It's possible that they couldn't get the screens-space water reflection buffer effect going in SVGA and left it out for that.

Interesting... I guess it may of been due to all the supposed time and budget constraints I read about during the development of this game. A shame, atleast 320x400 is better than nothing.

UNIVBE and SVGA requirement is strictly for the 640x480 256 color menus as you noted.

Unfortunately, the game will not go beyond 320x400. I was quite perplexed by this as well when I first played the game, but I guess it had to do with engine limitations. It may have been based on the same engine as System Shock (which in turn was based on the engine from Ultima Underworld), but it overhauled it significantly (large exterior areas were quite a feat back then!), to the point where the game is quite demanding at 320x400.
I played through the game on a K6-III+ 550 last year and noticed that there's quite a bit of slowdown on such a system. I can't imagine how demanding the game would be had they managed to get 640x480 support in there.

320x400 does look a bit nicer than 320x200, so I guess that's something 😁. Lot of lovely tech on this game, I especially enjoy the sprites for the enemy and your teammates, made me stare and examine the way they move around for quite a while 🤣 .

F2bnp wrote:

I especially enjoy the sprites for the enemy and your teammates, made me stare and examine the way they move around for quite a while.

Yeah that's the best part about Terra Nova. This is the first time I ever seen a game have detailed skeletal animation, for a collection of sprites attached to bone points on a skeleton.

The sprites are so high quality they just about make one double take on thinking it's not a 3D model...

Totally. Initially I thought they were 3D models, but they looked a bit off so I looked at them closer. What a great hack!

I also particularly enjoyed the 90's Sci-Fi story/setting and cheesy FMV acting.