Developer’s blog: The Inferno & Mor Ul Rek

On the 19th of September 2005, a new city including a new mini-game was released, inhabited by strange mysterious creatures: The TzHaar. Subsequently, on the 4th of October 2005, another part of the caves had opened: The Fight Caves, which included a boss that would haunt many for years to come.

12 years later, roughly 3 years after Oldschool's release, the successor to the original Fight Caves, named the Inferno, was added to the game. It is considered by many to be one of the biggest PvM challenges to date.

The restoration of Karamja

Although a big part of this client update focuses on the Inferno, we sometimes include restorations that are in the vicinity of the remaster. In this update, we included the restoration of Northern Karamja, and offers ample opportunities for exploration and enjoyment. This includes the isle of Crandor, the dungeons within Karamja Volcano, and the TzHaar City itself.

Watch the official release video here if you haven't yet seen it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e_0t65RyRg

The act of bringing back the old HD map elements while ensuring compatibility with the OS game is what we refer to as 'Restoring'. During the RuneScape HD, Karamja received no major upgrades such as areas like Ardougne or Lumbridge did. Therefore, many aspects remained unchanged, such as wall-kits (although roofs were upgraded). It did receive a number of small improvements, that were found all over the world during the HD overhaul, such as the introduction of glowing lava, ground heights were smoothened and new terrain was added.

Despite the low complexity, In a large area restore the chances of parts being moved, added or removed entirely is high. Karamja was no different, like this Wheat field that is present in the Oldschool Game, but not in the original HD map. We also decided to upgrade the mining rocks, as they still had the old models in the original HD map.

As for most caves, the Karamja Volcano Dungeon received a full overhaul which we were able to take advantage of. We did have to create some new models in order to make the map fully compatible such as the TzHaar entrance and the Dragon Slayer 2 passage.

HD Pack 16

HD Packs aim to enhance a selection of OS models by incorporating custom assets, so they align with the HD art style. Other than the various assets we had to create for the Inferno itself, the new city posed some major hurdles for the map remaster aspects...

Mor Ul Rek

The Tzhaar city received some major changes back in the day, though most of it consists of atmosphere and model upgrades. Our systems already try to auto-upgrade these aspects and tries to incorporate both into an unrestored map when possible. However, there were some notable fixes to the cave walls and additions to make lava glow fiercely. As part of the Inferno update released in 2017, a large portion of the city was changed, and several new map regions were added.

The scale of the new additions to the cave walls and lava seen in the restore-able maps would make manual implementation exceedingly time-consuming. Therefore, we opted to create and utilize algorithms to aid in generating these features instead.

The new TzHaar creatures have also been remastered in the spirit of HD. By modifying certain parts of the existing HD assets, we were able to create the infernal variants of the TzHaar in HD!

One of the feature requests on Gitlab raised concerns about the green butterfly particles appearing out of place in certain areas. This feedback was valid, and since then, we have been exploring new variations of fairy rings. Our efforts to diversify these will persist as we continue to restore more areas. Not only have we added new particles to the Fairy ring, but to most Inferno monsters and projectiles!

Lastly, an item from a distant past has been spotted at the establishment of TzHaar-Hur-Zal's shop... Players who have mastered the challenge of the Inferno can start a small dialogue that allows them to swap out their cape for the old TokHaar-Kal cape, which was a reward from the Elder Kiln, original ancestor of the Inferno released in 2012 on the main game. The revision of the game in which this item was released is largely incompatible with our client, therefore it has been remade as accurately as possible. Swapping out the item does incur a loading screen.

For more, check out the changes for yourself, and good luck to those trying to master the Inferno!

— The HDOS Team