A Star Wars X-Wing enthusiast has been working on a remake of the 1993 vintage X-Wing PC game for the last two years or so. Earlier this month hobbyist game developer David Esparza Guerrero published a YouTube video showing off his work thus far. The project, dubbed the XWVM community mod, offers massively updated visuals as it replaces the 1993 X-Wing flight engine with the modern Unity 3D engine.
Gaming site Polygon describes the Unity makeover of this PC classic as "breathtaking," and compliments both the visual and auditory improvements on offer in the XWVM community mod. Particularly pleasing are the graphics and lighting nuances provided by the Unity 3D engine.
A GOG thread on the project started in 2014 with a proposal to do this remake, asking if there was "any interest?" It has to be said there are many such proposals about remaking classic games, but many also fizzle out after an initial burst of enthusiasm. After all, sometimes people bite off more than they can chew, or simply can't devote enough development time to follow through.
Pleasingly the XWVM community mod has gone past that initial hurdle of putting plans into action and devoting time and effort to create something workable. However, there might be some significant hurdles ahead legally, predicts PC Gamer. It worries that as the XWVM community mod comes to prominence in the news the development could fall victim to a cease-and-desist type of complaint from the likes of Disney and/or Electronic Arts lawyers. This legal action could feasibly come despite XWVM relying on user possession of the original X-Wing game files to run the mod (such copyrighted files are not packaged).
