Sierra Adventure #0: Mission Oakhurst

Over the course of the last year, I've been working on a project to document the history of game design, and I've interviewed everyone from Sid Meier to Noah Falstein to Nasir Gebelli. As a part of that, this weekend, I set out to find the legendary game company Sierra On-Line. Unencumbered by research, my girlfriend Brenda and I spontaneously decided Friday night to leave Saturday morning for the Yosemite area.

I visited Sierra On-Line back in 1992, but that's a GameTales entry I need to write, and won't give away here. Oakhurst is approximately a 4 hour trip from our house through beautiful country, so we took the BMW Z4. Around 4pm we checked into our hotel room in Madera, CA, about 45 minutes from the Oakhurst area. We then continued on our mission. Around 5pm we reached the intersection of CA-41 and Raymond Rd., the beginning of Coarsegold. As we cruised down the street, we saw a Mexican restaurant named Alfonso's - surely a good omen, and oh, we would be eating there, of course. On we continued for another 8 miles or so until we reached the outskirts of Oakhurst.

Coming down the hill, the first business we see is on our left, and it's Erna's Elderberry House. I actually had dinner there in 1992, so it’s been around for a while. Since we had no idea where the actual address of Sierra was, we pulled over at a gas station to sit in the car and do some internet searching.

We pulled up next to a car. Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat with the window down. I knew that Sierra basically owned this town when they were functional, and probably everyone in the town knew that Sierra was a game company long ago. I rolled down the window and asked the person, “Hi. Do you know the game company Sierra that used to be in town?” “Yeah, just about everyone in town worked there. My uncle used to work in the warehouse.” I asked,”Do you know the address of the building?” The guy said,”No, but the bartender at Erna’s has been working there for over 20 years. Maybe he knows.” I said thanks, and we drove back up to Erna’s.

Duke Nukem Forever Returns

I've been asked several times by people on Twitter what I think about Duke Nukem Forever having an actual due date; that the game might actually come out.

Well, I think it's awesome for several reasons. First, because I've been a huge Duke fan since Duke Nukem 3D. I absolutely loved that game. My memories of playing DN3D are as awesome as my memories playing Dark Forces, Outlaws, Jedi Knight, and Ghost Recon. Secondly, I've been friends for years with Randy Pitchford, the man who bought the Duke IP from 3D Realms; to carry the torch as it were. I'm really proud of Randy for doing that - Duke is a great character that deserves another major release, and I'm interested to see what directions Gearbox will take Duke in the future.

I visited 3D Realms in May 2000, right after shipping Daikatana. I went over to check out the latest on DNF. George Broussard showed me the game, and it was seriously awesome. Granted, I was seeing the best stuff they had available at the time, but what I saw was really great. I was excited to play the game. Alas, development of the game went through many changes, and not having a dedicated producer early on took its toll. When I heard 3D Realms had halted development of the game, I was half surprised, and half not. It had been 12 years, and that's an incredibly long time to be in development - I mean, it's really incomprehensible. I can't fathom what it must feel like working on a game that long, then not releasing it, especially if you were there at the start of development.

But now we can all breathe a sigh of relief, those of us who kept the excitement at bay for so long. The Duke Nukem Forever development team that continued creating the game, even after being laid off, without being paid, for the pure love of the game, deserve an epic amount of applause and attention. These guys are the heroes. And I'm still excited to play DNF.

GameTales: HomeCourt

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Prototype Box

I recently tweeted about the fact that there was actually a sequel, mostly finished, for Origin Systems' game, 2400 A.D. titled 2500 A.D. MobyGames and Wikipedia were updated with the information which prompted someone on my TwitterFeed to ask about an unreleased Origin game titled HomeCourt.

Luckily, I'm one of the few people to know about this project. HomeCourt was a basketball game designed by two brothers, Don and John Walker. They were stronger on the design side than the coding side, so they had help from classic game programmer, Steve Meuse. I believe the game idea was brought to Origin in 1987 to make a full court basketball game (One on One was a half-court game).

Steve Meuse worked with the brothers, mostly with Don, to get a graphical prototype working. The prototype had players on a projected 2D court running around and passing the ball on an Apple II. I saw this prototype working once when Don Walker was visiting, and it looked pretty nice. It was black and white graphics at the time, and the running and ball-passing worked great. Unfortunately, Steve left Origin in 1988 shortly after I left to co-found my studio, Inside Out Software.

The New Hampshire office of Origin Systems closed, and the company was consolidated in Austin, TX at the start of 1989. That effectively put an end to HomeCourt. Says Steve Meuse, "The game design aspect was getting more complex, and by the time I left Origin in 1988, it seemed to me to be only getting moreso. With the company move and all, the Walkers probably could have used more help and guidance than they got, but that's just the way things turned out."

Unintended Acceleration

I was reading CNN today and there was a story about a guy whose Toyota randomly started accelerating and he crashed into two cars at 70mph. This was back in 2006 before all the recent Toyota issues. The man has finally been freed as the court found it wasn't his fault.

It brought back the memory of how the same thing happened to me back in 1991 when I was working on Commander Keen 4-6. I was driving my brown 1975 Cougar in the winter down a pretty short road that was just in front of id's apartment. I had the accelerator down to get some speed, and when I took my foot off the car kept accelerating! I started messing with the pedal but it didn't stop. I realized the smartest thing was to put the car in neutral and hit the brakes before I got to the intersection. It worked and I quickly pulled over and popped the hood while the car engine was whining loudly as it was still accelerating. I pulled the fuel hose out to stop the engine and then pulled back on the accelerator cable to get it back to normal. That was pretty terrifying for about 30 seconds.

The reason the accelerator got jacked is because I changed the cable assembly because the previous one broke. But it wasn't calibrated correctly and the cable snagged on something that time.

The lesson? DON'T TRY TO FIX YOUR OWN CAR! Lol.

Gamesauce #2!

There's a new magazine in town for game developers, and its name is Gamesauce. The first issue had an interview with Trip Hawkins. I was fortunate enough to be interviewed for the second issue by Brenda Brathwaite and answered some of the more interesting questions I've been asked thus far.

There are some other great articles inside, such as Ensemble Studios' development transition from Age of Empires 1 to 2 (Age of Kings), a short interview with my friend Randy Pitchford, and an article with ideas about how to you can spend your time if your game has been canceled.

The people who put this magazine together are a great bunch. They have many, many years of experience in the industry and want the magazine to be only the highest quality. I worked with Jessica Tams and Jake Simpson, and they are both very kind and generous to include me here. Gamesauce is only for professional game developers and those in the game industry.

You can read the entire magazine right now.