I’m obligated to report that Steel Gear Strong 2: Sons Of Liberty is over 20 years previous. I could not need to take into consideration that, however right here we’re. The unique visible aesthetic has an exquisite PS2-era allure that I feel has turn into reasonably endearing in its age. However that hasn’t stopped one modder from altering up the sport’s digicam to mirror extra trendy third-person requirements, thus giving a complete new perspective on the sport’s environments (and Raiden’s butt, duh).
The unique Steel Gear Strong 2 was in third particular person, but it surely used a extra traditional “overhead” or “mounted” digicam perspective, like the primary MGS earlier than it and the unique launch of MGS3 that adopted. Utilizing the GOG model of the sport (which was sadly pulled lastl 12 months attributable to everybody’s nemesis: copyright) modder Boris “oct0xor” Larin needed to “reverse engineer and rewrite many issues within the recreation engine” to permit for the extra trendy operate of transferring the digicam across the character freely. Larin launched the mod by way of GitHub a number of days in the past (however you’ll want the aforementioned PC model that’s at present in limbo). On condition that the unique recreation by no means had this operate, this permits for views on these environments that have been merely not possible earlier than. Take a look at the premiere trailer right here:
With a recreation as ol…ahem, vintaged as MGS2, this probably wasn’t a simple activity. Thankfully, for these of us curious in regards to the work that went into this undertaking, Larin has offered a 20-plus minute dev diary of the undertaking. Test it out, it’s completely Steel Gear-themed and is a enjoyable watch.
Based on the video, the concept got here to Larin very naturally, “I used to be taking part in MGS2 [and] I caught myself continuously considering: What if this recreation had the identical Third-person digicam like in MGS3?”
Whereas the unique MGS3 launch had a set digicam, its enhanced follow-up launch, Subsistence, contained the at-the-time extra experimental rotatable digicam to assist with the sequence’ new on-line mode. It turned customary for all most important MGS titles transferring ahead. However MGS2 has all the time saved the unique fixed-camera perspective.
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Enabling a moveable digicam in MGS2 required excess of merely clicking a checkbox buried in a chunk of software program someplace. Larin needed to “exchange all current camera-related code” with authentic code based mostly off of the texture of the third-person digicam in MGS3: Subsistence. That, too, wasn’t so simple as slapping some new code into the sport. Of their dev diary, Larin mentions that they needed to “reverse engineer how the sport controls work,” whereas overhauling how the “participant’s place and route” is calculated. Sadly, doing so launched quite a lot of new bugs and quirks which required fixing, equivalent to character motion needing to observe the route of the brand new digicam, as a substitute of the “mounted coordinate system” that dictates instructions for the character in any other case.
Collision with partitions is one other difficult challenge famous within the dev diary, as when carried out immediately, an adjustable digicam can simply break by means of partitions. Cool for an episode of Boundary Break, however not the most effective for somebody seeking to have a extra secure gameplay expertise.
As somebody who spent many, many hours of her youth taking part in MGS2, it’s fairly cool to see the Huge Shell from these angles, and I think about it makes the sport a lot simpler to play. Should you haven’t performed the unique in a while, it’s positively a kind of video games that reminds you of its age shortly while you instinctually transfer the best thumbstick to search out the digicam received’t orbit your character.
