Classic Star Wars shooter Rogue Squadron is getting an Unreal Engine 4-powered makeover thanks to a group of fans lead by YouTube user Thanaclara. The project’s still not ready for release but the team already have a few levels playable, and they even plan on making new ships and levels for the game.
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DSOGaming spoke with Thanaclara about the remake. According to him the game’s been in development for “a couple of years so far”, and regarding when it might come out, “certainly less than a couple more years I would hope”. The team are focusing on the campaign and bonus missions, with multiplayer and co-op “one bridge we’ll cross when we get to it”.
As mentioned, they also plan to create new ships and missions for Rogue Squadron. According to Thanaclara it’s a “relatively easy process” to make new craft, but levels are a different story. “ I can’t say for certain they’ll be in the final game but the aim at least is to try to make new levels and missions if we can get to it. I find the idea of coming up with our own original scenarios for missions fairly exciting”.
Of course, with Unreal Engine 4 the team have access to a lot of fancy graphical effects, and are trying to make Rogue Squadron look as modern as possible. Unreal’s volumetric fog for example not only looks good but it apparently has been a big deal for the game. The level ‘Battle Above Taloraan’ has pre-rendered clouds on the skybox in the original game, but the remake now has clouds that can be flown through. “The volumetric clouds really flesh out what could potentially be a completely empty and lifeless void of a level,” Thanaclara says.
Of course the biggest issue with the Rogue Squadron remake is the Star Wars licence. EA and Lucasfilm shut down the fan remake of the unreleased Battlefront 3 and that was a game that hadn’t even been released – whereas Rogue Squadron is still available to buy on Steam and GOG. Thanaclara says that “we have a few options that we’re exploring that we believe would make it so that we would avoid copyright infringement. But we’ll let you know when we know.” Until then he’s not sure when the remake will be made available to the public.
You can follow the remake’s progress on their Reddit page.