

[RobotSquirrel]

I just did a full playthrough of LBA2. I want to see what Green Zeelich looks like.
I hope there's a theme with Twinsun being the land of Magic and somewhat Luddite, with Zeelich being a technological powerhouse after abandoning its paganistic ways as its history was built entirely on lies.
I hope the Emerald moon is also shown I want to see the giant crater where the reactor was nuked.

Also interesting to note we don't know what gender Twinsen's child is its never revealed so there is the option for it to be player choice.

The game held up very well. I was actually surprised that there's a few optional extras you can do in the game. One thing I never did was beat up the school children for example, doing that is hilarious I recommend. Its also very morbid that you can beat up your pregnant wife lol.

Also I didn't know there was a time commando easter egg until now. Laughed my ass off.

 

[LESS T_T]

They settled on the franchise's new name. Twinsen's Little Big Adventure: https://twinsenslittlebigadventure.com/lba-new-name-twinsen/

LBA's new name

So many different names

Discover Little Big Adventure / Twinsen new name

A few weeks ago we asked for your help to find a new name for the series, as the games have different names in different regions (Little Big Adventure / Relentless and Little Big Adventure 2 / Twinsen's Odyssey). We proposed 3 solutions and you voted with many, big thanks for that! Some of you even made your own propositions in the comments.

We finally decided to drop our propositions and go for one of yours!

Say goodbye to Little Big Adventure, to Relentless, to Twinsen’s Odyssey and say hello to...

Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure


And we didn’t stop here. We are very happy to present the brand new logo of the franchise.


We hope you are happy with the new logo as well! This allows us to speak to players all across the globe and position the IP of Twinsen's Little Big Adventure in a clear and consistent way.

The Classic games that are available on Steam and GOG.com will get a restyle as well! The first game, formerly known as Little Big Adventure / Relentless, is now called Twinsen's Little Big Adventure Classic.


Little Big Adventure 2 / Twinsen’s Odyssey is now called Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure Classic 2


We would like to thank Alex from les Crafteurs for this amazing work!

And with a new name comes a new website. On www.twinsenslittlebigadventure.com you can follow all developments around Twinsen's Little Big Adventure Classic 1 and 2, plus more exciting news to come.

Stay tuned!

Ben

PS: As you might have noticed, we transferred the articles from blog.2point21.com to this new twinsenslittlebigadventure.com website. We sadly lost all the comments in the process.

And it looks like the publishing rights to classic games are rolled back to the creators from DotEmu last month.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

naming a bit dumb.
First game should be called Twinsen's Little Big Adventure: Relentless
Second game should be called Twinsen's Little Big Adventure 2: Odyssey
This would make more sense. Calling it classic makes me think I'm ordering a hamburger. Give me the classic 2.

Of course I'd rather they just call it Little Big Adventure: Relentless and Little Big Adventure 2: Twinsen's Odyssey
but they seem hell bent on the Twinsen branding.

 

[Terra]

So wordy, it's like they're trying to outdo the LGBT alphabet spaghetti at this point and have completely missed that LBA as a name/brand was memorable because it was short, snappy and contradictory.

Little Big Adventure - short, snappy, memorable.
Twinsen's Little Big Adventure - Eh, getting wordier but bearable. Anyone who know's what LBA is, knows who Twinsen is, anyone who doesn't, won't know Twinsen, and it's therefore a pointless prefix.
Twinsen's Little Big Adventure Classic - Just more needless words, serving no purpose.

What's next, Twinsen's Little Big Adventure 3 - Twinsen Twinsun something something featuring Dr Funfrock from the Twinsen's Little Big Adventure Classic series.

 

[passerby]

Man, I wish someone would make a build of the first LBA with normal save system, not this autosave bullshit. And without damage from wall collision (like in LBA 2).

There is a DOSBOX build with savestates, LBA is one of the games I've used to play with it, I didn't enjoy the game anyway and dropped, but without it I wouldn't even make a serious attempt.

 

[normie]

Twinsen Reloaded

 

[Infinitron]

https://twinsenslittlebigadventure.com/a-message-from-didier-chanfray/

A message from Didier Chanfray

Hello everyone,

My name is Didier Chanfray, and I am one of the co-founders of Adeline Software International in 1993 along with Frédérick Raynal and Yaël Barroz.


After releasing Little Big Adventure, Time Commando and Little Big Adventure 2, the team at Adeline Software launched a new studio - No Cliché - financed by Sega. At No Cliché, the focus was to work only on new IPs for the Dreamcast. The rights of LBA remained the property of Delphine Software, the holding company behind Adeline.

When Dreamcast ended, we had to close the studio. I decided to launch my own studio - Little Worlds - that was active for the following 10 years. After this experience I wanted to try to make a comeback for LBA and I managed to buy back the IP from Delphine Software.

In 2012 I published the LBA1 and LBA2 on GoG and worked with DotEmu to release LBA1 on iOS and Android. Sadly, this mobile port was not the success we hoped for, and so we didn't do the second one.

It appeared very fast that no major publisher would be interested in LBA. The sad truth is that the community - while active and loyal - is too small to build a game release on. The financial risk is simply too big.

Over the years LBA slowly began to fade to the background. When Playstation exclusive Little Big Planet arrived - a much bigger IP with a larger audience and fame - "Little Big" became more and more associated with this IP instead of LBA. The latest release in this universe dates from November 2020 and is called Sackboy: A Big Adventure, which is one "Little" away from Little Big Adventure. This makes marketing and publicity around LBA all the more challenging.

At this point, I had only one dream: find the best opportunity to make a winning comeback with LBA.

In the beginning of 2021, a true fan (that would be Ben) came knocking at the door -virtually-. His vision as a LBA fan, his business strategy as an entrepreneur and his genuine interest in doing what's best for the IP, convinced me that we could do something great together. I took the leap of faith and we created the studio with Ben and Gwen for this new adventure, with Fred’s support.

As a new studio, the objective is to build a strong IP around LBA and not just make LBA3.

When we started the discussion with Fred, Samantha (our new writer) and Ben about the new game, we quickly realized that the third game we initially wanted to make - the Genesis of the Stellar Entity - would be strange to make. The script was a first draft written to end the series. With the new studio, we do not want to end the series. We want to attract a wider audience and share the wonderful world, iconic characters and story with as many players as possible, so that more Twinsunian adventures can be created.

We decided to reboot Twinsen’s story.

I know some of you may be very sad to hear that we won't be creating the Genesis of the Stellar Entity. We strongly believe in a bright future LBA and think this is the best choice to ensure this future. Our goal is that our children and grandchildren will be able to continue playing new LBA adventures in the years to come.

If you wish to create something around the original games yourselves, we've open-sourced the code for the original games and will support any fan project/mod to the maximum of our capabilities.

While much is still unknown, we hope to release Twinsen's Little Big Adventure in 2024 for the 30th Anniversary of the series. We will be as transparent as we can and involve the community with the development, to make the best game possible, together.

We're currently building up our team (more info on that later!) and plan to create the first reboot with a core production team of around 12 people. Even though the team and budget will be smaller than what was used to create the original LBA2, we're confident that through hiring the right people, making smart decisions and utilising new technologies we can create an amazing experience for both newcomers as existing LBA-fans.

We hope that you understand our decisions and will support us in our development. Together we will make Twinsen big again and create wonderful adventures. Thanks for all your passion and support, it means the world to us.

Did

 

[RobotSquirrel]

We want to attract a wider audience and share the wonderful world, iconic characters and story with as many players as possible, so that more Twinsunian adventures can be created.

Make one good game first then maybe talk others. Further more your veterans are the people that are going to make your game a success, this whole "appeal to a wider audience" is usually suit talk for "we're going to ruin it because mobile casual gamers make more money". Never a good sign when studios talk this way. I'm questioning their intentions now.

The reboot news is also pretty crushing since you only really get one shot at this, to waste it on a reboot will be a bit insulting. LBA 3 is what we wanted. If they screw this up we're never getting it.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

I've been playing these a bit recently, and there's a lot to like about the world. Is it just me or is LBA the spiritual progenitor to Beyond Good & Evil? Talking animals, a dictatorship, seems all very reminiscent. Maybe they could fill that hole that Ubisoft repeatedly has failed to do with BGE2?

 

[Infinitron]

I've been playing these a bit recently, and there's a lot to like about the world. Is it just me or is LBA the spiritual progenitor to Beyond Good & Evil? Talking animals, a dictatorship, seems all very reminiscent. Maybe they could fill that hole that Ubisoft repeatedly has failed to do with BGE2?

Shared French aesthetic. Though I'm sure Michel Ancel played LBA. Here's an interview with him and Frederick Raynal from 2017: https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/artic...ncel-et-frederick-raynal_5160165_4408996.html

 

[LESS T_T]

What's more, the classic games will get new versions (free upgrade for the existing owners): https://twinsenslittlebigadventure.com/new-beginnings/

Devlog#3: New beginnings

And old things are coming back to life…
It has already been 5 months since we announced Twinsen’s return… Seems like yesterday! We’ve been busy with starting the studio proper, chasing funds and recruiting new people to join our happy little family!

The main news from the past weeks is that the studio is working on rebooting Twinsen’s story: Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure. Be sure you read Didier’s letter to understand the reasoning behind this choice.

In today’s devlog, I’m going to talk to you about the Classic development plans. If you missed the news about what stands for Classic editions, you can check this blog post.

Our plans for the Classic Games
We want to bring the legacy games to more players, so we are working in parallel on the Classic versions with a former Adeline developer: Sébastien Viannay. We scoped each version carefully to -hopefully- reach a wider audience as well as keeping the game as authentic as possible. Let me explain a bit more about them.

Give me all the versions !

A quick visual overview of the different TLBA Classic versions

• Assembly: This is the original engine code that we open-sourced last year. We cleaned the code and reencoded the characters but we won’t work on this version in the future.
• Retro Edition: Except for the in-game language selection, you’ll be able to play the original game as it was developed, but playable on Windows (no DOSBOX).
• Classic +: This was our main focus the past months :
  • > Complete C port for both games => required to consider other platforms that don't support Assembly code
  • > Controller support
  • > UI changes (new options in the menu)
  • > Platform SDK implementation : achievements, cloud savings
• Console: Currently not planned, but we are considering several target platforms.

This sounds good but you may ask, where will I be able to play those versions, and how much is it going to cost me?

Good question, thanks for asking!

The best news is that if you already purchased the games on Steam or GOG, you'll get the Classic + update for free.


And if you’re new to the game on Steam, you’ll get the Retro Edition on top of the Classic + version as a free DLC. Easy and simple. Right?

Don't miss the release by adding the DLC to your wishlist:





You can also expect new releases in the following months on different platforms.

Focus on In-game language selection
Depending on the platform you used to play the games it was not obvious at all that you could play the game in different languages.

On Steam, you had to guess that you could use the game properties to switch languages and on GoG there was a small language switcher shipped with the game. Some players thought it was an English-only build …

That’s why we integrated the language selection in the game so you can switch to your preferred language and benefit from the great dubs from the past.

The end of mobile support
One of the downsides of being a very small team is that sometimes we have to make some hard decisions that will lead to disappointment.

This one was not easy to make but we decided to stop supporting the mobile versions of Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure Classic game (iOS / Android) as we want to focus on PC and Consoles and we don't have the capacity to support mobile platforms anymore.

The mobile app won’t disappear from your phone though, unless you remove it yourself or the OS installed stop supporting it (it was already the case with latest Android releases).

And a 10 years old audio bug finally fixed *wink Seb*

When DotEmu released the enhanced version of TLBA1 in 2012, an audio bug was introduced and was never fixed. The voices were lower than in the original version and no one could figure out why.

In the Assembly version, the audio files were boosted by an x4 factor. But when porting the code to C, the developers, not aware of the fact, didn’t take this into consideration.

Now it’s finally fixed ! Yay to Seb for finding the needle in the haystack!


You read well; this guy was the lead programmer on TLBA2 !!!!!

Thank you for reading this far and don’t forget to leave us some comments down below!

Well if you have some wishlist of improvements and fixes, I guess it's a good idea to let them know there.

 

[luj1]

LBA 1-2 is an excellent adventure with some early RPG elements, unique story and characters/universe

highly prestigious and deffo one of my childhood favorites

 

[LESS T_T]

Apart from the news that the original game is now available on Amazon's Luna, they revealed a new art to represent the classic game: https://twinsenslittlebigadventure.com/play-twinsen-on-luna/

A new visual identity for Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure Classic
We asked a very talented french comic artist to create new visuals for the game. You can discover them on Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure Luna page, but here is a sneak peak and a gift .


Thank you Vincent for this amazing take on Twinsen and his lovely Dino-Fly <3

Download Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure wallpaper for your desktop or phone:

Desktop
1024 x 768
1280 x 1024
1920 x 1080

Phone
640x960

 

[LESS T_T]

The new ports of the classic games come to Steam and GOG on May 31: https://twinsenslittlebigadventure.com/new-game-plus-modes-incoming/

New Game+ modes incoming!

New Game+ modes are now available for Twinsen's Little Big Adventure 1+2 Classic

Hello everyone,

In May this year, we are celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure 2 Classic. This event is truly special for me. In 1997, I was 8 when I discovered the world of Twinsen for the first time. 25 years later, it’s now my (dream) job to bring Twinsen back.

As you may know from Gwen’s last devlog, we are working on updates of the Classic games. Before digging into the details, I must confess there’s one thing we kept secret…

We are bringing a NEW GAME+ mode for both Classic Games!
In this mode, you will experience the full story starting with end-game items like the Sabre, the Protopack and Magic Level 4!

Note that you still need to collect all items to progress through the story as you would in a regular playthrough. Look at these amazing GIFs!

Spoiler

What would you do with the sabre?





Who needs to jump when you've got a protopack?



How about a protection spell?

So how did we end up with that mode?
Since our work on porting the games on Luna with Seb, we were able to really go deep under the hood of the games. During one meeting, Seb told us about a debug mod of TLBA2 Classic that enables you to play the games with all items of the game. I couldn’t resist asking him to play this debug mode! After a few minutes, I realized I couldn’t stop smiling. After a discussion with Gwen, Roy and Seb, we decided to create a proper New Game + for both Classic games. A few months later, the result is finally here! I really hope you will like it as much as we did.

The content of the updates
Twinsen's Little Big Adventure Classic

• Language select in menu
• Steam Achievements
• Steam Cloud Saving
• Controller Support
• Input remapping
• New Game+
• Windowed Support
• Hit by walls toggle on/off

Twinsen's Little Big Adventure 2 Classic

• Language select in menu
• Steam Achievements
• Steam Cloud Saving
• Controller Support
• Input remapping
• New Game+
• Windowed Support
• Auto-centered camera in exteriors setting on/off

These versions will be pushed on every current and future platform where the games are already available. Should you prefer to play the original version of the games (no DosBox emulation required anymore), they will be available as a free DLC on Steam. Regarding the Enhanced version of TLBA1 Classic, we decided to turn it into a free DLC (only on Steam). For the occasion, we renamed it “Mobile Edition”. However, we will not support this version, as we wish for current and future players to experience the game with its original difficulty and behaviour changes.

Another change on the 31st of May
For those who already own the games, the updates are free. However, these updates represent a big investment for a small studio like us. We then decided to increase the prices of both games to 9,99€. These changes will occur on the 31st of May, so you still have plenty of time to buy the games beforehand (or to offer it to a friend). After that, should you wish to buy at a lower price, please add the game to your wishlist to know about future discounted sales. Thanks for supporting us in our adventure of bringing back TLBA to the forefront.

Special thanks to our beta testers, who helped us with their amazing precise and thorough feedbacks.

See you on May 31st for a happy 25th Anniversary!

 

[LESS T_T]

The new classic editions are now available on Steam. (Soon on GOG.)





https://twinsenslittlebigadventure.com/happy-25th-anniversary/

Happy 25th Anniversary!

We are super happy to announce that the updated versions of both TLBA Classic 1&2 are now available on Steam (and very soon on GoG and Luna).

To celebrate, we organize our first live on Twitch. We will be playing TLBA 2 Classic in New Game+ mode while presenting the team:

• From 6pm to 7pm (CET), we will speak in French
• From 7pm to 8pm (CET), we will speak in English

https://www.twitch.tv/2point21

The content of the updates
Twinsen's Little Big Adventure Classic

• Language select in menu
• Steam Achievements
• Steam Cloud Saving
• Controller Support
• Input remapping
• New Game+
• Windowed Support
• Hit by walls toggle on/off

Twinsen's Little Big Adventure 2 Classic

• Language select in menu
• Steam Achievements
• Steam Cloud Saving
• Controller Support
• Input remapping
• New Game+
• Windowed Support
• Auto-centered camera in exteriors setting on/off

If you like the updates, please write a review on Steam, it will help us a lot!

Have fun!

If you want to play DotEmu edition for some reason, it will be available as free DLC: