Re: Brutal Deluxe's holidays project 2: Sword of Sodan (behind the scene)

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

Toinet <antoine.vignau@laposte.net> wrote:

>In order to make it "nice", I contacted the original author on
>sodan.dk, he replied he had kept nothing on the game. Therefore, the
>additional images and sounds have been gathered from the long play of
>SoS on youtube.com and from WinUAE, a well-known Amiga emulator.

    Are you referring to Scott Patterson? I was told the same story when
I contacted him about 15 years ago. However it's important to know, 
before its cancellation, Discovery Software passed the project over to
another programmer who continued the work.

    That programmer was Jimmy Huey, who already programmed other
Apple II software titles (e.g. Calfornia Games GS, Epyx's Print Magic).
I contact Jimmy around the same time period and learned he still had
all the original source code and a playable, compiled version of Sword
of Sodan. I'll have to dig through my e-mail archives, but I recall him
saying 70% of the game was complete although it crashed quite often.
I asked, begged and pleaded, but he stood by the NDA he signed with
Discovery Software and wouldn't release it.

    The other part of the story is I found two beta testers who had the 
compiled alpha-version of the game, but they too were sticking to
the NDA. All except one, who offered to sell me the disk(s). That
person was Jeff Barbanell. I think the better choice here is contacting
Jimmy Huey again (I do have his e-mail and mailing address in California, 
but this goes back to 1997!). I can't imagine it being that difficult to find
him again.

    Incidentally, this project by Brutal Deluxe really caught my interest! 
I don't even lurk comp.sys.apple2 anymore, but just decided to tonight
and seeing that game title in the subject name drew me in! Sure it's 
20 years later, but I'd still be thrilled to pieces to see more of Sword of
Sodan on the IIgs! :)

On a related note, I captured the IIgs demo version and posted it 
to YouTube (I'd like to capture a higher quality version if I can find
a proper composite adapter cable for my Hauppage card)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNcuXo3owi4

Mitchell Spector