It’s important to understand what you need best for your gaming projects. If you’re working on a new title, a remake or a remaster can often prove highly effective at drawing in new audiences. A game port is just as effective with a recent title, allowing new players to dive into your game by expanding its reach and availability.
We’ve touched on the how’s and why’s of game porting before, but if you’d like to understand the key differences between these options, keep reading. The Starloop Studios team are experts and industry leaders in game porting, with more than twelve years’ experience in development, game porting, and more. And understanding what separates these options for developers or investors is key in successful continued business in the gaming industry.
Remaking
Remaking an older title is a fantastic way to rejuvenate fans of your titles and your work. Bringing life back into a classic title, on new hardware, can be a fantastic and breath-taking experience. Nostalgia is a powerful tool and witnessing a classic game from your younger years, reimagined and delivered on the incredible new platforms today, is a brilliant way to reengage older fans and bring in new ones.
A game remake is a full recreation of the title. The original game, scope, and intent are all kept in mind but the older game is fully remade. Assets, effects, and gameplay. It can be a difficult task, as access to the original files and assets isn’t guaranteed. The game is also likely running on an out-of-date code and engine.
For games that are too old to consider remastering, a full remake is the way to go. It’s an uphill journey but the results are incredible. Just look at the Dead Space or the Destroy All Humans! remakes.
Remastering
Remastering a game is a more delicate operation. Instead of taking an old game and recreating it, you update the existing title. This is easier done on games that aren’t fully out of date. This requires at least somewhat up to date code and engine. The models themselves, the engine, the design, and code will all remain relatively untouched.
Instead, this is a heavy artistic process that updates the visuals and performance to modern standards. The length of this process is entirely dependent on the age of the engine. In some cases, older models must be remade entirely or reworked significantly – to up the polycounts and level of detail.
The core of the work for remastering is texture quality and size, focusing on the amount of detail that players can see. It’s a process of adding detail, utilising more modern tools and technologies, and scaling the old textures to today’s standards.
Remastering a game means taking an older looking game, preserving its gameplay, and delivering a more visually pleasing and stunning experience.
Game Porting
Game porting is the odd one out here. It stands separate to game remaking and game remastering. And that’s because game porting involves work from both of these types of projects. But also, is not like them.
Updating textures, remaking models, reworking mechanics and code, are all involved in game porting. But the objective here isn’t updated visuals or remade experiences. It’s all done for the sake of performance – delivering a title from one platform to another. Game porting is a complicated and time-intensive task. If you’re delivering a game from PC to mobile, there is a tremendous amount of optimisation required. If you’re porting a game from mobile or PC to console – there are great considerations needed for the console’s dedicated requirements.
It is a task for consummate professionals. Experts in their field take a long and difficult process and instead make it look easy. And game porting is just one of the services the Starloop Studios team specialize in. Working with the dance of visual fidelity and gameplay performance, that is the key of game porting.
Whether game porting for PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, or mobile, there are considerations and requirements for each. Game porting does not serve the purpose of delivering a redesigned experience or an updated gaming world. It is a functional and artistic effort ensuring players can enjoy your game on the platform of their choice – as close to the original experience as possible. Atmosphere and life preserved.
Starloop Studios is proud to be part of the Magic Media group, an international group specialising in entertainment and gaming industry services. Our wide range of offerings includes VFX, blockchain gaming, game art services, and more. Reach out today to avail of our expertise and A-Z services for your projects.
