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Classic Game Postmortem: Alone in the Dark

Classic Game Postmortem: Alone in the Dark on HackerTube: recommended by 3 Hacker News commenters across 3 separate months, 2019–2023.

GDC Festival of Gaming

talk · intermediate · evergreen

Open on YouTube

Frederick Raynal gives a GDC postmortem of Alone in the Dark, the game that helped create the survival horror genre. He covers how the team built it and shows some of the old tools used.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN commenters recommend it as a firsthand account from the creator, including the old tooling.

people recommended it
3
separate months
3
strong recommendations
0
discussed on HN
2019–2023
“There is a very nice presentation [1] in which Raynal shows some of the old tools that were used to create Alone in the Dark.”
— smokel, Oct 2023, in “How the creator of Alone in the Dark came back to games”

What HN commenters said

3 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

smokelOct 2023Recommends

Note that both Little Big Adventure (also called Twinsen's Adventure) and Alone in the Dark were created by the same person, Frédérick Raynal! There is a very nice presentation [1] in which Raynal shows some of the old tools that were used to create Alone in the Dark. I'm still not entirely sure what kind of rendering is being used, but the editor sure looks nice (in 640x350 EGA). Perhaps there is some more background information on LBA out there as well? [1] ▶ this video

in “How the creator of Alone in the Dark came back to games” · View on HN

pengaruJun 2020Recommends

Also worth a watch/listen is the talk by Frederick Raynal at GDC about Alone in the Dark. He touches on converting Alpha Waves from Atari ST to PC: ▶ this video

in “Alpha Waves was the first 3D platform game” · View on HN

nope96Aug 2019Recommends

There's also a great "Classic Game Postmortem" video from 2012 by Frederick Raynal, too: ▶ this video

in “Alone in the Dark” · View on HN

Topics & tags

Game history & retro gamingGame designGame programming & enginesalone in the darkpostmortemsurvival horrorgdc3d games