12/22/2025
Questions answered! + Rolling Stones interview >>
Q: If you had to estimate a percentage-of-completion, how far along would you estimate?
A: I'm about 50% done.
What has been done so far: Barnett college, New York, Iceland, Tikal, Azores, Knossos.
What is missing: Algiers, Dig site, Monte Carlo, Submarine, Crete, Thera, Atlantis.
Future additions: CG cutscenes, more puzzles, extra storytelling and artifacts.
----------
Q: What are the largest tech hurdles that you have encountered during this project? What did you do to overcome them?
A: Visionaire Studio 5 is very easy to work with, but sometimes it requires a scripter to improve the game logic. To find a permanent and reliable coder can be difficult as well, but I know that working on free projects isn't for everyone. Also finding VO people that fits this project can be very difficult and again, it's a free project and none of us has been ever paid. Free fans work.
So it's not the game, it's the labor.
----------
Q: How many orichalcum beds did you put into God's machine before starting development of this project? đ
A: About 6000, that's how much money my mom spent to buy me an Amiga in 1992. Then another 130 to obtain 11 floppy disks with a game called Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
Then another 2000 for buying external floppy drive đ
----------
Q: Will you add cut-scene videos to the game, for example destruction of Atlantis (during Sophia's presentation), or the god transformations at the end of the game? đ
A: I will definitely keep adding CG cutscenes to this game. It has been a big part of this development. Even if it's a lot of work for one person, I like doing it, especially for this project.
----------
Q: Did any game development company contact you to propose any kind of âdealâ? Did âtheyâ offered just some help, or just out some problems in your âpathâ?
A: Yes. Big and small ones. None of them were successful in negotiating with the devbiz people at Lucasfilm. We have always tried to contact Disney and Lucasfilm several times to make the full game development legal and official.
----------
Q: What keeps you working on this project for so long?
A: You. The fans and good players who have supported me for a long time. People who have been patient with me and give me the motivation to continue. Believe me, if this project was at a standstill, I wouldn't be doing it anymore.
----------
Q: How much time weekly have you spent on this project (on average)?
A: That's not the case. Everything depends on my official paid job and also on my personal life, energy and mood. Life and health come first and hobby comes second, but I keep punching till my life allows me to.
----------ROLLING STONES INTERVIEW----------
June / 2017
Laura:
The Remake of Atlantis blog dates back to 2013. When did you start work on the special edition, and why did you set out to do the project?
Patrik:
First of all, thank you for contacting me and giving me the opportunity to talk about this ambitious project a little bit.
I got the idea for a remake of an Lucasfilm old adventure game in 2003, but it was just a matter of time when it was going to happen, mainly because I was so busy and still needed to improve my art skills. I used to say: âYour time will come when you are ready,â and I had this feeling in 2013, because lots of circumstances came together and I was able to try it out.
I still wasnât sure how much time I could possibly put into a remake, but my first idea was to create just a single room, so I started with the attic in Barnett College. This scene took me just a few days and the result wasnât bad, so I showed it to a couple friends and they liked it. Then I started working on the second scene, the archive storage room, and the response was pretty good, but I was missing something. So I contacted my good friend Eugene Negri, to see if he could do some quick color overlays, and I continued working on the game.
After a couple weeks, I had completed about 5 rooms. Then I decided to create a page and started working on this âSpecial Editionâ in my free time, and it became a passion.
The fan page started growing rapidly which gave me huge motivation to continue. I also contacted all original creators to get as much information about development as I could. I showed them what I had accomplished, and they all loved it. But they were also very skeptical, because Lucasfilm had been sold to Disney and making any deals with such corporations is very complicated. The interviews can be found on the FB page.
Fans have also been very worried of the possibility of seeing this project ceased by Disney and they have started lots of discussion about how to do it right. Honestly, in most cases, fans wouldnât like me to approach Disney or talk about this project publicly, instead, they suggested I just keep it a secret and release the game when itâs done, for no profit.
Laura:
You started with a demo. Did you always have in mind you would make a full game?
Patrik:
I always thought about the full game and I am still thinking about it, but I knew it's gonna be a crazy amount of work, because this is the largest adventure game ever made at Lucasfilm. It has 9000 lines of text and 90 backgrounds, not mentioning characters, soundtrack, sounds, voice overs and we also added CGI videos and updates to the story.
I was questioning myself, is it worth it? If I would keep working on this project with this number of people, it would take me 3 years at least! I would be working in my free time only, because who is gonna pay my bills, right? And this was the reason why we decided to approach Disney / Lucasfilm to see if there is any interest.
If they could give us a chance, we would share our plans and keep moving forward with development.
Laura:
I would like to hear a little bit about your history. You started making games at 15, right? And was your focus always on point-and-click?
Patrik:
I believe I was born in the golden age of the adventure game era. The 80's and 90's were a revolutionary period in computer development and innovation. Expectations were high, and all the big studios had to constantly improve their quality. Every 6 months brought new hardware and better looking games. At the time, Sierra was leading the adventure genre, but when Lucasfilm hired great storytellers like Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, Hal Barwood and Noah Falstein, everything went in a different direction.
I was born in the Czech republic - a communist country at the time - and it was difficult to get any of those great games from America. I played my first adventure games on Commodore C64. Zak McKracken and Maniac Mansion were a great experience, but also very difficult for a non-English speaking child. Later, I bought an Amiga 500, which was a huge step forward that brought improved sound and graphics quality.
The Amiga 500 came with The Secret of Monkey Island, which has been my favorite adventure game ever since! This game started a real madness, and there wasn't anything better happening in my childhood. This way I fell deeply in love with Lucasfilm games and was anxious to play other ones.
When I was 12 years old, I made my first graphic demo on Commodore 64, and I was 15 when I made my first adventure game for Amiga 500. Everything was pixel painted in Deluxe Paint 4 and that was my first experience in developing games. Point & Click style is something that I will never abandon and I will take any opportunity to work on such projects.
Laura:
As opposed to a classic âremakeâ, you set out to do everything from scratch. Why do you think this is an added value?
Patrik:
A âremakeâ shouldn't be limited to simply enhancing the original artwork and refined audio quality. If somebody has the opportunity to recreate a classic game, it needs to be done in a way that honors the legacy of the original. So, as you can see, I am not a fan of tracing and thatâs why I started this project from scratch. I used the original screenshots as concept art, and re-created all of the scenes in 3D software, which allows greater results in perspective, lighting, coloring, texturing, atmosphere, and higher graphic resolution. Even recreating a scene based on original art yields a different result. 3D scenes can be exported to a realtime engine, and the full game rendered in 3D. That also brings up real-time shadows and lighting, and layering becomes a thing of the past. Another advantage is the animation. Now you can use as many animations as needed, with very low memory usage because we're not using sprites anymore.
To bring something new to the storyline, it's important to understand the original concept and events that have transpired in the Indiana Jones genre. I believe the original creators had deadlines, too, and in most cases the project was over-schedule.
To remake something considered perfect is a very tough and risky job. I had to find people that would have the same high interest and that would help me with this project. The first person I found was my friend Dale Dassel, who wrote a Fate of Atlantis novelization with new scenes that can be used to enhance the Special Edition in greater detail, if we choose. We would never change the original storyline, we just wanted to explain some situations in greater detail and show more exciting action scenes and artifacts.
Then I was looking for a character artist who already created the 3D model of Indiana Jones and I found Luis Belerique, who agreed to share his model with me. Other people were my friends from previous companies and they helped me with small, specific things.
I also had to find actors for voice overs and I went through original credits to see who made them back in 1992. Now, this is a fan project that doesn't have a budget, so I had to ask everybody politely if they would like to participate in this demo. I got very lucky and they all agreed to record lines for the demo for free. I couldn't be more appreciative of such an effort, and it was a blast to work with them! It was a huge deal for me and for this project!
We found a great actor for Harrison Fordâs voice, and we also enlisted Jane Jacobs - the original actress who portrayed Sophia Hapgood back in 1992 - to reprise her role! Then we had the great Lewis Roscoe and also gave our fans the opportunity to lend their voices to the project as well.
The music and sounds were re-created by Rich Douglas, with additional music composed by Florent Rifai.
Laura:
What's your take on projects like the Monkey Island Special Edition, or Grim Fandango remastered and all the bunch from Double Fine? Do you like their approach when it comes to remastering old games?
Patrik:
I think the problem with recent remakes is that they are made on a tight budget designed to increase profits. Most of the efforts are rushed, as evidenced by the lack of detail. I strongly believe that all the artists on the Monkey Island Special Editions are very talented, but the art direction and project leadership was not well executed.
MISE 1 and 2 was something everybody had been anticipating for ages, and it was like a dream come true when it finally came out. But when you started playing it... everybody realized, wait? Why does Guybrush look like this? Why are the backgrounds so rough? Why did they break the serious tone of the story and make it cartoony?
Then Double Fine tried to approach Disney to remake Tim Schaferâs old games, but unfortunately, because they are stubborn and very political, it wasn't a big deal for them. So, without Sony in their corner to broker a deal, Double Fine wouldn't have been allowed to do it.
I'm glad they got the opportunity, but to be honest, people are still complaining about the quality. Based on comments all over the internet and the quality of the game itself, some of their remastered games do not look much better or bring up something new. The only difference being the smoothly traced lines and improved audio. If it's such a big deal for these companies to remaster the classic game, why not significantly improve it? I think the projects were rushed to meet deadlines and the budget, and the finished product suffered for it, unfortunately.
The only remastered version Iâve played was Day of the Te****le on PS4, and I watched the others on YouTube. I am happy that Double Fine got the chance and, in my opinion, they did an âokâ job.
Laura:
You mentioned that âpeople change in the big companiesâ. Do you have hope for a future official release of your labour of love?
Patrik:
If we are talking about Disney, the chances are very small. I think, by selling Lucasfilm to Disney closed the doors for most of the exciting projects made by small teams, because to deal with them in any way is just insane. There are many talented teams that do better jobs than big companies, but Disney has very tough company policies.
Based on the responses we received so far, they donât even care about this fanâs Indiana Jones project or even the team that is working on it. Itâs such a complicated and sad process of cooperation.
We had discussions with other famous and popular license holders and studios that brought up some exciting video game projects in the past and their responses were absolute opposite compared to Disney people.
I really deeply hope for some major changes at big corporations and for greater support of Indie teams and their projects!
Laura:
What are the challenges and the restrictions of doing a âfan projectâ? You have mentioned the financial pressure, and obviously the need of working on the project in your spare time. Is there anything else you can think of that has happened along the way, and wouldn't have if this was an official release?
Patrik:
Working on unofficial fan projects brings lots of problems and challenges. Basically, you need to be a huge fan of this project and be prepared to sacrifice lots of time. You have to prepare yourself mentally to do it right and keep consistency.
Lots of people like to talk a lot, but they work just a little. They like the hype of working on something new and exciting, but when the project starts and you are expecting results, suddenly the person has nothing to show.
Another problem is that people come and go. You cannot expect anybody to work on your project for free for many years. There are some exceptions that keep working till the end of the breath, but in most cases, people will do some work and then leave in the middle of the project.
The biggest problems were with coders/scripters, which I donât understand much about. They worked on the project for 6 months, delivering great results, making good progress on the game, and then suddenly decided to leave, abandoning all their work without regrets. And the rest of the team who has worked equally as hard, has to stop and wait for another person to pick up the reins.
So, if you donât have any financial support, you should always be prepared for the worst! :-)
In the beginning of this project, we never had plans to make it an official release. This was supposed to be an unofficial fan-based project, made by hardcore fans for the fun and enjoyment of it.
Laura:
Would there be any legal pressures at all related to intellectual property, if the game was to come out as a non for profit, fan project?
Patrik:
Anytime someone uses another companyâs IP, they can expect legal issues, but there are also other positive aspects that help IP holders advertise their projects for free. To make any game, movie, or studio successful, they need a huge fan-based community to share stuff on social media and spend money on their products. Without fans, those properties would be nothing more than dust.
Now, this is very important: If the fans donât tarnish the brandâs image, and if they create something that looks wonderful and enhances the property, then the company shouldnât oppose it. Instead, they should be happy for the fan dedication to the project, which helps to make it even more visible worldwide.
Iâve seen many other projects make a big mistake by hacking art from the original game and reusing them for their own games. Thatâs a legitimate issue the studios should be upset about, and sue them. If itâs a fan project that doesnât bring anything new to the remake, or in any way damage the IP⌠then it should be ceased. Those were the exact reasons why we started from scratch, and just followed the original game as a template for our Special Edition.
Laura:
Lastly, when do you think the game is going to be fully ready?
Patrik:
Honestly? Without an official agreement with Lucasfilm / Disney, I would say never (or in 10 years). :o)
Thank you kindly for your time!
