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Brian Flanagan answers questions about work on Operation Thunderbolt V1...
1) How did you get assigned to the game and what parts did you do?
I was assigned to OT as my first project after being hired at ocean.
Before that, I did "work experience" at ocean during my final year of
high school, I did a few sprites on operation wolf, learning a lot of
stuff from Steve Wahid, John Meegan and Simon Butler.
2) What was the first version really like, was it playable at all?
Barely, if not at all, it was more like a rolling demo of soldiers
sliding about, and not much else, the 3D sections weren't very nice, or
pretty!
3) Zzap seems to have seen/played something a heck of a lot better
than the released
game, what has made them see this potential "Zzap Sizzler" from just a
static demo?
They were promised an exclusive preview of another game, for a later
issue in return for a favourable review, pretty much the same way
publishers bribe / coerce magazines today, nothing new or shocking, It's
not as harsh as the "Give our crap game a good review or we pull
advertising" tactic, but it's still sad.
4) How complete was the game before Trevor was taken off the project?
He'd been on it for a while before I got there (possibly a few months),
and in all honesty, they should have got someone on the project to bail
him out, I had no idea that the game was so unfinished, being a teenage
newbie graphics artist straight out of high school, who also got little
to no support, Kind of dumb really.. we were just left to our own
devices.
If you want a figure I'd say between 50-60% complete
5) What was Trevor like to work with, and did he work on anything
else?
In all honesty, Trev was a nice guy, his programming skills weren't
amazing, but he was a nice guy, he was also treated pretty harshly
because he was black, and ridiculed in a pretty, actually.. no VERY
racist manner by a fair few members of staff.
No, OT was his last project at ocean, but he once showed up with a bunch
of programmers at Warthog one day, not sure why.
To sum up, The game shouldn't have been helmed by 2 "newbies". We should
have been filling in support duties for another programmer and artist,
still.. I guess that's what producers are for nowadays.
Brian Flanagan.
Robin Hogg speaks to GTW about the review of Operation Thunderbolt V1...
I had a feeling Batman would probably be involved somewhere, it was THE game of the time. There was a big launch at Ocean HQ when all and sundry journalists arrived at Manchester. From what I remember, that day involved previewing a number of games including Batman, but it's news to me that something had been 'arranged' with regard to the review.
We got the game and reviewed it, it got a good review and that was it, can't recall if the Amiga version was in the same issue but that wasn't as good from what I recall (good 3D scenes I recall but I preferred the C64 version).
Sure we used to discuss forthcoming games with the publishers and how we can make best use of the preview/review in the forthcoming issue (eg Terminator 2 involved a cover tape, lead review, visit to Ocean, interviews with programmers) but a deal involving good reviews for future work does appear a step too far. Hand on heart I can't say 100% that something like this didn't go on, but I don't recall being involved, and despite it being 15+ years ago, I would say that I should be able to remember things like this deal being made.
I can't say/recall any more on this unless Phil King or Stuart can comment.............
Robin Hogg.
Paul
Hughes speaks to GTW about work on Operation Thunderbolt V1...
"Oh
boy - Yeah I wrote a whole bunch of games - I can shed some light on
that one... Here goes...
The original version that appeared in ZZap was a version of the game
by a junior programmer called Trevor Brown, it was a total blag as all
the raster splits for the sprites were carefully positioned to show
nice big sprites but they could barely move! It looked good in screenshots
but was totally bogus; a tonne of code that did nothing.
So, Trev got the boot, and they needed a 64 version (as it had already
been in development for an unprecedented 6 months), so myself, Rich
Palmer and Johnny Meegan got the mad task of writing it - from scratch
- IIRC we did it from start to finish and into mastering in around 12
days. Rich and I did the scrolling sections, John did the pseudo 3D
bits - the big bummer was they had done some deal to support mice, light
guns and light pens as well as keyboard and joystick and the 64's IO
didn't like a number of combinations (a light pen in port 1, keyboard
for the 2nd player - oops IO conflict!).
Anyhow it took 12 days and it sucked big style!"
Paul
Hughes.
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