Sunday, December 10, 2006

I'll Just Have The Salabog


I didn't expect to post much about Secret of Evermore but it seems to be enjoying a small rebirth as a cult classic. Don't ask me why. I'm as surprised as anyone. I hear the new issue of Game Informer lists Evermore as their third most anticipated pick on their "top 10 retro game we can't wait to download on our Wii" list. That, plus the fact that folks keep posting clips of it on YouTube make for a quick easy post on a lazy Sunday. So, yay.

This clip is of the third boss battle in SOE, the big swamp snake thing, Salabog. I did the background art and Salabog himself (based on a concept painting by our art director, Daniel Dociu). The big critter himself contains very little animation, at least by an artist. The movement of the head and the body were all done with programming (I keep thinking it was Jeff Petkau). The neck is just made of a small overlapping sprites. The sections of the monster seen in the background got their motion from good old fashioned color cycling.

Below is another craptacular doodle from the notepad I had on my desk at the time.


As I said in earlier posts, lots of people who went on to Cavedog (and Beep, and later ArenaNet) worked at Square's Redmond office. The main character and dog were animated by Rebecca Coffman. TA fans might be interested to hear the score by Jeremy Soule, who accomplished some amazing things with the limited audio palette available on the SNES.

CK

1 comment:

Arne-Banane said...

Dear Mister Kauzlaric, I'm a big fan of Secret of Evermore since I first saw it about twenty years ago. When I accidentally found these blog posts in which you posted the sketches, I felt like finding a treasure chest. So, I'm afraid you're already annoyed by people who ask you about that old stuff over and over, but, whenever you're in the mood and when ever it is possible, please release more information about the development of this old game. The final game seems to only be tangent to what it could have been in so many ways, so it would be interesting to see what motivations lead to certain elements in the game, and what might have been left out for whatever reasons.