I’ve decided on my first project under this identity. I am going to be modernizing the 1995 Zombie Studios VR vehicular sports game Locus. Despite Zombie being a fairly well-known studio, known for the Spec Ops series and being the company that made the Saw video game adaptations, among others, Locus is not particularly well-known (at present there are a mere 1 play and 2 backlogs on Backloggd and a mere 5 ratings on MobyGames). Basically the only reason I know about it myself is because I just happened to borrow a copy from a friend when I was younger. It was only Zombie’s second game after Ice & Fire, a first-person puzzle game created in collaboration with the creators of Tetris. It was made to utilize the first generation of VR HMDs from the 90s, as the company’s founders, Joanna Alexander and Mark Long, had previously worked on a VR headset for Hasbro at Sarnoff Research Center.
While not well-known, Locus is an interesting game. It’s essentially a vehicular combat sport played in small arenas. Player play as one of two players on one of three teams and compete to take possession of a ball and deposit it in the other teams’ goals. After three goals have been scored on a team, they are eliminated. The match continues until only one team remains.
Each match sees you fly out of a long hallway and into the field before play begins, starting each match off as a frantic race to the ball. Players use magnets to scoop up the ball, turning the magnets off when they reach the goal in order to score. Once someone has taken possession of the ball, you can shoot them to get them to drop it.
The thing that really sets Locus apart, though, is that matches take place in zero gravity arenas that allow you to drive on the walls and ceilings. In this way, it shares some DNA with games like Rocket League, only without gravity pulling you back down to the “ground.”
For those who are interested, I pulled a gameplay video from YouTube and added it to the bottom of this post.
I recently tracked down Mike Dussault, the former senior programmer who worked on Locus, and was able to obtain the original code from him with the intent of updating it to work on modern systems. Former Zombie Studios CEO Mark Long also signed off on the project, so this work is being done with the blessing of the current rightsholder.
My current goal is to do at least the following:
- Add support for modern resolutions.
- Add modern gamepad support.
- Replace the 1995 multiplayer networking code with new, modern multiplayer code.
- I also want to look into adding matchmaking and some sort of competitive ranking system, but it’s not a priority.
- As the game was originally able to be played with early VR HMDs, I also intend to look into adding VR support, but this is also not a priority.
This is being done as a non-commercial fan effort, so the final updated game will be available for free. I just want to make sure that the game will remain playable in the future, as it’s already not the easiest game to play on modern systems.
I will be posting my progress on the modernization as I go, so be sure to keep an eye on this space.