TR1X: Open-source re-implementation of Tomb Raider 1

The name seems purposely ambiguous, but perhaps I'm getting old.

It seems that TR1X is a game decompilation project while OpenLara is a new engine created from scratch.

For modding; for a better experience on modern system (higher resolutions, etc.); for the joy of it.

It's hard to explain why a creator creates to a consumer that doesn't.

Fun, challenge, learning, curiosity, etc.

I would personally never spend that much time playing a video game nor writing one, but that kind of passionate behavior is commonly visible in the video game community (e.g. the recent tetris records, speedruns, etc.)

All I can say is, I wish I was passionate and motivated enough to work on projects like this. It doesn't have to be pragmatic in any way, you do it because you want to. No different than someone who may spend their free time working on old cars.

Think of it as as a hobby. Hobbies are good.

Just for fun. No, really.

(https://justforfunnoreally.dev)

Mayhaps because games these days are FN humunguous! and require daunting, powerful engines -- but games of old, that fit on a disk, CD, DVD even might all be within the scope of an individuals ability to tinker.

Also - OG games that built their own engines provide some insight to incredible methods of wizards -- like when people pick apart something Carmack did with what appears to be two characters to create a whole [thing] - as opposed to a UE4 engine game is going to have a f-ton of opaque mechanics?

If it's a faithful re-implementation I like the idea of it being easy to make cross-platform. I don't think I'd ever play this one, but I like the fact that ScummVM (and thus all the old adventure games) can be implemented for iPad etc.

One reason is to make a FOSS version, and other reason can be to add improvements. Furthermore, with some game engines, you might then be able to make your own sets of levels and other stuff, without needing the original proprietary software to be used with. You might also try to figure out the behaviour of specific details of the game engine, so that the FOSS version of the program may explain it. You might also be able to port it to other computers. And, maybe, you just like to do it.

This can be the case with many other game engines too. In a few cases, the original code may later be released as FOSS anyways (or, in the case of ZZT, it was rewritten from disassembling the code and made to produce the same executable file), but sometimes it might not.

(I had made a FOSS implementation of Everett Kaser's MESH:Hero game engine, and at least, the reasons I mentioned above are my own reasons for doing so; I don't know if the people who did TR1X have similar ideas and/or different ideas.)

There is art in it

May I present Augustus (https://github.com/Keriew/Augustus) which is a quality of life fork of Ceaser 3, only possible because they rewrote it in open source.

Because it's fun.

I have my own ongoing decompilation/reverse-engineering project for a video game. As part of it, I've accidentally stumbled upon delinking, a very niche and esoteric technique for slicing an executable back into object files. This turned into a two year side-quest to create and improve my own tooling for it, which has been by far the most interesting and intellectually stimulating project I've ever embarked on. It's steadily attracting attention (with some cool in-depth technical email threads with various people around the world) and recently it has even gained at least one active user.

Is there a rational reason why I've tackled this project? Absolutely not. It's completely bonkers, both in idea and execution. I've committed some wicked acts of heresy with it according to conventional computer sciences wisdom, like delinking code across platforms/object file formats and shoving it into foreign systems in spite of ABIs.

Sometimes people just have an itch to scratch. Mine is to take a chainsaw to executable files and make twisted chimeras out of the torn off pieces.

>Why bother remaking it?

Reverse engineering the source code makes it much, much easier to mod the game and add more fun stuff.