Activision Tech Could Revolutionize Remasters of Very Old Games
The retro aficionados in the crowd may have something to get excited about, as Activision is looking to develop new technology that would dramatically change the way very old games are remastered. At its heart, this new technology Activision is eyeballing is a system for more efficiently rendering older 2D games into 3D.
The technology would take an axonometric 2D game—think the original Diablo game—and overlay it with 3D visuals such that the game would operate in the same manner as it did in its original visual form. Activision's technology also aims to dynamically remap the world into 3D, so that while a player is interacting with the game, the rest of the map is being generated in 3D.
The original two Diablo games stand in as perfect illustrations for the new technology. While they both appear differently than typical 2D games due to their isometric perspective, they are in fact not fully 3D. In fact, Diablo 2 is much closer to something like 2.5D because of the way it tends to mimic a 3D perspective. The technology that Activision is looking to develop would quickly transition 2D games like Diablo 2 into their 3D counterparts like Diablo 2: Resurrected.
There are essentially two types of remastering. The first attempts to spruce up the fidelity and textures within a game to make it appear sharper and more modern, often found in graphical mods for games like Oblivion. The second is what happened when Diablo 2: Resurrected was developed—a complete remake from 2D to 3D. This is what Activision is attempting to optimize with its technology. While Diablo 2 and its remaster look similar, the original is essentially a 2D game masquerading as 3D due to its fixed perspective, and Diablo 2: Resurrected is the exact opposite for the same reason. If a player could free-roam with the camera in either game, the true nature of objects would be revealed as what they are, either sprites or fully rendered 3D objects. Activision's new technology would aim to take a pillar from the original Diablo 2—a 2D sprite—and render it into a 3D pillar as seen in Resurrected.
The underlying concept behind what Activision is trying to accomplish is not necessarily anything groundbreaking, after all, remastering older games has been standard practice for years, but the efficiency that this new technology intends to impart will raise a few eyebrows. To be able to actively render a 2D game into a 3D one as the player is engaging with it would be truly revolutionary, and would expedite the process of remastering older games significantly.
Source: USPTO
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