Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly Documentary (UPDATES)

we've been to the Dragonfly story being an almost endless topic it was a given that an update would need to take place eventually we've got many new developer phone calls tons and tons of all kinds of cuts content and much more nearly everything discussed here today happens to have never been known by the public until now please enjoy another installment in the Spyro 4 documentary featuring over 30 developers from the game [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] as for early level names we've heard a ton of them throughout researching dragonfly dojos early renditions spark spawned later became egg foo young and was only changed within the last six months of development while luau Island began as dragon keys before its design was changed and split into the finalised luau Island and removed level cutthroat code even monkey monastery was first known as monkey monk mountains enchanted forest was first known as fresh pine forest before becoming emerald forest interestingly enough the cuts leveled Baked Alaska and early named egg foo young for dragonfly dojo and things based on actual foods likely being a developer gag on an updated note before spark spawned was the original dragonfly dojo it was a flash game released on the official spyro website in 2001 this ties back in with how the dragon fly capture mechanic was inspired from season of Ice in the Game Boy hoof so many ideas being pitched for Spyro for very few actually stuck juicy universals pickiness and constant switching of their ideas at one stage in development Spyro would have started the game without his five ray and he would have had to regain it from Bianca very early in the game the idea remained prevalent for so long but it's even referenced within the game's manual speaking of that it's also stated for frogs were plans fodder for the game in fact within the game's model names it shows that the frog model was used as the basis for various other models and shorts this means frog fodder was created within the first months of development and likely would have appeared in cut for a coke a huge variety of other vehicles were also worked on throughout development with some including a rocket a surfboard and a mech vehicle cut fruits Cove would have even featured that surfboard with Spyro likely being able to traverse the tops of waves in a minigame besides the new cut levels we've discovered an additional one would have been fiend around a monsoon in fact this code left in the game for a rain weather effect with only snow being in the game - monkey monastery this deleted monsoon level would have likely featured a rainy destroyed looking environment and potentially even could have been similar or actually been cut for a cobra one point after Scott Smith informed us of a secret credits but gave credit to those who never got their rightful mane in the game we instantly began pondering on how to discover the inputs to access this cheat several months down the line was found for the code Circle up Circle Circle up when inputted into the first page of the Atlas actually unlocks a new page which is in fact the secret credits each of these names are to be expected with Ken's being secretary in the Czech six office who told everyone to head home once the project was temporarily canceled however the final two stands out which appeared to be close friends or family to Tammy Yap who programmed this secret credits menu in the first place it's quite insane to think that this cheat code in the game has never been accessed by anyone up until this point in time more cheats exist beyond that in fact when left right right right X is imprinted on the pause menu the game will run in slow motion this was achieved created by programmer Bob shade who actually just created it for fun even though it later ended up being used for testing again the developers refer to bullet time and was inspired by the matrix furthermore if you want to box the term purple just enter in left-right right-left X if you can recall Sparks was actually purple in a lot of beta material for the game due to the fact that he was still in progress while the names in the secret credits are interesting and revealing a ton of other people who worked on into the dragonfly when never credited anywhere one of those people was Joe Haight who actually had a pretty substantial role on the project he was producer on the game throughout the last half year of development but left before shipped we managed to arrange [Music] [Music] the soundtrack he wanted to use to her copeland and he was kind of fixated on in getting that in the game and getting these to her copeland do that for me huh but i was less worried about getting to her coat letting that be universals job to do that posted I was more worried about getting the kingdom done and she was like I was having a hard time get doing that and my thought process was that if he has those contacts and that will help the game sell Universal should take advantage of that everybody got along well everybody was friendly there was no that still hey hey hey foo Yoong turn into Doge of something well one of the things that happened in fact I believe is that was it John Mark did Nate start another game company in Paris but the guys who actually sticks out with me whose guy who couldn't really walk he had damaged legs Jason 40 he was a great guy we had a conversation about his debilitation legs and for me I like making connections you tell I took your phone call but I think that accommodating to people to people and connect with them write him and he gave me a book that Gary Adams cartoonion from the far side he let me borrow this book that I read it was very very meaningful to me that he did that at the time for me gave me a gift I left up to that and he stuck around did he like to meet people were good guys he was one of the good guys for me I remember the last one time or as hopes they hugged and I get married or something like that he said yes he said he would like to dance when he gets married and the long I was thinking about that was prosthetics like robotic prosthetic legs just like that hands up how did would make that happen considering Ricky really wanted to get Copeland back on the project it was only natural that he got his way but not after a long time of convincing him and even suffering many problems which caused the music to only be composed white before release Stewart even said in an interview how he felt detached from Spyro while working on enter the dragonfly and he didn't even recognize an advertisement he was shown as being Spyro there are also some weird goings-on such as how Spyro has a different eye texture within certain minigames and also how crops sir was going to have a cow tipping minigame another cool tip it is how you can see a sparks be looking particle effect underneath the dragonflies when their capture animation plays speaking of dragonflies they were also originally called ladybugs and later fireflies skill points were also an intended feature and were even planned for the flammable bushes in clouds 9 one day we had the chance to talk to Gary who worked on optimizing the game as a whole at Universal he provided valuable insight into the inner workings of the game and how the process of optimizing a game back in the early 2000s functions let's take a look at a very detailed email he graciously sent us [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] shockingly an equinox member actually uploaded two video files from a beta version of the game to Vimeo however the bad news is the files no longer exist because the account was deleted but luckily two thumbnails still remain showing off the beta look the water had in dragonfly dota the purpose of these clips was to document the equinox members work they had done on the interactive water as had been talked about several times before the final level sequence order took a long time to get right and was changed very frequently we've luau Island being the second level originally and the enchanted forest being the last level in the game this is also the reason why the ability stones for spires breaths are randomly placed within certain levels being a very late 2002 edition a racist Speedway actually wasn't intended to be found within thieves then originally in fact thieves then own Oasis both feature many textures and models that were ripped straight from cutthroat Cove the cutthroats Cove chests in Jurassic jungle has this particular yellow pattern texture thats found have been so many objects and thieves death when you take into account fact cutthroat cove with a featured Spanish architecture pirates and would have been a water level these lighthouses pyramids and palm trees really further the fact that a wases was intended for cutthroats Cove even the music for Oasis when compared to the short pirates track featured the same sample and style signifying the connection between the two the snakes in Oasis also have an unused design where its textures become darker and the bottom two vases have cracks this look actually sometimes shows up after restarting the race and was intended to be used when the snake was flamed this was likely done very early in development and it's quite similar to how insomniac handled the original furnitures enemies rainbow speedway song originated this monkey monasteries main theme as heard in the demo Peter Neff composed monkey monastery songs as well as Rainbow Speedway whilst your Copeland's composed cloud 9 Salva 2 tracks just compare all three of the Speedway tracks together and it becomes apparent the rainbow does not feature the upbeat nature of a minigame [Music] [Music] Speedway's also feature vocals literally within the first second of their tracks yet to embrace speedway lacks vocals entirely on the other hand cloud lines track name is called sana which matches with the unused track sauna meaning they were likely paired in the same level originally [Music] you icons used throughout the levels and minigames also happen to typically be a beta version of the character or item they represent a lot of the Speedway characters have very different textures and designs in their icons as well as Jurassic Slava item collection mission having an entirely different icon from what you actually collect the scripting definitely has a lot to break down from an idea where Spyro would chase down a bunny to get a key in cloud 9 to a koala being an early character idea or even noughts being referenced early on and the mysterious cyber egg being a character in Jurassic jungle there's also beta breath names as well as a character named King Kong being used for testing interactions with Spyro beyond this there are many other notable pieces of info we will take a look at now [Music] besides the South effects Warren hands it over to us mama beta build there are a good amount of other unused sound effects found within the final release some happened to be leftovers from earlier spyro games meaning that Vivendi did actually give check six access to the sounds at least even though they refused to give them any of us pyro assets [Music] [Applause] [Music] Spyro himself would have received a huge upgrade in his facial expressions and added reactions to the environment in the form of tons of animations the majority of these would have been used when talking with NPCs however others include Spyro holding his breath as he exits swimming which is strangely never used in the final release [Music] you you [Music] you you [Music] we later even plant a check 6 reunion where developers would come together to reminisce about the game after not talking about it for almost 20 years luckily both Jason Faria and Warren Davis came together with us to discuss an array of new info and relevant stories about the project after being glad to have reconnected after all this time hey Warren how's it going it's going good about you doing well nice to reconnect I guess after all these years let's talk about some Spyro boy yeah I'd love to hear what you remember I was that's telling Tyler I like I don't know I just it's a lot of these memories I mean I haven't thought about this game in years even when when the experience ended I kind of feel like I tried to wash my brain of a lot of it exactly yeah it was a bit on the traumatic side he stick around for when we got that unannounced that second game that we were working on the the money thing no I never worked on that ok yeah I stuck around pretty much til the bitter ends which wasn't that much longer after spiral honestly oh I remember about 6 you know I was hired by Joel he was the guy who recommended me and got me in Joel got hired to be the game designer and they were staffing up and he recommended me and you know the timing was good so yeah I came on board I do up here the story I remember is that they were in a small office they weren't on Main Street in Venice that's probably where they were when you started yes yeah which is pretty fine real estate oh yeah that was a really that was an awesome office but that was before Equinox and checks merge and I really I do remember one of the first games I came in or maybe it was when I came in for an interview it was Jimmy's birthday so Jimmy was the lead programmer mm-hmm I can't remember his last name allemande though he was the lead program it was his birthday and they hey I heard a stripper do you move it on that some of the guys who work the check six had like these little kind of cartoon caricatures span of them his idea yeah feared a few each xyx dog had that and they were like taped up on their office wall and I still remember Jimmy had one and his like superhero alter ego was called dr. pervo and I think you know how they had some connection to the slipper thing well anyway so then then they didn't you know merge with equinox and shared that space and at the beginning you know we were still staffing up I guess that somewhere during then I'm not sure exactly went into the closet he came but Joel was already gone so that means you came in you know there was already problems because you know we had a problem they were developing this engine I guess there were all these stories I remember hearing about before I even got there Kyle was telling me some stuff that you know I didn't I didn't exactly remember but it sort of triggered some vague memories I came on in in march of all tears so at that point you guys already had like a few you know a few of the levels at least blocked out if not final and you know it's all spiral is working stock psychic Sparks was working but it was far from done they were freaking out and they hired a bunch of new guys including me to get it done including John Bojorquez they brought all those guys ons and basically like trying good and done before in time for Christmas and we did miraculously so Ken said go home one with everybody we've they sent everybody home they had a big fight they said it's over they're throwing in the towel and there's just not they won't talk to each other I said this is it a point where I was like you know I feel like the it was when the end was somewhere in sight you know and I knew that relationship the relationship between them had deteriorated but it's like I don't know just something any kind of snap and I could no I am NOT going to allow this to happen I like didn't leave and I made everybody get into the conference room so there was like yeah there was John Mark and Jack the checks exciting Rea and Shawn on the economic side and maybe a couple of other people in ten who's there and we just and I basically acted as a mediator operator and I said okay what is the problem here why do you and you got them back together for you you saw you solve the fight I did so credit for the game being finished but I'm not proud of it not sure I made the right decision I decided it'd be better to let the thing just die then and there and and I I've always wondered if that might not have been the better choice I do remember a fight and I don't know if you had much awareness of it but it was um the daring via the IT guy he works for economics and he is everybody's IT guy but he was paid by economics one day John Mark was telling dad to do something and I don't know Gayle was offering some kind of resistance John Mark went away and then like Evelyn so I came back and started arguing with the L and like they didn't they couldn't find the terms of what they were arguing with and then John Mark came back and like said something like that like what did you say to my wife in like native personal and started like shoving chairs and stuff yeah and it got me ugly and you know fortunately it never came so came to blows but like that he's been like at that moment Charlotte said make you fire or something you know my backup plan for an IT guy I remember that was that I'm sure that was uh that was a long you know part of the whole equinox check six conflict I mean I remember even like the part before you were there the game you could just see the game was in trouble for a number of reasons one you know Joel the original designer was trying to make Universal happy but in doing so he kept on having to make changes to the design and we're in the thick of you know so they've signed off on the design basically and we're in the thick of production and then Ricky you remember Ricky in the Joel because you know couldn't agree on things and then a job which eventually ended in jail leaving because Joel felt like well you know I'm not the designer anymore I mean this guy is making me change things to the point where you know not you know Joe wasn't happy with the design anymore and then also we were becoming less and less able to implement it then there were engine problems right the engine really was unjust not-ready-for-prime-time you know they see the little scratch yeah and they kept thinking all right well we'll get the frame rate off itself but somehow it just never got there yeah and I'm not much of an engine guy I'm more of a higher level guy and you know I was working on Spiro and I was working on his physics and I remember Ricky was never happy with his physics because he wanted it to be exactly like the other three James and I I was right I was very happy with the his physics turned out you know I didn't know how to make it any better than I did but it's like without that without insomniacs code or without at least you know some kind of notes to say this is how they get it but this is the algorithm they use in fact how do they expect us to duplicate it rails and and again you know my goal was not was never to duplicate it my goal was to make it feel like Spiral no problems all along and then yeah Jimmy who was the lead programmer who was a great programmer and a great guy but a terrible manager she didn't like conflict or he didn't like you know back in the whip well I don't know what it was but I just you know fought there was no leadership he didn't really provide leadership for the team mm-hmm that's why towards the end I kind of took on that role I know John came on as the lead and that was also another kind of area of I mean I don't remember have any problems with John at all but right just the fact that he kind of came in so late and I just think nobody really is in a good position when you come into a project that late in a position of leadership you know it's just you know you've got a whole team of people and you they don't know you you know and they don't know your style and they don't know your way of doing things so you know and just the idea of throwing in a whole bunch of people at the end to get things done so more people means more coordination so the more peel and I'll roll on something the last minute the more important leadership becomes and you didn't have that and then you know we would pull all-nighters for like nights leading up to a milestone and I remember people would make mistakes and you know we've introduced crash bugs and you know I personally very much against you know pulling all-nighters to meet deadlines I much prefer you know what's going filling a month before your deadline and saying this is when we got to start getting serious right and getting discipline so that you can avoid those all-nighters the night xxxx it was like lalalalalalala oh we got three nights left that's okay we'll just work on we'll work 24 hours a day for three days and I'm gonna doing that I remember sleeping because I didn't have a car at the time remember sleeping at the office for two nights yeah oh I did I remember that and and going to the omelet parlor for breakfast something that Warren mentioned it kind of duplicates the question that I got there which which is that like I didn't really know who I was supposed to report to as my immediate supervisor or who I was supposed to come to with questions yet war and you had John you had Jimmy as unmarked like just yeah I just kind of could try wine and if that didn't work gone to the next one so and you know basically my first real job in the industry I you know I I had a lot of confusion about what to do yeah it was confusing there really wasn't a clear structure I know that I worked with Tammy remember Tammy yeah yeah I'm in a semi I think we sat together I think we were we were like in the same room that sounds right yeah yeah we did not just involved that well sometimes yeah yeah I mean it just this project brought out the worst and most people I think but the crazy thing for me was that I I was hired by check stakes I worked for check sake I remember I liked Rea and Shawn from necro Knox I just liked them and got along with them so much more than I did with John Mark when they told me that they were looking on Spiro you know my ears perked up immediately and I went to energy with them I had a good impression of LA I lifted the project but they showed me at the time it was running silky smooth 60fps looked beautiful as like yes this is exactly what I want to work on so I was like I'm on board and they took me and yeah much to my disappointment it didn't take long to realize that oh yeah it doesn't really run 60 at all I can write at 60 but it doesn't I programmed like a couple of the minigames because it was like at the last minute we were like we competed two minigames you know so I literally like furiously in a couple of days programmed a minigame you know or - yeah a minigame work myself yeah I mean I remember the minigame where you pick the cows and drop them on a roof it was built around a scene graph which I didn't have any experience in before but it seems really kind of clunky in the way that anytime you wanted to maneuver anything around you had to walk down the scene graph and find the object and then detach it and then reattach somewhere in the scene graph and that often led to a lot of bugs but I remember those aspects of the code and then I worked on a lot of minigames worked really closely with Ricky on getting spark to behave exactly the way I wanted it and I think he was kind of happy with it in the end and the baby dragonflies chasing them around but I remember the code better than I remember the actual game I hardly remember the game at all I was surprised that anybody had as much enthusiasm about the game as you do but you know if the enthusiasm is out there then you know I want to do my best to try to try to pay tribute to it so there's our train wreck phenomenon people are dominated by train ride nice to talk to you again one thing here Jason while only the PlayStation 2 and GameCube versions were released Xbox and PC ports were planned and even the engine components for Xbox were created referred to as Direct X except since Universal wasn't even willing to pay the money they owed check six and equinoxes the original two versions additional development on the final platforms were cancelled in favor of a helicopter Special Forces project who lasted a dozen weeks knowing that there was enough content made for enter the Dragonfly to fill five spy ropes as Rand often told us we began peering into every single aspect of the game possible starting off it turns out check six actually left in a ton of unused animation data within the game but sadly most of the cut content had been cleared up for the final release luckily for us the still a ton of animations meant for a variety of different things from talking running idle and other miscellaneous ones [Music] that wasn't supposed to happen [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] there's even a lot more cut voiced dialogue for counters all throughout the game from start to finish these range from lines that were meant to be read by other characters but were screwed up such as hunter saying yes and no for the minigame prompts while others were cut late in development in favor of other lines hello Spyro those dragonflies must be really frightened we're all counting on you to find them remember all throughout the Dragon realms you'll find fairies that will save your progress with a little zap like this if you get into too much trouble you'll return to the last fairy you encountered and Spyro make sure you use your breath weapons against any of the really big rip [ __ ] they're just too big to charge are you ready to play again yeah bring them on no not right now okay no thanks okay sounds like fun now watch out Spyro there are two UFOs this time good luck watch out Spyro some other UFOs are shooting at you this time hey Spyro thank you help me out here real quick pick up all the butterfly bottles before the time runs out to win let's go congratulations you got them all oh sorry you didn't make it in time play again oh darn Spyro looks like that UFO got one of my cows well I still need to get them cows into my Corral you won't try again thanks spiral what I need you to do is use your lightning breath to zap my cows back on with their feet and hurt him back into the corral but you'll have to hurry cuz there's a UFO circling the field which looks like it might be on a cow collecting mission all right go get Spyro thanks pyro do you suppose those ripped ox would have really eaten us don't gosh darn travel agents I knew I couldn't trust them not the brightest porkchop on the block are you what's that I said you welcome good for you Spyro things are finally back to normal well normal for a fairy tale world at least okay see you later then welcome to a honey Mars spiral then rip top critters a mess this here place up but good yeah let's give it another shot no thanks I've taken enough of a beating for one day Hey look at that spiral it's a dragonfly they are a rare sight and the icy peaks of our monastery okay see you later then I knew you were the right dragon for the job spyro unfortunately I forgot my water rings say maybe you can do it you know if I could swim I dive under the water and press that switch to open that door yeah not bad but if I had those water wings I would have taken care of myself sports where these lines would have existed are alive and well in the game for example luau Islands lost pig still has an option to talk the dialogue after you finished getting a dragon fly but says nothing same case with cloud nine spinal bear that crop circle specifically has the most interesting dialogue with the farmer being the original NPC who helped you with the UFO cowl minigame as well as the farmer reading out test minigame lines and even cart ideas for crop circle you can even see sparks reading off dialogue originally meant for Zuri in the Dragonfly dojo second chunk Zoe is literally right next to sparks when this is spoken guest sparks always has to steal the spotlight cuts dialogue continues but this time with just the script itself this aspect of the game is probably one of the most interesting and contains more unused content than the majority from early ideas of spiral reporting back to hunter and the dragon elders once he had progressed through the realms to the chests originally giving gems instead of dragonflies and being found within every level there are even ten dragonfly names four aren't used in any level with seven of them being direct references to check six and equinox individuals it's unknown which unused levels these would have been associated with although uncharted frost is very likely the one due to the fact that it's the only cut level that still referenced heavily within the final games file [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the Alpha mentioned lawyers that worked at Universal back in the day actually have an interesting inside look at how Universal function we got into contact with one named jury Sasson who had the opportunity of working on the legal team as well as pre and post production on an array of early two-thousands games such as crash bandicoot here was a look into what he could recall about his time on the game I actually worked at Universal actus old for a year so it's about 2001 to 2002 July 2001 about July news now - during that period I worked on several games we're done Crash Bandicoot the rest of cortex worked on the Battlestar Galactica game there was a Scorpion King game game as well as spark dragon I was a leak protection council pretty much for everything I was going on not only the stuff that was in production but there's some pre-production stuff and other games have been out circulating as well like terms of marketing contract stuff like that so my role there was basically legal counsel I just drafted contracts provide legal advice to the business development team an executive's finance team I'm happy to discuss as much as I can without you know violating any training platform I have two bosses there was conflict between Adu companies never filtered down to me or at least I never heard about it right did I you know it was you didn't have any in-house developers so what they did is they would contract with third-party developers to make their games right so they were into a software development agreement with any of the developers and then they would they would actually provide VIP I just was really involved with them on them or just that software development leaving level in the actual conflict Universal interactive like I I always said that you're there but at least from my experience it was a very invigorating experience because of the sort of energy the company had it wasn't a very super big group of people and say was between 45 and Szigeti people max last movie well all of us sit on one floor we used to work on the 31st floor and the Universal Studios lot so you can use Google Maps and your to Pena City Plaza right now it's got and I think the average age everyone else I've worked with Holly bouts like the average age is PI between 25 and 30 there's a little only waterside except for the to the senior management team we've been like Jim Wilson as the president dining Scott Johnson was the CFO Chris my boss but otherwise it was a pretty young energetic group like in terms of the producers the junior producers the marketing team all the admins it was really fun coming to work like there was a gaming lounge set up so of course he set up the lounge I played like the first xbox ever they had Xbox they have a ps2 set up at a Gamecube set up with pretty much all the latest games and so I never that much of a gamer but it's Barbie - well first Xbox - Leslie project gotham this is a lot of fun I'm sure actually have the developers team brothers a guy named DJ lat I'm pretty sure he was the guy in charge of this development and maybe production so Sally was always his gig to go out and like meet developers and take their pitches to give you games that's how I know I think that's how he found the developers of course I was people council I work for ruin an anticline heart remember actually of all the games that I've worked on in that year the spire was when Iraqi police were working on the lease to be honest I actually had to go up and like remind myself I go back and found an old resume that said yeah I didn't work on em like oh okay remember working on other stuff more it may have been farther along in the production cycle when I arrived versus like those other games where as it got more long there from the beginning and what's the roles producer right is that a clearly defined role and what was he supposed to do like was he just doing his job like he thought he was doing supposed to be doing it right because at the end of day he didn't work for the developer gonna love work for Universal and so if Universal gave him the task making the best game possible according to his vision that maybe was the developer she dropped to do those things fish and socks in the game suck but that's that's not on the ability the developer that's really hungry you've got the publisher who holds the money and you know this contracts are purposely written to be in favor of a publisher at the end of the day the publisher can have to hold the run he sort of has all the power to negotiation right you know providing services they have to abide by the milestone schedule because they're trying to hit certain production dates and any they're hit certain things they get the product out and market on time as my experience has always been a tug of war gene developer publisher based on stuff like money and schedule with people over promise and under deliver so on one if you represent publisher has situation like that you know and someone says hey I'm going to deliver XYZ on this day I think since Dayton that they compensate this I don't need X&Y you follow the general game production I think burnout is very hot their house alone especially when it comes time accordion game production stuff our supreme off you tell it takes its toll I kept you see then I get Bremen Bert house is pretty high for legal like it's never that bad like I probably worked around 60 hours a week so I give you about my fellow co-workers working for them I can't prove them wrong but they're probably in the office longer than me like I would leave and it'll be there continuing the theme of removed content various textures also go entirely unused in the game even a picture of what appears to be an avocado can be found which leads us to discussing the fact that a good amount of textures such as the butterflies and dragonflies are based off real life images of what they were going for in fact it even seems like in some cases actual reference images became the final contrast texture here are a wide array of cuts textures from the game [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] this red look for ripto likely was meant to be used during the second phase of his battle because when you consider the fact that there are three stages of a fight the first being his normal look second being his red look and the third being his final monster form makes sense this is also supported by the fact that riptos unused textures corresponds with the color of the flame shield he has in the second round the flames of circle the arena were also very likely the change per phase being blue red then white as per the original Spyro trilogy many magazine adverts were produced for each instalment but when it came time friends of the dragonflies marketing they had to scramble to gather any screenshot but wasn't completely a work in progress they even we used an old Spyro render for a very odd-looking page that featured an extremely small image of monkey monastery this particular screenshot appears to be one of the earliest if not the earliest one taken for the game Spyros model and textures may even be slightly different than the final as well as sparks being much farther away from Spyro than normal although the quality makes it hard to tell but even the back of the game's box has some abnormal images to it containing an entirely cut Jurassic jungle enemy only seen elsewhere in the game's trailer if there's anyone who knows enter the Dragonfly better than everyone that would have to be Randall he's still able to remember working with each individual for three companies as well as the removed content both Randolph and Warren are the sole reason the game ever got released in the first place they also fought back at the corruption and knew they needed to get this product out there no matter what took his some words from Randall for his last hurrah fighting the good fight mark Cerny is the god of spyro in any video games I have a lot of respect for him he's a very very difficult person to work with wanted nothing to do with us [ __ ] studio Alex Carbonaro would just belt out artwork in digital art right down on the spot with no content no pencil work nothing no painted nothing conceptual he were just belt it out we take a screenshot of that send it up for approval it was a pretty brutal shutdown so I think you know the thing the universal itself would still have that with a giant tree house it looks like a giant tree is a bunch of islands and trees type things yeah I think that's the one that Scott Simon designed and it was really big there used to be one where you jump over giant blades or things like that they're taking blades was a foot level but it was part of a it was part of an obstacle course swinging blades I'm sure was just not realistic thing was not cool he can't have freaking blades coming in spiral the design of that one was pretty rough there was a minigame where you're flying through canyons there's or cloth awful because we had to come up with those in like a New York minute there had to be at least you know 15 levels cut the development cycle that game is very long and I know they cut or at least three-quarters or 1/2 the content out of the game I didn't want some that were some like some ops I mean I was completely out of ideas at this point but I think just coming up with an obstacle course of various types and they really weren't that cool the biggest problem that we had between the two studios in the house is that because you have an outsourcing studio that basically focuses on doing commercials and you know TVs television commercials or content you know digital content of all kinds their job is to make things look as beautiful as possible right so when we tell them we want a hallway to go up you know turn go straight forward so many meters turn left at this angle come up to this angle over here give them a mark above the level rendered in Maya you know just in block form and we say specifically we need that level we need this hallway to go this or this platform to do that or whatever and they would make changes because it's more aesthetically pleasing but at the same time it breaks the design or creates an a bug is you can't go any further the game just dead ends you would have to fight with them on that and unfortunately the majority of their staff were from various parts of Japan China you name it and then magically they would just forget how to speak English so sorry I can't understand you we're like what oh she would fight with his own employees and then he would actually have to go in and make the changes himself physically that the head of the head of that studio and then hand it to us well that's the kind of BS internally you know it just and it sounded all good on paper I'm sure in the beginning but an actual application it was just you know so many culture clashes they spent money on putting in a freaking granite top bar we never used it there was so much just stupid spending on things that were completely unnecessary the layout of the Hopf office was ridiculous because the thermostat was at the back of the building away from the Sun and the majority of everyone's workspaces we're at the front of the building on the street side so one side of the office was always like 40 degrees the other side of the office was 90 degrees that was normal so we'd have just we were just dying and of course they didn't int the windows or anything so we just put up like construction paper to block the signs we look like we were permanently closed from the outside and then right next door there was a place where almost people gathered so when you go out to lunch or come back there's just homeless people hitting you up for money you have no idea you you need to feed us the founders of the company you know John our morale worked together with gentle- and to clamsy and Jen's Anderson and they were the original heavy gear team from Activision when they used it to internal development and heavy gear to was legendary for wasting ridiculous amounts of money and time and this was the original team of that and these guys were the reason why active to stop doing internal development I didn't learn that until later I did run into yen's in a job interview he went to work at the guys who did EverQuest and they got independent now they can became daybreak studios and came in and set it on the call and started asking me questions who comes to Dec 6 and I recognized it someone yeah I'm not getting this job he just wanted to troll me I'm sure if you dug in deep enough people let's just start getting better and yet people never get over that you know it's like you wanted to do a good job now that's why I brought up the whole point about people making deadlines you know this is the first failure in my career I've never been on a game it was either canceled or a shutdown studio or anything like that one failed spectacularly so for a lot of us it was just that was just very depressing I mean Ricky wanted to hire me to come to the vendee Universal to drive the you know lead design from a point of safety so I could collect a state paycheck he offered me a job right then and there and to prove from the top whatever his name was I felt like I would just end up being scapegoated sad a good friends with jean-marc Morrell I had to go outside I don't even smoke but he and a few other people like he would smoke outside and stand out in the alley and smoke and you know I just came out to vent and he was one of those guys that you know I just chucked up a conversation with and I said straight to his face I will never work with yen's Anderson again this is it I'm done with him you know cuz all of his little things and I reached a point you know he was one of these guys that takes a vacation right before major deadline everybody else's stuff works except for his and I told you what happened if you have a crappy contract the publisher doesn't have to pay the studio so all of a star he makes a six-figure salary in the rest of us make regular salaries we can't afford to go without a paycheck you know it's not like we live paycheck to paycheck but we can't just skip paychecks you know three or four times in a row and this guy could he didn't care you would go gallivanting all over Europe you know starting up coca freakin Denmark or whatever the hell he does but you know we have major problems with him so I just said look I'm never gonna work with them again and Freight Jerell ami just you just nodded his head says he just looked at me and raised his eyebrows and realised that I was dead serious and then the very next day they moved me to Spiro muscle and Tim had their fair share of stuffing in gags in every single level in the game from NPC to dragonfly names dialogue and even credits most of these are based off of popular movies at the time due to them sometimes watching TV on the job you [Music] take these two over to the garage where do I want to clean up for dinner I was going into tosche station to pick up some power converters hey it's coffee station [Music] listen to me I'm George George McFly I'm your density I mean it could be your density opinion your destiny [Music] even a large chunk of enchanted forests dialog was ripped straight out of Mike Myers's movie likely being a basis for what was going to be the level script they never got around to finalizing the dialogue so it almost remains word-for-word as seen in so I married an axe murderer well it's a well-known fact sonny jim that there's a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world known as the pen tablet who learned everything in the world including the newspapers and meet try annually as a secret country mansion in colorado no dad's the meadows so who's in this printer word the Queen the Vatican the Gettys the Rothschilds I'm Colonel Sanders before he went Teta I hated that colonel with his wee beady eyes oh you're gonna be my chicken dad how can you hate the colonel because he puts an addictive chemical there's chicken at me Bianca would have even had a major role within cloud nine that she was going to be what power to the hourglass she still loaded in the level and passcode whilst cheerson completed still shows her basic function instead of the final versions dream beams which are powered by Spyros electricity spiral would have walked up to Bianca she would have flown all the way to the hourglass to activate it with her wand after all she did have the power to travel by rainbow in Year of the Dragon beyond the invincibility Jurassic offers or the occasional super flame super bubbled super nice super electric and super smash are all referred to in the game but not existing in the final version due to the low level count and not enough time being designated for power-ups with monkey monastery being the first level created it's only natural but it's the most polished full of ideas as well as having cut content present it not only features a beta Atlas picture but the reflections used the ice texture also a pictures taken before the layouts was final on top of that the door that opens once the level is complete only opens on the left side the right was planned to open as well but doesn't function entirely even the ice platforms you jump across to enter rip tock bombing originally moved sideways to make the challenge even harder speaking of rip Taj bombing this minigames geometry was originally entirely different and features cut models and textures both the manta ray capture minigame and I slide feature modeled tunnels that would have connected the minigames to the actual levels being a seamless experience this is also the case for a few other minigames but was scrapped simply because having two minigames bundled within the level model would have been a huge feat to accomplish and would have made the game load longer and have been even slower loading screens even detain level music specifically edited for them in total there are 5 tracks that range from 24 to 28 seconds while they do not play normally in the game when visiting a level from the debug menu they happen to play as intended you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the demo disk even presents fairly unfinished aspects of the game Sparks has an extra hit point where he turns purple the pause menu had only begun production and the windshield is activated differently additionally it actually contains the full version of the bullet time sheet where you can alter the speed and manually move the camera in 360 degrees unlike the final game [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] additional developers have answered more of our looming questions throughout the past months we reached out to literally everyone humanly possible which totals over a hundred individuals so here's a highlight of some new conversations from LinkedIn [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] since the Gamecube reports have done additional several weeks of development a lot of optimization and small changes are present tons of the textures in the game are also altered and are improperly mapped in do too hasty work aspects like the portals and effects are also substantially different between the versions each sound file in the game has a description as to what it's meant to play for which means glancing at the sounds list text files shows the intention for all the unused sound effects as well as several unused ideas and a bunch of other interesting tidbits [Music] [Music] you with this three-hour documentary halting to a stop spyro enter the dragonfly goes down as one of the most unfortunate development cycles in the gaming industry to date this game certainly never deserved all the uproar it got and still gets to this day in fact it's about time someone somewhere gave enter the Dragonfly the love it deserved which is primarily the reason this journey began back in February 2018 we hope you enjoyed this very deep look into the game it was a true honor to research and a wonderful time thank you for watching

Channel: Mr. FO1

Views: 17,857

Keywords: Behind The Scenes, Game Development, PS2, Scott Smith, Universal Interactive, Vivendi, Jason Fourier, Ricci Rukavina, Playstation 2, Check Six, Stewart Copeland, Gamecube, Game Developers, Equinoxe, Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly, Brent Oster, Enter the Dragonfly, Documentary, Warren Davis, Spyro 4, Interviews, Developers, Spyro, Cut Content

Id: H2c0Z98d4xI

Length: 85min 36sec (5136 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 06 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/tomadom64]

Love how no one has said anything about this or given it any attention. I feel like the community would have bigger feelings towards this, but I guess not.