Game Engine
Overview
Little Big Adventure (LBA) series engine was an evolution of the tooling created during the development of Alone in the Dark (AITD). They share a lot of the same core ideas but the team was able to innovate and evolve their technology. Both games shared pre-rendered backgrounds with 3D software rendered characters, a technique use in the early 90s due to hardware constraints. AITD was the pioneer of pre-rendered backgrounds and use static images that were hand drawn on top of 3D wireframes of a 3D scene. Each image corresponding to a different camera view of the scene.
LBA did it differently and use isometric sprite composition in order to create a scene and use a single isometric camera view panning around the environment.
The isometric scenes were composed in a grid format with limited width, depth and height. Various objects were composed by a number of sprites following a set of standard dimensions and then placed together to create scenes. They are also used for collision detection with slopes to make the height transition smoothly.
The team continue the trend in Time Commando (TICO) and used pre-rendered backgrounds with video motion. A similar technique used in LBA movies but improved to be used not only as cut-scenes but in-game backgrounds with depth information attached.
Another aspect that has been shared among all games is the use of 3d software rendering for the player character and non-player characters (NPC) with dedicated file formats. AITD uses 3d models with flat polygons with solid colours and dithering in some polygon types to give a more textures like feel.
LBA uses the same flat polygons but added the implementation of Gouraud Shading and Directional Lighting.
LBA2 and TICO had another enhancement by adding texture mapping to their 3d model formats.
LBA2 also used the models for the outside 3d scenes, which had a further improvement from isometric only scenes in from LBA1.
