Tony Warriner | |
---|---|
Born | October 19, 1968 |
Occupation | Video game designer |
Known for | Revolution Software |
Notable work | Broken Sword , Beneath a Steel Sky |
Spouse | Tanya Riarey |
Website | http://tonywarriner.io/ |
Tony Warriner (born 19 October 1968, Malton) is a British video game designer, programmer and co-founder of Revolution Software. At a young age he started playing adventure games, when they were just text adventures. He wrote his first game, Obsidian , while he was at school and sent it to Artic Computing for consideration. Artic's director, Charles Cecil, loved the game and convinced him to license it to Artic, and then to join Artic as a programmer. At Artic he wrote, together with Adam Waring, Ultima Ratio which was published in 1987 by Firebird. In the same year he got a job at Cecil's Paragon Programming, where games from US publishers were converted to European platforms. When Cecil had left to work for U.S. Gold, Warriner started doing 8-bit programming for games. In 1988 he created Death Stalker, published by Codemasters. In the same year he joined Cascade Games, where he worked on 19 Part One: Boot Camp , Arcade Trivia Quiz, and Arcade Trivia Quiz Question Creator. In 1989 Warriner moved to Bytron Aviation Systems based in Kirmington, Lincolnshire, where he wrote software for the aviation industry, David Sykes was his fellow programmer.
In March 1990 Cecil, Sykes, Noirin Carmody and Warriner founded Revolution Software. For their first game he wrote an innovative engine, called Virtual Theatre, which enabled the gameworld to be more active and dynamic than was previously possible. The game's title became Lure of the Temptress and it was published in 1992. It was followed by a string of other critically and commercially successful adventure games, including Beneath a Steel Sky , the Broken Sword series, In Cold Blood and Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado. Beneath a Steel Sky and Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars are often both referred to as one of the best adventures of all time, appearing on numerous "top" adventure game lists and receiving several awards and nominations. Warriner (with others) received a nomination for Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2004 and for Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - The Director’s Cut at the British Academy Video Games Awards in 2010.
With Steve Ince he began to explore new ideas and in 2006 he founded 720games to publish their own gaming projects. In the same year he presented his game Blocster, a single player puzzle game. Besides his work on new editions of Beneath a Steel Sky and the first two Broken Sword Games (2009/2010), he worked on various games that weren't developed by Revolution, including A Christmas Carol and Sticky Blocks. In 2023 Warriner published a memoir of his career in the games industry to the present time, entitled - Revolution: The Quest For Game Development Greatness. His current project is an Action-adventure game game called, Wormhole Dungeon.
In his youth Tony Warriner started playing adventures when they were just text adventures. Games like the original Unix Adventure , Zork and the Level 9 games were rich experiences for him and would inspire his future career. [1] Still at school, he learned how to program and he started to write a game in assembly code. He succeeded to complete a game by himself, failed all his exams in the process, but he managed to get a job with the game. [2] [3]
That job was at Artic Computing, a company where Charles Cecil, upcoming co-founder of Revolution, had already been working for a couple of years during his studies. Warriner lived close to where Artic was based (Brandesburton, near Hull) and, about seventeen years old, he had sent in his game for consideration. In the game, Obsidian, the avatar moves around in a jet-pack to fix power terminals in a space station, while picking up items and avoiding the defenses of the station. Cecil, who considered it to be brilliant, convinced him to have it published by Artic. Warriner then came to work for Artic (1985). [4] The cassette tape game was released for the Amstrad CPC in 1986. His next game, which he wrote together with Adam Waring, was Ultima Ratio, a vertical scrolling arcade shoot 'em up, set in space above the earth. Like Obsidian it exhibits colorful rooms that were typical for his early designs. Because Artic was already coming to an end, the game was finished for Telecomsoft and published in 1987 by Firebird. [5]
In the same year he got a new job at Paragon Programming, started by Cecil, and at Paragon various games were converted to other platforms. [6] When Cecil went to work for U.S. Gold, Warriner drifted around for some time, doing 8-bit games programming here and there. [7] One of the games he created in this period was Death Stalker. The arcade adventure is set in a mystical world of ghouls, spells and wizards, in which the player must find the lost key of darkness and descend to the deeper dungeons. Death Stalker, with music by David Whittaker, was published by Codemasters in 1988. [8]
In 1988 Warriner joined Cascade Games, where he worked on 19 Part One: Boot Camp (1988). Other games he worked on were Arcade Trivia Quiz and Arcade Trivia Quiz Question Creator, published by Zeppelin Games in 1989. [9] In 1989 Warriner moved to Bytron where he wrote aviation software. David Sykes, who would become co-founder of Revolution, was his fellow programmer at Bytron, where they worked on a system to replace the strips of paper that were used in the towers at airports. The system was the first in the world to computerize those and, coming from the 8-bit gaming scene, they had no option but to encode their initials in the messages. [10]
Warriner didn't stay long at Bytron, as he was contacted by Cecil in 1989, who wanted to set up his own studio. [11] Together with Sykes and Cecil's then-girlfriend Noirin Carmody they founded Revolution Software (March 1990). Warriner would stay a member (and co-owner) of the company till the present day. He would focus primarily on programming, but he also became involved in design, for which he is credited in various games.
In March 1990, in an office located in Hull, he began to work on what would become Revolution's first game, Lure of the Temptress (1992). [12] Warriner designed an innovative engine for the game, called Virtual Theatre, which was in some respects more versatile than the game engines used by LucasArts and Sierra at that time. [13] [14] One of its new features was that it allowed the in-game characters, instead of being static NPCs, to wander around the game world independently of each other, living their own lives and doing their own thing. [15] The game became, critically as well as commercially, one of the many successful games that would follow. [16] [17]
The next games he worked on were Beneath a Steel Sky (1994), Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (1996) [18] and Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror (1997). The typical Virtual Theatre features shown in Lure of the Temptress were scaled back in Beneath a Steel Sky, as they were hard to design for and more suitable to RPGs. [15] New features were added to Steel Sky though, such as an object-oriented system, a new conversation system and a sophisticated, separate conversation editor. [19] The cinematic Broken Sword games included more scripted events, cutscenes and parallax scrolling, as well as a new user interface and a conversation system with subject icons that didn't reveal what the main character was going to say. [20] Though it was released only a year after the original game, Broken Sword II added more technical advances. [21] [22] The sequel included an Easter egg for the first time in Revolution's games, [23] and a couple of years later Warriner revealed that the port of Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars to the Game Boy Advance would include – unlike the PC version - an Easter egg as well. [24] [25] The biggest change in the GBA version is the control interface that replaced the point-and-click method by direct control. [24] The original games used a version of the Virtual Theatre engine, which was updated frequently.
He continued to work on all the games that would be published in the next decade. As In Cold Blood (2000) was the first one of the 3D games that would follow, he had to write new functionality to the game engine, [2] and he worked on story design as well. In the same year Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado was published, a game that was based on the animated film, The Road to El Dorado . In this period he also worked on Good Cop Bad Cop, an action adventure for which a new in-house engine was developed, but the game, intended for the PS2, wasn't released. [26] After these games the Broken Sword series was continued in real-time 3D with Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon (2003). [27] Unlike some other companies, they had deliberately waited to bring Broken Sword to 3D until they felt that they got the quality they wanted. [28] And the move to 3D was fairly difficult, as many technical issues had to be dealt with that would never surface in a 2D game. [29] Besides for AI programming, Warriner was credited for story, game and section design. For Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon he received together with Cecil, Steve Ince and Neil Richards a nomination for Excellence in Writing at the Game Developers Choice Awards 2004. [30] In 2006 the fourth episode of the series, Broken Sword: The Angel of Death , was released, for which Warriner was credited for additional design. The game allowed the player to choose between point-and-click and direct control.
In 2009 and 2010 he was credited for his work on Beneath a Steel Sky - Remastered, Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - The Director’s Cut, and Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror - Remastered. He considered the iPhone version as the best one, as the interface brings the player closer to the game by touching the screen. [31] The Directors Cut of Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars includes another Easter egg, showing a room from Beneath a Steel Sky with one of its characters (the robot Joey) and the spaceman from Warriner's first game (Obsidian). [32] For the game he received together with Cecil and Neil Richards a nomination in the category Story at the British Academy Video Games Awards in 2010. [33]
After the Director's Cut version of Broken Sword, Warriner started working on a brand new engine, Virtual Theatre version 7, in order to deal with multiple platforms and screen resolutions. [34] The engine is used in Revolution's fifth Broken Sword game, entitled Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse , which was successfully funded in a Kickstarter campaign. [35] [36] The campaign updates included a video in which Warriner and Cecil talked about the game's characters and feedback. [37] In October 2012 he set up a Tumblr blog, called Tony's Revolution Dev Blog. [38]
With Ince he began to explore new ideas and in 2006 he started 720games to publish their own gaming projects. In the same year he presented his game Blocster, a single player puzzle game. [39]
Besides working on Revolution's games and Blocster, Warriner has also been working on various games that were (partially) developed by other companies. He worked on Disney's Story Studio: Disney's Mulan (Disney Interactive, Inc., Kids Revolution, 1999). He was also involved in A Christmas Carol (Nintendo DS, Sumo Digital, Ltd., 2009). With Jeff Rollason of AI Factory he created a new follow-up to its puzzle game Move it!. The game, entitled Sticky Blocks, was released in 2011. [40]
Warriner is married to artist Tanya Riarey. His daughter, Ella, is credited in Sticky Blocks and The Director's Cut. Professionally, he is highly interested in the latest hardware and software developments. [41] [42] His dream setup (2011) is an iMac with a 2500 x 1600 screen and a massive SSD. [43] Once asked about which of his games he was most proud of, his answer was that it would probably be Beneath a Steel Sky, as it was hard to do with very limited resources, and achieved a minor cult status. [15]
Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine (ScummVM) is a set of game engine recreations. Originally designed to play LucasArts adventure games that use the SCUMM system, it also supports a variety of non-SCUMM games by companies like Revolution Software and Adventure Soft. It was originally written by Ludvig Strigeus. ScummVM is free software that is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Beneath a Steel Sky is a 1994 point-and-click adventure game developed by British developer Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment for MS-DOS and Amiga home computers. It was made available as freeware – and with the source code released – for PC platforms in 2003. Set in a dystopian cyberpunk future, the player assumes the role of Robert Foster, who was stranded in a wasteland known as "the Gap" as a child and adopted by a group of local Aboriginals, gradually adjusting to his life in the wilderness. After many years, armed security officers arrive, killing the locals and taking Robert back to Union City. He escapes and soon uncovers the corruption which lies at the heart of society.
Revolution Software Limited is a British video game developer based in York, founded in 1989 by Charles Cecil, Tony Warriner, David Sykes, and Noirin Carmody.
Broken Sword is a series of adventure games. The first game in the series, Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars, was released and developed in 1996 by British developer Revolution Software. Its sequel, Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror, was released a year later, and was followed by Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon in 2003, Broken Sword: The Angel of Death in 2006, and Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse in 2013. A remake of the first game in the series, known as Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – The Director's Cut, was released in 2009, and a remake of the second game in the series, Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror – Remastered, in 2010 for iOS devices; other platforms followed in 2011.
In Cold Blood is an adventure game developed by Revolution Software for the PlayStation and Microsoft Windows in 2000 in Europe and in 2001 in North America. The player assumes the role of John Cord—an MI6 agent who is captured while on assignment and tries to figure out who betrayed him through a series of flashbacks.
Rolf Saxon is an American actor. He is well known for his voice-over work in video games, movies and TV shows.
Lure of the Temptress is a point-and-click adventure game published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment in June 1992 for Atari ST, MS-DOS, and Amiga. It was the first game developed by Revolution Software and uses their proprietary Virtual Theatre engine. The player assumes the role of Diermot, a young peasant who has to overthrow an evil sorceress. The game was well-received and re-released as freeware on April 1, 2003.
The Virtual Theatre is a computer game engine designed by Revolution Software to produce adventure games for computer platforms. The engine allowed their team to script events, and move animated sprites against a drawn background with moving elements using a point-and-click style interface. Upon its first release, it rivaled competing engines like LucasArts' SCUMM and Sierra's Creative Interpreter, due to its then high level of artificial intelligence. The engine was first proposed in 1989, while the first game to use it, Lure of the Temptress, was released in 1992, followed by Beneath a Steel Sky (1994), Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (1996) and Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror (1997).
Charles Cecil is a British video game designer and co-founder of Revolution Software. His family lived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when he was still very young, but was evacuated two years after Mobutu Sese Seko's coup d'état. He studied at Bedales School in Hampshire, England. In 1980 he began his studies in Engineering Manufacture and Management at Manchester University, where he met student Richard Turner who invited him to write text adventures for Artic Computing. After completing his degree in 1985 he decided to continue his career in game development and became director of Artic. The following year he established Paragon Programming, a game development company working with British publisher U.S. Gold. In 1987 he moved into publishing as a software development manager for U.S. Gold. A year later he was approached by Activision and was offered the position of manager of their European development studio.
Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon is an adventure game released on Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 in November 2003. It is the third installment in the Broken Sword series, released six years after the previous instalment, The Smoking Mirror. The Sleeping Dragon moved the series to 3D graphics, and is the only game in the series not to use a point and click interface. The player assumes the role of George Stobbart, an American patent lawyer who flies to the Congo to write a patent for a scientist who claims to have found a source of unlimited energy.
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is a 1996 point-and-click adventure game developed by Revolution Software. It is the first in the Broken Sword series, co-written and directed by Charles Cecil. The player assumes the role of George Stobbart, an American tourist in Paris, as he attempts to unravel a deep conspiracy involving a sinister cult and a hidden treasure, seeing him travel to various locations around Europe and the Middle East. The game's storyline was conceived to feature a serious tone and heavily influenced by research on Knights Templar by Cecil, but was also interlaced with humor and graphics in the style of classic animated films.
Broken Sword: The Angel of Death is a 3D point-and-click adventure game developed by Revolution Software and Sumo Digital, which was released in 2006 in Europe and Australia and in 2007 in North America. Being released only on Windows, it is the only game in the Broken Sword series not to be released on any console. The player assumes the role of George Stobbart, an American patent lawyer, as he and Anna Maria, a girl with an old manuscript, search for a great treasure that the manuscript leads them to. The game uses a point and click interface, though George's moves can be controlled using a keyboard.
Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror is a point-and-click adventure video game originally released on Microsoft Windows and PlayStation in 1997. It was re-released on Microsoft Windows, OS X and iOS as a remastered edition in 2010 and on Android in 2012. It is the second installment in the Broken Sword series, and the first game in the series that does not follow the Knights Templar storyline. The player assumes the role of George Stobbart, a young American who is an eyewitness to the kidnapping of his girlfriend Nicole Collard.
Obsidian is an action-adventure computer game for the Amstrad CPC personal computer published by Artic Computing in 1986. The game is set on the titular space station located within the centre of an asteroid, which is out of control and drifting towards a black hole. The player must guide an astronaut with a jet pack around the station and re-activate its engine shields to prevent the Obsidian's destruction. This involves collecting items and using them to solve puzzles, while avoiding the Obsidian's reactivated security systems.
Steve Ince is a British writer and game designer, known for his work on Revolution Software titles such as the Broken Sword series, and is working on a freelance basis.
Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse is the fifth title in the Broken Sword series of adventure video games, developed and published by Revolution Software, for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Android and iOS. The game was released in two episodes: the first was made available on 4 December 2013; the second was released on 17 April 2014 for Microsoft Windows, OS X and Linux. The Serpent's Curse was announced on 23 August 2012, along with a Kickstarter project; it was launched for the development of the game, which had been self-funded until the launch, to be completed. The game is presented in HD and returns to the series' 2D roots, with 3D characters pre-rendered and saved in 2D frames. The majority of the funding for the game was raised through Kickstarter, more than $771,000 of the requested $400,000 were raised, and together with PayPal donations, over $823,000.
The Goat Puzzle is a puzzle featured in Revolution Software's 1996 point and click adventure game Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. In the puzzle, protagonist George Stobbart must gain access to an underground dig located in a castle in Lochmarne, Ireland, while avoiding a fierce goat. The puzzle's perceived difficulty is due to it requiring the player to think in a different way to their approach to previous puzzles in the game. Many gamers and critics consider it to be one of the hardest video game puzzles of all time.
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – The Director's Cut is a 2009 enhanced remake and director's cut of the classic 1996 point-and-click adventure game Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars developed by Revolution Software. It was released for Wii, Nintendo DS, iOS, Microsoft Windows, OS X, Android and Linux spanning 2009 to 2012. The player assumes the roles of George Stobbart and Nicole Collard, who was a pivotal but not a playable character in the original version.
Beyond a Steel Sky is a 2020 adventure video game developed and published by Revolution Software. Set ten years after the events of the 1994 video game Beneath a Steel Sky, players assume the role of Robert Foster as he finds himself returning to Union City on the hunt for a kidnapped child, only to learn that the city's new utopia state is not what it appears to be. The game's design utilized the Unreal Engine 4, focusing on cel-shaded 3D graphics, including comic book-styled text boxes.
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is an adventure video game developed by Revolution Software and published by BAM! Entertainment for the Game Boy Advance (GBA) handheld game console. It is based on the original game of the same name from 1996. and released in North America and Europe in March 2002.