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

[Owain Taggart]

Hard to say since there really wasn't much gameplay done by that point. It was mostly cancelled due to its exorbitant costs which they had underestimated. It wasn't really something they could undertake given their financial difficulties.

 

[Ronald Held]

I am going to venture into dangerous territory. If the game were completed by fans, and in the gameplay style of that era, how many people would play it?

 

[Yosef Lindell]

I don't monitor this forum much anymore, hence my very untimely reply. But it's amazing that 20 years later, SOVF threads still come up with some frequency. Every time I see one, I learn something new. Now it seems like not only was the game not far along, but they never really recorded the dialogue either. Sad, but not unexpected.

Some of you may remember that 10 years ago, I released a point-and-click adventure called Star Trek: the Continuing Voyage. It was a full 8 mission game in the spirit of 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites. It's still available online at www.startrekthecontinuingvoyage.com, and in my opinion, it's the only thing that has gotten close to what made the original Interplay adventures so great. The problem is that I'm not a programmer, so the code--written in Visual Basic--is rudimentary and poor, and I have not maintained it over the years. (The graphics were all lifted from other games as well and edited in MSPaint!) So good luck trying to get it to run on any modern version of Windows. I haven't had success post XP, but some friends have played it on Windows 7.

I still wish that someone could do something with my game. The story's basically all there--although I'm a better writer than I was then, having published some original science fiction short stories in professional magazines in recent years. The game just needs some investment of time, money, and programming expertise to make it something really great. I'm the developer, so I'm biased, but I think those that play it will see what I mean.

Anyway, I'd love to talk about it with anyone who's interested.

 

[Kor]

Since there was a script, I wonder how much trouble it would be for somebody who has a copy to just scan it and post online somewhere as-is, rather than adapting as a novel, fan-made game, etc.

Kor

 

[Phoenix219]

Didn't that one guy manage to crack all the audio out of it, and was going to make a series of CGI episodes, years ago?

 

[Haggis and tatties]

(See's a post on the front page and catches "The secret of Vulcan fury" title, runs in all excited, could it be, have they found the whole game, is it coming out, are they going to give us something..............get's in..........and.........)

This and Who lost episodes threads still cause me to skip a beat all these years after, just can't give up that last bit of hope. lol

 

[Ronald Held]

There was talk, years ago, about DC Fontana converting it to a novel.

 

[Kor]

There was talk, years ago, about DC Fontana converting it to a novel.

As mentioned up-thread, Pocket Books wasn't interested. So it's not going to happen.

Kor

 

[MCKurland]

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.​

If the dialogue tracks still exist, I think the fans at least deserve to hear them. Especially in the case of DeForest Kelley's final performance as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy.

 

[1moreRobot]

The developer said the following (from my earlier post)
"To be clear, almost no recordings were done for this game, in spite of what has been reported."

 

[Danlav05]

If the dialogue tracks still exist, I think the fans at least deserve to hear them. Especially in the case of DeForest Kelley's final performance as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy.

Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan and Mark Lenard are all now gone. Do have this lost chapter of their Star Trek career unearthed would be a must for any Trek fan.

 

[Ronald Held]

Impressed that this topic still exists. Seems highly unlikely any game will officially be made. If fans can do so, that would be acceptable.

 

[Kor]

Perhaps somebody could do it as a mod to an existing game. I remember that somebody made lots of TOS interiors for "Elite Force."

For such a project to be accurate, D.C. Fontana would have to be willing to reveal all the story details.

Kor

 

[Haggis and tatties]

(See's a post on the front page and catches "The secret of Vulcan fury" title, runs in all excited)

Awww, come on people, your playing with my dreams and hopes here, if it's not this it's the Dr Who lost epsiodes thread. lol

 

[Tallguy]

Haven't you heard? The BBC found a black and white recording of The Secret of Vulcan Fury in some guys attic in Australia.

 

[Danlav05]

There's conflicting reports to whether the cast returned to record hteir lines or not! The lines on the traielrs were lifted from Judgement Rites, however there are rumours that recordings were done, with Maurice LaMarche taking over from DeForest Kelley, who did initial recordings, when he got ill.

I'm aware that there may be rights issues surrounding CBS/Paramount/Interplay etc, so it will take a lot of tiem and money to investigate this fully, not to mention the legal stuff. My main question is the audio, the performances, if they existed or not? There seem to be conflicting reports.

Yorktown: A Time To Heal with George Takei was revived nearly 30 years later but that was a fan film.

 

[Danlav05]

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Featuring some recordings, done over at least 5 days. All 7 went into the studio, Kelley ajourned early, replaced by LaMarche

 

[Tallguy]

Wow. That was great. Thank you for posting this.

 

[captainkirk]

That was amazing. I didn't realize that much footage had survived. After all the discussions before I had assumed we'd seen all there was to see.

It's time some developer got the Star Trek license and made a spiritual successor to these games. An adventure focused on story and character rather than action.

 

[Ronald Held]

Thanks for posting! I presume this video indicates too little material exists to finish the game.