Bionicle Heroes: Double Vision 1.3 Release news

Bionicle Heroes: Double Vision 1.3 Release!

Hey everyone! This update for DV is a huge aesthetic overhaul on the base game - every single level has had the world textures revised with the DS equivalents! This is thanks to MelonRipper - a DS emulator that also has NinjaRipper-like functionality of ripping whatever is loaded on-screen - which allowed me to take world textures from the actual game itself. I will detail further the process for each level but this is going to be by far the biggest aesthetic change to Heroes so far - so let's get into it!

Visuals

-New world textures for Hub + Hub Secondary Levels - As mentioned earlier, a new tool allowed me to emulate the DS release of the game and rip out textures and models. The latter will be relevant in the future for DV, but for now, I'm able to take level edits a step further as I always intended and make the very world look more like the darker, Quake-like environment of the DS release! Many textures are good enough that an AI upscale and bit of cleanup was all it took, but the DS has many fewer textures than the PC release, and so much more work was actually required to make believable variants of DS textures to replace their PC counterparts. All textures are comprised of DS textures, photo edited or overlaid, so the intent is still preserved. The hub is an obvious place to start and features some major changes already.

Examples:

-New world textures for Stronghold - The Stronghold levels were the easiest to translate as the textures basically worked straight out of the game, though one or two had to be "composited" from other textures in the DS stronghold levels.

Examples:

-New world textures for Water - Water experienced perhaps the most significant atmospheric change, with a change of time of day to night-time as per the DS release.

Examples:

-New world textures for Volcano - Volcano was one of the first zones that required a reasonable amount of composition of custom textures, though nowhere near as much as some of the later levels.

Examples:

-New world textures for Mountain - Mountain is when the custom textures really ramped up - lots of modification was required and whilst all replaced textures still use DS textures as a basis, this is when the limitations of the format began to become apparent.

Examples:

-New world textures for Jungle - Jungle didn't require so much customization but as the Air environment in the DS is very different from the PC version, not all textures from the DS were as transferable. Nonetheless textures from other areas of the DS were utilised to keep the style consistent.

Examples:

-New world textures for Desert - Desert was by far the most transformative chapter, because it has no analogue on the DS - the earth levels are facility/machinery based on the DS, and so all sand-related textures had to be heavily adapted from the handful of workable equivalents from the DS. However, after much hard work, the style was still preserved going into this level too.

Examples:

Misc

-Updated to MOVN 2.2 where relevant - Another MOVN release has hit with more fixes and minor improvements, so as ever, DV also reaps the benefits with a version update.

-Gave Nuparu visual recoil (but no actual recoil) - This in misc as it's more of a bug that was fixed, as I accidentally assigned Nuparu Level 3 the wrong hold type and as a result he had no visual recoil when firing his gun. This is now rectified.

Examples:

Conclusion

DV 1.3 was wrapping yet another design goal for DV - changing the very world itself - and pushing DV ever closer into Total Conversion territory! We're still awaiting more reliable custom model imports but as things progress, another major DV update is inevitable. If you'd like to see what I and the community get up to next, join our Discord server here: Discord.gg