PC Gamer has published an interview with Noel Austin, technical director at d3t Limited, the development studio behind the rerelease of Shenmue I & II to modern platforms.
Noel reveals some fascinating pieces of information about the way the original games and the challenges involved that will surprise even veteran fans.
We recommend reading the full article (link below), but here is a condensed summary:
- The project got underway in October 2015, when d3t gained access to the "massive" Shenmue archive of data and started planning their approach.
- At least 20 developers in total worked on the code over the course of the project, with the team size growing to around 10 developers at its largest point.
- The project was "by far the toughest" project d3t has ever done.
- Source code was not available for the Dreamcast libraries (and hence for Shenmue I which was released only for that console).
- For Shenmue I, some of the biggest challenges were around the hardware:
- Sound: the loop points, reverb, volumes, envelopes etc that were specified within separate programs for the Dreamcast's audio chip had to be reverse engineered.
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