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When they mentioned that "It will be done when it's done" All I could think of was Duke Nukem Forever...
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Valve time. :P But at least you know that they're active.
Anyway, I listened to the podcast while playing TF2. I've decided to summarise the bits about N'n'T for the hell of it. Wall of text crits you for 9999 and all that, but there is some good info here, although I think a lot of it's already appeared in other interviews.
When questioned about the remake:
- Lorne reflects on how he's better able to engage with his audience nowadays then he was previously, thanks to social media
- Fans wanted to see a remake, but also wanted to see something new
- Lorne chose to do a remake of AO 'cause making something new would be too expensive at the moment
- He talks about the challenge of how to do a remake without upsetting the fans, since they demanded it to be made better without changing much
Then the discussion covers:
- Planning how to do the project, and how to rehash an old game with modern tech
- Deciding which engine to train JAW's staff how to use, that they settled for Unity
- Working with Unity's dev team, how JAW are pushing Unity's tech, particularly graphically wise
- Lorne is happy with the quality and progress of the work being produced by JAW
They're asked about how some fans remember the original game as being better than it actually was, and the challenge of working from low-res source material:
- Stewart thinks the hardest part about that was jumping from 2D to 3D.
- He enjoyed the original games back in '97, '98, but didn't like how static the environments were, and is now pleased that JAW is able to bring AO's environments to life, making them appear more dynamic in N'n'T.
- Ridge Racer stood out to Stewart for having a dynamic world, despite it being a "boring-ass track racing game"
Lorne covers this question later in the podcast:
- Lorne is pleased about having the tech to show visual and lighting effects that weren't previously possible
- He's disappointed when people get remakes wrong by changing too much. For example, they "fucked up" the King Kong remake because they changed the script.
- He feels audiences want original IPs left as they are, but remade and enhanced with new tech
- He's pleased to see AO come to life as he originally envisioned it, rather than a "flip screen game"
- (later still) AO had 3 million dollar's worth of 3D assets. While dated now, they were high quality back in the day, and OWI were saving a library of them for later use when user-end technology could render them in higher resolutions.
- Said assets are not compatible with today's tech, but have been used as templates for new assets, saving the dev team a lot of work and money
They're questioned about N'n'T's progress:
- Stewart talks about how they changed engines 3 months after displaying footage of N'n'T at E3
- Unity is a lot easier to use than the previous engine they were using and has better features
- They had to rebuild N'n'T in Unity, but were able to reuse most of their existing assets
- 16 months after rebooting the project, it's coming together "really well" as they approach the end of development
- They've polished the game a bit since releasing recent screenshots a couple of weeks ago
When asked about when we'll be able to see more game footage:
- Stewart: "Soon"
- Lorne: Game Dev Conference in San Francisco in the coming weeks
Later after Lorne rambles about game dev, they're questioned about the camera angles in N'n'T. Lorne answers with the following, and Stewart later backs him up and adds extra info:
- People wanted classic 2D play because they appreciated the simplicity of the original gameplay rather than changing AO to a 3D platformer
- Having a more dynamic, moving camera over a static one was a way to give depth to a 3D world while retaining the 2D gameplay of the original.
- Lorne speaks about how to make the game more accessible to new players while not dumbing it down for the hardcore ones
- He acknowledges that they haven't shown much of N'n'T's gameplay yet, and appreciates the attention to detail that fans have on level layout when commenting on screenshots
That's about all I can be arsed to do. The rest of the interview is about game dev in general, and Lorne talks a lot about the challenges of being independent and his POV on stuff.
Hot damn, we're inching ever closer!
