Unfinished Adventures

Obiwan Kenobi writes "Just Adventure has an interesting article on unfinished games that were nixed in mid-development. Amongst the casualties are incomplete trilogies, an off beat 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea game, Blizzard's ill-fated Warcraft Adventures and the Star Trek title "Secret of Vulcan Fury.""

Comments

I have cancled many games.

[packeteer]

I always have great plans to make some sweet ass game. As a programming student i get myself way in over my head and end up scratching it long before it becomes playable. Typical problem or not organizing and shooting too high.

It makes me think that i dont wanna do coding as a living becuase if i actually did make progress and someone cancled my work it would not be very fun at all.

Re:I have cancled many games.

[Subcarrier]

I always have great plans to make some sweet ass game. As a programming student i get myself way in over my head and end up scratching it long before it becomes playable. Typical problem or not organizing and shooting too high.

The person who modded you a troll must be on a fantasy adventure, or something.

I have to say that I have my share of aborted adventure games in the closet. In my experience, every piece of software consists of two main components: a) the neat bit; and b) the boring bit. I usually wrote the neat bit first (that's the game engine), and then got started on the boring bit (the game itself). As it happens, something else with a neat bit in it usually came along before I managed to finish the project.

It makes me think that i dont wanna do coding as a living becuase if i actually did make progress and someone cancled my work it would not be very fun at all.

Writing software for a living can sometimes be like that. In my experience, there are two kinds of jobs: a) neat jobs; and b) boring jobs. Just make sure you are skilled enough to get a neat job. You want to be the one who gets to write the neat bits.

Re:I have cancled many games.

[packeteer]

I usually start to write a game and get some good ideas. I have wrote some text based adventures and i have a cool idea about how to draw up the map and move around. I write that part out but it gets boring after i finish what i went in for. I made and openGL game in my programming class but once i got a little sip flying around shooting things i lost to motivation to actually put in stages and a game.

Whenever it has workwed best its usually with other people. In my programming class i did work on other people's project coding certain parts they needed but it becomes difficult to keep going with two visions. When most people start coding what they really want to do is produce a game. They want to be able to design the game and have other people do it their way.

Re:I have cancled many games.

[Subcarrier]

These days all serious software projects are written by a group of people. In some ways, a software project is like a marriage. If the people are compatible, the team grows together into a well oiled machine and produces some great software. That can be a very rewarding experience. The opposite can happen too; the team can fall apart because of slackers or strong willed individuals with serious differences of opinion and no ability to compromise.

I think it's important that the team consist of a variety of people with different talents and insights. The different views enrich the project. While everyone should have a say in where the project is going, someone must also be in charge and be able to make the final decision after the ideas are on the table.

In real life projects sometimes get cancelled for business reasons that have nothing to do with how the project is going. The many cancelled commercial adventure games are a prime example: no market for it. That is something you, as a professional, will have to learn to live with. If you have been working on a project for two tears, having it cancelled can suck big time. But, all things considerd, it is still only a job.

He's dead Jim.

[nlinecomputers]

I thought that Vulcan's Fury got shelved because De Kelly got ill and then died before it was finished.

Why not make the source open?

[DAS1]

It seems like such a waste having all those resources put into games just to have the it scraped in the end. Why doesn't the game developing community just make the unfinished code open-source and set up a sourceforge project around it :-) i could imagine some pretty cool games coming about this way.
--david

Re:Why not make the source open?

[stratjakt]

some reasons.

most games, codewise, are just mods to a game engine, which is/was very much used, and not something you give away, with a few exceptions (doom, quake).

the plots can be recycled, again not something you give away. Same with any artwork, cinemas, etc.

they can, however, be bought. these guys have bought out a few scrapped sega cd, vectrex, cd-i and colecovision games, finished them, and offers them for sale.

Similar community based efforts may work. Though not enough are interested in anything but 'latest newest highest poly-count' FPS titles.

Curiously

[slycer9]

There's no mention of PC based Halo (bought by the great Satan to promote a substandard console...'nother story tho'), Mac OS9 ports of Half-Life, OSX ports of everything, Linux ports of Starcraft/DiabloII/DeusEx, etc... At the risk of sounding a troll, compared to these titles, I could care less about those listed in the article. Interesting read nonetheless.

The Babylon 5 flight sim?

[Platinum Dragon]

I still remember the B5 space combat sim being deep-sixed by Sierra. Too bad, as it looked like a good game in the making with something close to realistic physics.

Fallout 3

[crumbz]

We might be able to add this one to the list. It looks like this will (unfortunately) be vaporware and only live on through fan-created fiction...
A shame 'cause it is truly a great franchise.

Common in Console World Too

[frostgiant]

Games getting cancelled happens all the time in the console games world too, it seems. Luckily, on consoles, it is common for a prototype or two to survive.
Take Earthbound 0, for example. Some of you may remember the SNES game Earthbound, but it comes from a NES game known as Mother in Japan. Nintendo of America finished translating the game but never released it. Fortunatley, it has been dumped.

Countless prototype games have been dumped that may never have been able to see their light of day. Recently, Star Fox 2 for the SNES was dumped too.

Unfortunatley, playing these dumps is illegal as is distributing them. :-(

Also, I wish some prototypes would surface for my favorite console, the Virtual Boy!

descent 4?

[moosesocks]

what about descent 4?
the earlier descent games were fabulous

The death of the adventure game...

[DoctorPhish]

was when the text-parser was axed. Adventure games lost the most of their expressiveness and became a game of "Click all the current screens with all your current items to advance" whenever you got stuck, because in the end, that was your only way of interacting with the environment. Maniac Mansion style games were a bit better, but were still a long way off of text-parser style action. Parsers gave the game authors so much more flexibility as to what could be done, and gave the player so much more to do and explore, that there isn't really any comparison between the games of yore and all the rodent infested ones that came after ^_^;
Or maybe it's just me...

Wasteland

[jpdbest]

I remember playing Wasteland on the ol' C64. It was one of the few games that I got hooked on and actually finished. It was very similar to the Bard's Tale genre of games, being a text adventure with a few graphics thrown in. I'm feeling nostalgic about it right now and wish I still had a copy.

This is the first time I've ever heard about Meantime. I did a quick Google search on it and found this tidbit of info about the game:

Meantime: The Unfinished Official Sequel to Wasteland

It's too bad that the sequel fell through, it would've been interesting for sure. Fallout is a great (if unofficial) sequel. One of the first things I remember thinking about after hearing about it was 'Cool, it's just like Wasteland!' Little did I realize then how much of a connection the two games actually have.

two mmorpg for the log

[pyrrho]

(1) Sierra was creating Middle Earth MMORPG for several years before scrapping it. It couldn't straddle the Old and New Sierra eras (the latter being an era where Sierra Doesn't Exist, from the point of view of an old timer).

(2) Worldplay Games spent millions making Cyberpark, an online MMORPG and virtual environment. The project was bought by AOL which eventually cancelled it. The technology was functional and could house thousands of people, but which floundered over business model concerns at AOL and a related lack of direction. I still don't think that the current MMORPG have as good of a hosting architecture... but I'm biased.

Indeed, this is the frustrating thing about the game industy, there is a ton of work thrown away or spoiled.

Leisure Suit Larry 4

[subuni]

To read the story of the missing LSL4 game straight from the developer's (Al Lowe) mouth, check out Lesiure Suit Larry 4 and Why Larry 5?.

Fairly interesting story -- What was supposed to be LSL4, ended up morphing into The Sierra Network, and then getting sold to AT&T for $100 million (and then getting resold to AOL for $10 million).

Re:Lunar 3!?

[jgkastra]

Game Arts doesn't really have much to do with the Lunar look and feel as much as Studio Alex does. Studio Alex and Shoten do the plot/artwork and Iwadare does the music. Game Arts only did the coding and they were the Sega freaks, hence the many Sega releases. But Working Designs has said they are shooting for PS2.

Victor Ireland has also stated that they are doing the Lunar 3 translation and Studio Alex, Game Arts, and Iwadare are showing up for another run.

It's probably a good thing to keep the hype tight lipped. Just because they aren't saying anything doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Re:Babylon 5: Into the Fire

[Picass0]

Yeah, I haven't purchased a Sierra game since the B5:ITF game was killed. I can't help but get a little mean glow inside thinking that Sierra killed the Lord of the Rings game at the same time, and LOTR has become one of the hottest licensing properties around. They blew the chance to make A LOT of money because they had their heads of their asses. Sierra shitcanned the B5 team and the LOTR team on the same day. I hope the developers feel a bit vindicated.

As a B5 fan it pisses me off that the last performances of these actors in their roles will never be seen. As a gamer I relly wanted a top notch Starfury flight sim.

Fuck Sierra. Fuck them right in the ear.