Troika Games' Lord of the Rings Demo (2001)

[@hombregatoooo]

Unfortunate he said the words "Arcanum 2" in his opening sentence, and I couldn't hear the other 7 minutes over my own loud sobbing.

[@aleksander6765]

Arcanum game was so magical...

[@madpriest7822]

Same!

[@WickeD-of-Oz]

That is too funny! As soon as I heard him say that, I started going on and on about Arcanum 2 lol. Haha.

[@HeatIIEXTEND]

what isn't can be :D

[@madpriest7822]

I'm in shock Arcanum 2 was turned down. That was and is one of the best games I ever played. Really cool and memorable.

[@karry299]

You are very easily pleased. Probably have "best game i ever played" moment every year.

[@akhigasi]

Your work formed me as a gamer, I absolutely love Fallout 1 and 2, and all the games Troika produced are some of my favorites . It's great to have a peek behind the curtains and your thought process in making those jewels. Cheers from Brazil!

[@cheapScrewDriver]

Tim when people talk about classic RPGs yours are the ones that come to mind. Other games just felt like they were linear, and the only decision that truly mattered was whether or not you wanted to use a sword or cast lightning through your finger tips.

[@weretennikov_alex]

Блин, не думал что доживу до момента когда Тим Кейн заведёт канал на Ютубе и будет всякое интересное рассказывать. Очень круто!

[@CainOnGames]

Спасибо. У меня есть много историй, чтобы рассказать!

[@weretennikov_alex]

@@CainOnGames будем с нетерпением их ждать!) спасибо!

[@GrettHard]

@@CainOnGamesТак либо я спятил, либо Тим Кейн дал ответ на русском)

[@kevinfisher5492]

I really love what you are doing on this channel. It's great to hear the background stories about game development and things that never came to pass. I wish others would do that, specifically Richard Garriott...would love to hear him talk about the long and rocky history of Ultima IX.

[@WeatherRapport]

I've been loving these videos Tim! Your insights are incredibly valuable, keep them coming :)

[@thegrimm54321]

I am so sad that this never got to exist...but I am so grateful that you shared it with us. I'll choose to live my life with implanted fake memories that I created to convince myself that I did, in fact, put 200 hours into this game lol

[@Mr.Neko1]

Looks like just from the demo if your team got the go ahead it would been a good game. I’m impressed.

[@xasv1k]

Thank you for such an interesting fact and great projects, you're cool!

[@davidmuldowney]

Thanks for sharing this! I had no idea this was on the cards for Troika! Was combat going to be an evolution of Arcanum's real time/turn based hybrid method or were you looking to focus on one type?

[@CainOnGames]

I wanted to pick one and focus on it, but the last design we submitted had both turn based and real time combat. That might have changed later during prototyping.

[@jblps]

Tim, Big Arcanum fan. It was one of the first PC games I played as a kid. Anyway, I hope you know there's still a lot of Arcanum fans out there and some cool community mods and an HD mod to get everything beautiful on modern PCs. I think we'd all love to see it get a revival of some kind whether that's a remaster, remake or sequel. Any hopes there? I was hopeful the Acti-Microsoft merger would free the license up but looks like that's in trouble too. Would love to see you do an Arcanum playthrough or a lite playthrough while you talk about the game.

[@CainOnGames]

Any more Arcanum games is up to Activision, but it would be fun to do a Let's Play of Arcanum. I'll add that to my list.

[@pikaman3684]

Ou sont les MODs ? :o Works with the Steam version?

[@jblps]

@@pikaman3684 I use the Unofficial l Arcanum Patch. Only works with English localization unfortunately. Multiverse is another popular one

[@glr]

Wow, so close! I hope in the future it gets finished based on the description and video. Or some future game-building AI hallucinates the rest of the game into a compiled, enjoyable experience.

[@madpriest7822]

Looks great ,wish you guys got to make it, love the style and graphics. Troika rules!

[@soromny]

Thanks for sharing all this!!!

[@TorQueMoD]

Man, that is gorgeous for the time! Great work. Sad you never got to finish the game.

[@slothbro2740]

man that would have been the lord of the rings game i've been wanting all my life

[@schhhhhhhhhhh]

Thanks for sharing this :)

[@vast634]

Baldurs Gate 1 kind of optimized it by using prerendered elements that where dynamically placed at runtime, to avoid having to load the whole background as one large image into memory.

[@Deadforge]

I would've loved to see this. Not many great LOTR games out there.

[@MrGareth1973]

Great ideas you had for the game!

[@techieg33k]

Thanks for sharing. This is great and would have been a good game in certain

[@blake_ridarion]

Thanks for sharing!!

[@Rob333]

Sounds a lot like LOTR the third age, RPG with a party on the same path.

[@kran27_]

I've seen some discussion of Troika's Post apocalyptic demo. Was this ever meant to be a pitch for fallout 3, was it separate, or did both happen? Also, as far as I know there's just the one old video relating to this, so you have anything else in your archive?

[@videorebus]

Спасибо! Было очень интересно послушать и посмотреть ).

[@ModernOddity728]

I really like the world design there, very good for the time it was created. If you ever have time to revisit it and get it rereleased with bugs ironed out I would love to play it.

[@Xibalba161]

Thanks for sharing. Any thoughts on the Rings of Power show?

[@CainOnGames]

I’m not a fan of it. I hope RoP is not a foreshadowing of what Amazon is doing with the Fallout TV show, or I’m going to be an unhappy camper.

[@jsullivan2112]

Awesome.

[@ΜεταξάςΒαργιάς]

Perfection!

[@wszczebrzeszyn]

It's good that you got paid for the demo at least. Graphics look surprisingly good, Arcanum engine could work for this setting. I assume that it would be an RPG? If so I wonder how would levelling up work, seems to me like we wouldn't be able to reach the demi-god level like in Arcanum. Then again in VtM:B we were fledglings but at the end we were much more powerful than possible (which was much better than staying weak).

[@CainOnGames]

You’re right, characters could not become super powerful in our LOTR game. You can play characters as a hobbit, an elf, a human, or a wizard, and each one has access to particular skill trees that you could improve as you leveled. Each race resisted corruption differently too, with hobbits the most resistant and humans the least.

[@Lexx2k]

@@CainOnGames You can't release the source code, but could you make changes / improvements / fixes and release a new .exe file? :>

[@CainOnGames]

@@Lexx2k I cannot. I am contractually bound to have any and all changes approved by the IP owner.

[@gargamellenoir8460]

@@CainOnGames So a non Maiar wizard? I thought that wasn't really a thing in LOTR?

[@CainOnGames]

@@gargamellenoir8460 You played Zermaine the Colorless. "A far-traveled Wizard of few words and less history, Zermaine has walked the lands of Middle-Earth, keeping to himself and watching the affairs of Men, Elves and Dwarves."

[@tvojemama0123456789]

I wish we could see Arcanum 2 come to life

[@gluehandsluke8477]

My biggest takeaway from this video is that Tim pronounces Hobbiton like its a Transformer

[@EWlovers]

Thanks Tim! Good to see that internal demo from have some missing parts and it’s absolutely normal. I think rendering whole background for a demo also helps to save time instead of making huge tileset?

[@pikaman3684]

Possible to download this demo? :) I will be ready to finance a project graphically close to arcanum and close to Tolkien's universe :o Lets go crowdfunding ?! ;p

[@Elkand305]

I wonder if the demo version of that unreleased RPG in the post-apocalypse world that was in development when the studio existed was preserved?

[@jess648]

it’s actually bizarre there was never a decent lotr crpg. shame Sierra never pursued it further

[@digital_underground]

The art looked really good. Are you not allowed to reuse code from other games you make for different companies? I ask because of the frame rate.

[@S1eepers]

Have you played LOTRO? Been playing it since 2008. Still play it. I love it.

[@karlgoldberg9268]

What other games were Troika studios working on that got cancelled? I know you guys had starting working a bit on your version of fallout 3 in anticipation of winning the rights in that auction but I remember reading something about another World of Darkness game, is that true?

[@CainOnGames]

We didn’t work on any other games that were canceled, but we did with on game designs that were not picked up by any publishers. And we also did a short contract for the Department of Defense to allow Temple to be played by an external AI. Now that’s a story…I wonder if I can tell it. I’ll check.

[@karlgoldberg9268]

@@CainOnGames Temple is a great game, one of my absolute favorites. Really incredible how much enemy variety there is given how short the game is. Was the game originally intended to be a bit longer?

[@CainOnGames]

@@karlgoldberg9268 Yes, there was quite a bit of both cut content and content we never had time to make. The opening alignment-based vignettes were intended to be longer (like 30 minutes each), and I wanted the Elemental Node maps to be bigger too. But the worst cut was in the village of Nulb. Whole buildings full of already made and approved content (NPC's, quests, conversations, loot, etc.) were cut, because months later someone high up didn't like it.

[@kanrakucheese]

Is it true that you still have the source code to Arcanum/ToEE but can't release it due to some contract nonsense related to the DRM? If true, who do we need to campaign on social media for a chance to get it released?

[@CainOnGames]

Yes, I have source code for Arcanum and Temple because Troika legally owned that code, so it became mine (and Leon's and Jason's) when we closed. But I contractually cannot release it, and while the contract doesn't give reasons (it simply forbids it), I am sure the use of source code to remove DRM was a contributing factor for the inclusion of that clause. Recently I recompiled Arcanum on the latest version of Visual Studio, just to see if I could. There were some warnings thrown, but it compiled and ran!

[@kanrakucheese]

@@CainOnGames Was the contract in question one with Sierra, Atari and/or someone else? People got 3D Movie Maker's source by asking nicely on social media, and I doubt that was as "on hand" as what you have.

[@CainOnGames]

@@kanrakucheese I am referring to the contract with Sierra. Activision now owns those rights.

[@kanrakucheese]

@@CainOnGames Thanks. Guess we'll have to wait a few months for the UK stuff to get sorted out before asking MS (since it's doubtful Activison would do it even if it wasn't being bought out).

[@stoyanpanchev664]

Brilliant

[@Mad_Russ1an]

From Russia with ❤

[@samuelschwager]

I totally would have played this game :)

[@piratelady17]

I want this game.

[@C5204]

Would have been a great game making LOTR coming off Arcanum.

[@SCARaw]

i wanna ask something: if Arcanum was develpped and released in 2003! how your 2001 Demo use Arcanum engine and looks better, don't you wanted to bring some of the visual improvements? or did you had the game lying around ready for release?? how was it??

[@CainOnGames]

Arcanum came out in 2001.

[@armed_but_blind2768]

NGL if that turned out like a diablo in the lotr world setting then it could of been big

[@Mgaak]

I loved Arcanum but come on, if I saw that demo I'd never give you the green light to develop a game 😮 is a demo like that an industry standard ?

[@svenherzig6290]

When are we going to see a proper LotR single player RPG? This is the reason I'm actually sad now that Troika went under. Not Arcanum 2, not Bloodlines 2.

[@SCARaw]

I didnt know about it

[@stiepanholkien605]

Post apocalyptic demo? Van Buuren?

[@jess648]

van buren was at interplay and a tech demo actually was leaked for it

[@yaosio]

Video starts at 5:09

[@stormergames4686]

As a lifelong Tolkien fan I might have hated this game just for deviating the plot.

[@TrueNeutralEvGenius]

Very nice spiders.

[@codylamp6814]

So is Tim a part of the Outer Worlds 2 team? Semi-retired? This is depressing