Jumping Flashesque game by Warren Spector

[xS]

6-7 years ago I remember reading a Warren Spector interview in some NG mag(I think that it had some Bomberman game on the cover). He said that there was this one 3D plattformer game designed by him never passed Origins approval system. In spite of this, I distinctly remember him linking to a demo of this game. Does anyone know where I find said game? Thanks in advance.

[NeoZeedeater]

This is the first I have heard of this. I'm interested to know more.

Origin did have an unreleased game called Transland made around that time but I don't think it resembled Jumping Flash.

[xS]

It might have Transland. My memory is really fuzzy on this one.

[skelly]

I asked the man himself, and he graciously replied:

The game was Transland. It was actually conceived by some guys who
worked for me -- Art DiBianca and Gary Scott Smith. I wanted to see
Origin do something a little lighter in tone than our norm and those
guys came up with what could have been a very cool game. I put together
a small team out of my producer group and they generated a demo that we
made available for download, after the powers-that-be decided to pass on
the project.

I still have the demo somewhere but I don't have any idea who owns the
rights to it, or could authorize its release. Too bad. Could have been
fun. And it'd be interesting to see how people responded to it in 2003!

Warren

A bit of Googling turned up the actual demo -- the best place to get it is here. It's a DOS game (with an extender and such), so the odds of it running in anything beyond Win98 (possibly WinME) seem slim. I haven't even tried it in 98 yet, for that matter. I'll do so tonight.

Here's the staff, as listed in the readme:

Transland was produced by:
Programmers: Art DiBianca, Gary Scott Smith
Artists: Whitney Ayres, Darrin LeBlanc
Design Assistant: Scott Hazle
Designers: Everyone above (and Warren Spector)

Warren adds that Art and Gary were the heart of the team he put together to work on the game before it got canned. Or maybe more accurately (?), before it went into limbo.

Good call on the title, Neo & xS.

[NeoZeedeater]

Awesome. Is that a new interview or an old one?

I just tried Transland again and I remember why I didn't play it long the last time. It's a very incomplete demo. It seems like a nice engine for an action game but there's no complete game from what I can tell.

[skelly]

Not an interview, just an email reply.


Too bad it's so incomplete. I guess I'll see for myself later. (Metroid Prime just hard-locked... urgh.)

[NeoZeedeater]

Cool. You are a lucky man to have his email address.

[xS]

So which games has WS produced? These are a few that I can remember.

Wing Commander series
Ultima Underworlds
Crusader no remorse
Theif
Deus Ex
System Shock 2
and this game

What else has he done?

[NeoZeedeater]

He worked on System Shock 1, not 2.

I don't think he's on the credits for Thief but I have read that he was involved in the early stages of it.

He also worked with Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts on the Action/RPG Bad Blood, with Paul Neurath on the Space Sim/RPG Space Rogue, and with Richard Garriott on Ultima VII. There are probably a few more.

[skelly]

MobyGames has a good list of games he's credited in.

Edit: Played it, and here are some screens to prove it.

It's not the best thing ever, but I think I might have liked it a lot more back in 1994. 'Course, the demo doesn't seem to have been released until '96, so... hrm.