• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Need For Speed 3 Remaster in Unreal Engine 5

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

David Kerekes is the modder behind this creative project as he has used the original models of Need For Speed 3 to recreate a brief but brilliant experience of driving a supercar in Need For Speed 3 with enhanced visuals.

While it only includes two maps and a single car, it’s already a favorite project for the old-school fans of the Need For Speed series. Thanks to all the cutting-edge tools in Unreal Engine 5, this project already looks like an official remaster with incredibly beautiful lighting and shadows.

Unfortunately, the creator did not reveal whether they would continue this project to add more circuits and cars. It’s not available to the public at the moment and we don’t if the developer would ever share it on the internet. Regarding the possible copyright issues, however, we can assume that this remaster will probably never be available to the public.

 

RayBoy

Member
wow

The feels

One of the bests racing games that i ever played

149478-need-for-speed-iii-hot-pursuit-windows-front-cover.jpg
 

Soodanim

Gold Member
I wonder how much attention publishers give these projects. Not from a legal perspective, but from a market research perspective.
 

Outlier

Member
These days. If you don't have a name brand game, then the only way to have a successful new racer is to make it on a budget and make the gameplay stand out from the rest, in some way.
 

Tunned

Member
I would kill for a remake/remaster of this game, one of my all time favourites. But in all honesty that looks very meh, the original PS1 version looks better...
 

CamHostage

Member
It's funny how many of our favorite games of the past could just be boiled down to "maps"...

Like, this isn't NFS3. It isn't that game's physics code, it doesn't have that game's AI, it doesn't play exactly like the original. But you can rip the maps and other assets, and there are various basic handling models for UE dictating how cars behave on a track, and now there are plug-ins to do those effects that had to be invented back in the day for sense of speed or light hits, and so you can create a facsimile of the game world all by yourself if you know what you're doing.

Not that this guy Dávid Kerekes didn't put in some work, it's just funny how doable and easy this is now with some games, to the point that even he says, "I barely started working on it," yet here it is in playable form.

You couldn't do this so easily with Burnout, as a counter-example. Sure, you could rip the track, and you could maybe even find car models on the Marketplace with breakaway bits, but the gameplay isn't just "maps". It's logic for how often traffic populates the roads, it's AI for the multiple opponent vehicles, it's a set of game rules for whether you crash or rub off on guardrails or how hard you have to smash for a Takedown. Still doable, but you'd have to make a game, not just a "map".

It's just kind of surprising to think about how turnkey some games really were. They were maps, and avatars or vehicles on those maps. Brilliantly designed maps, which is where the work went in (as well as in making the engine that threw us into those maps,) but the nitty-gritties of how cars drove and how characters walked or jumped and how guns shot, those were kind of generic aspects (the whole idea of NFS was to try to simulate driving a car, so how different can cars drive, you wonder? Pretty different, actually, but that's all shades of difference on a general physical notion of "this is how cars drive.")

Heck, you could completely replace how the cars drive and characters walk and how the guns were aimed, using more modern and accurate or complex systems, and you could call that an "upgrade". It's not just not the same game, it's a "better" game!

Just something I think about where I see stuff like this or the Need for Speed Underground 2 UE fan project or the Simpsons Hit and Run UE project. These are not "remasters" of the original game by any means, but when you boil down what those games were, sometimes there's not a great difference between the greatest game in the world and a tribute.
 
Last edited:
I really love seeing old game assets ported to a new engine to see how much they hold up. NFS3 (and 2) are some of my favorite games from my childhood and it's amazing to see it in this engine. Other game worlds I want to see in new engines are GTA 3 and 4, Half-Life, World of Warcraft, STALKER, Metroid Prime, etc etc. It's surprising how well they tend to hold up, likely from really strong art direction.
 
heh played this game via software rendering on my dad's old ibm aptiva 233mhz amd k6.

e91216.001

still think the case looks cool.

thought alienware cases were so cool back then:
s-l400.jpg
2003-Alienware-Area-51-PC-Gaming-Computer-Vintage-Print.jpg
tsxtujr17xj41.jpg


dont remember this version...
images
 

CamHostage

Member
I really love seeing old game assets ported to a new engine to see how much they hold up. NFS3 (and 2) are some of my favorite games from my childhood and it's amazing to see it in this engine. Other game worlds I want to see in new engines are GTA 3 and 4, Half-Life, World of Warcraft, STALKER, Metroid Prime, etc etc. It's surprising how well they tend to hold up, likely from really strong art direction.

Really wish there was something like a "Remake Engine" that games could be ported into and then upgraded while still running accurately to the real games (sort of like what Bluepoint does with its remakes.) You can do a lot of tricks too with game emulators to add reshade or hi-res/AI-enhanced textures or even take out some of the innate hardware problems (such as lack of Z-Buffer on PS1 or the clockspeed of Super FX chip.) Official game producers are careful to not over-modify games (for better or worse, you're lucky to get a little upscaling treatment and maybe a CRT filter,) and as far as PS1-era game there's so few "remasters" of that era as it is, usually it's 8-bit and 16-bit or else PS3-era games getting brought back, but there's really exciting stuff being done with original game software and assets in new run systems.

I always find this model viewer for Wipeout to be inspirationally gorgeous. It's the original track data and textures, reverse-engineered into a custom viewer freed from from the hardware limitations of its day, and yes, those limitations are what made this game what it was (a hard lesson once you start modifying games and find out how modern conveniences can unfortunately ruin the experience,) but the possibilities of what can be done with classic games is immense...


tumblr_nmulxesW5S1qav3uso1_540.gifv
 
Last edited:
Thew reason we need stuff like this is because basically most pre 2010 NFS titles are unplayable unless you got an old PC. Even EA Origin i think they only got liek SHIFT from the old ones. Everything else is from PS4 days. I would honestly be happy even with a simple remaster port, just so i can play these games in one spot. I dont use a PC anymore, I sold my PS3 ages ago and now I want to play The Run or SHIFT...tough luck.
 

Scotty W

Gold Member
It's funny how many of our favorite games of the past could just be boiled down to "maps"...

For me, the tracks in a racing game are the most important thing.

I have very little interest in cars and none in tuning and that kind of stuff, and once NFS got to Underground I just tuned out. I respect that a lot of people like that kind of stuff, but I wish they would continue to have an old school option for players.

I watched my roommates play Underground and some of the followups about 10 years ago, but there were no interesting tracks. But those first 5 or 6 games had so many classics. I am mot sure about the NFS games released since around 2009, but based on the lackluster reputation, it sounds like they are not worth bothering with.
 

Cattlyst

Member
Would love a remaster of the original Road & Track presents: The Need for Speed, along with upscaled intro videos, car showcases and those clips of the cops when you got busted
 

Mokus

Member
It really captures the feeling of the original game, no microtransactions or other "surprises".
 

DukeNukem00

Banned
Thew reason we need stuff like this is because basically most pre 2010 NFS titles are unplayable unless you got an old PC. Even EA Origin i think they only got liek SHIFT from the old ones. Everything else is from PS4 days. I would honestly be happy even with a simple remaster port, just so i can play these games in one spot. I dont use a PC anymore, I sold my PS3 ages ago and now I want to play The Run or SHIFT...tough luck.



You don't need an "old" PC. You just need a PC, of any kind. Each game is playable with some comunity patch thats available on pcwiki. Plus, all the 90's NFS games are so unquantifiably better on PC, they were mostly different games. Much, much more content, features, game modes, customization. Its amazing how different the ps1 and PC verions were. Culminating with Porsche on PC, the star of the first generation of Need for Speed games.
 

Cherrypepsi

Member
I played this game in 1998 on my brand new computer on split screen with my cousin

I played on wasd, he played on numpad.

I remember it exactly like this remaster looks :p
 


You don't need an "old" PC. You just need a PC, of any kind. Each game is playable with some comunity patch thats available on pcwiki. Plus, all the 90's NFS games are so unquantifiably better on PC, they were mostly different games. Much, much more content, features, game modes, customization. Its amazing how different the ps1 and PC verions were. Culminating with Porsche on PC, the star of the first generation of Need for Speed games.


Yeah i stopped being a PC user in 2006 XD. Not gonna get a PC for stuff like this but i am hopeful, they would end up on consoles.
 
Top Bottom