Game "Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury" What happened?

If you believe the hype spouted by TV shows today, were someone to find one of these computers or their drives, some incredibly smart person might be able to find something off of it.

 

Yeah, that's what I pretty much figured. In the end, we'll probably never get the story, either in novel format or otherwise.

 

If the video game is not possible, can we at least ask D.C. Fontana to turn it into a novel and have CBS & Pocket Books publish it? We'd also need the right cover artwork for it. Any ideas?

 

You really believe it's over? I don't hear any fat ladies singing, though. You know the old saying, "it ain't over till the fat lady sings."

 

Fontana has said in the past that she'd like to write a novel based on the story. Pocket Books, however, has shown no interest.

 

So much cool stuff posted by Kenneth Allen
Like this short clip of actor recording:


And this long one of someone getting a head mold made:


And this one showing some UI:

 

And here is Kenneth Allen talking about the project from the description and comments from the 8 minute video I posted about yesterday:

Kenneth's description:

In 1997 in preparation for E3 Atlanta, my team at Interplay prepared this proof of concept to demonstrate that an entire Sierra-style point and click adventure game could be produced using nothing but full motion video.
We knocked it out of the park!
In so doing, we pioneered several techniques later adopted by the likes of Pixar, such as filming voice actors so we could get frame-perfect lip-syncing and facial expressions.
The laser disc bonus footage for the movie TRON also proved to be a valuable resource on how to plan for using a virtual camera in a 3D scene.
While the team was hard at work on this footage and game demo, I was also at the motion capture studio with a few other team members to get frame perfect walking animations. A messy enterprise for the day (no pun intended) but we got pretty good results.
As lead designer and game producer for STSOVF, this video is a glimpse into my vision for this game. Some of the design materials still survive to this day, but sadly I doubt I will be able to realize the full dream I had for this adventure game.
I appreciate Brian Fargo and the rest of Interplay's leadership for allowing me this much of my vision. I especially appreciate my team consisting of Brad Grace, John McGinley, Jude Greer, Tim Wilcox, and everyone else involved. If I've forgotten your contribution, please respond below.
Someday, I will publish the design. But until then, see the video of the long forgotten game demo.​

And his responses in the video comments:

I don't want to air 20 year old grievances, in part because I don't want people doing that to me.
And while there are some accounts on why the game was never published, I was in the captain's chair on this and know all the moving pieces and I can tell you those other accounts are not very accurate.
I will say this. ST:SOVF, was only my 2nd internal development project of my career as project lead, & so I'm part to blame. But there were a lot of dynamics at play.
Interplay's rapid growth found it struggling to establish processes for good development practices for.
Paramount's consumer product division assigned gatekeepers who didn't understand the Trek ethos but had an iron-fist on approvals.
There were some who saw the game's potential & were determined to put their imprint on the game, which derailed the project.
Eventually, I was scapegoated and left Interplay, but when I did, I had a full script, a complete game design & a dev plan mostly scheduled out.
After my departure, development languished and the team lost focus.


(Ken who controls the voice recordings for this? Interplay, Paramount? I heard they were lost…)
The voice recordings for Interplay's Star Trek games were stored at a locked cabinet in the sound department. These are either in storage, or were destroyed with the shut down of Interplay.

(Hmm, a kickstarter should be tried to get those out of whatever legal limbo they're in or to discovery if they still exist. Thanks for the quick reply.)
To be clear, almost no recordings were done for this game, in spite of what has been reported.

I was the producer for the CD-ROM version of Judgement Rites. I added all the movie packs, voice recordings and speaking animations, plus the collector's disc. The core game was produced by Rusty Buchert.

No recordings were made except for some temp lines. All the recordings you've heard/read about were done for Judgment Rites


(Does all the audio still exist?)
I don't know about the audio. I found the demo on an old hard drive and was able to find a tool that converted the video clips in Interplay's proprietary movie format to .MOV files

Scotty's lines are culled from James Doohan's performance for Star Trek Judgment Rites.

The walking animation was temp. We were working with a motion capture company to get lifelike movement.​

 

Well, look at the evidence. I'd like to believe it to be possible like anybody else, but it's a very slim chance of anything being found. Plus, so little work was actually done, that if you could even find anything, you really wouldn't have much to work with.

 

^^Yeah, it's 20 years since it was announced, and as much as i want to be optimistic, i think at this stage we can say it is over, i have been optimistic about this game since i saw the trailer in ST Judgment rights way back in 1997..........and to kick us while we are down, the Trek gaming franchise is a mere shadow if what it use to be in it's hayday during the 90s and early 2000's, i doubt even if they found some holy grail of the game like the voice work and some game, that anybody would be willing to spend money on it knowing, (and i say this as a totally obsessive trek gamer), that will have a limited appeal and sales outside of trek gamers, as trek games were never the the big franchises sellers that you see around today like Cod and the likes, gaming has changed, SOVF was a game from a diferent time in everyway.

 

Any chance fans could make a similar gsme not for profit?

 

Pretty much, yep. I just see the writing on the wall. There's just too much evidence. I think maybe if some company with deep pockets would have been interested in untangling the mess and negotiate with Paramount a year or two after this went down, I would have thought it would be possible.

But even then, what people don't realize was how much the gaming landscape was changing. People were playing more and more shooters and less adventure games. Even if Interplay would have managed to release it, as expensive as the game was, I don't realistically think it would have sold enough for them to justify the cost in making it, and they would have lost money on it, kind of like how a movie studio doesn't make enough on a movie to recoup the costs in making it.

Most of the art out there for it are the different ship backgrounds where the characters would be animated on, and those would most likely have to be redone if a version of the game were done today, as they're most likely 800x600, and any of the animation would have to be redone for modern resolutions.

I think a far more likely scenario is for fan-film studios getting together to make a Vulcan Fury inspired game with some of the Trek actors that they've worked with. That would solve a lot of the legal entanglements.

 

They certainly bit off more than they could chew, did i not read they were basically trying to make a pixar quality type animation for like 10% of a pixar budget.

I suppose if the voice work was ever found a third point and click adventure like the previous two could be made in the same art style, but that's a lot of big assumptions, finding the voice work, licences, and somebody funding it, possibly via kickstart.

Ha, can't give up that little bit of hope it will happen some day, even though i know 99.9% it's long gone. Lol

 

Yep, exactly, and it was most certainly a very expensive undertaking and I've heard that they had severely underestimated the cost involved in doing so.

As for voice work, I think it would be much easier to just do something new with some of the Trek actors that are still with us rather than hanging on to something that just might not see the light of day.

 

A lot of work goes into making a game, which I suspect is the reason there haven't really been any fan-made Trek games. And given the Axanar lawsuit I'm sure many people who might have considered it are too scared of being shut down and all the work being for nothing.

 

No way they could get permission from CBS as a nonprofit project?

 

That's very unlikely. Something that needs to be considered is that the Star Trek TV shows and the Star Trek games are not made by the same companies. The TV shows are made by CBS and the games are made by licensees such as Interplay in the case of SOVF, or Ubisoft with the upcoming VR game. Now CBS has been very lenient with fan films, even now the guidelines offer quite a bit of freedom. But if someone tried to do a high-quality fan game, Ubisoft and Cryptic (creators of STO) could complain that the licenses they're paying a great deal of money for are being infringed upon. And if the game has animated cinematics could that potentially violate the time-limit rules of the fan film guidelines? My legal knowledge is very limited so take all of this with a grain of salt, but all of these concerns would discourage me from trying.

 

^ Fucking lawyers.

 

All is not totally lost, there is a chance that some theorists might be right, and when the universe ends it actually resets and starts over again, so we just need to wait and get it right next time......anybody here volunteering to make sure they take a degree in gaming next time round, and i will cover the rubbish skip at the back of interplays office in case it messes up again. :-)

 

Have any bits of plot from this game ever found their way into existing novels or episodes?

 

Guys, if a videogame isn't finished or released, it's likely because they thought it was a dud. While the recorded audio of the original actors is fascinating, I doubt the gameplay was up to much.