Nightdive Studios - Blade Runner Enhanced Edition

[Scarlatti]

My guess is that it uses ScummVM, but there's no mention of it. The logo of their KEX Engine appears at the beggining of this preview of the A.I. enhanced cutscenes:

https://youtu.be/mmPyg9O2dlI

[Scarlatti]

Seems like it doesn't use ScummVM at all:

https://techraptor.net/gaming/interview ... ed-edition

[eriktorbjorn]

Apparently it's been delayed, though: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020 ... o-remaster

Anyway, I'm firmly in the "wait and see" camp. There have been some impressive remasters over the years. Others... not so much.

[Praetorian]

My guess is that it uses ScummVM, but there's no mention of it. The logo of their KEX Engine appears at the beggining of this preview of the A.I. enhanced cutscenes:

https://youtu.be/mmPyg9O2dlI

Around this time, last year, when we were still in talks with Nightdive Studios about them using our ScummVM Blade Runner engine, they shared with us (very) early work on Steam, where the KEX Engine was basically wrapped around our engine implementation.

Later on of course came the GOG release, and then the plan about console exclusivity for NDS and eventually (in early 2020) the decision that they would not use our engine (due to licensing issues and failure of negotiations) and they would proceed on their own.

So what they'll do now is anyone's guess, since they are also working on remastering and "upgrading" the visuals and models on top of reverse engineering the game, fixing bugs, and adding quality of life stuff (probably good controller support most of all). They also talked about subtitles support and subtitles with some unfortunate and false claims that subtitles were in the source code. I am not sure if they mentioned restoring content (as we do) but I *think* I remember reading that too (although I may confuse that with their ShadowMan remaster, where they definitely talked about restored content).

It does seem to me that they found out that working on the enhanced version is not as easy as they expected it to be. I'd say that only their upgrades (without including the huge amount of work the reverse engineering requires) are not an easy task; it is not just about upscaling videos, changing the models is a huge task, and then they have to also be integrated in the backgrounds properly (another big task). But even just the video upscale, the easier of tasks, needed more attention than what they did and showed off in their September demo. Which they already stated in the Eurogamer interview that they will be revisiting.

Bottom line, I'm cautious about what they will release. Hopefully the console gamers will end up with a good solid release of Blade Runner, but I'm really apprehensive about NDS "borrowing" work already done (without crediting ScummVM team and without respecting the license) and botching the upgrade.

I certainly still think the ScummVM version of Blade Runner is currently the definitive one, to be improved further with additions of more subtitles and localizations, more restored content and active maintenance of the engine code (and probably support of more platforms via the ScummVM backends system).

[sev]

My guess is that it uses ScummVM, but there's no mention of it. The logo of their KEX Engine appears at the beggining of this preview of the A.I. enhanced cutscenes:

https://youtu.be/mmPyg9O2dlI

What is shown in this promo video is just a set of upscaled videos. The production of it required nothing from the Bladerunner engine, ScummVM based, KEX based or whatnot. They just took the movies and applied some (semi)automated algo to it. I regard it as a mere PR stunt.


Eugene

[Arthandas]

I certainly still think the ScummVM version of Blade Runner is currently the definitive one

Is GOG version the "ScummVM version"?

[Praetorian]

I certainly still think the ScummVM version of Blade Runner is currently the definitive one

Is GOG version the "ScummVM version"?

It is.
Note, though, that the current version of ScummVM (2.2.0) is higher than the version bundled in the GOG package for the game (which iirc is 2.1.0).
We do recommend using the latest stable (or if you feel adventurous, the latest developer build) since they include bug fixes and improvements.

[Arthandas]

It is.

Then I don't understand why there's literally no mention of additional fixes or restored content on the storefront. I bet most people buying it won't even know they're playing much better version compared to original release.

[Praetorian]

It is.

Then I don't understand why there's literally no mention of additional fixes or restored content on the storefront. I bet most people buying it won't even know they're playing much better version compared to original release.

I think people at that point were happy to have a re-release of the game since it was considered impossible to see a modern release up to then. This includes us and GOG too

A proper list of bug fixes and QoL improvements took a secondary priority to that excitement, and ultimately I don't even think it was asked of us to provide one. To me that's understandable, although in retrospect it might have prevented a few people being completely dismissive of the work put into it.

Also, technically, the restored content version is still WIP. There's quite a few more stuff to be restored, and it has not been tested as much as we'd like -- there will probably be a formal period of testing for it sometime down the line. And even though the stuff restored are in the game's files, and a small subset of those are just untriggered or bugged, the restoration project is largely a "fan made" work. We're making our own decisions on how to fit the restored content in some situations, trying to avoid "breaking" the game. We do have some clues from leftovers in the code, the content of the audio cues or external research (creators and writers interviews, press releases etc) & we do lots of planning but there is guesswork involved and we take a few liberties with the material.

GOG and our team both agreed that it was best that it wasn't made the "default" mode to play. They do still install a shortcut for it and have some instructions on it on their support site, but it's not promoted on the storefront.

A similar situation was with the subtitles. We did implement support and had English transcript and subtitles available (now also French and Spanish, with more to come) but GOG could not redistribute fan made subtitles (or did not want to have to deal with the possible issues for that). Which was also understandable for a game that was tangled up in licensing hell for years. Thus, they remain distributed from the ScummVM site for anyone interested. GOG just has the option for subtitles enabled in the configuration file so that it'll be pretty much "plug-n-play" when you copy the file for the subtitles in the game folder.

[Arthandas]

I think people at that point were happy to have a re-release of the game since it was considered impossible to see a modern release up to that point. This includes us and GOG too

Thanks for the exhaustive answer

I wouldn't hold my breath for the Nightdive version. Not only they're working with a game that really doesn't want to be tinkered with, judging from their Blood Fresh Supply port, there'll be many bugs and inaccuracies.