Impressive title made using same game engine as TRON 2.0

[TronFAQ]

I recently found out about a game that was released in 2004, only a year after TRON 2.0. What's amazing about it, is how good it looks. I mean, it even looks pretty good by today's standards. (Except for the character models, which give away its age.)



Watching that video, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a much more recent title. I'm amazed at what these guys were able to pull off with the old Lithtech Jupiter engine. Though, to be honest, the engine was actually pretty advanced for its time. Monolith had managed to catch up with their competitors.

At least, for a while. Then, after FEAR, they fell behind again.

I've got to see if I can get my hands on this title, somehow.

[deeahchur]

How did you come across this nugget of Myst-like environs? I rather like the moody music, and the organic forms! That was really impressive!

[TronFAQ]

Yeah, that's what a lot of people say when they first see this game. That it's very Myst-like.

I found out about it by accident. Didn't even know it existed, until I posted the message. If I'd known about it sooner, I would have gotten it a long time ago.

This game is known by two titles. "Sentinel: Descendants in Time", and "Realms of Illusion". Sentinel was the original release by The Adventure Company. It can be picked up for cheap on Amazon. Apparently, TAC was taken over by Dreamcatcher Interactive at some point. At the same time, they re-released the game under the Realms name. Nothing has changed, except the title and the price. Realms costs considerably more, even though it's the same exact game.

Sadly, Detalion, the Polish developer that made the game, has long since gone out of business. The site for the game still exists, though. Oh, the irony. Even Sentinel has an official web presence after all these years, while Tron 2.0 does not.

I have the game now, and it's bloody amazing for 2004. In terms of graphical fidelity, artwork, and soundtrack, anyway. Even today, it looks pretty darn impressive. I did a quick hack to allow me play it at 1920x1080, but I won't be putting the kind of extensive work into it like I have for Tron 2.0. (I might post a video on Youtube of the game in 1080p, for the fun of it.)

The default controls suck, though. And when you're on the options screen to change the controls, the game often locks up on me. It only happens on that screen. Otherwise, the game runs fine. The performance is great: 1080p, maxed out anti-aliasing, and with absolutely no slowdown on a Phenom II 1100T and Radeon 6870.

Aside from the eye-candy and the interesting premise and style of the game: as you can guess, I'm intrigued by it because of what they managed to do with it in Lithtech Jupiter. At first, I wasn't even sure how they accomplished some of the things they did. I was thinking "how the hell did they do that?". But after taking a tour of the levels and looking closely, I think I understand how they pulled it off.

[Techromancer]

Hey Tronfaq,

Thanks for posting this. Your right, I think the graphics are pretty nice – I am amazed as well that they did this with the Litech/Jupiter. Nice find!