New Remasters
Hi, this is Sean Hotinski here, and this is first blog post of this website! I decided to add this section to bring people who are interested in Samantha’s Quest the latest updates and developments on this series.
Recently I added five new videos called “Samantha’s Quest: Isles of Galerock (Part 1–5) (Remastered)”. These videos are the same as the originals in terms of the dialogues and script, but they add:
- Music throughout the videos (procured from the Unity Asset Store).
- Smoother framerates at a consistent 60 frames per second, using the Unity Recorder asset.
- The episode’s name at the beginning of each episode in the title screen.
- Various small things fixed (e.g. fixing some 3D models).
I plan to release the remastered versions of episodes 6 and 7 some time later. They’re not as high on the to-do list, since they already have music and descent framerates.
How These Came About
I was inspired to do this mainly after watching through my videos again, and making the observation that episode 6 (I had six episodes back then) was my favourite.
When I considered why, I realised it was because of the music. It added so much more emotional depth to that episode that I just knew, from that moment, that I had to give the first five episodes music also to bring out their full potential.
I also figured it would be a good opportunity to fix some minor things, like some of the 3D models, and update the framerates to give the videos a more polished look.
Part of the Workflow
Perhaps the biggest change in this area was the way in which I recorded the new remastered episodes. I originally exported each episode in Unity as separate builds and then recorded the “gameplay” with OBS. But in performance-heavy scenes, this negatively affected the framerates at times.
For episodes 6 and 7, I used the Unity Recorder asset instead, to give a consistent 60 frames per second. The issue with this, though, is that I had exported them to MP4 straight away via the “Movie” recorder, which gives a “grainy” look because of how compressed MP4 files are.
So instead, I switched from the “Movie” recorder (heavily compressed) to the “Image Sequence ” recorder (no compression) and “Audio” recorder settings, to render out each frame as a PDF image at 8 samples, and then render the audio separately. I then combined the two in Da Vinci Resolve and exported the video there as an MP4 file, which significantly reduced the visual noise.
Episodes 3 and 4 were a bit of a challenge to do, because despite using the Image Sequence recorder, I still got some strange visual artefacts and noise from the PNG images. After looking into it, I realised that the solution is to record not the whole timeline in one go, but to do so in smaller intervals (e.g. frames 0 to 3500, 3501 to 7000, etc.). This fixed all the major visual problems.
Final Remarks
It was an exhausting process (a lot of trial and error), but worth it in the end! Overall, I’m really happy with the final results, and especially love what the music brings to the first five episodes. Personally, I’ve found that episode 5 in particular really resonates with me after adding the music.
I’m currently working on the script for episode 8, where Samantha and her friends enter the portal to rescue Clara. I don’t have a release date planned at this stage, but I may post another update when it’s almost complete. In the meantime, I wish you all God’s blessings, and encourage you to stay tuned for the next episode.
All praise and glory be to Jesus Christ, to whom I am forever indebted for saving me.
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