Magic Carpet (Bullfrog/EA) - Unreleased Amiga CD32/AGA pics found for HOL!!!

I don't think an untextured version of Magic Carpet was ever started, it's possible that Mike looked into it as he did have some 3D tech on Amiga that was never used but Magic Carpet would have been hard to do, all the characters were scaled sprites which would have been almost as hard to do as texture mapping on A1200.

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by GlennCorpes

Sorry to revive such a long dead thread but someone just posted a link to it on Facebook.

Those pics are from a very early PC version of Magic Carpet, probably from at least a year before release. I'd recently switched from Amiga to PC and was having a lot of fun playing around with the byte per pixel mode. That version didn't even use polygon rendering, it was a sort of strange slightly voxelish vertical scanning thing. I ended up completely rewriting the graphic engine before Sean Cooper (who had just finished Syndicate) turned it into the game that was finally released.

Back then we were still talking to Amiga magazines about Syndicate and Theme Park. I suspect what happened is that a journalist visited the office and someone (possibly even me) implied that it might be possible on CD32 as it had a byte per pixel mode or a chunky to planer converter or something didn't it? I hate to admit it but I stopped keeping up with the Amiga's capabilites by then, my only knowledge coming from occasionally talking to Mike Diskette who handled those last two Amiga conversions before going on to create Syndicate Wars (google 'Satellite Reign' to see what he is up to now).

Anyway, it's great to see those screenshots again, that old version had a few advantages over the final release, not least that you could actually see a bit further. It's also nice to see Andy Sandham's bloke standing on a rug graphic, he was animated and everything...

thanks for your post,
could you please tell us why the amiga version was canceled ?

Originally Posted by turrican3

thanks for your post,
could you please tell us why the amiga version was canceled ?

I thought I'd explained this above but I'll spell it out again.

I suspect that what happened was something like this, though I'm filling in gaps in a vague 20+year old memory here:

We had some guys from CU Amiga visiting. The Amiga mags had always been very good to Bullfrog back when we were an 'Amiga first' company. We were just switching over to being a 'PC first' company and all of the core dev people were working on PC stuff. The entire Amiga team consisted of one or two programmers porting Syndicate and Theme Park.

We didn't want to appear to be not focused on being great Amiga developers so when the journalist(s) were shown around the office to see what we were working on, they'd have seen that early version of Magic Carpet running on a PC and asked if it would also make it to Amiga.

Someone fed them some bullshit. I'm not even accusing Peter of this, as I said above it's very likely that I said it could probably be done because the rumours about CD32 (which maybe didn't even exist yet) were that it had a byte-per-pixel mode or a hardware chunky to planer convertor or something.

The reason it never happened is that it was never going to happen. Presumably by the time Magic Carpet was in full development IF we had considered an Amiga version we'd have quickly judged the market of capable Amigas (if there even were any) to be too small to bother with. Sorry to disappoint.

[turrican3]

Originally Posted by GlennCorpes

I thought I'd explained this above but I'll spell it out again.

I suspect that what happened was something like this, though I'm filling in gaps in a vague 20+year old memory here:

We had some guys from CU Amiga visiting. The Amiga mags had always been very good to Bullfrog back when we were an 'Amiga first' company. We were just switching over to being a 'PC first' company and all of the core dev people were working on PC stuff. The entire Amiga team consisted of one or two programmers porting Syndicate and Theme Park.

We didn't want to appear to be not focused on being great Amiga developers so when the journalist(s) were shown around the office to see what we were working on, they'd have seen that early version of Magic Carpet running on a PC and asked if it would also make it to Amiga.

Someone fed them some bullshit. I'm not even accusing Peter of this, as I said above it's very likely that I said it could probably be done because the rumours about CD32 (which maybe didn't even exist yet) were that it had a byte-per-pixel mode or a hardware chunky to planer convertor or something.

The reason it never happened is that it was never going to happen. Presumably by the time Magic Carpet was in full development IF we had considered an Amiga version we'd have quickly judged the market of capable Amigas (if there even were any) to be too small to bother with. Sorry to disappoint.

that's too bad, but that was real, the amiga market was at this time too little.

[Anemos]

Only Atari ST can be playing that game ..

[Amiga1992]

Sorry to necrobump, I just read Glenn Corpes story, great insight!

With that in mind, wouldn't it be correct to strike this entry form HOL altogether? As he says, the screenshots are from PC, and this was NEVER mean to be an Amiga game, not even planned.

The entry is still up here:
http://hol.abime.net/4423

Or is HOL also gonna keep track of all fake entries magazines lied about at the final days of Amiga?

(I see also Megarace is there, is there any ACTUAL PROOF that it was at any point planned and development started for it to the CD32? Because taking a magazine's word for it is not good as proved many times. They were outright making shit up by 1995)

[kikems]

I remember an article in a spanish magazine, Micromania, where the team have an interview and he confirm that their start developing Megarace and Lost Eden for Amiga CD32. I need find this article and i'll post photo here to check.
I need talk with one of my friends, Frondiesete, for help me to find this article, he is a human encyclopedia of unreleased amiga games.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Akira

Or is HOL also gonna keep track of all fake entries magazines lied about at the final days of Amiga?

(I see also Megarace is there, is there any ACTUAL PROOF that it was at any point planned and development started for it to the CD32? Because taking a magazine's word for it is not good as proved many times. They were outright making shit up by 1995)

I hardly say 1993 was the ‘final days of Amiga’, btw lots of mags made shit up by reviewing early versions as the complete version or the disk version instead of the CD one, doesn’t mean every article should be viewed in the same light.

Megarace has been shown, the screenshots in some mags, i cant remember which are CD32 shots, i did compare to mega cd and pc cd and they are different, one of the devs say it was near complete too so its not just mag talk there so its very different to the Magic Carpet situation.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

btw lots of mags made shit up by reviewing early versions as the complete version

I'm talking about outright lies like mentioning Day Of The Tentacle or Rebel Assault on the cover of The One somewhere in 1995 or 96, stuff that never existed. Preview versions means they were once planned or existed in some form and as such DO earn themselves a place in HOL in my opinion.

one of the devs say it was near complete too so its not just mag talk there so its very different to the Magic Carpet situation.

Which dev for Megarace and where have they said that? Proper interested because I never saw such a thing.

What I am saying is, I wouldn't take the word of any magazine at this point on this kind of dubious title that never was or similar, I would only accept what the people behind the alleged project have to say. Of course magazines make shit up to sell more, but by the end of Amiga they were splitting hairs and going too far (sorry, I do think by 1993 the Amiga started to die, but I am mainly talking about what happened post 1994/95. Pretty sure Magic Carpet popped up in 1994 but not sure and can't be arsed to go look).

As for Magic Carpet, this should be removed from HOL, it has been demonstrated in this thread that it was a hoax. There's no question.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Akira

I'm talking about outright lies like mentioning Day Of The Tentacle or Rebel Assault on the cover of The One somewhere in 1995 or 96, stuff that never existed. Preview versions means they were once planned or existed in some form and as such DO earn themselves a place in HOL in my opinion.


Which dev for Megarace and where have they said that? Proper interested because I never saw such a thing.

What I am saying is, I wouldn't take the word of any magazine at this point on this kind of dubious title that never was or similar, I would only accept what the people behind the alleged project have to say. Of course magazines make shit up to sell more, but by the end of Amiga they were splitting hairs and going too far (sorry, I do think by 1993 the Amiga started to die, but I am mainly talking about what happened post 1994/95. Pretty sure Magic Carpet popped up in 1994 but not sure and can't be arsed to go look).

As for Magic Carpet, this should be removed from HOL, it has been demonstrated in this thread that it was a hoax. There's no question.

DOTT and RA were taking out of the mouth of David Pleasance i’m pretty sure of that, not stating they were a fact, more ‘oh they could be done on CD32’ and of course the mags getting a story out of nothing, same for Starblade and Alone in the dark i remember, David was in a couple of mags doing a column so he knew what readers might pick up on, so some hints here and there might help save the sinking ship without actually outright lying so to speak.

Without searching, Megarace is different to any of these ‘rumoured’ games Mindscape advertised it and it was preview in a few mags with CD32 screenshots talking to the devs, so yes its totally different to a mag just making something up about a game maybe coming out.

Btw Magic Carpet was in the 1993 CD32 AF CD brochure one of the first times i read about it.

But even in Commodores own produced ‘CD Gold’ they listed Magic Carpet among others that never appeared, so unless they got the news direct from the magazines, it may well have appeared on a schedule somewhere sometime?

[Amiga1992]

The guy who made the game for other platforms says it never existed. What does it matter what any publication published? That's my point here.
Commodore talking shit on a publication or CD? Again is anyone surprised? They probably read it on some mag. What do they know? It's not like they had any or much direct contact with publishers, otherwise maybe we would have seen some killer apps coming out for the CD32.

Is there any doubt here that David Pleasance was running off his mouth too at that time? You said it yourself, if he said DOTT and RA were coming for CD32, it's a good proof he was just talking shit to desperately save the company he invested so much in.

Back to the point so we don't get distracted by my mention of magazines (maybe I should not have brought it up to not attract emotional responses about them):
The creator of Magic Carpet -confirmed here- that Amiga Magic Carpet was never meant to be. They lied to Amiga Format. It never existed in any form. The screenshots in HOL are taken from an early PC version. As such entry in HOL should be removed.

Let's quote again and mark for emphasis

Originally Posted by GlennCorpes

We didn't want to appear to be not focused on being great Amiga developers so when the journalist(s) were shown around the office to see what we were working on, they'd have seen that early version of Magic Carpet running on a PC and asked if it would also make it to Amiga.

Someone fed them some bullshit. I'm not even accusing Peter of this, as I said above it's very likely that I said it could probably be done because the rumours about CD32 (which maybe didn't even exist yet) were that it had a byte-per-pixel mode or a hardware chunky to planer convertor or something.

The reason it never happened is that it was never going to happen. Presumably by the time Magic Carpet was in full development IF we had considered an Amiga version we'd have quickly judged the market of capable Amigas (if there even were any) to be too small to bother with. Sorry to disappoint.

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by Akira

Sorry to necrobump, I just read Glenn Corpes story, great insight!

With that in mind, wouldn't it be correct to strike this entry form HOL altogether? As he says, the screenshots are from PC, and this was NEVER mean to be an Amiga game, not even planned.

The entry is still up here:
http://hol.abime.net/4423

Or is HOL also gonna keep track of all fake entries magazines lied about at the final days of Amiga?

I wondered when someone was going to bring this up. It's been on my TODO list for a long while to change the HOL entry and detail the story posted by Glenn Corpes. It's probably better to do that and keep the HOL entry rather than delete it altogether, especially since a few Amiga mags did preview the game. That way the HOL entry will provide a definitive answer for anyone wondering about how far along the Amiga "conversion" was (i.e. "never started" as opposed to the false impression of coding having been started in the mag previews).

I guess the other thing I wanted to do was to contact Peter Olafson and get the full story on the contact he had with Bullfrog and what exactly led him to believe that they had a prototype of the game running on the A1200. I have his current email address somewhere coz I bought many Ami games from him 2-3 years ago on Ebay. I'm kicking myself for forgetting to ask him about it back then, so I'll have to fetch his details out.

Originally Posted by Akira

(I see also Megarace is there, is there any ACTUAL PROOF that it was at any point planned and development started for it to the CD32? Because taking a magazine's word for it is not good as proved many times. They were outright making shit up by 1995)

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Megarace has been shown, the screenshots in some mags, i cant remember which are CD32 shots, i did compare to mega cd and pc cd and they are different, one of the devs say it was near complete too so its not just mag talk there so its very different to the Magic Carpet situation.

Originally Posted by Akira

Which dev for Megarace and where have they said that? Proper interested because I never saw such a thing.

Well, some years ago a guy who dealt in Amiga games claimed he came across an alpha version of Megarace on CD whilst sorting through his stock. Supposedly it was acquired directly from liquidation of gear at C= UK offices following bankruptcy. Trouble is that he didn't seem to know that the game didn't see an Amiga release and he never posted on EAB again.....so he may have never seen the requests to make an ISO.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=478069#post478069

[Amiga1992]

All these lose ends are really annoying! Would love to see Megarace unearthed in any form.

As for Magic Carpet, you guys run the show, but this is clearly vaporware and misleading. Having some info might be useful, but I feel like it doesn't warrant a space in teh database.

Again, it's just my opinion, I'd be more factual and have less of the vaporfluff that the commodore world was rid with. You guys do you. I just thought I'd bring it into attention!

[Amigajay]

I agree with DrBong, it would be better to leave a listing, remove any screenshots as they plainly arent from the Amiga ‘version’ and have the listing detail the game was never started or even down for publication.

Just removing the listing will in future not help other people’s explanation of this title and why it never appeared on the Amiga, better to clarify for everyone.

[Gzegzolka]

I would rather would like to see those laser disk video games that use amiga hardware for drawing graphics or custom amiga hardware based VR games than those urban legends that someone sometime hear that they could maybe be made for Amiga. I am not for deleting entry from HOL, good option would be to add detailed description about no real development planed on amiga.

[Steve]

Originally Posted by Akira

As for Magic Carpet, you guys run the show, but this is clearly vaporware and misleading. Having some info might be useful, but I feel like it doesn't warrant a space in the database.

I totally agree. If it was never released (in fact never even developed) for the Amiga then it absolutely should not be in the HOL database. If that is allowed in why not add Theme Hospital or even Dungeon keeper for that matter.

[Galahad/FLT]

Im with the Bongmaster and Akira.

It was never going to be released on Amiga, so it deserves to go.

However, Carlos idea that keeping the entry and detailing what Glenn Corpes said is also sensible, that way anyone wanting to look at why it wasnt released, dont have to trudge through acres of posts on here, its on HOL (which would be the reasonable first place to look) and isnt HOL about being informative?

Maybe even add a new category (MIA, UNRELEASED ETC) such as "Vapourware".

[Dunny]

It should stay on HOL, with a huge watermark "Vapourware" or somesuch. The fact is that it was touted as being in development for the Amiga, reported as such by the press and so it's not unreasonable that HOL would have an entry for it - as long as the facts are presented.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Steve

I totally agree. If it was never released (in fact never even developed) for the Amiga then it absolutely should not be in the HOL database. If that is allowed in why not add Theme Hospital or even Dungeon keeper for that matter.

Well because they weren't referenced in an Amiga mag like Magic Carpet was!

Plus where does HOL draw the line, there are 324 unreleased games on the database, many are just rumours and going on hearsay, either leave Magic Carpet or remove it, but do the same with any other game that has nothing to back up its existence.

[Ian]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

Im with the Bongmaster and Akira.

It was never going to be released on Amiga, so it deserves to go.

However, Carlos idea that keeping the entry and detailing what Glenn Corpes said is also sensible, that way anyone wanting to look at why it wasnt released, dont have to trudge through acres of posts on here, its on HOL (which would be the reasonable first place to look) and isnt HOL about being informative?

Maybe even add a new category (MIA, UNRELEASED ETC) such as "Vapourware".

One way of looking at it that deserves support if that is the decisions I guess.

I disagree though, take it out every few years "Why no Magic Carpet in HOL, I've seen a magazine saying it was made", leave it in, with the quotes and mark it as bullshit, everyone knows it's false and doesn't exist in any way shape or form.

We should also do the same for Final Fantasy 7 just for the lols.