1. Hello, Łukasz "Szafa z grami" here.
2. Today I would like to start a new, so far unnamed, series about Polish games which have
3. never seen daylight.
4. Since a month I have been building a database of Polish games in the form of magazine excerpts, that is
5. Secret Service, Top Secret, Gambler, Reset, Świat gier komputerowych [[names of Polish gaming magazines]] and so on.
6. I've collected over 1200 articles about over 400 games from which it turns out, that 40 of them were never released.
7. And so I've decided those are stories worth telling, today we're going to talk about the game Warhammer 40k: Agents of Death
8. made by the Mirage company.
9. The game was supposed to be released around 2000 after the release of the well-received in Poland,
10. and so not-so-well-received in the west, Mortyr, which was a great financial success, which allowed in a
11. quite unexpected way to get the Warhammer 40k license from Games Workshop.
12. At first the ambition of the developers was quite big, they wanted to create a singleplayer game in the Games
13. Workshop's world.
14. But quite soon after the first announcements they've realized that with their
15. financial resources and the size of their team they are not able to deliver the epicness
16. for which Warhammer's worlds are known, and it was decided to turn the premise of the game by 180 degrees, a
17. singleplayer game was to become a multiplayer game similar to Quake 3.
18. But the only excerpts I have found in the magazines were from Secret Service and CD-Action.
19. Secret Service nr 71 and the 41st CD-Action, which were still describing the singleplayer version.
20. They were described in this way: "Well we'll be damned! Mirage is making a game set in the world of Warhammer!
21. Naturally, we're talking about Warhammer 40000: Agents of Death.
22. The game will be running on the engine which is also to be used in Mortyr II!"
23. Unfortunately as we know today, that wasn't the case, but it will probably be discussed in an another episode.
24. "That means it will be a FPP game! Release in December 2000.
25. And supposedly it's supposed to be a REVELATION.
26. We hope so. But looking at the screens, we're optimistic!"
27. On the other hand Secret Service waxed lyrical in this way:
28. "After the delayed, but still successful, release of MORTYR, MIRAGE doesn't slow down in their efforts to satisfy
29. the most picky gamers and is preparing the release of WH40K: AGENTS OF DEATH - a game on the WARHAMMER 40K license.
30. AOD is supposed to be ready for the 2000's Christmas Eve and it's engine
31. will be also used in MORTYR 2 (release date still not planned).
32. It looks like we have the first strong team of developers whose games are able reach success in the west
33. and who are wooed not only by the countries of the former Warsaw Pact.
34. Meanwhile the version of M&M7 localized by MIRAGE should be already in sale."
35. The screens appearing in the both articles are practically identical.
36. As far as I know they originate from the singleplayer version, but from now on we're going
37. to talk about the multiplayer version.
38. At first the game was being created by roughly the same team which made Mortyr, which means
39. Sebastian Zieliński was still the one in charge of the Intercalaris Engine and Paweł Kalinowski was the producer.
40. The works were going in a quite good tempo, a dozen of really well-designed maps was finished, there's quite a lot of
41. finished weapons and what's interesting, and quite innovative for these times as it was used quite recently,
42. we had 3 character classes to choose from, so, uh, something that was used quite
43. recently in games such as Quake Champions or Overwatch.
44. The characters have different speed, jumpability
45. [[I guess he meant jumping height but I wanted to keep the translation more direct]], durability, armor
46. and also weapons which they could pick up in the arena, things which in these times in comparison
47. to Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament was totally out there.
48. It could be said that the game was practically finished, but in a certain moment some perturbations happened
49. which resulted in Sebastian Zieliński leaving the Mirage studio and unfortunately with him quitting,
50. the studio was left with a game without an engine, because Zieliński owned the rights to the engine.
51. Tomasz Mazur couldn't come to an agreement with Sebastian, so Mirage was left with the assets and basically,
52. basically that was it.
53. Mirage managed to buy the Lithtech engine from Monolith, which unfortunately didn't meet
54. the expectations of the developers and after half a year of attempts to make something from the beginning
55. and sending it to Games Workshop in the form of some kind of an update in the subject of the developing game
56. the people from Games Workshop couldn't understand why after half a year they suddenly receive something that
57. looks and plays much worse than what was shown earlier, which unfortunately led to the licence being taken away.
58. Looking at what was finished on the Intercalaris Engine I must say it's such a shame the game wasn't released
59. and the guys, Tomasz Mazur and Sebastian Zieliński couldn't make a deal since we've played a few sessions
60. of the game's multiplayer and the game played really well and didn't look bad at all.
61. What I would like to announce today is the practically finished Intercalaris version being made available,
62. unfortunately I couldn't get the Lithtech version, since it was lost somewhere on Paweł Kalinowski's hard drives.
63. But from what I've heard it's not really a big loss.
64. The game will be available to download in a link in the video's description.
65. However, I must add a few disclaimers:
66. First, you must be aware the game wasn't finished so some things aren't working entirely
67. as they're supposed to and sometimes the game can crash horribly, but still,
68. we could call it a beta version of the game.
69. Neither me nor Sebastian Zieliński, nor any of the game's developers can't give you any support so you are on your own.
70. I'll try to put some of my own observations and tips on launching the game in a text file,
71. playing it is fully possible, you can play online, you can run a LAN party, the game is definitely playable.
72. There's a dozen levels e.g. we can fight in the area of the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw.
73. The weapons are also quite interesting, I think the game can provide you, even today, with a few hours of great fun.
74. We played with about 8 players and lags can happen and it's one of the game's problems.
75. It's much safer to host a LAN party at home and play through the local network instead of playing online
76. since you don't have to make an account on Hamachi and so on, which causes lags.
77. I'm always quite unlucky and end up having a slower connection and unfortunately, there's quite a bit of lagging.
78. So, folks, I wish you a nice time with the game, I think it's worth it.
79. In the next episodes I will be publishing other games which haven't been released yet.
80. Some of them more, some of them less complete, those aren't only games released on PC but also games
81. for Amiga, Saturn, Gameboy and other various strange platforms,
82. so if you like this series and you're interested in the history of unreleased Polish games
83. please write if it's fine in the comments, if you don't like it give a thumb down...
84. [[just some stuff about the channel further on]]
85.