"Hunter HD" - Fan Remake & nostalgic discussion of a classic Amiga game :)

[Cherno]

Edit: Newest version 003 on page 5!

HUNTER!

A game known to many Amiga users of the early 90s, it was nevertheless something of an underdog and never reached the fame other titles of bigger studios of the era had. After all, it was pretty much developed by one person alone: Paul Holmes! Read an excellent interview over in the Amiga Lore section for more information about the development.

The significance of this humble game was only made clear nearly a decade after it's release: The open world gameplay and 3D graphics became commonplace in such bestsellers as the GTA series, Operation Flashpoint / Armed Assault, and even Bethesda's Action RPGs. Especially Flashpoint could be seen as a spiritual successor to Hunter, along with Just Cause 1 and 2. Both feature expansive, open worlds, a military theme, and the focus on small squads of soldiers or lone heroes.

Personally, I remember my brother playing the game a lot, I didn't play if too often as it just seemed slow to me and even though roaming around the world in vehicles was fun, I didn't understand what I was supposed to do. I also couldn't for the love of god, land that damn helicopter! (I think I later found out that there was some kind of auto-landing key). I know that I was (and still am) intrigued, not to say fascinated, by the eerie, otherworldy atmosphere and the sublte-colored low-polygon vector graphics, which almost gave Hunter something of an abstract visual style.

Since my hobby since I started programming a Hired Guns remake years ago seems to be attempting to make faithful remakes of the Amiga games I loved as a kid, I started development of a Hunter remake! I call it just "Hunter HD" since the higher resolution is the most obvious difference to the original, all the models have been faithfully recreated to look as close to the 1991 Amiga game as possible, including the limited color palette. However, I built in improvements where I thought it made sense, mainly in the controls and GUI, which was a little unwieldy with the mouse/joystick combination.

Long story short, here is the web version of the first version of my Hunter HD remake!

http://cherno.lima-city.de/hunter/Build001_Web.html
Here's the offline version for those who don't want to install the Unity Player plugin for their browser. Just extract into a directory of your choice / run Build001.exe.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ba0jzraxwqfatym/HunterHD.zip

As you can see when you play this version, it is only a proof-of-concept with some basic functionality. You can move around the world (but not swim yet!), pick up a pistol and fire at things, enter vehicles and cruise around, and use the tank to blow stuff up, resulting in nice polygon explosions
the running animation is crap, the vehicle physics are dogdy (try exiting a vehicle while it turns ), and there is no hit indication for the tank shells, but I hope you can see that with a few improvements here and there, the classic game Hunter can be made into a truly great game

Comments, nostalgic memories of your own Hunter experiences / ideaas for a remake are welcome!









Bonus: Vehicles in development

[Adrian Browne]

I remember reading reviews of this game way back. I always thought it looked interesting.

[Cherno]

There's something about those - by today's standards - primitive vector graphics, a similar style can be found in Elite, Midwinter I & II and even the old Sentinel. I just love that facetted look without any smooth shading.

Travelling through the Hunter world was always a little bit scary because of the fixed camera angle and the low view distance. You could never guess what will pop up without looking at the map constantly

[gimbal]

I like how all the vehicles and buildings look like they are made out of cardboard In the Amiga days it was pretty much the limit of what you could achieve and today its a pretty unique style.

[Cherno]

Originally Posted by gimbal

I like how all the vehicles and buildings look like they are made out of cardboard In the Amiga days it was pretty much the limit of what you could achieve and today its a pretty unique style.

Now that you mention it, it would be fun to recreate the models as cardboard models using different colored paper Maybe once I get a new printer I will build some I think Mr. Holmes did an amazing job creating these models which have very few details yet are instantly recognizeable as tanks etc. It really shows the talent an artist has if he has to work within those constraints and still achieve the goal.

[Shoonay]

I would play the shit out of this map in ArmA 3

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Cherno

Now that you mention it, it would be fun to recreate the models as cardboard models using different colored paper

I'm pretty sure that's what Mr. Holmes did too, only the cardboard versions existed before the digital versions

[Cherno]

I just found out there was, or is, another remake of Hunter in the works!

http://newhunter.sourceforge.net/

This is the New Hunter project ("newhunter")

This project is hosted by SourceForge.net. The project team describes it as:

A WIN32 remake of Hunter, an 1991 action game on Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. With high-resolution 3D-graphics and more options, missions, weapons, structures and vehicles than its original version.

Oh and btw, my version also has proper underwater areas (no underwater effects yet) because I want the submarine that is in the original game to be pilotable and not just have it's periscope move around on the surface

[Neil79]

Damn it, looks like I need to write this one up when I'm awake

1am now

[LuMan]

I remember my mate and I sitting up for hours playing Hunter. A lot of the time we just explored and wandered about. Similarly in Midwinter too.

Nowadays I tend to adopt a similar approach in things like GTA and Skyrim!

I think I'll be reloading this game into my trusty miggy later on....

[Cherno]

I really wonder how much better Hunter would have been if it had have three months more development time... Paul Homes mentions a free camera and better targeting system among the things he would have implemented given the time, and I think that these are the two main things that are missing.

[Superman]

I thought this game was pretty impressive back in the day. The free roaming aspect was quite a new innovation at the time.

[Neil79]

http://www.indieretronews.com/2015/0...ssic-gets.html Done

[Cherno]

Originally Posted by Neil79

http://www.indieretronews.com/2015/0...ssic-gets.html Done

Gee, I had to quickly upload another version that fixes the non-locked cursor at the start of the game, my note that pressing L at game start was necessary was left out of your news post and I didn't want people to get a bad impression when they load it in their browser and couldn't do anything

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Neil79

Damn it, looks like I need to write this one up when I'm awake

1am now

This guy sleep-types. Now that's a first.

[Cherno]

It happens when you are jacked into the Matrix and fall asleep :P

[Neil79]

Originally Posted by gimbal

This guy sleep-types. Now that's a first.

I have been known to write articles in my head while asleep

[Cherno]

I spent the last six hours programming a compass/radar bar like the one featured in Fallout 3/NV and Skyrim, and I finally managed to emulate it
I also removed some minor bugs (the gun not disappearing when entering vehicles & the "interact" indicator staying enabled because the gun also didn't have it's collider disabled, car wheels with no backsides).
Next on the to do list:

- Better running animation
- Not being able to push vehicles away
- Color shading for vehicles
- Better camera system
- Random object spawner at game start, to populate the landscape with vehicles, buildings, and terrain like trees and rocks
- Swimming
- Day & night cycle
- Resource points that look like crates. They can be picked up as an item and then the player gets a specific resource: A vehicle, ammo, health and so on. When using a resource, some kind of stealth transport helicopter or plane will fly over to the player's position and drop the requested item Kind of like in Just Cause.

To go into further detail with some of the tasks above:
For testing purposes it's actually helpful that the player can even push the tank away slowly. It helps because when a boat has too much speed when hitting the coastline, it will slide too far onto the ground to be able to reverse or turn. the only way to get it back into the water is to push it by hand at the moment. I plan to replace this unrealistic behavior with some sort of towing chain device which can be planted anywhere, including on the water, and then the rope or chain on it can be attached to a vehicle, and it will pull the vehicle towards it Similarly, a device that turns overturned vehicles upright again, like the gravity gun in Half-Life 2 could , but more realistic. Kind of like a jack for vehicles.

About the vehicle colors, from looking at Hunter screenshots it seems like the vehicle surfaces are not entirely lighted just buy the light coming from the sun. Vehicle roofs are often of the light green / peppermint color, for example.

I also think that a crossbike / motorcycle would be cool, if there's a bicycle there has to be something similar but faster I also want to include a sniper rifle for those long-range encounters. Ammo would be very rare, however, so that it's not overpowered in the open landscapes.

[Cherno]

Last days' progress report:

- Better 3rd-person camera control, still not completely happy with it. Need to check how OP Flashpoint & Co does it.
- Building interiors & being able to enter & exit them.
- Fixed tank projectile behavior and some turret bugs. Also added explosion effect to the tank shell hits.
- Modeled several houses and the Headquarter building, as well as a couple of furniture pieces.

[Neil79]

Do you have a link to the latest build? As the OP is the old one

Cheers