Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaoss

[DonEmilio]

I wonder if someone has in mind to remake the game ‘lands of lore: the throne of chaoss’ by westwood studios, having played mods like ‘a test of true heroism lost lands of lemuria’ or ‘call of house hardabar’ I see that there are already resources and textures to remake that game (and much more), this topic was talked about years ago, in the times of grimrock 1, then it was very difficult, now the thing has changed :\

Old forum thread: https://www.grimrock.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1722

The game has a medium length, it would just be copying all the maps as they are in the original game, the same puzzles, it would be a job, but a much smaller job than developing a mod from scratch because I believe it is easy to copy.

[minmay]

I don't believe it is easy to copy. Lands of Lore has monsters and other animated characters in it, and those take a long time to model and texture and animate, and that's without even getting into all the environment models you'd need to make.

I see that there are already resources and textures to remake that game (and much more)

You vastly overestimate the resources of the Grimrock modding community. A quick web search suggests that this game has about 40 different enemies (excluding palette swaps and other small edits). These would all need distinct models, animations, sounds, and so on. The number of fully custom monsters with their own models and animations that have been released for either Grimrock game, ever, currently sits at less than 1/10th of that. This is after more than 10 years of modders' collective work.

The situation with environment models and textures would be less dire; there've been a few complete custom settings like Phitt's tilesets and germanny's Dungeon Master tileset, along with several more incomplete ones. Getting the amount of art you'd need to remake this game's environments is much more plausible than getting the characters and monsters - it requires a lot less domain knowledge - but still probably untenable.

[DonEmilio]

I don't believe it is easy to copy. Lands of Lore has monsters and other animated characters in it, and those take a long time to model and texture and animate, and that's without even getting into all the environment models you'd need to make.

I see that there are already resources and textures to remake that game (and much more)

You vastly overestimate the resources of the Grimrock modding community. A quick web search suggests that this game has about 40 different enemies (excluding palette swaps and other small edits). These would all need distinct models, animations, sounds, and so on. The number of fully custom monsters with their own models and animations that have been released for either Grimrock game, ever, currently sits at less than 1/10th of that. This is after more than 10 years of modders' collective work.

The situation with environment models and textures would be less dire; there've been a few complete custom settings like Phitt's tilesets and germanny's Dungeon Master tileset, along with several more incomplete ones. Getting the amount of art you'd need to remake this game's environments is much more plausible than getting the characters and monsters - it requires a lot less domain knowledge - but still probably untenable.

And I think you underestimate the grimrock community and grimrock itself, I made a “quick” comparison of monsters as you said, and I think that at least half of the monsters in lands of lore would have good substitutes with resources that already exist and have been used, there would be a small amount that would have to be worked on, but I think it can be done and more than enough. Monsters do not have to be identical, only similar or better.

The animated scenes can be replaced by large portraits and texts, it looks as good or better than in the original lands of lore those animated scenes.

In another moment I will put a comparative exposing that type of grimrock level and its mods could replace a level of lands of lore. I will do the same with the monsters.

Regarding the music and sounds: In the music you can use remastered versions that currently exist. In the sounds of the monsters could be used exactly the same ones that already existed without problem.

And of course with the textures (currently) left over.

[DonEmilio]

I don't believe it is easy to copy. Lands of Lore has monsters and other animated characters in it, and those take a long time to model and texture and animate, and that's without even getting into all the environment models you'd need to make.

I see that there are already resources and textures to remake that game (and much more)

You vastly overestimate the resources of the Grimrock modding community. A quick web search suggests that this game has about 40 different enemies (excluding palette swaps and other small edits). These would all need distinct models, animations, sounds, and so on. The number of fully custom monsters with their own models and animations that have been released for either Grimrock game, ever, currently sits at less than 1/10th of that. This is after more than 10 years of modders' collective work.

The situation with environment models and textures would be less dire; there've been a few complete custom settings like Phitt's tilesets and germanny's Dungeon Master tileset, along with several more incomplete ones. Getting the amount of art you'd need to remake this game's environments is much more plausible than getting the characters and monsters - it requires a lot less domain knowledge - but still probably untenable.

And I think you underestimate the grimrock community and grimrock itself, I made a “quick” comparison of monsters as you said, and I think that at least half of the monsters in lands of lore would have good substitutes with resources that already exist and have been used, there would be a small amount that would have to be worked on, but I think it can be done and more than enough. Monsters do not have to be identical, only similar or better.

The animated scenes can be replaced by large portraits and texts, it looks as good or better than in the original lands of lore those animated scenes.

In another moment I will put a comparative exposing that type of grimrock level and its mods could replace a level of lands of lore. I will do the same with the monsters.

Regarding the music and sounds: In the music you can use remastered versions that currently exist. In the sounds of the monsters could be used exactly the same ones that already existed without problem.

And of course with the textures (currently) left over.

All these images, except for the swamp, are taken from two mods: ‘Call of house Hardabar’ and ‘A test of true heroism lost lands of Lemuria’:

https://postimg.cc/gallery/Ymfsc6X

Regarding the monsters, substitutes could be found, for instance

- Thieves of the forests: There are human models created in some mods, such as in ‘A test of true heroism Lost Lands of the Lemuria’.
- Wild boars: They could be replaced by dogs or warg.
- Draracle Cave Rat Man: Ratlings.
- Troglodyte in draracle caves: To be determined.
- Giant lizards: Ice lizards of different colours and slightly larger size.
- Nomal Orcs: Ogres tuned in green, with warpaint and reduced size.
- Large Orcs: Tuned green Ogres, with other warpaints and larger size.
- Green swamp monsters: Slimes of different colours.
- Swamp Tree Men: Tree Monsters.
- Gorka Soldiers: Zarchtons of different colours.
- Axe or scythe skeletons: There are axe skeletons in Grimrock 2.
- Mine worms: Worms that already exist in other mods, such as Journey to Justice.
- Mine claw bug: Giant crab.
- Mine monster rock: Monsters of rock of Grimrock 2.
- Amazons: They could be modified medusa or they would have to be created from scratch.
- One-eyed monsters from the white tower: They could be replaced by the one-eyed monsters from Grimrock 2.
- Rare small monster that shoots arrows in the white tower: Green slime that shoots from a distance.
- Dark soldiers: You could use the helmeted soldiers (who don't look like the undead) that are in Call of House Hardabar.
- Wall-crossing wraiths: There are ghostly mass-shaped wraiths already created.
- Transparent ghost soldiers: There are transparent ghost soldiers in many mods.
- Giant Toad: Exists in Grimrock 2.
- Necrosaps: Power lights that attack with electricity are found in many mods.
- Xeobs: Fire elemental.
- Knowles: Ice Elemental.
- Death Disk: Xeloroid.
- Manthas: Eyctopus.
- Scotia: She would have to be created from scratch and only for the final combat, her other appearances can be replaced by a dialogue box and a couple of portraits of her.

All animated scenes would be conversations with portraits (the harbour, the boat trip to lower opinwood, the conversation with chief Gorkha, threats of scotia in the woods, etc...).

Shops: There are shop systems in several mods, the most advanced I have seen are in ‘Exellion’ where a 3D model buy and sell items and he speaks with a portrait at all times.