Steam Community :: Twinsen's Little Big Adventure

Twinsen's Little Big Adventure

All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos News Guides Reviews

Twinsen's Little Big Adventure

0 in Group Chat

Step into Twinsen's shoes, a hero on a quest to thwart evil in a fantastical world. With new quests, enhanced graphics, and revamped narration, experience the cult-classic like never before. Your adventure awaits!

Visit the Store Page

Most popular community and official content for the past week. (?)

One of Our Biggest Challenges: Geographic Continuity

Mar 27

Dear community,

It’s time for us to share one of our biggest challenges with this remake: outdoor geographic continuity. What are we talking about?

Remember: in the original game, the exteriors were divided into “cubes” for technical reasons (memory, performance, etc.). Four “black borders” defined the limits of each cube. At certain places, it was possible to change cubes. This system is difficult for players to understand today and was already abandoned in 1997 for Little Big Adventure 2/Twinsen’s Odyssey. Our vision for the remake? To merge these cubes to create a more immersive open world. Easy, right? Well, not exactly. There are 3 major difficulties:

1/ Joining cubes… that don’t fit together
Some cubes respect the geographic topography and can be correctly merged. Example: Brundle Island.

[twinsenslittlebigadventure.com]Some cubes are logical and go together, but have an altitude difference that creates a problem. Example: Citadel Island. How to manage the altitude difference between the 2 cubes?

[twinsenslittlebigadventure.com]Some original cubes simply do not connect at all. The biggest example is Principal Island. Some cubes negatively impact the cube next to it. On Principal Island, the building of the HQ prevents visibility of the Twinsen character when one wishes to go to the library. Here, we thus need to shift the library cube to keep the path readable.

What happens if we unite the cubes of Principal Island?

[twinsenslittlebigadventure.com]

A path is missing between the library and the military camp
The HQ hides part of the path on the 3 cubes next to it
The old town hides part of the path from the military camp cube

Obviously, we cannot leave Funfrock’s HQ as is in a game with continuity. Transforming it into a real building worsens the visibility problems on the adjacent cubes. It’s a real puzzle!

We decided to create new spaces – internally called “seams” – to join the cubes in a more organic way.

2/ Replacing black borders with content
Once the cubes are united, we need to find a graphical way to replace the black walls with content. In the Proxima Island prototype, we simply placed trees, but it’s not always that simple.

3/ Story coding
We’ve talked about the tip of the iceberg. Let’s move on to the submerged part. The original code is based on cube logic. When loading a cube, the code checks what you have in your inventory to define the state of that cube. The NPCs’ routines also start at this moment. What happens when the cubes are united? The routines start when you arrive on the island (and not the cube). The most complex case: when you are in a vehicle (the tank in the Hamalayi and the bulldozer on Polar Island). Here, you change cubes while in the vehicle. Seb tore out the last hairs he had 🤯.

Another example: to give a sense of life in the original game, you could meet the same NPC several times in different cubes of the same island. For example, you meet the hair dryer salesman several times on Citadel Island. By uniting the cubes, we end up with… multiple hair dryer salesmen! We need to keep one and create a new routine for the character so that he traverses the equivalent of several cubes from the original game.

The most complex case is when a character follows Twinsen from one cube to another (e.g., the rebel lapichon in the Hamalayi). Physically, these are different NPCs, reset at each cube change with their own code. Again, we had to be clever to make it seem like it’s now the same one following you from cube to cube!

The most frustrating
We believe geographic continuity is one of the changes that will allow the game to be discovered by the largest number of people. The most frustrating thing for us is that even you, the fans, won’t notice it. Our memories have built an idealized version of the original game that was a true open-world. To succeed, we have to do better than your memories 😅

In my childhood memories, I always believed I had a gun that shot red lasers in Little Big Adventure 2/Twinsen’s Odyssey… but no!

We hope this significant change will allow you to relive the emotions of your childhood… without realizing it 😃

Twinsen's Little Big Adventure

Ugly artsyle.

It needs to be said.

Nyarlathotep

May 12 @ 6:48pm

General Discussions

Behind the Scenes of the Remake

Feb 21

Dear Community,

Today, we invite you on an exclusive journey behind the scenes of our remake. Let’s start with a look back:

In June 2023, you experienced an initial prototype on Proxima Island, developed in a short time by a small team. Despite its imperfections, this prototype was a crucial springboard for engaging with you and understanding your expectations.

This prototype was built using Unreal Engine 5, with an almost manual reconstruction of the island. Faced with the challenge of replicating this method for a larger world in a limited time, we opted for a complete overhaul of the game, based on new foundations. But what is the nature of these new foundations?

The answer lies in the work of Sébastien Viannay, a developer on the original games, as well as the mobile port. It was during the work on the latter that Seb developed a small tool to setup the pathfinding – that is, the ability to tap a point on the screen and have Twinsen follow that direction. This tool interprets the original game’s data to reconstruct the level and identify obstacles.

This tool opened a new world for us: using the original game’s data in a modern game engine. In practice, all the game logic (quests, dialogues, levels, even animations) is in the form of data. By importing it into a new engine, we can not only faithfully reproduce the game but also reinvent it.

The only hiccup in this story? Seb developed this tool on Unity 😅. After attempting to transfer this tool to Unreal, we made the strategic decision to migrate to Unity during last summer.

How We Are Developing the Remake

Our adventure thus continues on Unity, leveraging the original data. Here are the key steps of our project:

Transposition of the Original Game into Unity: Our goal is to preserve the essence and logic of the original game. One of the major challenges lies in adapting the original scenes to geographical continuity, an aspect we will detail in a dedicated article.
Drawing Inspiration from the Unreal Prototype to Perfect Twinsen’s Movements and Controls: We aim to enhance the gameplay experience while remaining true to the original.
Enriching the Narrative: We plan to adjust certain sequences of the game, such as reducing the repetitive back-and-forth between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
Reconstruction of the Islands in 3D with a New Art Direction: We are reimagining the islands to offer a unique visual experience.
Recreation of All Characters and Animations: Each character and animation will be redone to meet our current quality standards.

Importing Original Data into Unity

In the video below, you will discover how the import of a scene from the original game is reproduced in Unity. Please activate subtitles to understand what hides behind the hood.

In this video, we are showing the tool we developed to import the data of the original game. We don’t use the original textures in the final game. It’s only to help us in our development.

In our next article, we will explain the challenge of geographical continuity.

See you soon!

Twinsen's Little Big Adventure

Reboot, remaster or remake? The answer

Dec 20, 2023

Dear community,

As promised, it’s high time to explain our project in detail. Since the creation of our studio in 2021, our vision has always been to bring the Little Big Adventure series back to life.

The Abandoned Reboot

Our initial ambition was to reinvent the story of Twinsen through a reboot: discovering his origins, his powers, and his entry into this extraordinary universe. With the invaluable support of Didier and Fred, we redefined this universe, without constraints and for 18 months, integrating:

A new gameplay
A new camera
A new story
A unique biome and story per island
A new artistic direction

The Evolution Towards The Remaster

Faced with the difficulties of convincing a publisher for the reboot, we announced the project of remastering the original games. This project – less risky – was intended to reassure publishers about the potential of the license. By remaster, we mean the original game with mainly graphical improvements. For a while, the reboot and the remaster coexisted.

Unfortunately, the reboot project did not convince. We found ourselves with a remaster project that didn’t really excite us. After working on a reboot free of many constraints, the return to reality was difficult. We then decided to modify this project to arrive at what will be released: the remake.

The Alchemy of the Remake

Thus, the remake project was born, merging the best of our initial ideas and classic elements of the series. This remake of Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure Classic originally made in 1994 will integrate:

A smoother gameplay
A modernized main storyline
The geographical continuity of outdoor scenes
A reinvented artistic direction
The improvements from TLBA2 Classic
A harmonization between TLBA1 and TLBA2

Other changes and novelties are planned, but we will talk about them later.

We hope this article answers your questions and clarifies our intentions.

Your Involvement

What are your expectations for this remake? What elements would you like to see integrated or improved? Your passion and suggestions guide us in this adventure.

As a result, the game’s name is now Twinsen’s Little Big Adventure.

To support us, add the game to your wishlist and share it with your friends. Thank you!

Twinsen's Little Big Adventure

161

Russian maybe?

Can you please put Russian into this remaster? This game is cult classic in Russian old-gamer community!