Highlander insight for the Jag CD

[TrapZZ]

I don't think this has been covered (a quick search didn't bring any results).  About 6 months ago I came across a video review of Highlander for the Jaguar, in the comments was a post (which seems legit) from someone who was on the development team.  I've pasted it below, I found it interesting and completely believable.  I've never known anyone who might find it interesting (besides my wife pretending), until I came across the group here!

[hr:wg1ju4r2][/hr:wg1ju4r2]
I worked for Lore Design during the development of the game.  (I did some of the tools, including the 3D maths converting the motion capture data into animations used by the rendering engine, which was quite new at the time.)  We were a bunch of 24-year-olds who were keen, but relatively inexperienced.   We were getting pulled every which way by the producers, so to be frank, it's was a miracle the game was shipped at all. Seriously, we weren't particularly enamoured with the fact that the game had to be based on the cartoon.  My colleagues and I quite liked the original film.  The cartoon was just wrong. And the storyboard for the game didn't come together well.  I believed you picked up on that.

God alone knows where the funding came from .  (Ok. my boss at the time, Steve Mitchell, would know, too.)  It was the last game produced by Lore Design - the company folded shortly after the game shipped.

The Jaguar CD platform was quite buggy, and ever so resource-constrained.  This had significant bearing on the style of the game.  And it wasn't as if there was the Quake engine or similar you could buy in for the Atari Jaguar CD - everything had to be coded by hand, from scratch.

I remember joking with Paul C, the chap who did the 'music', that his painstakingly-crafted 2-second loops "didn't really go anywhere".  He spent ages on them, and was chomping at the bit to do something that didn't go back to the start after a few seconds.  We were toying with the idea of writing a small wavetable synthesis engine, but there wasn't enough RAM or CPU to do that, without compromising the graphics.  Paul almost went nuts crafting those looping tracks.  Poor sod.

Needless to say, many of us drank significantly during the development. Dunno if that was cause or effect.

Excellent review of yours, though.  All entirely fair comments. 

Thanks for going to all the trouble of getting the footage.  Viewing it brought back plenty of memories.

Kudos to you.
[hr:wg1ju4r2][/hr:wg1ju4r2]

If anyone is interested the full link is here: http://spoonyexperiment.com/2010/10/19/highlander-last-of-the-macleods/
(This isn't a plug for the site, I've never been to it or watched one of the videos except for some of this jag one)

[TL]

I remember reading this myself actually but totally forgot about it!

About 2 years ago I actually spoke in length with the owner of Lore Design who also worked on this game! I pitched an article to Retro Gamer about the company but they never went with it at the time. I will have to try and dig out the email convo for you all. 

[TrapZZ]

Neat!  I'd love to read it.

[TL]

Neat!  I'd love to read it.

I will have a look for it, I am trying to remember the guy's name!

I moved this to consoles as it's about a console game, we use the other section for more general stuff like multiple format games, this is format specific. 

[Rogue Trooper]

I remember reading this myself actually but totally forgot about it!

About 2 years ago I actually spoke in length with the owner of Lore Design who also worked on this game! I pitched an article to Retro Gamer about the company but they never went with it at the time. I will have to try and dig out the email convo for you all. 

Will have to dig out the Edge preview of it (they never reviewed it).

I'd have loved to have seen an article on the company in RG magazine, no chance you can re-pitch it mate?.

[TL]

Yeah I will try, they have quite an interesting history.

They actually started off doing those play-by-mail games and were very successful with them before moving into video games. The first titles they did were for the BBC Micro, IIRC they converted the Star Wars games for Domark.

They then did a few games for the Lynx before moving to the Jaguar.

[Rogue Trooper]

Yeah I will try, they have quite an interesting history.

They actually started off doing those play-by-mail games and were very successful with them before moving into video games. The first titles they did were for the BBC Micro, IIRC they converted the Star Wars games for Domark.

They then did a few games for the Lynx before moving to the Jaguar.

I'd like to see it as it's a company iknow so little about.Re-wording/dressing up the same old games/formats/companies in RG magazine is starting to get really stale, it needs to take a change on more out there articles.Pitch it mate, worse that can happen is it's rejected again.

If magazine wants to devote space to PS2/GC etc in future, then i'd hope for balance there's still room for articles like these.

[Alberto 2K]

Thanks for sharing!

I also think that using the cartoon instead of the movie was an error although signing C. Lambert for the intro would have been more expensive than drawing it.

This game could have been much more enjoyable with better controls, graphics and sounds are great and you can kill people with a chicken, not a lot of games offer that.

[TL]

As promised here are some snippets of info from Steve Mitchell, the owner of Lore Design who produced Highlander:

Atari Highlander was a motion capture based game done for the failed Jaguar CD system. Sadly this was the last game released by Lore as a dispute with the then Atari Corp on future titles resulted in the insolvency and ultimately the voluntary receivership of the business in around 1997. Many of the team stayed in the north-west and joined Magenta Software (who also worked on Highlander but still survive as a business to this day).

And talking about the existence of Highlander II and III prototypes:

There was a PC highlander (unreleased) and the sequels were in production (unreleased), as they were licensed games and those licenses had expired I can't imagine there being any official versions released however. But it is not impossible that either from QA, Atari or an ex-Lore member that something may be out there. So I can't squash the rumour, though I'd be surprised if it was a final version.

[TL]

I noticed that Steve himself commented on this video:

Highlander Atari Jaguar Cd

Steve Gregory 2 months ago
I don't think the controls are *that* bad ... Great vid !!
Reply  ·Â  Vote Up Vote Down

[TrapZZ]

Somehow I missed this thread when you first replied with his comments.  A good read, I wish you could have done the article.   

[TL]

Not Jaguar but definitely related - a cancelled Highlander game for modern machines:

Highlander (PC/Xbox360/PS3/Cancelled) - Gameplay and ''making-of''' footage

[Minerals]

Shame that version was cancelled, looks decent and very Assassins Creed like.

[Rogue Trooper]

Found the Edge Prescreen look at Highlander, Jaguar CD.

Lore Design started working on game in May 1994 and it actually started out as a 1-on-1 beat'em up, in the mould of Rise Of The Robots!, but thankfully project director, Steve Mitchell soon realised you could'nt do the world of Highlander justice this way, so it evolved into an Alone In The Dark adventure featuring 16 Bit, pre-rendered backgrounds, polygon characters etc.

Game was said to be coming on 3 discs, 1st setting the story, second adding more to the story and 3rd featuring a fighting finale.

Lore used motion capture for the characters, developing custom tools which enabled the capture data from the motion camera set up, to be transfered directly to the Jaguar.your character, McLeod was made up of 300 polygons and the backgrounds (displayed in 65,000 colours) were rendered in 3D Studio (for techno buff's who are reading....fluffers can skip that bit :-) ).

Lore took original production design from Gaumont television, creator of the animated series and modelled it as a 3D 'set' before using the package to establish camera angles and render viewpoints.Pixel-perfect Z-buffering was then added with collision detection being added last.

So, 3D polygon models, 65,000 colour backdrops, Z-Buffering, Motion-capture and 'real world locations from TV series.

I'd say that made for a pretty 'Next-Gen' game back then.

[DreamcastRIP]

Found the Edge Prescreen look at Highlander, Jaguar CD.

Lore Design started working on game in May 1994 and it actually started out as a 1-on-1 beat'em up, in the mould of Rise Of The Robots!

Fascinating revelation. Had me thinking of how Shenmue, which of course started out being developed on Saturn, was originally to be Virtua Fighter RPG, iirc.

(for techno buff's who are reading....fluffers can skip that bit :-)