Willard Posted May 4, 2003 Share Posted May 4, 2003 I've heard alot of stuff about centipede 2000, but does a working version of it still exist? If so, who has it, or how rare is it. Although it was supposedly 50% done, I've searched everywhere, and havn't even found a screenshot of it. Centipede 2000 was supposed to be an RPG, set in a forest of polygon-based mushrooms. Centipedes were to stalk you through the forests, and there were small towns that you could complete tasks, talk to people, and collect items to help you along the way. It was being produced by a company called "dark science games," and was completely polygon based, and very well shaded. Atari decided to can it after a quarterly sales rep. decided that remakes of old games weren't going to sell very well. Thats about all I know about the game, and I would like to know if my statement is entirely true. Also, will songbird productions ever release it, or maybe even 4play/Scatologic? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunderbird Posted May 4, 2003 Share Posted May 4, 2003 I've heard alot of stuff about centipede 2000, but does a working version of it still exist? If so, who has it, or how rare is it. Although it was supposedly 50% done, I've searched everywhere, and havn't even found a screenshot of it. Centipede 2000 was supposed to be an RPG, set in a forest of polygon-based mushrooms. Centipedes were to stalk you through the forests, and there were small towns that you could complete tasks, talk to people, and collect items to help you along the way. It was being produced by a company called "dark science games," and was completely polygon based, and very well shaded. Atari decided to can it after a quarterly sales rep. decided that remakes of old games weren't going to sell very well. Thats about all I know about the game, and I would like to know if my statement is entirely true. Also, will songbird productions ever release it, or maybe even 4play/Scatologic? I'd love to release it, but we would have to find it first. Then we would need to get the proper permissions. It sounds pretty cool. Can anyone confirm this description? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaysmith2000 Posted May 4, 2003 Share Posted May 4, 2003 I've heard alot of stuff about centipede 2000, but does a working version of it still exist? If so, who has it, or how rare is it. Although it was supposedly 50% done, I've searched everywhere, and havn't even found a screenshot of it. Centipede 2000 was supposed to be an RPG, set in a forest of polygon-based mushrooms. Centipedes were to stalk you through the forests, and there were small towns that you could complete tasks, talk to people, and collect items to help you along the way. It was being produced by a company called "dark science games," and was completely polygon based, and very well shaded. Atari decided to can it after a quarterly sales rep. decided that remakes of old games weren't going to sell very well. Thats about all I know about the game, and I would like to know if my statement is entirely true. Also, will songbird productions ever release it, or maybe even 4play/Scatologic? I've never heard of a Centipede proto for the Jaguar being out there. Hasbro did release an update of Centipede for computers though. Would have been awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willard Posted May 4, 2003 Author Share Posted May 4, 2003 Dark Science Publisher: Atari? State of completion: Game programming was 30%, still focused on the game engine, no prototypes exist. Also planned or released for: Notes: The Dark Science "Centipede 2000" was actually going to be a fantasy role-playing game (RPG). The design was to be similar to current 3D RPG titles on Sony and Nintendo systems like Nintendo's Zelda64. Of course, due to the limitations Jaguar hardware, everything would have been constructed of nicely gouraud shaded polygons with little or no texture mapping. We were developing the title under (and referring to it as) "Centipede 2000" or "C2K" -- However, an official title for the game had not been decided. The game was also to be a JaguarCD-ROM title. As you can probably imagine, since the game would have been based on the original "Centipede," the game environment would have consisted of fields of giant mushrooms -- inhabited by giant spiders, scorpions, and, of course, centipedes. In typical fantasy role-playing fassion, the player would travel the world and stop off in various towns to purchase supplies, talk with people, learn new skills, and buy/upgrade weapons. The player would use a combination of weapons, magical items, and magical spells throughout the game. Atari was initially looking for companies to produce revamped titles based on their classic games. Dark Science was granted the right to do the Centipede remake because some people at Atari really liked the RPG concept. When granting Dark Science permission to create this game, Atari gained all rights to the game concept, design, graphics, code, etc... Dark Science gained the right to market the game with our name and logo on the box and on screen and conduct marketing procedures as we saw fit. Dark Science was also given the right to all profits other than a small royalty fee on the first 10,000 copies sold. Now for the bad side of the story... After about 6 months into the development cycle (or approximately 30% completed), Atari decided to pull the plug on the project. This was because their marketing "experts" decided that remaking old game titles was not in the best interest of Atari's future. Everything had to be turned over to Atari at this point and all that was kept by Dark Science was a copy of the source code -- which was then used to begin building another game, which I will address in more detail below. Within another 6 months of starting this second game, Atari decided to cease all Jaguar development and to move development efforts to PC CD-ROM titles. At this point we had to return all development software/hardware to Atari (because it was given to us for creating Centipede) or purchase it from them. It was becoming extremely obvious at this point, that Atari was about to curl up and die, so we elected not to purchase the Jaguar development system and to cease all Jaguar development. Within 3 months, Atari folded up and sold out to JTS corporation - a hard disk drive manufacturer. Unfortunately, JTS manufactured what could easily be considered the lowest quality hard drives ever and it took less than a year for JTS to go belly up. This is when companies like Hasbro stepped in to buy up Atari's patents and copyrights. Many companies bought different pieces, but the Atari name and the names, copyrights, and trademarks that go along with Atari's old games were all sold to Hasbro Interactive. Since discontinuing Jaguar development, Dark Science has served as a 3D content creation, graphic design shop, and budget special effects house for broadcast television, multimedia producers, and the internet. Throughout this time, Dark Science dabbled with PC game development, but never produced anything final. This past September, Dark Science's owner/founder started a new multimedia company (Applied Visual Technologies). Dark Science has been retained as a part of AVT that will handle the development of special effects for AVT animation/video/multimedia projects and more prominently the development of games. The second Jaguar title I spoke of above has been restarted (only three weeks ago) for Windows and Linux PCs. All that I can really say about it at this point is that it's 3D and it should be great fun if you like multiplayer strategy. It's still too early in the development cycle to show screenshots or post information online, but everything will show up at darkscience.com as it all becomes available. The game has a target completion date of November, 2000. Hopefully this rather long e-mail gave you what you were looking for (and probably more). The Dark Science Centipede RPG will probably never see the light of day and it has probably been lost in the shuffle like many of the partially completed and/or unreleased Jaguar titles. No prototypes of the Jaguar games were ever produced because it was still in a state of development for the game 'engine.' Everything that was produced for C2K was given to Atari anyway and the code was reworked into our second game title. I have no idea what became of the code or anything else related to it. Besides, none of that would be made public anyway, at least not until the Windows/Linux incarnation(s) of the concept have been exhausted. Anyway, we will be placing all relevant information about game titles and developments on www.darkscience.com however, as you can see, there's nothing there now. We're building the new site now, but there really isn't anything to place online other than a few empty pages, so it will wait a while longer. If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask and I'll answer when I get a chance. Myself and a few others here were quite amazed that anyone remembered that we even had a Jaguar title in development. (Email interview with Carl Rojas, 1999) Related links: http://www.darkscience.com Screenshots, Pictures: Videos: [back] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaysmith2000 Posted May 4, 2003 Share Posted May 4, 2003 Cool. Would have been a great title. I wonder what happened to that source. Anyone ever contacted them? Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willard Posted May 4, 2003 Author Share Posted May 4, 2003 I'm currently trying to contact them. If i ever get the source code, i'll hopefully be able to pass it off to 4play/scatologic! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunderbird Posted May 4, 2003 Share Posted May 4, 2003 I'm currently trying to contact them. If i ever get the source code, i'll hopefully be able to pass it off to 4play/scatologic! I look forward to hearing from you. It will be cool to bring this little-known title to the hands of jaguar fans! Thanks for your efforts! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
t.skid Posted May 4, 2003 Share Posted May 4, 2003 Yeah... the plot of the game (could I use word 'plot'?) seems very interesting! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaysmith2000 Posted May 5, 2003 Share Posted May 5, 2003 I'm currently trying to contact them. If i ever get the source code, i'll hopefully be able to pass it off to 4play/scatologic! Cool! Glad to hear you plan to give it to T-bird, he'll be able to put it to good use. Hopefully finish up the code or polish it off and then release it. Best of luck Willard! Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted May 5, 2003 Share Posted May 5, 2003 Unfortunately when I contacted Dark Science about 18 months ago, they told me they threw away all their Jaguar code several years before. All I've got from them is a short .avi of the very basic polygon engine running, plus I think some blurbs about what they wanted to put in the game. I'll see if I can dig it all up, and give it to AA to host in their Jaguar section. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
t.skid Posted May 5, 2003 Share Posted May 5, 2003 Unfortunately when I contacted Dark Science about 18 months ago, they told me they threw away all their Jaguar code several years before. . Sad news..... why they did it..... Farewell to another Jag game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaysmith2000 Posted May 6, 2003 Share Posted May 6, 2003 Unfortunately when I contacted Dark Science about 18 months ago, they told me they threw away all their Jaguar code several years before. All I've got from them is a short .avi of the very basic polygon engine running, plus I think some blurbs about what they wanted to put in the game. I'll see if I can dig it all up, and give it to AA to host in their Jaguar section. That's a bummer Carl. Although that .avi would be fun to see. Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willard Posted May 10, 2003 Author Share Posted May 10, 2003 THE EMAIL I GOT, SAYING IT WAS DEAD FOREVERalthough we already know it is: Jon, We are the right company responsible for the Centipede 2000 implementation on the Jaguar, or at least as close as you're going to get... Dark Science Software has since been re-formed into a new company and we now do 3D graphics, animation and visual effects. The source code (if we still have any of it left) is archived away somewhere unknown to me (as I have looked for it about a year ago), but most likely has been discarded. At the time we stopped work on the game, only the core graphics engine itself was operational and approximately 30% complete - there was no playable game of any sort, only the ability to draw very simplistic terrain (similar to what we all saw in the original Cybermorph pack-in game) and the ability to place simple 3D models on this landscape -- low poly mushrooms in this situation. We could move the viewport around the terrain and that was it for functionality. When Atari halted Jaguar development, that was the end of our game... We did attempt to buy the development hardware and continue work, but Atari was just wrapping it all up and trying to switch to PC development, which also fell through before their sale to JTS. We did keep touting the game as "Centipede 2000", but it may or may not have been able to carry that name on release as licensing of the Centipede trademark was still under negotiation - there were no official contracts with Atari, only discussion and an on-loan developer kit so we could get working as negotiations took place. When Atari started to fall, that's when we attempted to purchase the dev kit and continue to develop the game in whatever way we could for the system, but as I just mentioned, Atari wanted none of that and took back all their development hardware. I dabbled a bit with Jaguar stuff after the fact, some with the Jaguar Server dev mod and a few things, but rapidly lost interest and time to work on such things. I think that while Atari will always have a place of fond memory in my heart, the Jaguar is more of a sore spot. When I last looked for the code I was going to release it into the public domain, but I never located it. I'm 99% sure it is gone for good. - Jeff Kilgroe - Applied Visual Technologies | DarkScience - www.appliedvisual.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pocket Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 sad Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaysmith2000 Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 That's a bummer, but kudos to Jeff Kilgore for that detailed response and his willingness to release the source to all of us if he had found it. Oh well, maybe he'll find it one of these days. Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevincal Posted May 11, 2003 Share Posted May 11, 2003 I just bought a DC package off Ebay, and one of the games it's coming with is Centipede. It's a 3-d game and I went to IGN and they gave it a review of like 2.2 or something lol, anyways, I wonder if this version has anything to do with th eversion mentioned above?... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willard Posted May 11, 2003 Author Share Posted May 11, 2003 I doubt it, the version above is an RPG, and the dreamcast version is Action game... Plus, the DC version isnt gourad shaded Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Songbird Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 Don't remember if I ever got this on AA somewhere, so here it is... only a year later than promised. According to Jeff from Dark Science, this is a clip from the engine running on real Jag hardware, and not a mock-up. It's short, but kind of cool, I think. shroomwalk.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 Holy cow! That looked better than the cybermorph terrain to my eyes. And pretty damn smooth! Thank you Carl for sharing that with us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 sure seems 2 b pushing a lot of polys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregory DG Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 That is nice looking. I couldn't help but think of Cybermorph when watching it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trip_Cannon Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 "Anotha one bites the dust! Yeeow!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bradjewell Posted June 5, 2004 Share Posted June 5, 2004 that would have been a very interesting game to see on our jaggy. Brad Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Punisher5.0 Posted June 5, 2004 Share Posted June 5, 2004 Impressive looking. I like how much farther the horizon is compared to Cybermorph. That’s the only reason I can't play that game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted June 5, 2004 Share Posted June 5, 2004 Yeah, I noticed that too. It seems to draw way farther out on the horizon than Cybermorph, or Battlemorph does. On a sidenote, is it just me, or is Battlemorphs popup worse than Cybermorphs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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