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Jane's A-10 Warthog
The State of the Game
Denny Atkin, editor of Computer Games Magazine, was one of the only writers to get a good look at the game prior to cancellation. "It didn't have a state-of-the-art 'look' because it didn't have the new graphic engine yet," says Atkin. But what he did see made it clear that "the flight dynamics were amazing, as was the level of research they'd incorporated into the plane's systems, weapons, and so on."
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A member of the A-10 team elaborates: "The stuff we showed at the last press showing in June was test data because we were still in the research phase on the terrain. The problem with the terrain was that we were developing a new engine. We only worked on it for five months. How long does it take most people to make an engine from scratch? A year? Two? Besides, our games always looked like crap right into beta. That is because we had such short development cycles that we had to put off our optimization until the end." Even F-15, which was developed by the separate Baltimore team "didn't get explosions until two weeks before it shipped," a source reports. The development team was now working with Terrex, a high-end terrain tool designed for the professional simulation industry. Art director Vince Lin and contract 3D programmer Donavon Keithley had left the original code far behind, forging ahead to create a virtually brand-new terrain engine. No longer based on the Longbow 2 code, the A-10 terrain engine would boast detail down to the level of street signs.
The new code, when compounded by the personnel changes, had conspired to delay A-10 by at least six months. In the end, time simply ran out. The game had missed several deadlines, and it was clearly not going to ship in 1999. In July of 1999, Origin pulled the plug. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, and despite the work that had been put in, the project was cancelled. Origin Systems' director of communications David Swofford explains, "We cancelled the project because it helped facilitate our transition into online-only games."
The online-only strategy was now firmly entrenched at the company. The extent to which single-player games were abruptly ditched can be seen in what happened to the last two single-player projects in development at Origin Studios: A-10 and Ultima: Ascension. The difference between the two, says Andy Hollis, was that Ascension was a "key part of the Ultima franchise and was directly tied to the Ultima online community, so it made sense to continue that." A-10, adrift without a strategy for flight simulators, didn't have Ultima Online's lifeline, and thus was canned.
Ultima: Ascension was simply pushed out the door, regardless of the fact that it was obvious that it was in no state to ship. The first patch was actually dated before the official release date. Now, with a new set of patches out, the game's message boards have been closed to new posts. Essentially, it has been consigned to oblivion. All in the rush to move to online-only. In the words of an ex-Origin employee, "That is why Ascension is ignored now. No one cared, even when it shipped. It was just a milestone to get past to move on to the big time."
Next:
Moving toward multiplayer
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