New vs Old

When starting out making Eclipse Hypernova it was decided that due to the massive change in resolution and game specifications that the graphics would be made from the ground up with retaining a similar look to the original Eclipse: First Wave but not directly just remaking the exact same graphics. Many of the 2D game remakes/remasters these days have an almost clean, 2D vector look about them with clean gradients and flat colours replacing the pixel art of the original look and with Eclipse Hypernova we have gone for a look similar to the original but brought it up to date while improving the detail but hopefully avoided the 'too clean' look many others appear to fall into.

The original game had just 2 layers of parallax scrolling, the new game has a minimum of 8-10 layers depending on the level. The background graphics filesize alone for the first level of Eclipse Hypernova is larger than the unpacked filesize of the entire Eclipse: First Wave game, but this time around we are not too concerned about large filesizes whereas the original had to fit on a mobile phone.

The level design too has seen a massive overhaul due to the difference in resolution and aspect ratio, gone is the roughly square play area and in comes a 16:9 play area. This changes the way the game is played and the difficulty will reflect that as the player now has much more time to react to what is happening on screen and so the enemy location, patterns, bullet spread, speed and many other things have to change to keep the game challenging for the player.