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Fallout, Tim Cain and Dinosaurs.

Kz3r0

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2008
Messages
27,012
Stolen from the watch.
An interesting insight on insane game design and M$ underhanded policies:
In a Fallout post-mortem at the Game Developers Conference, Tim Cain, the producer, designer and lead programmer described an alternate version of the game’s story that could have come to be a reality.

“You started in the modern world,” Cain said. “You traveled back in time, you killed the monkey that would evolve into humans, you went through space travel, you went to the future, which was ruled by dinosaurs, you were exiled to a fantasy planet where magic took you back to the original timeline that you restored to full, and came back to the modern world to save your girlfriend.”

Some other notes from the talk:
The game initially failed certification for Windows 95, but for a very strange reason. Namely, Fallout failed Windows 95 cert because the game worked on Windows NT. To get certified on Windows 95, the game was supposed to “fail gracefully” on WindowsNT. Instead it worked. Cain said he called microsoft and said “It fails so gracefully that it doesn’t fail at all.” Which didn’t fly, The solution? Go into the game and code it to detect Windows NT and just sort of… fail. Heh.

The team had a rule about references: If a pop cultural reference was going into the game, it had to be unnoticeable by someone who didn’t get it. As an example, Cain said that the “Slayer” perk was because Chris [Jones] was a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

People refer to Fallout as a game from an isometric perspective, but Cain pointed out that the perspective is in fact “Cavalier Oblique.”

They originally wanted the Inkblots’ “I Don’t Want to Set The World on Fire” to be the game’s theme song, but couldn’t get it due to licensing reasons. Instead, they went with “Maybe,” and it would up working better for the tone of the game. And, much later down the road, “I Don’t Want to Set The World on Fire” became the theme of Fallout 3.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/03/fa...t-time-traveling-dinosaurs-and-monkey-murder/
 

Icewater

Artisanal Shitposting™
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Jun 12, 2011
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Freedomland
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2
The game initially failed certification for Windows 95, but for a very strange reason. Namely, Fallout failed Windows 95 cert because the game worked on Windows NT. To get certified on Windows 95, the game was supposed to “fail gracefully” on WindowsNT. Instead it worked. Cain said he called microsoft and said “It fails so gracefully that it doesn’t fail at all.” Which didn’t fly, The solution? Go into the game and code it to detect Windows NT and just sort of… fail. Heh.
What the fuck am I reading?
 

Shannow

Waster of Time
Joined
Sep 15, 2006
Messages
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Finnegan's Wake
What the fuck am I reading?
Microsoft's idea of OS coding and compatibility. Fun times. And thanks for singling this out, had a good chuckle out of it.
Fixed ;)

Gods, would I have raged if killing the first "monkey" (sic) in the past would have lead to dinosaurs ruling now. What, the dinosaurs built a time maschine that took the past the cataclism that killed them and put them back in a few million years later just before the said monkey would evolve?!? It's worse than FO3's story/inconsistencies...
 

Shiki

Learned
Joined
Dec 29, 2011
Messages
237
Location
Hell
Microsoft at the time must have hated the thought of Windows NT becoming more universal and replacing the 9x series. You couldn't even run a current version of DirectX on most of the NT until Windows 2000, which was the first NT to be usable outside of the work environment. NT4 didn't have Direct3D and its dx was stuck to version 3. Windows 95 officially supported DirectX up to 8.
 

ghostdog

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2007
Messages
11,079
So Tim Cain wanted to make a Chrono Trigger for win95.
 

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