Nvidia RTX Remix is proving to be a powerful tool for creating contemporary remasters of classic games. We recently interviewed David Driver-Gomm about the making of Half-life 2 RTX. Now, more exciting implementations are emerging following the RTX Remix competition, including an update of one of the best first-person shooters of all time.
A two-person team has given 2K's BioShock the RTX Remix treatment with the addition of real-time path tracing, upgraded lighting and new physics-based materials. There's a free demo available to download now, and it looks superb. At least we have something to make up for the bad news on the planned remake and BioShock 4.
Originally released in 2007, BioShock was a landmark for its blend of first-person shooter and role-playing elements, immersive world-building and complex narrative. Set in the fictional underwater city The Rapture, it delved into philosophical and moral themes such as the dangers of unchecked power and the consequences of ideological extremism.
We had the official BioShock Remastered back in 2016, but fans felt the game deserved more. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported last week that BioShock 4 has "failed a review", leading to leadership changes on the team at the studio Cloud Chamber. It also says that plans for a remake of the first game were scrapped earlier in the year. Could a BioShock RTX make up for all the bad news?
The remix is the work of modders Skurtyyskirts (art and assets) and Watbulb (programming & reverse engineering). They've rebuilt the game's art deco world fro the ground up and resolved engine issues in a bid to improve stability and performance as well as the visuals (see the making of video above).
They created a hybrid rendering wrapper to act as middleware between Bioshock and RTX remix to convert or ignore draw-calls that would be incompatible with RTX Remix's fixed-function D3D9 pipeline. There are still a couple bugs, but the developers hope others will use the compatibility mod to build on their work.
You can download the BioShock RTX demo for free from Moddb.com. Nvidia's RTX Remix competition closed on 18 July. Winners are due to be announced on 18 August.
For more on tools for creating games, see our guides to the best game development software.
