Drakan Remake by YanGez93 [Project abandoned]

[Arokhs Twin]

Do you guys want a wordpress account for the main site as the news page is sadly lacking. Posting news articles on the main site index page would give your project more coverage. You can't sign up for an account yourself as updating the website is limited to myself and other admins but I can create you one if you like so you can post your own articles.

PM me if you want to do this.

[HeckFluff]

Does yangez93 need volunteers? If not, it's probably best to wait until he's got it to a minimally playable state, at which point, he'll have something to show a non-Drakan gamer.

[yangez93]

I think it is good idea. Some news in main website will not hurt. As HeckFluff said the best to show playable version of Drakan Remake, but you know, it will take some time Anyway, great job HeckFluff for you recent work

[HeckFluff]

Your screenshots show plenty of art assets, but do you have any plans on how and when you're going to implement the game's systems and mechanics?

You know what would be really fun? Arohk/Rynn multiplayer campaign co-op. Would this be something you'll be capable of doing? Does Unity have built-in functionality for this kind of thing? Or would this be just as unused as the current Drakan master server? Might require a bit of level redesign, though.

[yangez93]

Does yangez93 need volunteers? If not, it's probably best to wait until he's got it to a minimally playable state, at which point, he'll have something to show a non-Drakan gamer.

Great projects are made by team. As you said, i really need volunteers Anyway support here in this forum is very helpfull and make me more motivated

Your screenshots show plenty of art assets, but do you have any plans on how and when you're going to implement the game's systems and mechanics?

Main goal is to finish in maybe 60-70% levels (details I will corect at the end).It easy to make trigger switching from one level to another. Next make in blender NPCs, dragon models, Rynn,Arokh, animations, scripts. Not forgeting bow and arrows, spells. Right know I scared when I thinking about animate dragons, monsters, death mage(and throwing spells) and programming

Right now i do what I can so I make levels, when i started make Drakan Remake i made basic menu system for just click "Play game" with switching camera after clicking it and of course quit game, as simple as "Hello World" in c++, maybe this menu concept will stay with with famous owl? But Drakan menu was very ambitious with rotating crystals I saw some tutorials about changing player controls, mouse speed etc. I made some animation blending for Rynn

I tried also RAIN AI for unity assets to implement some navigation mesh, i made at least moving knights models, sceletons but they dont fit to Drakan (I'am talking about models).

Do you guys want a wordpress account for the main site as the news page is sadly lacking. Posting news articles on the main site index page would give your project more coverage. You can't sign up for an account yourself as updating the website is limited to myself and other admins but I can create you one if you like so you can post your own articles.

PM me if you want to do this.

If it'll be official trailer i for 100% post it in wordpress, thank you very much Arokhs Twin for account. It'll be nice to make some cutscenes and make from this trailer. Right know i try to post simple forum posts, if I'll upload some important news i promise to upload it in wordpress

You know what would be really fun? Arohk/Rynn multiplayer campaign co-op. Would this be something you'll be capable of doing? Does Unity have built-in functionality for this kind of thing? Or would this be just as unused as the current Drakan master server? Might require a bit of level redesign, though.

Yes, that idea sounds nice. With cooperation with Rynn can be spectacular fight system. For example there be Rynn and other survived warrior together or just player1-Rynn and player2-Arokh. Or just new levels dedicated for cooperations, maybe conquer dragon mountain with 4 players cooperating,commanding.I think also about diffrent movement system (obviously as a additional modification) as in Dragon Age for example, movement just by clicking mouse. I still learning unity environment i cannot answer you

My ideas:

• What about add food as "heath potions"?
• Maybe there are also never used creatures in artist concept of Drakan?
• Destructable objects(houses, trees)
• Underwater ruins and underwater NPCs in islands
• Expand Arokh's lair
• Expand Herons Tomb
• Evil towers (magma,poison,ice, magical weapons)

https://jbjhjm.deviantart.com/art/Legen ... -408301267
(Very nice scavanger for Drakan Remake )

Alright, Rynn walk on particles








And of course Wartok Canyons advancing beacuse this is very nice huge level, it'll take time to finish it, i improved texture blending and erase too much grass in some ways. I have also to compute occlusion culling.















ballistas, where are you?

[HeckFluff]

Great projects are made by team as you said, i really need volunteers Anyway support here in this forum is very helpfull and make me more motivated

Main goal is to finish in maybe 60-70% levels (details I will corect at the end).It easy to make trigger switching from one level to another. Next make in blender NPCs, dragon models, Rynn,Arokh, animations, scripts. Not forgeting bow and arrows, spells. Right know I scared when I thinking about animate dragons, monsters, death mage(and throwing spells) and programming

Alternatively, you could use placeholder programmer art or the original assets, and then use crowd funding to hire artist(s), because there would be a lot more confidence in your project if all you need is art.

Programming isn't a big worry. This is an old game, so you won't need and state-of-the-art know-how. You'll probably spend longer figuring out any Unity'isms.

I tried also RAIN AI for unity assets to implement some navigation mesh, i made at least moving knights models

RAIN AI seems dead. I can't find its documentation on their website. And it seems to use DLLs; are these native x86/x64 Windows DLLs, or .NET? Also, what about spiders? Do you want them to walk on ceilings? Can RAIN AI do that for you? Can RAIN AI handle flying creatures? In case you can't tell, I'm doubting that RAIN AI will fulfill all your requirements. This is speculation, though, I don't have RAIN AI or Unity.

sceletons but they dont fit to Drakan (I'am talking about models).

The word you're looking for is "aesthetically" or "artistically", I guess.

movement just by clicking mouse.

That's a completely different genre. X-Com: Drakan.

What about add food as "heath potions"?

They're called "cheese wheels".
What about Arohk's health pickups? They're just glowing orbs. Can't get much more unimaginative than that. We, like, totally need to see him drink water. Maybe eat people. I Of The Dragon on steroids. On the otherhand, that's an unlimited health source, so maybe this should only happen on lower difficulties.

Destructable objects(houses, trees)

If Unity doesn't have this functionality, you'll want something like https://mango.blender.org/random/voronoi-fracturing/. You'll probably need it anyway for barrels. For extra points, have big chunks of debris create dynamic holes in the navmesh.

Underwater ruins and underwater NPCs in islands

There's only one way this can end: https://ragnar-thorson.deviantart.com/a ... -558226270.

Expand Arokh's lair
Expand Herons Tomb

Ever played Skyrim? http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Labyrint ... byrinthian.

Alright, Rynn walk on particles

Is it switch controlled?

And of course Wartok Canyons advancing beacuse this is very nice huge level

Huge level has huge terrain. How is it rendered? Are you using a terrain LOD system? Or is performance already good?

[nikouni]

If you want to i can extract you a full working menu as .unitypackage

http://drakan.synoptic-entertainment.com/ (example)

Also i have some other high poly models as if been helping out on some other remakes with the unreal engine.


If you need some support in the case of programming i would be able to support you, as i've been doing this for quite a long time and covered nearly all possible topics in the past. (unity as fav engine for prototyping)

Althought the character controller for drakan is quite simplistic as well as the animation sound blending stuff. Most of the other things are specialized quest scripts.

I could maybe write you a flying ai with correct pathfinding, and i also got a working drakan inventory lying around somewhere for unity3d. (Using the UMA plugin you can find in the assetstore to exchange textures / models as part of the equipment on rynn)

Also i have some procedural animated shaders for the health and breath energy globes (https://gyazo.com/cc9cd95792084fa3d7438c5d2d6ff3ce)

[HeckFluff]

What are these models you have lying around? Characters? Props? What about art style consistency with the models that already exist?

That game UI is using the original textures, which is probably not a good idea, unless they are loaded from the original files.

Haven't heard from yangez93 for a while.

[yangez93]

Hi Drakan fans!

After a little break I'd like to announce I started a Drakan Remake WordPress

https://drakanremake.wordpress.com/

News, screenshots,description of how I create a game,plans for the future will be placed right there in this blog. Of course I'll be actively post news here in this topic and reply you guys. This wordpress will be concentrate on promotion for non drakan players. If you are story teller, please, write here how Can I write Drakan story so Sony won't complain And what about spoiler whole Drakan story? It'll be inappropriate to write whole Drakan story, screenshots of all levels and describe all weapons. Let's do it mysteriously

This is good way to change any time game description, upload to front page actual screenshots, write Drakan story and of course (when it'll be possible ) link to playable version of Drakan remake.

Rynn Components

Rynn right now has some basic scripts such as:

• Player motion: forward, back, left, right,slow walk,sprint, attacking. Speed of Rynn depend on animation. In this .cs file I can change rotation speed.
• Player sword: position when sword is unequipped or equipped.
• Rigidbody: here we can change her mass so she can fall faster. Arokh of course hasn't right know this component.
• Collider: it depend when other objects has mesh collider.
• animator: animations such as idle, walk, sprint. I still have problem with sprint. She has also animation of attack but fight system needs to be improved
• camera movement: it has determination of player camera, center point of Rynn, distance, max and min height of camera. In script we have lookat function.

RAIN AI seems dead. I can't find its documentation on their website. And it seems to use DLLs; are these native x86/x64 Windows DLLs, or .NET? Also, what about spiders? Do you want them to walk on ceilings? Can RAIN AI do that for you? Can RAIN AI handle flying creatures? In case you can't tell, I'm doubting that RAIN AI will fulfill all your requirements. This is speculation, though, I don't have RAIN AI or Unity.

In RAIN you can do basic Waypoint network, put navigation points so characters can walk. It'll be necessary that NPCs has component of spot Rynn.

They're called "cheese wheels".
What about Arohk's health pickups? They're just glowing orbs. Can't get much more unimaginative than that. We, like, totally need to see him drink water. Maybe eat people. I Of The Dragon on steroids. On the otherhand, that's an unlimited health source, so maybe this should only happen on lower difficulties.

This is good point. Players love games when there are a lot of possibilites and functions.

If Unity doesn't have this functionality, you'll want something like https://mango.blender.org/random/voronoi-fracturing/. You'll probably need it anyway for barrels. For extra points, have big chunks of debris create dynamic holes in the navmesh.

Imagine that Arokh destroy everything, it'll be one big ruin Especially with his super weapons. I thinking about destructable objects so player cannot complete level without this.

Alright, Rynn walk on particles
Is it switch controlled?

This is just planes with 100% opacity ;D I know this is so simple. We will need switch (trigger) so it'll change position of particles. In this stage there is elevator, switch controler, some death mage, quest key and some boxes(these boxes have motion open itself, so we have to write trigger )

And of course Wartok Canyons advancing beacuse this is very nice huge level
Huge level has huge terrain. How is it rendered? Are you using a terrain LOD system? Or is performance already good?

In Wartok Canyons i didn't compute Occlusion culling. Terrain is made by multiple layers, these terrains aren't even stitched together.LOD system can be possible with trees, right now i didn't make good LOD system and performance is poor especially when i add some Bloom Optimized script or Motion Blur to camera. We will work on it In artistic way i make some texture blending in Wartok Canyons and delete unnecesarry grasses.

nikouni, please send me everyting helpfull. Don't even ask me, just send Main menu health and globes looks awesome. Unity has collaboration feature.

What are these models you have lying around? Characters? Props? What about art style consistency with the models that already exist?

That game UI is using the original textures, which is probably not a good idea, unless they are loaded from the original files.

Haven't heard from yangez93 for a while.

Yes, better avoid using original textures. I try to use completly diffrent models and textures. But sometimes it takes time to make for example completly new tavern in blender.

[Arokhs Twin]

Good to see you are back again. A blog is a good idea; Ill put a link to it on the front page unless you would like to do it?

When the mod is more complete and the story etc is established you could put it on ModDB as well. Speaking of the story I don't think Sony would have any problems with it keeping it the same if you are going down the route of the requirement to own the original game and make your mod free. I doubt they would care actually unless they decide to make another Drakan game for the PS4 (also unlikely) so I'd say go with it.

On the other hand if your mod is to be standalone it's not just the story that they would complain about, it would be any assets from the original game that is used in your mod and any character names etc. I can see them having an issue with that but not if you were to simply make the remake the same as or very similar to the original game's plot / story / characters as long as the original game is required to play it.

It's hard to say, you could try asking them but getting any sensible reply from them would be doubtful.

Maybe one of our other members that knows more about copyright laws etc can help?

[HeckFluff]

After a little break I'd like to announce I started a Drakan Remake WordPress

https://drakanremake.wordpress.com/

Gotta polish that website:

• "DRAKAN REMAKE". Redundant. "OpenOOTF: A Drakan Remake" should be the main title.
• "Drakan Remake is project created in ... 1999." -> "OpenOOTF is a remake of Drakan: Order of the Flame from 1999."
• "I’am YanGez93 ..." -> "You can find the latest info at https://arokhslair.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=4."
• "Special thanks ... remake" -> (centered)

  Project Lead (you whatever you want to call yourself)
  yangez93
  
  Special thanks to
  Arokhs Twin
  Morell
  UCyborg
  Voodooman
  HeckFluff
  nikouni

• Top menu "Artworks" -> "Art Progress" (or similar). Also, it would probably be a better idea to ask contributers to get in touch on these forums, because they would probably want to see the rest of us. It would also be a good idea to put some actual screenshots in it.
• Contact: Might as well add a link to these forums.
• https://drakanremake.files.wordpress.co ... ped-22.jpg. I call this one the "Corrugated Arohk".

Although, I think it's too early for a website because we still don't where all the required art assets are going to come from. You need 3D models, textures, voices, sound effects, and possibly music.

If you are story teller

You don't need much to create a sufficiently different story. Just put Drakan in a different setting. Different place, different time, and the story will write itself. For example, set Drakan in the modern day and with the same myths and legends. Or maybe you want the same setting but with a different plot? Just make a slight tweak. Maybe the evil side convinced Rynn's brother to join them peacefully, by tempting him with another dragon. For added drama, maybe Arohk would want to use that other dragon to uh... repopulate and rebuild the order of the flame. Maybe this other dragon was originally a statue next to Arohk, but Rynn couldn't get there in time to save them both.

But if you go with a different story, then you might as well create an entirely different game, because the only similarity would be the art style and setting.

This is just planes with 100% opacity

0%?

Imagine that Arokh destroy everything,

Terrain deformation is a thing. Maybe Arohk's attacks should only be destructive if he uses all his "mana" at once.

In Wartok Canyons i didn't compute Occlusion culling. Terrain is made by multiple layers, these terrains aren't even stitched together.LOD system can be possible with trees, right now i didn't make good LOD system and performance is poor especially when i add some Bloom Optimized script or Motion Blur to camera. We will work on it In artistic way i make some texture blending in Wartok Canyons and delete unnecesarry grasses.

By "terrain LOD", I was refering specifically to optimised heightfield rendering like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROAM.
Another LOD technique you might want to know about is http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/10/Imposters.
For grass, try showing only nearby grass. Also, is Unity using instanced rendering for the grass?
And furthermore: Use something like portal culling for interiors, even when outside. For example, if the player is outside, culling the view frustrum against the entrances to interiors when rendering those interiors should cull most interior stuff. I don't know if this is doable with Unity, though.

[Chrysalis]

From What I understand about copyright, you would only have to avoid using story aspects/names that the original Drakan dev specifically had copywritten. Also not sure if you were planning to or not, but most companies seem to be fine with the community releasing inspired fan content as long as it's not for monetary gain.

Also if you guys happen to be looking for someone to help out with sfx/music I'd love to possibly help out.

[yangez93]

Welcome,

Thank you Arokhs Twin that you put link im main websiste it's very helpful and useful and Heckfluff for you remarks. I did some corrections to Drakan Remake blog according to your instructions, i change a little bit functionality that makes Fan Fiction, mods and users artworks more popular, I know that every Drakan fan art has to be promoted and for sure it will not hurt anyone, they did incredible work and I hope it'll encourage them to creating more. And of course promotion Drakan:OOTF and TAG itself. Increase community,share,followers. For me I hope it makes this blog stats booming

I started to make plot, description of levels/characters/weapons they are crucial for this game. It'll be not to much complicated, even better to make it simple. But i don't want to make CTRL+C -> CTRL+V story. to have a general sketch I'd like to read fan fiction story such as The Order Reborn https://drakanremake.wordpress.com/the-order-reborn/ and get inspiration.

By "terrain LOD", I was refering specifically to optimised heightfield rendering like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROAM.
Another LOD technique you might want to know about is http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/10/Imposters.
For grass, try showing only nearby grass. Also, is Unity using instanced rendering for the grass?
And furthermore: Use something like portal culling for interiors, even when outside. For example, if the player is outside, culling the view frustrum against the entrances to interiors when rendering those interiors should cull most interior stuff. I don't know if this is doable with Unity, though.

Right know there is difference between Ruined Village and Wartok Canyons in terms of lightning, in Ruined Village there are multiple of point lights, in Wartok Canyons there just Directional Light so he decrease of FPS is noticeable in Ruined Village. And I want to add Depth of Field component to player camera but it is also beta Right now I need voxel terrain asset to make better Canyons and advanced shapes of terrain. I think also about cloth component (Rynn hair, evil banners, clothes). I will apply your remarks about LOD optimization, levels keep growing

From What I understand about copyright, you would only have to avoid using story aspects/names that the original Drakan dev specifically had copywritten. Also not sure if you were planning to or not, but most companies seem to be fine with the community releasing inspired fan content as long as it's not for monetary gain.

Also if you guys happen to be looking for someone to help out with sfx/music I'd love to possibly help out.

When we talk about copyright I haven't received any warnings of Sony so far There in Drakan Remake is only rain sound in Wartok Canyons, there aren't sounds of footsteps of Rynn and ambience sounds. So if you can help, please write, sounds will be very crucial, I will add some fx such as reverb in caves. Music can also be useful at an early stage of production, you can make remastered original OST(or just export original ost to midi files-> and make music from scratch with your samples and VST/synthesizer) or you own version of Drakan OST(I think better idea). Maybe we can be able to make basic trailer afterwards or first Drakan OOTF cutscene with Wartoks raid, but we will need a lot of NPCs models

Right know I unfortunately I have less time because of my full-time job (but when I started making Drakan Remake, too). I always find time to make little progress My direction currently is blender and 3d modelling, I want to make decent Rynn and Arokh, there are tutorials how to create this, so level design I am targeting to later.

[Chrysalis]

I'd love to help out. I have some free time this week, so I can put together some ambient outdoor and maybe cave sounds, and start working on making a theme/menu song that keeps the style of the original but is different since the theme is probably one of the assets that's most likely copyright protected.

[Zalasus]

Hey everyone!

I apologize for the long post right away, but I have a few things to say. But in order not to annoy anyone, here's the TL;DR: I got it into my head to make a similar thing, put much love into it already, and now I don't know if people will love it back and whether I should carry on.

But now the long version:

About a month ago while fiddling with OpenMW, a recreation of the Engine of Morrowind, I had the idea to use my free time to reverse-engineer and recreate a game engine myself. It obviously had to be an old game. Something obscure and forgotten, like that old, cheesy game about Dragons I loves so much as a kid, what was it called? Ah, Drakan!

Well, I thought, starting to dig through my old game boxes for the Drakan CD, how hard could it be? I just had to find out enough about the data files to piece together some program to dump the raw data in a way I could work with and everything would just grow around that.

I was immediately drawn into it and pieced together all information I could get from just digging through Drakan's data files in a hex editor, meanwhile documenting everything I found out as best as I could.

As a fan of all things open-source and free software, of course I had to name my project OpenDrakan, instantly pushing all I got to Github once I had polished it enough for others to lay their eyes on.

Now when I got curious the other day and started to Google for OpenDrakan, not expecting anything to come up about a game that I remembered as beeing so obscure, I find this very thread in this very forum, and I was kinda shocked. Not only is someone already making a remake of Drakan, there are people who have reverse-engineered nearly as much as I did in the past few weeks, if not more. Should all my efforts be in vain?

Now, please don't misunderstand me. I looked through this post and a few other threads already, and I am amazed and totally in awe of the effort YanGez93 already put into his remake. I'm really looking forward to give it a try once a playable version is available.

But what I am really after is your opinion on this: My plan was to write a new engine that could load the Riot Engine's files (which one had to provide him/herself of course) and provide an experience as close to the original Drakan as possible. I had trouble getting the old Engine to run on modern Windows, and don't get me started on Linux etc. Wine is not doing a good job on that one.

I understand that OpenOOTH is not going to be a 1:1 recreation of Drakan, but something many would consider better. Not only will it be visually more appealing, but it also will not require the user to try and find a copy of a game that is really hard to get nowadays.

Now my question is this: Would the few of you who are still interested in Drakan be also interested in a free, open-source recreation like the one OpenMW provides for Morrowind fans? Would you suggest me to carry on, or am I even missing a second project like mine that has done the same thing already?

I know in the end it really is my choice, but finding out my work has already been kinda obsoleted has really discouraged me.

I am really thankfull for any answers and hope my post is not too offtopic here. Otherwise, feel free to move it into a seperate thread.

A fellow Drakan fan,
Zalasus