Wasteland Wasteland 1 Remastered by Krome Studios

[Nutria]

Why does everything take so much more time and effort than it did back in the day? They had to fit everything in 64kb of RAM, floppy disks, and get a goddamn book printed on paper that matched the disks they were sending out. I cannot fathom why in the hell it would be more difficult to adapt these ancient games to modern computers than it was to make them in the first place.

 

[apostrophe]

why in the hell it would be more difficult to adapt these ancient games to modern computers than it was to make them in the first place.

They are making them from scratch, they have art and graphical assets now, optimization, multiple platforms, etc.

 

[Nutria]

They had multiple platforms, probably more than now in the late '80s and harder to port. They had to do insane optimization to make anything work at all. And now you just use some library to show a JPG on the screen without writing it yourself. I really don't get it.

 

[apostrophe]

They developed Wasteland 5 years and was at the time AAA title. It was designed with Apple2 in mind, so it was fairly easy to port it to C64 that had significantly better hardware. And now a lot more time gets "wasted" on design, there was no need to debate certain aesthetical choices when everything is made from brown blocks. People now have much higher expectations from things like UI and general usability and figuring out how to make great UI while staying true to the original also wastes time.

 

[Efe]

what kind of optimization do you need for wasteland?
game design is same. multiplatform 2d engines are readily available.
what more do you need?

 

[FeelTheRads]

multiplatform 2d engines are readily available.

Isn't this gonna be 3D and look like SHIT? I remember seeing some horrifying screenshots that by any standards looked worse than the original and they were made in a 3D engine.

Not that it excuses the development time. That's probably down to being developed out of the pocket change of Fargo's kids.

Edit: Ah, duh, the screenshots are in this thread. They're not as bad as I remembered them, but still.

 

[Infinitron]

I can think of reasons why this game could take long to develop. Maybe it's being worked on in a part-time basis. Maybe its art is outsourced and there are delays related to that. Maybe after Microsoft acquired inXile they decided to pour some more money into the project and otherwise it would have been out by now.

It's possible that the game has been ready on PC for a while now and has been awaiting console certification. Perhaps something will be announced at the X019 event next week.

 

[Efe]

shit, i thought it was going to be like bards tale remasters..

 

[Gregz]

shit, i thought it was going to be like bards tale remasters..

The original Wasteland art assets are too rough by today's standards (although I still love the pixel art, obviously). The bards tale remasters only had to refresh the GUI and avatars, Wasteland requires a complete overhaul of the overhead map elements.

Krome does fantastic work, but art assets are always a nasty bottleneck for any company.

 

[Infinitron]

This is coming out Q1 2020 apparently.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I want the source on that artwork.

 

[Infinitron]

More screenshots!

Spoiler

 

[Murk]

Hopefully that blur/softglow/bloom/whatever can be disabled.

Though I appreciate how 1-to-1 those screenshots imply it will be.

 

[undecaf]

More screenshots!

Spoiler

It looks sort of nice, but I think they should’ve kept it 2D and tile based.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Whoa, no wonder it takes so long to make. This might actually be worth playing.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

This looks worse.

 

[Duraframe300]

It looks sort of nice, but I think they should’ve kept it 2D and tile based.

And a bit more colorfull.

 

[aweigh]

Why does everything take so much more time and effort than it did back in the day? They had to fit everything in 64kb of RAM, floppy disks, and get a goddamn book printed on paper that matched the disks they were sending out. I cannot fathom why in the hell it would be more difficult to adapt these ancient games to modern computers than it was to make them in the first place.

I suspect a large part of the reason why is simply worse management, worse office practices, worse collaboration, too many people that have to sign off on something that in turn is required for being able to do something else; etc.

EDIT: Also all the stuff that Infi mentioned. Yeah.

 

[Darkzone]

This looks worse.

Depends on the personal subjective preferences. So to speak i agree with you, but ... let me elaborate .... It strays away from the art of the cover and the WL box, that was delivered with the Game. This 3d environment and textures lack the 80s touch of the post apocalypse. The oveall color scheme of the 80s post apo ranged from sand color to rust (inspired by Mad Max 2), and is quite good caught by the original cover art. The roofs of Quartz should therefore be more grayed out or more of the color of the covering, like old dark wood or rust indicating metal sheets underneath the grayed out paint, due to the Sun, Rain and Sand. Who paints his house and the roof in the post apo?
Then the streets with their markings. This street markings would not survive 40 years without people constant renewing it,
because plastic and rubber becomes brittle due the UV rays from the sun, while paint is slowly rubbed away by the wind carrying small sand or washed slowly away by rain. In the core of my criticism is the simple fact that the errosion is not shown by the texures of this assets.
Don't get me wrong they have made a good job with the BT series, but and especially the australians should know this, since Mad Max originates from Australia.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

It looks pretty ugly tbh, the original game wasn't good looking outside combat but this doesn't look much better, and I really doubt they can improve the enemy portraits, which were beautiful.

Not that it would matter to me though, all I want are new quality of life features, a better control scheme, some obvious fixes, and not having to read paragraphs from the manual.

 

[LESS T_T]

I don't mind generic looking 3D models that much, but why do them look so blurry?

It's not just blur and bloom. It looks intentional post-processing effect, as if they added sharpen to blurred image.

I want the source on that artwork.

What they uploaded is pretty big, unless you meant logo-less: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJbmLrcUwAAx1C5?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

 

[RNGsus]

They had multiple platforms, probably more than now in the late '80s and harder to port. They had to do insane optimization to make anything work at all. And now you just use some library to show a JPG on the screen without writing it yourself. I really don't get it.

There's a lot more overhead these days. My guess.

 

[SniperHF]

blur is shit and I have yet to see an example in a video game that actually looks like blurry peripheral vision in real life. I don't understand how so many developers over the last 20 years can't manage to realize it looks like trash and stop using it.

and tile based.

It might still have a grid of some sort though it just probably hides it.
Otherwise the gameplay would just be totally different. Encounters would be different, skill use, splitting the party. Wouldn't even be the same type of game at all.

 

[Sigourn]

Looks like shit. Should have focused on expanding the color palette of the original and improving the sound effects.

 

[Gregz]

Honestly it's hard to say, I think it makes sense to choose an art style that leaves as much to the imagination as possible. Not an easy task.