Unreal Engine 4 recreations are nothing new, however the Star Wars Mos Eisley spaceport project—which comes courtesy of a group of Obsidian developers—is pretty impressive.
Headed by Jason Lewis, a total of 17 devs of varying rank are using the project to learn more about the engine, but of course being self-confessed “super Star Wars nerds” makes the undertaking that bit easier. Speaking to 80.lv, Lewis says he first started out with the desire to craft a three dimensional Millennium Falcon, however things quickly spiralled as the project grew in scope.
“Originally it was just going to be the Falcon sitting in Docking Bay 94 so I could run around and look at it in real-time," says Lewis. "Then I thought it would be neat to add the interior to the docking bay, and then maybe some of the surrounding Mos Eisley city, then I thought ‘hey, let’s put the Mos Eisley Cantina in as well!’
“It was at this point that I realised the scope of this project had grown beyond my ability to finish it by myself, so I extended an invitation to several of the artists working with me at Obsidian to help out with this project in their free time, and I got many very enthusiastic YES responses, so I divided up the work based on the time and effort commitments that volunteers were willing to put into it.”
Mirrors for the files can be found below (the download is 7.7 Gb) which Lewis stresses is not a game—more an “interactive fan art piece”. I’m sure it’ll interest more than a few Star Wars fans nevertheless.
“You can run around with a blaster (or a hidden weapon that you have to find) but we were unable to enlist the help of any character artists, so the only characters in the environment with you are a bunch of Astromech droids and a few Gonk droids,” adds Lewis. “We are also working on a VR version as well as several people in the group have been playing around with Occulus and Vive VR kits, and we thought it would be cool to have a version that runs in VR, so we are currently trying to get that finished as well.”
The 80.lv article can be read in full here, where Lewis also digs into the more technical side of the Mos Eisley project.
