Welcome!

Click to see fullsize.

Welcome to the Grim Fandango Deluxe project, an unofficial fan-made mod for Grim Fandango. This blog will document the project's progress. Here's a brief introduction...

Grim Fan-what-now?
Grim Fandango is arguably the greatest graphic adventure game ever released. It continues to be praised by critics and still appears in "Top PC Games of All Time" lists to this day. It was designed by the legendary Tim Schafer (of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Brutal Legend and Psychonauts fame) and released by the equally legendary LucasArts Games. It's a film noir-inspired journey into the Mexican Land of the Dead, with all the humour and imagination you'd expect from Tim Schafer and LucasArts.


This Project's Aim
While Grim Fandango is a masterpiece, with many stunning attributes, its 3D character models (limited by the technology of its day) sometimes detract from an otherwise stunning presentation:

The Grim Fandango Deluxe project aims to try and improve the quality of these models, perhaps to the level of quality seen in some of the in-game videos:

Especially note the quality of the hands/objects.

How?
This entire project is made possible thanks to the hard work and dedication of the people behind the ResidualVM project, an open-source interpreter that allows a user to run their copy of Grim Fandango on modern machines (and even non-PC platforms). If you're familiar with the ScummVM project, you may recognize it as a sister project for the 3D LucasArts adventure games.

You can download ResidualVM for free here: http://www.residualvm.org/downloads/


But what will you change?
Every effort will be made to stay as true to the original spirit of the game as possible. Only changes that enhance what is already there will be considered. Specifically there appear to be three possible routes to enhance Grim Fandango's graphics:

1. Increase the texture quality (a test of which can be seen in the Manny image at the top of this post)
2. Adding polygons to the game models
3. Upping the game resolution to 1280x960

Great! When will you be done?
Unfortunately even with Residual's help there are still technical problems that need to be overcome before we can even begin all of the above work.

These problems are:

1. Textures -- We have found a way to increase the texture quality (see the image at the top of this post), but we are still limited by the game's 8-bit palette. Ideally a 16-bit palette would be supported, allowing for better quality textures.

2. Polygons -- We just need some skilled 3D modellers to volunteer their time. See here for more information: Calling 3D Modellers

3. Resolution -- This particular chestnut still needs to be cracked.


If you want to help out with any of the above aims, you can either drop me email here:

grimfandangodeluxe@gmail.com

Or you can join in the up-to-the-minute discussions about these problems at:
http://forums.residualvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=100 (this is really the best place to jump in - don't feel shy!)

Please get in touch either way, if you feel you can offer something to the project!

Links:
DoubleFine Games - Tim Schafer's game company
LucasArts Games - Original publishers of Grim Fandango
Residual - Home of the software that allows modern machines to run Grim Fandango

Remember: This project is completely fan-made and unofficial. It has no affiliation with LucasArts or DoubleFine or any other official body.