Now, that’s an interesting bit of video on its own, but it’s even more interesting if you look very closely at the prototypes Peter presents. In the first one, you are obviously flying over a Populous level that has been converted to use a voxel heightfield. Another one briefly displays an ASCII header that reads, “CREATION BY BULLFROG”. Now, if you’re up on your Bullfrog history, you know that the original name for Populous was “Creation”, and Peter was forced to change it when he couldn’t get a trade mark.
Thus, I think it’s clear from these prototypes that the project started with Peter telling his team, “I want to fly over a Populous world. Make that happen, I don’t care how you do it.” And once that was accomplished, they came up with a game – Magic Carpet – to go with it.
EDIT: I think I may need to start explicating posts like this one a bit more. I think too often I operate under the assumption that everyone else has studied video game history and design as ravenously as I have and thus I don’t have to explain things. Magic Carpet was a Bullfrog title released in 1994. It didn’t do that well because it required a powerful PC and the only network play was over LAN – this was back when most network play was done with a serial or null-modem cable. It also (as Sol mentioned) had a very short draw distance which made it kind of hard to play. The concept was good, though, and a remake could be quite fun.
Ah, magic carpet and the visibility of 10 meters.. =)
That’s one game that could do with a remake. This time with a somewhat longer visibility too. And possibly other technology-enabled improvements.
I am not familiar with Magic Carpet. Would you say that coming up with the game after you develop something cool to do is a viable way to develop games? I suppose it is no different from simply coming up with prototypes and then wanting to build a game around a cool mechanic.
Lots of games have been created around a mechanic a designer or programmer discovered when they were just playing around, Katamari Damashii being the most obvious example.
Other designers start with a coherent engine or simulation and then build the game on top of it; most of the Ultimas were created this way. Richard & Co would create a world simulation of Britannia that was bigger, more robust and prettier than the one in the previous game and only when all that was working would they start thinking about what story they wanted to tell in this world.
So yes, I’d say that it is a viable way to make games.
I pray everyday someone remakes this game. It was a work of genius. Tons of action, spectacular dogfights with other wizards and creatures that literally shattered the foundations of worlds, all this tightly connected with quite complex tactic part, and all this extremely easy to use and navigate in the fever of the battle. If someone made a 1:1 redo with modern graphics (precisely balanced game mechanics don’t need tampering at all), it woult be a huge hit.
ah, and multiplayer was great as well. to some extent it was similar to starcraft or warcraft type of games.