Screens from games that never were

[radiowaves]

Ooooh, I loved those Byzantine pictures, too bad its never going to see the daylight 

Here are some of my backgrounds from a friends project "My Little Real Life Adventure" which concept was really good though. And yep, its sort of dumped.







Character sprite by my friend.

[Steel Drummer]

Holy merde-bombers on toast frying over a scantily clad woman!! :O 

Those graphics are professional!

[TribeHasSpoken]

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.

In the eyes of a Ranger,
The unsuspected stranger
Had better know the truth of wrong from right,
'Cause the eyes of a Ranger are upon you,
Any wrong you do he's gonna see,
When you're in Texas look behind you,
'Cause that's where the Ranger's gonna be

[Cyrus]

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.

Well, what kind of game it was? Did it have any MI references, plot lines?

[edmundito]

Hello everyone. So I'm here to talk about a couple of games I tried to make, but they never came to be. And man, did I try so hard to get them made... let's start with some history:

Long ago (for the interwebs, that is), there were about 3-4 people who ever released medium-length complete freeware amateur graphic adventures; I just so happened to be one of them when I released this Monkey Island inspired game called The Treasure of Drunk Island; yeah... some of you may remember that one. It did not age too well after the release of Rob Blanc followed by the start of the AGS revolution, but then again what do you expect from a 14 year old with a basic grasp of the English language?

Anyway, My plan was to either make a sequel or to remake the game, and eventually the project that got started on this was called "The Treasure Never Found", a loose remake of the game, just like Blackwell is to Bestowers. Some of the things I was trying to do was to make a 640x480 game with pixel-like art. I did some of the backgrounds you see here, and Cornjob (I Spy, Run Hot) did the painting:



And here's a concept of what the main character, William, would look like:



Some of the preliminary stand-in art I did for it is quite hilarious. I totally forgot I made these until I was looking for art for this game this evening:



There is another game as well. This had been planned for ages; It was called Beyond Fantasy, and is the game I started to make after the original Drunk Island; in fact, it was going to be made in SCRAMM! Eventually after abandoning the game I decided that perhaps I could make the first chapter on AGS, and so I took the backgrounds I made and started making new ones and stuff:


This one is from the SCRAMM version, I believe. But eventually when I got back to it on AGS, I talked to Cornjob and he was giving a totally new look:





Beyond Fantasy was an interesting project. I tried to assemble a team, and there way too many people involved doing not much at all, and the scope of the game was HUGE, plus the story was kind of convoluted and not very polished. It was about this guy who gets lost in this imaginary world and tries to find who he is by traveling to different worlds. When I did the AGS version, I wasn't really satisfied how it was turning out, so I abandoned it.

Anyway, these are two games that will never get made, so there you have them. Enjoy.

[TheJBurger]

Announcing a game I will never release that started production in 2002 (GASP!), the appropriately named:
HIDE QUEST
Featuring over 150 rooms (no kidding), a plot involving time travel, paradoxes, and cliches, Hide-Quest was nowhere near completion when I finally abandoned it. It was really my 'baby' game and let me exercise my bad design skills before (hopefully) moving on.

This was one of the first screens I made for it:

And this was one of the last:


More screenies (circa 2002-2006):
(animated)

[Snake]

I'm sorry if digging this thread up again tickles anyone's tighties, but I've just re-discovered my old site (while searching for an old demo) with some screenshots of games I never finished:

The Life of Marty Shore




The End



The Adventures of Josh Spacek


Evil Night




Nice screenies, btw, J!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The Life of Marty Shore has a cool title screen.

[Ubel]

I have a lot of these...

One of my first projects ever, Apollo 27:


This is actually a scrolling background and there is a huge lens flare on the right edge, but it's probably best for all if we keep that hidden.

The next one's also a bit old. I never came up with a name for it. I started making it for the Hotel-themed MAGS. It was supposed to be sort of a The Sims style hotel simulator game.



Now then, some more recent projects...

Hail Pablesus, a game I considered my main project for quite a while. It would have been awesome to finish it but I doubt I can motivate myself to do that.









I started making the next one, Lunar Eclipse, for some MAGS I can't even remember anymore. Some of these are unfinished... And yes, those alphabetical characters are actually the two player characters.









I wanted to make a remake of Buna Wants Beer at some point. I haven't actually given up on this project yet, I'm just not gonna do it in this style after all.



Prisoners of the Storm was a game based on a bigger story I've been planning for a long time. I decided not to make it a classic adventure game though. I might continue on it at some point as an interactive novel type of thing.

[Trent R]

I actually first got into AGS through QFG style fangames (which is why I'm making one myself finally) that 'never were' such as:

Heroine's Quest by Corby (although he announced at AGDI that he's starting to work on it again!)


Hero6 by [huge list of people... many of the original having moved on]


Struggle For Life and Honor (aka SFLAH)


Also worth mentioning:
Quest For Infamy by Infamous Adventures
Project Katrina (though I always thought it was a poorly managed project)

[Radiant]

Heroine's Quest by Corby (although he announced at AGDI that he's starting to work on it again!)

He has? Oh, that's awesome. I can has link please?

Project Katrina (though I always thought it was a poorly managed project)

As I recall, it had ten writers and one artist Not so great a combo.

[joelphilippage]

My three person Halloween Game that I postponed because I wanted to do it in a higher resolution.
(As you can see, I still have horrible spelling.)

[Trent R]

Heroine's Quest:

Heroine's Quest by Corby (although he announced at AGDI that he's starting to work on it again!)

He has? Oh, that's awesome. I can has link please?

http://www.corbydesigns.com/hq/main.htm
Same site as before, but it's pretty bare now. No forums yet either. But he's been working on backgrounds and plot a bunch for the new Norse setting.

Project Katrina (though I always thought it was a poorly managed project)

As I recall, it had ten writers and one artist Not so great a combo.

I don't even think they were writers, it was probably fans such as, "OMG! QFG4 is teh best!!1 Lets make game about kartina!!!"


~Trent

[m0ds]

Great stuff, lots of superb art gone to waste!

I'm no artist but I thought I'd upload some music that "never was" and maybe some other musicians can follow suit! Hopefully I won't get into trouble for it

I was asked to write original music for 5 Days A Stranger a few years back, I only ever tried the theme, and it was never used. It's funny how the style in this piece doesn't reflect that of the music I did LATER for Yahtzee.
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/5dastheme.mid

I was on board to do Ben Jordan 7, but hadn't honed my digital skillz down so it wasn't possible for me to do it.
But here are a few tunes I sent to Grundislav just in case
Cardinal Sins theme
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/bj7theme.mid
For his apartment
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/bj7apartment.mid
Church background
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/bj7church.mid

Lif & The Treasure of the Tanones was going to be in MIDI to begin with too, but I later changed that. So I guess, in theory, this MIDI is actually free to use!
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/tanones.mid

I was asked to write the theme for Run Hot based on Bladerunner. Hehehe!
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/runhot.mid

Dave asked me to do the Blackwell Legacy music in MIDI for dial up users, but I didn't get it done in time.
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/blackwelllegacy.mid

There are some other things, for example Rodekill 2 and a few other games that "never made it" but I made some music for, you can hear them at http://www.screen7.co.uk/music/midi/

That's all. Just thought I'd share. These files weren't ever gonna do any good on my machine, all alone These ones though aren't even from my main MIDI computer, so who knows what other music there is for games that never were.

[Ghost]

Great stuff, lots of superb art gone to waste!

After listening to some of that stuff, I think that with music, it's even more sad to dumb it. With graphics, you can often recycle and save a little. Music's so much more specific, and often lost forever.

[Trent R]

Yet this community leans towards not using ripped graphics, but is fine with using public domain sounds and music.


Not that I don't agree... just commenting.
~Trent

[kaputtnik]

Great stuff, lots of superb art gone to waste!

After listening to some of that stuff, I think that with music, it's even more sad to dumb it. With graphics, you can often recycle and save a little. Music's so much more specific, and often lost forever.

In fact, I think music is pretty easily recycled, and I was always of the opinion that you couldn't recycle graphics all that easily! I have carried over lots of ideas from one project to the other, or used tunes in another context with only slight modifications. My soundtrack to The Vacuum, for example, was half recycled and half fresh composed stuff. And I doubt anybody noticed that. Well, I doubt anybody found the soundtrack very remarkable at all, since it was more of an experiment in scenic scoring than a soundtrack people might remember.

Anyhow, here are some tunes from the crypt:

"Ride the tristesse", a melancholy surf/western gunslinger introspective made for Fightmeyer's Payday, stalled due to lack of motivation and an adept animator.

www.sonores.de/reyze/music/kaputtnik/ride1.mid

"Strangers of glam", a stunningly sexy midi effort from my 2011 smash hit "Stop - in the name of L.O.V.E" (working title), maybe I'll finish this someday. Someday.

www.sonores.de/reyze/music/kaputtnik/glam1.mid

"Stacked", a piece of highly scientific biohazard for the game S.T.A.C.K.E.R, which was never used because of deadlines.

www.sonores.de/reyze/music/kaputtnik/stacked.mp3

"Appartement de la pomme", a stupefyingly relaxing midi reggae tune for a game by khrismuc about a worm living in an apple and visiting bars and such.

www.sonores.de/reyze/music/kaputtnik/appom.mid

Other than that, I have loads of Cyberpunk Midi up my sleeve due to two canceled or not even started projects, should anybody be making a Cyberpunk game, drop me a line.

"Maybe in gaol", a tune of romantic failure tune beneath a copper sky.

www.sonores.de/reyze/music/kaputtnik/gaol1.mid

But, on the other hand, I am really working very resource friendly, you should see the heaps of material Funkmast (maybe you've notcied him around the forums) has produced in his short life! That's quality gone to waste in outrageous amounts...

[abstauber]

Here's some material from me.

The Vestibule (when it was called Exodus), sporting incredibly wrong drawn gallows


The first version of Stone:


Relicts from the website


The last room I drew for the vestibule, featuring an awful lensflare


And last but not least, the title for a silly project during this Andy Penish time



No material I could ever recycle

[m0ds]

Ass Crab Adventures! Brilliant!!!

[Snake]

Cool, since this thread was bumped, I get to re-upload the images that didn't appear earlier:

The Life of Marty Shore:



Evil Night:


The End:


and the first Monkey Wrench in AGS:





And there are the special guests of the evening... Hirum and Allie.
I don't know why I thought that scattered blue and white background for the menu was good, heh.

Once I find the new Monkey Wrench I was working on with Squinky, I'll post that.