Screens from games that never were

Pet Terry · Sun 11/02/2007 21:08:56

Quote from: Snake on Sun 11/02/2007 19:29:59
stuff

Jesus f*cking Christ. Your post just sent shivers down my spine. I bet you guessed I'd be replying to it tho!1

Also also, Daemons in the Attic, Tablet of Altheria, Maya Con Dios, Byzantine, JHpart2, Jimmy Jam... talk about a blast from the past.

rodekill · Sun 11/02/2007 21:09:26

Ok, I'll bite.

So a few of you, especially those that were around in the 2000-2003ish timeframe, may remember my character Rode Kill and his series of games, and how I was working on a sequel to the original, and how it was taking a long, long time.

Well what happened was this. I had a serious issue with planning the game ahead of time. I had the story done, and a general sense of a majority of the puzzles, but mostly I was just making it up as I went along. This led to a few problems, namely, motivation factors to get it finished, and as you can see below, serious problems with maintaining a sense of style throughout the game.

The sad part is, I had some really great stuff done, and some really great people help me along the way, including Mods and his amazing soundtrack, which I am greedily hording for myself for the future (yes, I do have some Rode Kill stuff planned and in the works).

m0ds · Tue 13/02/2007 14:27:45

Quoterodekill's entire post

Wow!!!!! That was a thrilling post Rodey

I've been looking forward to that game for yeeaars! The screens look great, the backgrounds have Rodey humour in them & so does the game so you know it's going to work!! it'd be great to see a "rodekill island" of some sorts - someday! But you keep hording that music :p just make sure you use it sometime! I should update it sometime

This thread is great!!! 2 Kudos for you Snarky. Laitors Edge looks really nice! As does Jimmy Jam - I'd not seen that before! The artwork is immense :O In a very good way. An extremely visual way of playing!

Adam, yay! Scotch's art! Superb stuff... would be cool to see them in game. What about that one you showed with the tower, was that from the same game? And I remember that old Byzantine screeny!! Which reminds me - one of the token two a year Byzantine questions 'via email' has arrived;

NN asked

QuoteWhat's the track that's playing in your office, in the Byzantine demo?

Also, any news on what form Byzantine will take now?

aussie, I like the look of those too! I wonder how many completed rooms in ags all those games actually have. CSM had about 3, never any more. I can't quite tell, it won't load in any version of AGS now :p

Dave Gilbert · Tue 13/02/2007 15:43:27

Some of you might remember my first attempt at making "Bestowers of Eternity" commercial. It was a collosal flop and never went anywhere, mainly due to the high resolution. After many months of production, only one room was completely finished:

This scene was a flashback that starred Rosa's Auntie Lauren.

Vel · Tue 13/02/2007 16:28:17

Wow, that looks impressive! Who drew it?

Snarky · Tue 13/02/2007 16:50:39

The sprites, at least, are bigbrother's work. The palette gives it away.Ã,Â (Also, the sprites in this thread are stored on the herculeaneffort server.)

And Dave, I hope you'll take all that cash you're making and plough it into producing a game that looks like this!

Rincewind · Tue 13/02/2007 16:57:29

Ah, yes, Byzantine... Damn, how I love that demo... Incredibly atmospheric. Still my all-time most anticipated AGS game, DS...
Finish it, I know you can make it!

And I won't say anything about about TLoLE being back on track this time, as I know someone will make some remark about it. Hah.

But yeah, it's been a long while in the making, no doubt about it...

Nice to see all these old screens, anyways... Brings back alot of memories, to be sure.

SSH · Tue 13/02/2007 17:00:57

I see Griff is still in there! Now, if only we could have the best of both worlds... a completed BOE/BL with the hi-res!

Dave Gilbert · Tue 13/02/2007 17:04:04

Quote from: Snarky on Tue 13/02/2007 16:50:39
And Dave, I hope you'll take all that cash you're making and plough it into producing a game that looks like this!

I'm making cash?

Pet Terry · Tue 13/02/2007 17:19:03

Err, 'nuf said!

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens · Tue 13/02/2007 20:16:10

QuoteRise of the Hidden Sun, Blackthorne. He did a column about it at AG, so I HOPE Snarky's already got that on his list. Funnily enough, someone nominated its characters for best player and best NPC in the awards this year...

I was actually working on this, doing both the character art (if you recall, the originals were painted scans) and animation. After doing quite a bit of the main character he sent me an email that he'd cancelled the project and was moving on to other things. I don't think it will resurface, but then again it might.

Here's a sample idle animation I did for him initially. You will note that it is anti-aliased and rather grainy. I was asked to use the original scanned image rather than redraw it.

Vince Twelve · Wed 14/02/2007 11:40:28

That is hot, ProgZ!

What about The Cloak?

SSH · Wed 14/02/2007 11:46:13

How has no-one mentioned this one...

More at: http://web.archive.org/web/20021019161525/monkeygames.mixnmojo.com/runhot/art.htm

m0ds · Wed 14/02/2007 17:42:40

Because we need the man himself to come and talk about it!!!

Where aers Anthony Hahn!?/1

Radiant · Wed 14/02/2007 23:40:19

I could post screenshots for Glorious Quest but they wouldn't be very original!

The idea was to make a QFG game using existing Sierra graphics; that idea didn't last long, but I have a demo somewhere with the healer's room from QFG1 where you can use balancing skill to walk over that board near the roof, and which has a bit of fighting on the ground.

Helm · Thu 15/02/2007 01:36:31

always loved that screen, suggest you use it for an OROW or something.

aussie · Thu 15/02/2007 11:46:33

Quote from: m0ds on Tue 13/02/2007 14:27:45
aussie, I like the look of those too! I wonder how many completed rooms in ags all those games actually have. CSM had about 3, never any more. I can't quite tell, it won't load in any version of AGS now :p

I guess that's the really important point. If you have the talent, it's not that hard to make one great-looking bg. The hard thing is to maintain the effort and complete a game that lives up to that level.

As for those games I referred to:

Daemons in the attic: There is a very nice 3-4 room demo, which I still have in my hard drive. I'm not sure if the link from the games page is still active.

Tablet of Altheria and Maya con Dios: There were three or four screenies in the games in production thread. I think you can still find it if you do a search.

**************

Now, while I'm still at it, here are some more. These may still be in production but we haven't had news in awhile:

Hero Theorem, by Bernie:

Inc's Henri 6:

Corby's Heroine Quest:

I post the screenies because I love good-looking screenies.

Blackthorne · Thu 15/02/2007 13:54:26

Tablet of Altheria was really fun. I worked with the Author (Berserker Tails) in the early days of IA, and he shared his early version of it with me. He's a talented dude, but I imagine he's just busy these days - as I recall, he was actually playing a lot of music and working as a musician. I bet life just caught up with him.

Bt

JosÃ© Luiz · Sat 17/02/2007 02:21:00

A game I'd love to play, besides some of those you all mentioned, is "Buccaneer II" (by Hobbes).
However, I haven't see any news about it. Is it still in production?

A screenshot of the game:

Grundislav · Sat 17/02/2007 04:02:07

My first abandoned game, Return to Carver Island. It was a Monkey Island ripoff starring me and my adventures in school. This one would have been high school. It was high res and voice acted, and almost finished, except I couldn't come up with a decent final puzzle.

In hindsight, I really should never have released this series to the public, nor should I have spent such a ridiculous amount of time on this game, only to abandon it at the end. But then, making them all gave me the experience I needed to make less sucky games.