Nerf Arena Blast Windows, RTX game

Hey, all! Today I'm releasing an exciting new demo for people looking to try out more RTX Remix mods - a remaster of the first arena from Nerf Arena Blast! Special thanks go to mmdanggg2 for creating a DLL that made Nerf Arena Blast compatible with the Remix runtime. Check out his work on Github here.

If you just want a top-level view, watch this video here!

Remastered with RTX Remix

Almost every texture in the Twister Arena has been remastered, with a combination of AI upscaling, hand-painting, and PBR texture generation using Materialise. Lots of thought was put into the intended materials of much of the arena; I thought back to the play areas I went to as a kid and figured if you were playing competitive Nerf as an amateur, a nice spongy floor would've been preferred to cracking your ankles on hard stone! Note that whilst only the Twister Arena has been given a proper makeover, many of the textures used there are also used throughout the game, and so you might find some remastered textures in other levels, too!

Emissive Neon

One of the main features I felt Nerf Arena Blast could really use to its advantage was emissives. These are textures that give off light. In older games, this was usually faked by putting an independent light source near the texture, but with RTX Remix we can do this the modern way. All of the neon lights in the arena now give off light and volumetric effects, changing the profile of some scenes completely.

Heightmaps

Parallax Occlusion Mapping displaces the surface of a material according to a separate heightmap texture, giving the illusion of 3D depth to materials where it wouldn't be practical to model them for real. In this RTX remaster, I used this technique throughout to add more visual interest to many prominent elements, like doors, the neon strobe lights, and walls.

Path-Traced Glass

Nerf Arena Blast, like most games of the day, faked the visuals of its glass with a simple texture; later on some games used cubemaps or earlier forms of real-time reflections. With Remix, I’ve been able to replace these textures with realistically-simulated glass that reflects the world behind it.

Future of the mod

This demo is a proof of concept intended to show the potential of both the Remix runtime and also of the game for further remastering. Right now I will not be working on it further, but I am releasing the work completely open and free to use for anyone interested in continuing this remaster themselves! Since I didn't remaster weapons or characters, these could be a good starting point, as well as sorting out the very small handful of textures I didn't remaster in the Twister Arena; or, you could begin to look at tackling a remaster of another arena in the game!

How to play?

First, you'll need to get a copy of Nerf Arena Blast. The game is hosted on myabandonware.com, but you may also be able to use a local copy, if you've still got one. Afterwards, follow the instructions mentioned on the downloadable file!

That's all - enjoy this blast from Nerf's past and the showcase of RTX in a classic title!