RottExpr & Rott94: A Small Insight of (and a Small List of Wishes for) 2 New Rise of the Triad Source Ports

    

    The 90's classic first-person shooter Rise of the Triad has not seen many new source ports being developed to support it. With Kaiser indirectly saying that RoTT EX is cancelled and people still waiting for 3DGE and ECWolf developers to add support for RoTT, all hope that the game will receive any modern source port seems to be lost.

Fortunately, RottExpr and Rott94 have come to grace PC RoTT players, after a long time of not having ready-to-run binaries. RottExpr was originally a DIY-oriented source port, in which programmers have to pick up the source code on Github and compile the code with their own ability, while Rott94 started as an Android-exclusive source port. This month, both ports have finally received a Windows release, and before you get started, I will describe both ports' advantages and disadvantages.

RottExpr (July 17, v0.0): +Has more customizable graphic options, even new gameplay options (under the Ext. Game Options menu).

+No audio issues.

+Support for high resolutions all the way to 3840 x 2160 (!).

-Has 4 separate binaries for different releases (shareware, commercial, site license (GOG/Steam release), Super RoTT). Players may have to consult release page which version they have.

-No multiplayer as of when this article was written.

Rott94 (July 15, v0.88-beta): +Plays closer to vanilla, retaining all original options.

+Only 1 binary for many versions. Players only have to put data files inside a folder named "assets" within the binary's directory.

-Buggy audio, namely that no sound effects play and music may stop sometime after a few minutes.

-No high resolution settings.

On top of this all, I am giving out my suggestions for the developers to add the following features/improvements for the port(s):

• An in-game mouse movement fix.
• A more optimal HUD scaling option.
• Uncapped framerate + interpolated graphics, game logics, etc.
• Additional multiplayer-related gameplay options.
• A MIDI soundfont choice option and an external music track option similar to DXX-Rebirth.
• Last but not least, support for extensive modding.

What do you guys think of this article? Let me know in the comments section!