Minter and Lionhead's Unity cancelled Comments by Tom Bramwell
High standards derail shoot-'em-up.
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Comments: 1-39 of 39 in total
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Blerk, actually Lionhead specializes in 2 things. Inovative games (or projects), and squells. Expect to see B&W 2 and Fable 2 :P
As for underground stuff, there is still some out there. Most for PC, yea, but I can think of some XBox titles which had a small team, and are prety nice (despite being next to unkown). |
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There's some stuff on XBox Arcade, for sure. Mutant Storm by PomPom for instance.
But apart from that incentive, it's almost as if larger publishers would like to see platforms grow in unnecessary complexity and license cost just to shut smaller competitors out of the largest market, creating a monopoly. Now who would suggest somea thing likea theat to Sony?
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most recently on 10/12/04 @ 13:04
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"What was the game anyway? I haven't come across any info about what kind of game it was. "
It was a side scrolling and tempesty (tunnel) shooter where all the geometry and textures were generated on the fly from the music, and quite possibly the music itself was generated from how you played. It was a psychadelic shooter trip which would have made rez look as tame as a WW2 FPS. But, yeah. It would have only sold 1 copy per hippy/artsy game developer. I was gonna buy a Game Cube just to play it. "Why not switch over to developing for PC? With Lionhead's really long development times, current consoles will have come and gone before their game's are finished. " Jeff (historically) tends to work at a pretty low level, around the technology so that he can make the most out of its quirks. It doesn't really make for terribly easily portable code as far as I know. Actually I am probably wrong about this. Ignore me if you haven't already. The game also wasn't finished, as far as I can tell, so there would still be a lot of development to do before he would be happy to release it.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 10/12/04 @ 13:17
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"Jeff (historically) tends to work at a pretty low level, around the technology so that he can make the most out of its quirks. It doesn't really make for terribly easily portable code as far as I know. Actually I am probably wrong about this. Ignore me if you haven't already. The game also wasn't finished, as far as I can tell, so there would still be a lot of development to do before he would be happy to release it."
Well if thats true, why don't they but it back for launch on Revolution and/or Xbox Next the archietecture seems like its going to be pretty similar. Ninty should be sending him a dev kit now! |
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It was really only Lionhead's generosity that got him the first Ninty dev kit. Nintendo probably had very little to do with it. Although some of his code would be useable, a lot of the low level stuff would have to be redone no matter what the new system is... and at that point, he's just emulating an old piece of hardware on a new one, and I'm sure he'd much rather work with the new technology, rather than despite it.
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most recently on 10/12/04 @ 13:29
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From playing trippy games like Rez, Frequency and Vib Ribbon and then reading about this, Lumines and more you kinda as a programmer get an urge to do something yourself...
the whole point of these games are that they shouldnt be too heavy on the art-resources except musicwise... If the code generates the levels from the music everything relies on the coder... christmas holiday + boredom + laptop = code |
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I loved Tempest 2000 on the Atari Jaguar, I enjoyed Llamatron and Revenge of the Mutant Camel on the Atari ST, Jeff Minter is a God in my opinion. I'm gutted that Unity has been canned, was it because of the bad language in the text? Phrases like " Arse Biscuit " Shouldn't be on a kiddie console. First BC was canned and now Unity, what's going on at Lionhead? Microsoft and Peter Blender are behind this, I hope all of Jeff's work hasn't gone to waste. :(
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AnotherMartin
10/12/04 @ 15:13
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Crap - could he palm it off as a music-accompanying light show?
Well he kind of does already in the form of VLM. VLM, which he uses at various raves/events and Unity shared a lot of the same code for the music to gfx effects. I'm sure VLM will still keep going. I sounds pretty good actualy, they've had GC with 4 wavebirds hooked up at events by all accounts, where by the crowed can use the WBs to affect the gfx. I'm gutted that Unity has been canned, was it because of the bad language in the text? Phrases like " Arse Biscuit " Shouldn't be on a kiddie console. Those where mearly placeholders and done as an in joke for the guys at yakyak.org. The screenies with them on where never intended for press release but where leached from his site as soon as they went up. He tried to explain a few times but I don't think it ever got accross. |
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*claps slowly to keep the retard entertained*
my point wasn't that it sucked, but that its not a commercialy viable game - it didnt work as the jaguars killer app and it wasn't a selling point on the Nuon powered systems over in the US. and before you ask, yes - i do own a nuon and a jaguar.
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most recently on 10/12/04 @ 18:51
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I think it's pretty obvious from the reactions in this section that it would have sold more than 14 copies.
I spose that this means that the GC may do well now, as this game isn't being released. Think about it. Whatever, it's a real shame, was looking forward to it. Must have been a hard decision as it's been a labour of love practically for the last couple of years. |
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ManicMinerUK - i agree with you, but sadly the reason this got axed is down to money rather than design, im sure if they spent the time putting all the features together it would of ended up as a rather spiffy game, it wouldn't of got off the drawing board if it sucked.
it sounds to me like they've concluded by the time they would of finished it, the cube will be on its last legs and they wouldn't make the money back. |
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Minter must of been working in a team with this title, otherwise what would lionhead have to do with it (they are not publishers after all).
His games are cool and trippy, but the ones i've seen are very much a 'one man band' development, and as a result the game feels more like polished freeware than something you'd fork out 34.99 for. |
Comments: 1-39 of 39 in total
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