Primordia News

Finally after long testing we've managed to fix a bug that while random has happened to a few people over the years.

-Fixed a crash bug with wiring UI. [if you know, you know, otherwise spoiler free]
-Fixed a repetition of a quip in the same UI to avoid annoying players.

Tiny patch:
-Ed a wonderful user on the WEG discord, reported a bug in regards to a music track not playing in a specific point in the game, on specific circumstances, cannot explain further cause that'd be a spoiler.

Early today, Marauder Film exercised its option to purchase the rights to make a cinematic adaptation of Primordia! It’s another major step forward, even if the final destination is still a good ways off.

This journey started five years ago with an email from Bastiaan Koch (head of Marauder Film) to Mark Yohalem (Primordia’s writer/designer) asking about the possibility of adapting Primordia. Bastiaan is a movie-industry veteran with decades of experience on films like Pacific Rim, Rango, and Ready Player One.

Given the overwhelming enthusiasm from co-creators James Spanos (Primordia’s coder) and Victor Pflug (Primordia’s artist)—and after meeting with Bastiaan in person and seeing how enthusiastic he was—Mark got over his uncertainties, and we all signed an option with Marauder Film. It seemed like an impossible dream, but bit by bit, Bastiaan worked to turn that dream into reality. He enlisted Walker McKnight, Winner of the Academy’s Nicholl Fellowship screenwriting award, to write a treatment and then a screenplay, and brought in his team of artists to develop the project’s look.

Over the years of that development process, Bastiaan spent hours talking with each of us about what Primordia meant to us. When he shared Walker’s draft script in January 2023, we each responded in our own style. Mark told Bastiaan about his “Aunt Virginia, whose poem ‘The Inheritors’ was so inspirational for Primordia,” explaining that in another poem, she imagined undergoing a sea-change that would bring new joy to others: “Shape me and shine me into a sea prize / Found by a boy’s / Quick eyes in glad surprise. / Sea, sky and sand, / Let me one day / A small child’s happy summer memory.” Vic invoked the film franchise that inspired his artwork on Primordia: “This is just fantastic in every way. It feels a bit like the sequel to Aliens to me—punchier and more action oriented than the original, but told in the same universe and the same world, with the same vision at its core.” James was simple and direct: “Exciting!”


As you can see from the poster, and as we’ve talked about before, this is a Marauder Film project, not a Wormwood Studios one. Our game is a jumping-off point, but Marauder is not simply making a non-interactive version of Mark’s story with an HD version of Vic’s graphics. Cinema has its own imperatives and strengths, and Bastiaan’s team members have their own distinctive talents as storytellers and artists, even if they don’t have a coder like James!

We hope Marauder Film brings new players to the game we made so many years ago, and it’s fascinating to watch another team explore and build upon our creation. We’ll keep you posted as we learn more.

Happy birthday to Primordia! Today marks 11 years since its release!! And we have worked on a big patch. A list of specific follows below, but I'd like to prefacing it by saying, that we love your support and your encouraging words over the years. Myself and Mark have constantly put work into Primordia primarily to reward the players for their faith in us and in the game, inherently. I hope everyone has a wonderful time playing the game during the holiday season, that's almost upon us. Thank you so much, I can't stress that enough!! We love you!


Primordia Patch Notes:
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1) Ctrl-G now switches between MOUSE/KEYBOARD to skip speech and MOUSE/SPACE.
Essentially this means when the only keyboard key that will work is space and any mouse click will also skip
the dialog/speech lines
2) Re-arranged options/settings in the OPTIONS/SETTINGS UI, so that they make more sense.
3) Added OPTIONS/SETTINGS on the Main Menu Screen [bottom right, there's a cog/gear]
4) Added an extra option that defines whether mouse/keyboard/time is how dialog/speech progresses
or mouse/keyboard meaning it will remain till the player clicks or hits a key.
5) Added an extra option for text, which is Voice Only. Any voiced lines that are difficult to read
or like boops or bleeps, will still appear on screen, but this essentially allows players to play the
game, without text visually appearing on the screen.
6) The game has been upgraded to 3.6.0.50 version of the engine, saves will not break to our testing,
but in case they do end up breaking, you can revert to the previous version of the engine.
The reason why we change to this version, is because it fixes a lot of visual issues and compatibility issues
with input devices [mice and keyboard]. It also allows the game to run at more likely a desired and proper
resolution for the player.
7) Fixed the infamous issue with the "Three Musketeers" and "We're all in this together" achievements.
8) Fixed an issue with Crispin disappearing.
9) Now settings persist through saves [meaning your settings will now be the same for all your saves]



- If you want to revert to the older Primordia, opt into beta channel "351primordia"/"Primordia AGS 3.5.1",
password is "olderprimordia".

Here's a small guide.
1) Right click on Primordia, go to PROPERTIES.
2) Properties
3) Betas
4) typing in that text input box "olderprimordia" WITHOUT QUOTES, hitting check code
5) Hitting the blue button that will appear
6) The game will begin downloading files and once that's done, your saves will still be there
and ready to be loaded.

As I've mentioned before, a couple years ago we were approached by Bastiaan Koch of Marauder Film about adapting Primordia into TV or film. Bastiaan is an acclaimed VFX artist able to push the visuals to the next level, and he has had a longstanding interest in post-apocalyptic settings and robots, making him a great match to our game. (Just to hit a few of the highlights: Bastiaan is a VFX Supervisor at FuseFX and a veteran of LucasFilm, and he's been a part of three Oscar-winning and five Oscar-nominated VFX teams.)

As anyone who has worked in the industry knows, it's a lot easier to express interest in adapting a game than to actually adapt one, particularly when the game wasn't trying to be "cinematic" at the outset (the way modern AAA action games are, for instance). But Bastiaan has stuck with the project doggedly -- through a pandemic, no less -- and, along with others (including Walker McKnight), has put together an initial screenplay and outline for a Primordia movie. Walker is himself the winner of the Academy's prestigious Nicholl Fellowship for screenwriting.

What they've crafted is not "Primordia the game in a screenplay format." Instead, Bastiaan and Walker found the elements of the game that resonated with them most, and as well as the elements that go best in the cinematic medium, and then they added a great deal of themselves and their own vision into the project. That's how it has to be. The thought of folks creating something out of Primordia without putting their own souls into it would be terrible! A theme of Primordia is humanity's inheritors taking responsibility for building a new world rather than mechanistically sticking to their programming in a context where it no longer made sense! So too with this: if Marauder manages to pull this off (and so far, Bastiaan has proven indefatigable), they will bring forth a new world of Primordia, rooted in the old one to be sure, but suited to new creators in a new context.

As a jumping off point, here are some thoughts from Bastiaan:


And if you're curious, here's a look at one of Bastiaan's original projects, which has been picked up by Netflix:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

All of that is to say: exciting times! I'm hopeful that we'll be able to share more concrete elements with you as the project goes on, but either way, we're proud that our little game has inspired such an undertaking.

Mark, Vic, James