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Hi all, so about 5 months ago I started learning Unreal Engine 4, and began practising by exporting and converting the Jungle Gym from Trespasser’s Beach level to learn player movement. Over time I built up the area around this location, by exporting each unique object and hand placing them. I also used the Beach's heightmap to generate the terrain in UE. I’ve since recreated as much of the level as I can. The level can be played from start to finish as in retail, and the physics puzzles are mostly playable.

I also used some unused dialogue in places it seemed relevant and models from previous builds that were cut from retail.

I’m not sure where I stand releasing it publically, as it uses so many resources from the original game. But I was thinking that one day I could go through the level, and replace all the objects with free downloaded HD objects (I’m not a modeller) and create a more modern day, retelling of the Beach level.

Also Unreal seems limited on terrain control, so I had to use one grass texture and couldn’t paint over it. But, I’m kind done with the project for now, and I think this is as good as it’s going to get at the moment.

Oh, and the YouTube encoder really didn’t like the video.

I'm a big fan of ports like this and i hunt for them on YT from time to time. Glad to see people still remember this game and actively try to put some life into it! Nice YT channel BTW. i've seen your flower video as well as the ones about cut/planned content. I really appreciate what you're doing

Nicely done. The Invisibe Anne...
I see you also converted the sound effects and the captions, too...

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Pretty cool! It's nice to see a "remake" in another engine that's actually playable and largely finished, even if it's just a direct port.

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Thanks guys, yeah, the project was on hold for a while after finishing the model export and import, but I found converting and adding in all the audio gave the map so much more life and reduced the empty feeling.

The rendering looks pretty good. I never played Unreal, is that why Anne is invisible? It's like a ghost running amok on
the island!

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Yes, with Unreal you can set up the player controller however you want it. I’ve got a player camera attached to an invisible physics object, so you can move objects by pushing into them. I could try exporting Anne’s body and attaching the camera to that instead.

The controller uses a raycast beam to pickup objects, so I probably couldn’t have Anne grab the objects with her hand. I think in Trespasser, hand magnets are placed on some physics objects to tell Anne where she can pick it up from, which would be a bit of a nightmare to replicate. So I stuck with a Half-Life 2 style object grab.

Looks neat! It's slightly unsettling to see a player move so fast in Beach, and with super motion blur. Alas I feel some players of the modern era became too impatient.

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->Tres2020 Starter Kit

"Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said. ... "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."
"I see it." [said Sarah]
...
"The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"
"No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."
~Michael Crichton

Looks good, just like an upgraded Trespasser engine with the original assets.

I might release a few HD models that you could use sometime to replace, probably just the barrels, crates and fencing and blocks of foundation. They currently all set-up for Cryengine, but might see if can transfer into Unreal.

That would be cool, I converted the Trespasser models to .obj files and Unreal read them well. I’ve also started playing around with putting InGen decals on some free assets.

I like it! The classic InGen logo makes all sorts of things look better. I'm also a bit fond of the JP3 version, which is found on the latern I put in JPDS..

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->Tres2020 Starter Kit

"Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said. ... "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."
"I see it." [said Sarah]
...
"The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"
"No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."
~Michael Crichton

So I’ve been replacing the original Trespasser objects with some more modern ones, and it’s done for the most part. I’ve given the more recognisable objects, like the foundation blocks, new textures instead of replacing them, and I grabbed some sign textures from TheIdiot’s ‘Trespasser HD - Beach’. Need to work on the rockery, player controls, and filling out areas with vegetation next.

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Are you using baked or dynamic lighting? I'm not sure but I think in UE4 we can bake buildings and the general landscape for appearance and then use dynamic on vegetation right? I don't know if thats worth it but it might look nice. I know they have GPU-lightmass which would speed up the terrain baking.

It’s all set to dynamic preview lighting at the moment, yes, I think you can bake the lighting for stationary objects, and almost handcraft the shadows for them. And then set anything movable to dynamic. A lot of the vegetation has swaying effects, so it should look nice with dynamic lighting. Don’t know a lot about lighting though, so I’ll have to look into it.

I just figured baked lighting would look a lot more smooth and detailed on the buildings, and maybe the terrain. Have a gradient to it. Obviously wont work on moving vegetation though. If it was me I would try to bake the terrain and use that option that allows both baked and dynamic like you said. But I have the feeling I would end up using dynamic for the landscape in the end. I myself might try a low res light-map on the terrain, like 2x or 4x max. Then use dynamic for the detailed shadows coming off the buildings. That would give the terrain a bit of a blurry lightmap look overall, kind of a cloud effect. But I guess you can do that with the sky light casting anyway. I can't remember what everything is called in UE4. The reason they prefer dynamic for outdoor scenes is memory usage, but Trespasser maps aren't all that big. But you definitely want it for moving vegetation. I only have limited experience with the newer unreal engines. Have you looked into GPU-Lightmass? It only worked on NVIDIA last I checked but it really speeds up the builds.

My old i5 2500k struggles with builds but the RTX works wonders. Someday when they are cheap on the used market I will get a threadripper, or at least a high core count Xeon. Would work wonders for World Machine builds.