Our Project in Depth

On this page you can read more about our project!

1: History of the Project

2: How we do research & do historical work

3: How we model & work in engine

4: Immersion & Interactivity

However, It wouldn't be until early fall that we got the pump room going:

The First Pump took about 1 month to make and contained around 300k Triangles. For those that don't know, almost every 3D video game's geometry is made out of triangles. For example one square side is made of 2 triangles and a cube has 12 triangles. The more triangles you have, the more detail.

After about 1 year of working on the project, we revealed the project to the Public. The reveal video can be found on our youtube channel. On the 26th of April 2023.

Not long after, The Pumps were remade since we were not happy with how the model looked. The new model took about half a year to complete and contains over 14 million triangles.

In the fall of 2023 another MAJOR decision was made. The current world that we had was off scale, instead of the pillars being placed in 600cm intervals, they were 595cm on the East-West axis and on the North-South axis, it was even worse, there it was uneven and too narrow. It was decided to make a brand new UE5 world, where we would start out new. Still a lot of assets could be moved over. 

Even though this set us back a year of hard work, it was definitely worth it as the current world has much better proportions.

Since the dawn of the project, we had already known we would release demos. However we didn't really know when and how much would be included in the first demo. In December 2024, we planned for a first demo to be released on the anniversary, 26th of April 2025. The world was made ready during these months. 

The history page will be updated in the future as time progress.

Part 2: How we do research & historical work

Disclaimer:

This part has during recent times been quite sensitive. Throughout the Chernobyl online community, different teams & developers have accused one another of copying/stealing assets or working directly off of someone else. Team members have TCE has also during different occasions been accused of copying other people's work.

We therefore need to clarify our stance on this very topic:

We at TCE does never directly copy someone else's creative work. This means video games or any type of physical or digital recreations of Chernobyl. We also do not support directly copying other people's creations and we are ready to take a stance against people that has been active in such behaivour. What can happen is that if we see that someone has portrayed a part of the nuclear power plant differently from us. It may make us reconsider our research and we may go back to our research pile and take a closer look on that specific area to see if we were right or wrong.

 However, we may use other people's research or historical documentation that has either been made public or has been shared to us. We mainly do online research trough historical records, technical documentations, guided tour videos of Chernobyl and other nuclear power plants that are available online or that has been shared to us.

The research process:

Our research team mainly focuses on providing historical records and information that will help TCE in recreating Chernobyl as accurate and authentic as possible. The project leader "FickanGamer" is also active in doing research.

Example story: A room to recreate.

First of all, we observe the specific room on floor plans that may contain descriptions of what the room is for. Then we start looking for as much information as possible, mainly what the room looks like and what's in the room. Our first priority is images and videos, especially high quality videos, we start with trying to find images of that exact room. If that can't be found we see if we can find a similar room, perhaps a copy of the room in an adjacient reactor. Chernobyl's reactor 3 is definetly the most common example of this.

If we can't find in Chernobyl, we look for other RMBK reactors, such as Smolensk NPP, Leningrad NPP, Ignalina NPP & Kursk NPP. If we can't find it there either, we go back to see what the room is for and look for other generic examples of that type of room or equipment that should be found in the room. We prioritise the Soviet 1980s version of said equipment. 

An important thing to consider is that Chernobyl NPP has been changed during the years and what you see now in guided tour videos doesn't always reflect what you would have seen before the disaster. Walls have been torn down or added, color changes, both intentional and non intentional, added equipment and pipes. Stuff changes over time so another priority is to look for resources that dates back to before the disaster occured. 

Part 4: Immersion & Interactivity

The highest goal & priority of the project is Immersion. We want chernobyl to come back to life! When playing the game, we want you to feel like you're actually there. Working at the nuclear power plant and hearing the equipment work to produce power to the mighty Soviet Union!

Most people use a set of "accurate" recordings of an active RMBK. Even though these audio files are accurate, they are quite low quality and doesn't really give a real feeling of the equipment working. We therefore record our own audio from different audio sources to create high quality audio to give the feeling we are aiming for.

For example, the Pumps were recorded with a jigsaw that was then we slowed down and added reverb to. The humming noise in the pipe rooms are from a ventilation fan that our project leader (FickanGamer) found while out on a bike ride. The crane-bridge moving was from the motor of a height-adjustable table.

We aim to have around 30% of the equipment interactable and all doors openable. This of course is do make sure you can do something in the project, not just look around but be able to make changes to Chernobyl. As if the Nuclear Power Plant is in your hands.