Exile for the 21st century

This page is dedicated to the current efforts to bring Exile to the screens of modern machines. The active projects of which I'm aware are:
Simon Storr's PC Exile
The ColumbusForce Project

In repsect of both of these projects, I would recommend visiting their sites where you can find out about the progress, read proposed ideas, fan's suggestions and programmer's response on the forums and see further stills from the projects.

PC Exile

What? No lanterns?	Similar to the red acid drops cave, if I remember correctly

Here we can see a familiar cave close to the surface with a status panel (reminiscent of the Amiga versions for example) and a cave much further down the planet showing Simon's water transparency. Simons has implemented light sourcing which can be seen in other screenshots elsewhere on his site. Judging by the above graphics at the time of writing, it can perhaps be said that whilst the game seems to be an improvement graphically over the BBC original, there is still a lot more to be done if it is to compare to the standard of the Amiga AGA version's graphics (the last version to be officially released on a computer as far as I know).

It would also be good to see this version utilising the ability of the hardware as strikingly as the original on completion. Simon has many ideas for extending the game both visually and also in gameplay so it will be interesting to see the progress of this project as it seems the most likely to see fruition at the time of writing (June 2001).

The Columbus Force project

After a period of absence James Howat's project I understand is ready to continue. According to the information on T.R.Schmidt's Resurrection site:

This is not just a nostalgic ramble - my chosen task right now is to painstakingly remake the game on the PC platform. However, unlike many remakes, I don't see my goal as a pixel-by-pixel duplicate of the original. My aim is to create a fittingly updated Exile, free from the restrictions of the original hardware - more special effects, better graphics, a flexible and extensible game engine architecture and (keep this one hushed) possibly even network play.

I'm yet to see any screenshots of this project although there is a demonstration available on the ColumbusForce site. A new discussion forum has been added as well. I'd be interested to see how this project compares to Simon's.