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Rumor Control on Duke Nukem Forever & Prey
Several rumours have popped up today in regards to Duke Nukem
Forever & Prey. Here is some text taken from George Broussard's
.plan file about these issues. Have a read...
I'll make this brief because we're busy working and don't have time for silly rumor distractions.
FACT: Duke Nukem Forever will NOT be shown at E3 in any capacity, by
OUR choice. We have decided to stay focused and work through E3, and
not let the distractions of a trade show dictate "when it's done". GT
fully supports our decision and should be applauded for it. Duke Nukem:
Zero Hour (N64) will be the Duke Nukem focus and man, let me tell you
what, it rocks! We've been testing and tweaking it for 2 months and I
see a million seller there.
FACT: GT has not "dropped, cancelled, pulled support, or poo-poo'ed"
any part of Prey. They have always been supportive of our products.
FACT: Prey has had it's problems, but this is not news to anyone.
We're designing a new engine (announced late last year when we hired
Corrinne Yu). We parted ways with two key Prey developers last November
(lead coder and project leader). These moves were made because we
weren't happy with the tech in Prey. This is all old news. While new
tech is being developed all content developers in the company are busy
on Duke Nukem Forever. We didn't think this was such big news, but
apparently we should have called 60 Minutes? ; )
NOTE TO OUR FANS: We'll update everyone on Prey when the time is
right. But, if anyone is anticipating Prey anytime soon, you shouldn't
be. We thought it was obvious that this game was a long way off, since
we're creating a new engine. We probably should have been a little more
clear about that and we apologize. Meanwhile, our sleeves are rolled up
and we're all busy making one of the coolest games you've ever seen
(DNF).
COMMUNITY NOTE: Seems to me that today's rumors were fairly
inaccurate and something to take into account in the future. It'd sure
be nice if "respectable" web sites would email us for clarification
FIRST before posting wild claims from known rumor sites.
Jason "loonyboi" Bergman (http://www.loonygames.com)
Billy "wicked" Wilson (http://www.voodooextreme.com)
David Laprad (http://www.avault.com)
Jason Bates (http://pc.ign.com/)
Kudos to kick ass web guys above for emailing us about the facts BEFORE posting anything. Responsible journalism at it's finest.
We're going back to work now.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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3D Realms Makes Gamecenter's Top 10 List - 6 Times!
GameCenter has been around for two years and decided to rank their top ten feature stories of more than 2000 total. Six of those features included 3D Realms!
* Best Feature #9: Prey was one of the games ranked in a feature titled, "The Magnificent 7."
* Best Feature #8: Wolfenstein 3-D is ranked number three is a feature titled, "The Hall of Game Innovation."
* Best Feature #6: Duke Nukem 3D was matched against Quake in another
major feature, with Duke winning in the areas of weapons, deathmatching
and interface.
* Best Feature #4: The original Duke Nukem ranked number five in a feature titled, "The Top 10 Downloads of All Time."
* Best Feature #2: In a feature titled "Separated at Birth," Duke Nukem
and Tom Jones are compared with shocking results. GameCenter rates this
feature as maybe "the funniest story GameCenter has ever published."
* Best Feature #1: This probing feature on "Sex in Games" also references Duke Nukem a time or two!
This is a really fun set of stories, some of which you might have
missed. You can also vote for your favorite feature. At the time of
this writing the top four features leading the voting all include
Apogee/3D Realms games.
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Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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3D Realms at ECTS
A lot has happened over the US Labor Day Weekend, and we're back in
gear to let you know what's going on. First up is coverage of the 1998 ECTS Show
(That's the UK equivalent of E3). There's been several previews and
comments about our titles there, so here's what we've found...
1. Max Payne Preview
- Set in contemporary New York, the game will not draw upon
science-fiction elements for its weapons array. Instead, each gun has a
real-world equivalent. While this may not be so revolutionary, the
modeling of the weapons is. Max Payne will feature a 3D particle-based
system, so that muzzle flashes are both randomized and ultrarealistic.
2. Duke Nukem: Time to Kill Preview - Move over Lara Croft, Duke's coming to get a piece of your third person action.
3. Duke Nukem Forever Preview
- The two chaps charged with keeping the laughs � John St John and
George Broussard - have plenty of source material. Ideas being kicked
around include a visit out in the desert to a place called Slick
Willy's - where rooms will be called Paula Jones or Monika Lewinsky.
Vocal jokes will abound too as the ever cynical Duke "Borrows some
guy's ass..." to get to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
4. Prey Preview
- Prey is widely touted as the true next generation in first-person
shoot 'em-ups, with a powerful, original engine, advanced geometry and
mind-bending potential for interactivity. Its 3D engine adopts a new
system known as Portal Technology, which allows a full six degrees of
freedom in a very, very smooth environment.
Also, the Max Payne Preview has a couple of screenshots, make sure to check them out, too. All four of these links come from Gamespot UK, a European Gaming News site. Thanks to 3D Portal for the link info.
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Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Quake II Killers
 The
premier issue of PC Accelerator (http://pcxl.ign.com/) just arrived,
with a feature story titled, "Quake II Killers." Five Q2 Killers were
chosen and scored (in parenthesis): Duke Nukem Forever (51), Prey (50),
Half-Life (47), Daikatana (47), and Sin (46).
For Prey, PCXL wrote: "Portal technology is the hot, upcoming
technology, and Prey kicked that off. From what we've seen [it's] truly
the next step in 3D gaming. The realistic environments and complete
interaction with them create a virtual world unlike any other we've
seen."
Just missing the the cut for the top 5 "Q2 Killers" was Max Payne.
PCXL commented: "A high action quotient working within the
story-powered framework. Max has a real purpose. A murdered boss and
slaughtered family provide a backbone for many twists and turns."
Also in this issue we find a fun, original article called, "The 25
Greatest Guy Games." What's the greatest manly game of all time? Need
we state the obvious?! Hail to the king, baby! Duke Nukem scores
another victory. Says PCXL, "No game can even come close to this
near-flawless combination of all things we cherish...Drinking, sex,
violence, and expletive-loaded one-liners."
This issue is out on the newsstands now - make sure to pick up a copy of it today!
UPDATE: More from the premiere issue of PC Accelerator: On
page 121, in their "X-TRA" department, there's a top 10 list entitled
The Power Meter, which shows the editor's choices for the most notable
companies in the PC game industry. We're surprised and pleased that 3D
Realms tops the list! The issue states: "With Prey, Duke Nukem Forever,
and Max Payne stealing the show at this year's E3, 3D Realms
established itself as the one to beat in 3D gaming."
Also on the list, Epic MegaGames takes #2, GT Interactive grabs #4, and id Software nails down #9.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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PC Games Spooges
 The
September 1998 issue of PC Games Magazine is on the stands. There is
some spooging going on over there about our games, and what we have
planned. Here's a sample of what they have to say (make sure to go get
the magazine yourself on the newsstands):
1. "The Engines of 99" Article (Pg. 29) - They speak highly of both
our Prey technology, as well as the switch from Quake II tech to Unreal
tech for Duke Nukem Forever.
2. "State of the Game" Article (Pg.
62) - They talk about Duke Nukem Forever, Max Payne, & Prey
(incorrectly listing it as a game done by another company).
3. "Stunners & Bummers" Article (Pg. 77) - They spooge about Duke Nukem Forever and what they saw at E3 '98.
Here's some quotes from the various articles they have about us:
1. (About Prey) - The wait's been long, but it looks like it will be worth it.
2. (About Max Payne) - This game doesn't have aliens; it has bad
mobsters, crooked cops, grungy NY alleys and sparkling high-rises,
modeled guns that behave and sound as they should, excellent lighting
effects, and cool comic book style cut scenes.
3. Party on, 3D Realms. I'll admit that the DNF I saw at E3 won't
exactly be what I see out of the box, thanks to an engine change from
the Quake II engine to the Unreal engine. But I believe. I'm a sucker
for big bosses, big weapons, and big hooters. What stunned me was the
new stuff, like any character/player being able to pick up and use any
weapon and interact with any model, and face animations with true
lip-syncing. Oh, and the amazing built-in mods such as "spread the
disease" and a variation on "kill the guy with the ball".
Plus much more. Make sure to check out the magazine at your
newsstands. They also have our E3 floor video for Duke Nukem Forever on
the companion CD-ROM with the magazine. You can also download the video
(as well as the Max Payne and Prey videos) from our master download page.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Prey Development Update
Wow, I was just looking back over our Prey news and realized how damn long it's been since I penned an update for you good and patient folks. Yes, we're still alive and well here in Talon Brave country, and working our butts off on the game!
On the coding side of things, we made a huge decision-we decided to move Prey into DirectX territory to support multiple 3D cards. As you know, we'd been developing under Glide and we'd been tentatively planning to utilize OpenGL as our support API. As we evaluated the whole 3D accelerator question more fully, it became clear that Microsoft had made some very welcome course corrections in DirectX 6, making at a very attractive option. That, plus their support assistance and the fact that we only have to deal with one fully-implemented API and vendor (and that every 3D card out there has some sort of DirectX support) made the decision easy.
So, for the past few weeks since E3, we've been porting everything over. Tom did all the low level initialization coding and texture management and William is handling the rendering side of things. It was also a great opportunity to dive in and optimize the rendering pipeline so that it should be faster under DX6 than under Glide, and that's a good thing indeed.
Once William wraps up his end of things next week, he'll be jumping into Preditor once again to support a number of features requested by our GSEs.
Loyal has been working full-tilt to nail down our character LOD system, and he's done a commendable job. It's cool, because the character polygon reduction process takes into account the texture swatches that an artist has laid out, so that we keep excellent visual continuity on a reduced actor's surface. Also, since it's a Loyal thing, he's thrown in way too much control, like massive undo and the fact that you can texture an animated model while it's cycling through LOD levels (not useful at all, but tres cool in principle).
Tom has been "low level boy"-polishing his gem of a PreyOS at the lowest levels of networking and entity communication.
Tom is also handling the implementation of our sound and music system. For those of you who didn't get to hear about Prey at E3, we're using Power Micro Research's Toltec Audio Engine in Prey. PMR is a small firm based out of Austin and they came to us a while back to show us their 3D audio system. At that point, we'd been using Diamondware's Sound Toolkit, and Tom Tucker came by to show us Toltec. It was a 3D system, but we weren't sure whether or not we wanted to go that route-what we wanted was pure speed. As it turned out, their 3D sound system is the fastest sound API we've ever seen, and it delivers 3D on any Windows PC with MMX. Man, it's a sweet system, and we've had them do some custom coding for us so that it fits neatly into the PreyOS. Oh yes, working with PMR, we've got the Toltec system to handle fully interactive music... more on this later. Just use your imagination: KMFDM original music, but totally interactive... man, oh man!
On the content side of things, the GSEs are wrapping up their initial work-through of environments in chapters two and three and are getting ready to dive into chapter five. Allen and David have been cranking out the models, which means that between 2D textures and the plethora of Skinner texturing work to do, Scott and Steve have plenty to keep them off the streets at night.
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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More E3 Commentary
The August issue of Next Generation magazine has an E3 wrap-up
report, and they list what they consider to be the 15 most promising
games (across all platforms, not just PC games). Two 3D Realms' games
made the list: Max Payne and Prey.
For Max Payne, they say: "Hard-hitting action, a fast engine, and
tons of 3D Realms' trademark attitude." (Note: Remedy Entertainment is
the game's primary developer, with 3D Realms acting as a secondary
co-developer.)
For Prey, they wrote: "Prey has come out on top. Featuring 3D
Realms' new portal-based engine, spectacular lighting effects, and a
story that actually matters."
Duke Nukem Forever didn't get mentioned. Duke is not happy.
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Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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The E3D Realms Report
3D Realms has been nominated in several categories of the UGO Best of E3 Show awards. These awards are given out on June 22nd, but in the meantime, here's a list of what we're nominated for..
1. Most Promising New Game - Prey (Awarded to a title not part of an existing franchise)
2. Best PC Game - Duke Nukem Forever
3. Best Action Game - Duke Nukem Forever
4. Best Action Game - Prey
In other awards news, The All Games Network has handed out their awards from E3, and this is what we won:
1. Best Action Game - Prey
2. Most Anticipated Game - Duke Nukem Forever
3. Titles to Watch - Max Payne
In Photo Archive news,
I've placed 20 more pictures online. That brings it to a total of 80
regular shots, and 70 Booth Babe shots. I'm probably about halfway done
with the regular shots - I hope to have them all online before the end
of the week.
UPDATE @ 7PM: 20 more pictures put online! That's a total of 100 now. I've got about 40 left to go.
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Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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The E3D Realms Report
PC Gaming.com has placed two reviews of our games online. The two games covered by them are Max Payne and Prey. Make sure to check out what they have to say about our games. PC Gaming had this to say about Prey:
* This game (Prey) is so awesome that it's not a Quake Killer,
it's not an Unreal Killer, but an industry killer. Nothing even comes
close.
They had this to say about Max Payne:
* They'll get my money when it comes out, as they make a great game.
* Max Payne was one of the top titles at E3. Nuff Said.
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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The E3D Realms Report
UPDATE (5:00PM): OGR has given out their E3 "Best of Show" awards. Among the awards were:
1. Game of Show (Runner Up): Max Payne
2. Most Promising First Person Shooter - Prey
3. Most Promising Action Game - Max Payne
4. Most Promising Software Technology (Runner Up): Prey
They also ran a separate "Best 25 Games of the show", and all three 3D Realms PC Games (Duke Nukem Forever, Max Payne, & Prey) all placed. Click on any of the links here to see what OGR had to say about the games.
Also, we have more shots of Lara Croft! That's right, more Booth Babe shots!
(I thought I was done). The first two were given to me by Onethumb from
Ritual Software (shots #64 and #65) - Thanks Don! The remainder
(#66-70) come from our own Keith Schuler. The Babe Shots Return! :)
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Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Prey Development Update
In my last update, I told you that we were expecting some new KMFDM material. Well, it came (4 theme tracks), and boy, does it rock! The whole team, in shifts, filed into my office, we closed the door, cranked up my stereo and let it rip. By the end of the CDR, our jaws were hanging open-this is some of the best stuff I've ever heard from KMFDM (that's what Sascha promised us, and it looks like they're delivering).
While it'll be some time before you can hear their tunes (though those of you "lucky" enough to brave the mayhem of E3 will get a short aural peek), I thought I'd fill you in a bit on how they're working on the music.
Our approach is simple-build the body of music out of a small collection of recognizable themes. KMFDM and I have been working together on designing the various Prey themes. Of course, there will be the main game theme, plus themes to represent each of the species of the Trocara (as well as the Keepers), and some other themes to represent other key characters in the game.
I put together some emotional descriptions of the various themes (like, how are you supposed to feel when you hear the Keeper's theme, for example), plus relevant backstories. From there, the band has been working on different approaches-one great idea that Sascha and Tim had was to attribute a certain beat speed to each of the Trocaran species. The latest CDR that they sent has rough versions of four themes, and it was cool to close our eyes and listen-we could really visualize the Trocaran species through their music.
We then put together our comments and thoughts on the themes to sent back to them for revision. Right now, they've gathered together (some members of the band live overseas) in Seattle for a month of studio work, laying down tracks for us and for their next album.
I'll keep you posted...
-Paul
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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Prey Development Update
This is one of those rare Mondays that just crackles with excitement-a lot will be converging together this week, on both the tech and the content side of things. It's either that of the four cups of coffee that have my heart beating this morning.
Last week, Loyal gave us our first taste of the new Skinner. Loyal has been spending quite a lot of time converting his hybrid MFC program to a pure PreyOS tool. Now, our artists can texture the characters right in any game environment they'd like, and actually see the game's dynamic lights effect the character as they work. We're really working towards a WYSIWYG paradigm with our tools, and its coming together quite nicely.
After much discussion, we rearranged the desks in the main Prey "pit"-now, virtually all of the content creators are facing west, in line with the spinning of the Earth. We're hoping that this will cut down on their "developer vertigo."
John's father, when he had some time on his hands a few months back, emailed me and asked if he could reproduce our Prey logo for John. I said sure, but I had no idea what he was up to. Last week, John brought in the masterpiece-a gigantic sculpture of our logo, done in welded steel, wood and plaster. Very cool indeed. I'm going to try to talk John's dad into doing another one for our office.
Last week, Ken Brown, executive editor of Computer Gaming World, stopped in for a visit. He was in town on another story (covering a non-action game from the Dallas area... imagine that?), and just stopped by for an off-the-record visit. I showed him Preditor in action, and I think he liked what he saw.
I just got off the phone with Sascha of KMFDM. He and Tim Skold will be burning a CD and a DAT tape for us tonight. A few weeks ago, they sent us their first CD, which explored some rough ideas for the Prey theme. Even though the music is still in the rough state, I'm pretty excited about the kick-ass tunes and level-play music we'll have for Prey.
Until soon... cheers,
Paul
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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When It's Done
 The
UK version of PC Gamer has a monthly chart tracking the readers' most
wanted coming games. The April '98 issue shows that Duke Nukem Forever
is their readers' most wanted game, with a 35% rating. Prey also scores
well on this list, at position number five. The article states, "Duke
Nukem Forever has leapt straight into your hearts, got the bivouac out
and settled down for a very long stay, leaping, as they say, light
years ahead of Tiberian Sun, who sits and sulks at number two (15.5%
share)." Click on the image to the right to see a large version of this
article.
In all, there are six first-person shooters on the list, showing quite clearly the popularity of this style of game.
There hasn't been a lot shown of Duke Nukem Forever (or Prey), but
we just got finished sending a bunch of screen shots to several top
magazines. These magazines should appear around the time of E3, late
May. Don't expect the hype machine to crank into full gear for either
Prey or Duke until a few months before each game's release. With all
the surprises we have in place for each of these games, the last thing
we want to do is spoil them early.
When will they be released? All together now.. When it's done..
Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:00 PM
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Prey Development Update
Busy time here on the Prey ranch. First off, we've got to welcome Martinus to the fold.
He arrived on a rainy day three Mondays ago. It seems as if it's raining and the traffic is at a standstill whenever we have new folks flying into town. Martinus spent the first week running all of those annoying errands that we force new residents to endure: getting furniture, getting transportation (he selected a bike at Toys R Us), getting an SSN, utilities, house wares and all that jazz. He spent last week just getting up to speed with Preditor, and he's refining his Preditor skills this week. In a few days, I'll hit him with his first two level assignments, and he'll be off and running.
It's very exciting to have the entire team in place right now (and everyone finally has a real desk-no more folding tables for anyone!). I've been spending the last few weeks filling out countless spreadsheets with all of the myriad of tasks ahead of us as we rumble towards E3 and beyond. Sometimes my brain begins to ache when I try to get my mind around Prey and its seemingly endless list of development tasks, but I also get this wave of calm as well, like we've got the chaotic beast under control (for the moment, at least).
When I left last night, Tom and William were merging their code bases together-I didn't hear much yelling or screaming, so I'm assuming that things were weaving together nicely. If they're both alive this morning, then I'll know for sure. Tom, William and Loyal have their own threads to pursue for the moment, but every few weeks between now and the end of April they are scheduled to weave their code together, and I'll keep you posted as that happens. William's current realm is the engine, collision and Preditor; Tom's is network, sound, entities, messaging and the game itself and Loyal is still wrestling with the massive beast that is our character system (I think he's winning the war).
Content-wise, we're nailing down the stuff we want golden for E3 early this month (to get it into the coders' hands as quickly as possible), then we'll do some design refinement and blast ahead at the remainder of the game content (there's plenty there to keep the boys off the street-trust me).
KMFDM is working on our music as we speak-we should get the first DAT of their work in a week or two. Their first two tasks are the Prey theme song and to lay down some potential level play music so we can see if they are on the right groove. Sascha and I have talked a few times over the last week, and I'm confident that they share our rather twisted wavelength-I can't wait to hear their first stuff.
Until soon, cheers!
Paul, project leader
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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Prey Development Update
Since we've all been sharing the same core developer's hours for the last month, things have really been energized. So many threads of the game are coming together right now. Progress is almost at a blur. I'm lucky that I get in early in the morning so that I have an hour or two of quiet work before the energy gets feverish.
I received a crackling, staticy call from Martinus the other day-he was standing outside of the U.S. consulate in Frankfort, Germany, with his newly-stamped visa in hand. Finally, after months of work, he is on his way! Martinus has been working with us for several months now on the design side of the game, via conference calls from Munich. His imprint is already felt on the design of Prey. In a few days, he'll be able to dive into the trenches with John and Matt, learning the intricacies of the newest and badest Preditor yet.
Martinus will have the unique privilege of being the first Prey team member to show up for work with a real desk, real monitor and real computer ready to go. I guess if you're trapped in visa-hell long enough, we will get everything in place for you. The only downside is that Martinus won't have that feeling of pleasure and elation when he gets to trade his folding table in for a snazzy desk, his 13" monitor in for a 21-17 dual monitor setup. Pity.
As an interesting aside, we thought we would give you a chance to check out Martinus' Quake map that first attracted our attention. Martinus cautions you, though, with these words of hesitation: "Please remember that this map is absolutely out-dated (done over a year ago), especially the architecture and the texturing. It is because this map was made when the maps for Quake had to be within the 8 MB heap size."
Speaking of Preditor, William and Tom have nailed down a major Preditor breakthrough. The first phase was William's "abstraction rewrite." William is the master of arcane, abstract structures, and he prefers to work from a "top of the mount" conceptual foundation, and then code to match his abstractions. For Preditor, this meant abstracting the type of things that you are doing: creating geometry, manipulating the structure of the geometry, transforming the geometry and changing the attributes of the geometric faces. With these "modes" firmly conceptualized, it's amazing what you can create. The first thing is to throw away the notion that geometry is just geometry as we think of it normally (cubes,, triangles, etc.). It can be nearly anything from a cube to a fractalized mesh ground surface to a portal to structures way crazier than that.
With this foundation in place, William and Tom have coded the most insanely versatile system to control geometry interactively. I won't describe the system here (man, do I want to!), but I will tell you that it allows you to visualize, then create, as simple as that. Can you imagine it (within the constructs outlined above)? If so, then you can create it. Matt and John had the new functionality for less than 2 hours before they were showing me things that I have never, ever seen before. Man will this be cool!
Finally, I hope you enjoy our new web look. I think Joe and Brian did one helluva job. Be sure to check out the newly updated information about our Prey tools as well. Have a great weekend, play great games and remember, pick up a book once in a while--it's still a viable entertainment medium.
Until soon... Cheers,
-Paul
project leader, Prey
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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Prey Development Update
Greetings and a happy holidays to you all! Right now, we're crunching on the last day of our pre-Christmas milestone, and things are looking good! It's a great feeling to see all of the hard work of the entire team begin to weave together into a cohesive strand. This milestone is one helluva great way for us to wrap up 1997.
We have some news as well: the Prey team is proud to welcome David March to its ranks as a modeler/animator. David will work with Allen on the myriad of modeling and animation tasks we've got ahead of us. Before I tell you any more about David, I want to say thanks to all of you who submitted work for this position. The choice was very hard indeed-especially the final choice, when we had narrowed the field down to 3 candidates, all of whom would have made an excellent addition to the team. Thanks again for all of your hard work!!
David is a graduate of Baylor University (a business major-can you believe it?), and while he may have the book-learnin' of a "suit," he's truly a gamer at heart. He freely admits to being one of those geeks who loved to paint fantasy miniatures in his youth (hell, I was one too). He also likes putting a brush to canvas once in a while, and his non-digital portfolio certainly impressed us. When he's not modeling, he like to shoot pool, drink beer and strum liquid licks on his Gibson Super 400 Jazz guitar.
Quoth Mr. March: "I am in awe and dumbfuddled to use my noggin to conceptualize and create 2D drawings and characters which will eventually jump around in 3D space."
In the spirit of the season, we'd like to offer up these slight treats for your holiday enjoyment:
1- Two new screens ripped from the belly of our Christmas milestone.
2- A nice little windows wallpaper file from Scott McCabe. (Click here to download)
3- Two songs from KMFDM: "Megalomanic" from their latest album and "Inane" from Xtort. Major thanks go out to the band for their permission to distribute these songs!!
Note: if you don't have an MP3 player, you can download Winamp from here: http://winamp.lh.net/. Click on the two KMFDM images below for the two MP3 files. They're somewhat large, both over 5 megs. If you are on the net at 28.8 or lower, it might take awhile. :)
Cheers, and have a happy and safe holiday season!
-Paul Schuytema, project leader
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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Prey Development Update
I was just looking things over and, man, it's been a while since our last official update! Time just flies when you've got your head buried deep in a game!
Over the last few weeks, Scott and Steve have been working on crafting a "reference set" of textures that capture the mood and feel of the four primary Trocaran environments. We've had written specs nailed down since March, but actually seeing things come together graphically lead to some wonderful discoveries. Scott and Steve were encouraged to stretch beyond our specs and to capture their individual take on these alien species, and after we all sat down to review their work, it was amazing how similar their interpretations were. We also discovered some mood and visual motifs that go beyond our written specs.
Once the reference textures were complete, John and Matt were charged with creating "reference rooms" for each of the four environments. These rooms are not complete levels-most, in fact, didn't even have any portals. They were more like visual dioramas for the mappers to try out the new textures and to experiment with some intriguing architectural motifs.
Reviewing the rooms, both Mat and John hit upon some excellent motifs that we've decided to incorporate into of "tone" definitions of the four species. Now, the artists and mappers have a solid suite of visual reference work and documentation to refer to when creating the game's Trocaran environments.
We've decided to release a few screen shots of these reference rooms. These environments are not meant to be indicative of gameplay levels, but they are a very excellent examples of the tone and feel of our myriad game environments. These are the last screen shots that we are going to release that are "environment" only-we want to showcase our characters in the screens that follow.
On the character front, Loyal is working hard on our actor system-when completed, it will give us amazing dynamic flexibility. Allen has been finishing up the animation cycles for a few of our "golden" entities, and they look mighty sweet indeed. When Allen finishes a model, he then turns that model over to Steve or Scott for texturing within Creditor. Currently, Steve has been doing weapons and object texturing and Scott is texturing the characters.
Last week also saw another milestone-Tom and William merged their code and Prey, the game system and Prey, the portal technology engine are now happily married! As an offshoot, our mappers can now load their environments into the Prey OS and run some very real performance metrics on their geometry.
Look for the first Developer journal to show up on Gamecenter (http://www.gamecenter.com) on November 24, with installments to follow monthly.
Finally, the news we've been dying to spill can at last be spilled: KMFDM will provide the music for Prey! Be sure to check out our press release for more news. This is a collaboration that the whole team is excited about, and one that will truly ratchet up the visceral intensity of the game. We'll all be taking a road trip to Austin in early December to see the band on the US leg of their tour.
Cheers for now, and keep playing those games!
-Paul Schuytema, project leader
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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Prey Development Update
Last week, I spoke with George Jones of Gamecenter, and we're golden for a Prey development journal. The first installment will hit the web in early November, and it will focus, in detail, on some of the specific challenges and problems that the team encounters as we work through the development cycle. Each installment will most likely focus upon a particular aspect of Prey development and insights will be provided by the team members closest to the "fire."
The main reason for this update is to inform all of you 3D modelers out there to check out our Get Hired page. We have one final opening on the Prey development team, and that's for a 3D character modeler. We're looking for a stellar talent to work with Allen Dilling, who's currently "going solo" as the only Prey modeler. Before you apply, I encourage you to read through our company mission statement in the About Us page. We want to hear from those of you who share our vision and posses the creativity and talent to help us shape the very special project that we call "Prey."
Also, Allen adds, "If you want to see your own carefully crafted models get blown to bits in real-time, then you just might be who we're looking for. Besides, I need someone good to argue with! If you're a Bears fan, that's also a plus..."
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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It seems as if the Prey team has been taking its licks over the last few months.
On the way to E3, Matt's car crapped out. Tom ran and grabbed his car, which had a flat and then Matt, Tom and Allen were hassled by the cops (they thought they were drug runners, not game developers... both peddling mental escapes, though). Next, William totaled his car in a wreck.
The next victim was Scott McCabe-he was involved in a head-on collision (though by being there, he saved the out of control pick-up truck from ramming into a huge propane tank), and got hacked up pretty bad. He even chomped through his tongue-he sounded drunk for a week!
Next, I had my car jacked up and all four wheels were stolen. Then John Anderson and his family moved into town-with all of their stuff in tow, a weary 2-year-old daughter and a freezer filled with food. They pulled into their apartment complex only to find that the manager who was expecting them had quit... only to find that the people who were supposed to be evicted from their apartment were still there!
Loyal Bassett after his accident And now, as evidenced by this lovely mug shot, the latest victim was Loyal, who had some serious "face time" with a dried up river bank while mountain biking.
About this picture, Loyal has to say... "I was preyed upon!"
We were joking that this just must be the karma price we pay for working on such a kick-ass game!
In other news, the trip to Seattle was a huge success. I lugged my office PC (sans monitor) all the way there (I wiped all the code and design docs off of the HD, just in case it got lost in transit), and gave the Prey demo to the band, and they were blown away. We talked about what we want to do, musically, with Prey over a nice pasta dinner and glass of wine, and they seem on exactly the same wavelength as our development team. It looks like things will be "golden" soon-we just have to fax, sign, fax, sign and fax again some documents, and we're good to go. I'm sorry I can't give you any more info, but I'm wearing one of their t-shirts right now-who knows, if I accidentally step in front of our video capture cam, you might discover their identify.
Also, we'll be starting a development diary soon with Gamecenter. I'll be talking with George Jones about the details of that later today, but it should be an exciting forum to get some "down in the trenches" and super-focused news about what we're up to during the remainder of Prey's development cycle.
In development news, the coders are hard at work, cranking towards their next milestone. We've nailed down all of the environments for the shareware chapter of the game, and Matt and John are beginning work on their respective areas. Steve and Scott have been bolstering our texture library with some simply amazing art. Allen has been modeling some of our "golden" game entities, but he's also taking time to brainstorm some new ideas that are very cool indeed. I've been working through the tedious, yet very fun process of performing a full dramatic analysis of the major story elements of the complete game.
We'll keep you posted... cheers!
Paul Schuytema, project leader
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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It's been quite a while since our last update-we haven't been hiding in seclusion or anything, but we've been working towards our fourth Prey milestone: Deathmatch Prey. We wrapped up the milestone this week, and it pretty darn cool to be able to load our maps and enter a multiplayer game. Tom put together some nice tracking code that is helping to identify the areas of the engine to optimize for performance.
We decided to get multiplay in first because it will really help us nail down some of the game loop optimization issues up front. I've seen so many projects wait to get net play in at the last minute, only to be left with a heinous task of optimizing and retrofitting the code.
Loyal has been working on "Creditor" (we're not sure about the name, but I have a bad feeling that it will stick), which is the tool that will allow our artists to turn 3D content into Prey objects. Creditor is also the tool that lets our texture artists set up and texture a model, and already Steve and Scott have been creating some wonderfully textured objects. Of course, Creditor will also be included with the registered version of Prey.
That brings us to this update's surprise screen shot. It's an image from Creditor of a textured and lit (via Prey's dynamic lighting system) Talon Brave. I've got to emphasize that this is NOT the final Talon Brave-he's more of a proof-of-concept model. Taking what we've learned from this model, Allen is beginning work on the real Talon, which will better fit into our vision of the character. The model in this shot has far less polys than the actual game model will, but I think you can see the awesome fidelity of our texturing.
Next week will see John (our new mapper) joining us (he and his family are driving their U-Haul from Florida as I type this), and I'll be flying off to Seattle for a few days to show Prey to a band that we're hoping to sign for Prey's music. They're jazzed, we're jazzed-now it's time to talk turkey. I'll keep you posted.
As an aside, I just sent a final revision of my story, "The Visions of Teela-san," over to the UK today. Bad to the Bone press will be publishing the story (they've published the "Solo" series of graphic novels)-they've had an artist working with the story for a few weeks. I'll let you know when that comes out.
That's all for this week's update. We'll keep you posted. Cheers!
-Paul Schuytema
project leader
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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Wow, it's been a crazy few weeks here. The team is jamming towards an early September milestone which will let us begin doing the "serious" work of testing multiplayer Prey. We're all anxious to go after each other and see who evolves into the best Prey player (for the moment, that is).
The other important news is that we've sewn up our final two mapper positions on the development team. We'll be announcing another name soon, but today, we'd like to welcome John Anderson to the team. We received countless submissions, and narrowed the field down to a select few who possessed the "magic." Then we put them through one of our Prey "tests" and had them build us a deathmatch map based upon a short fictional description. John's map (which you can download here) was the unanimous choice of the whole team.
For those of you interested, here is the little fictional background we created for the map test:
The year is 1520. Lord DeFuge holds the very castle his ancestors built over 200 years ago, a dark, brooding affair, every inch of it built for fortification and surviving a long siege. The lord had been a fair man, and his family kind, but for the last nine years, the villagers have seen nothing. No one, not the lord, his family or even a guard, have left the castle these last years. The moat is all but dried up, the grass hugging the walls is tall and heavy with seed.
Nine years ago, during a banquet in honor of his daughter's 15th year, a magical rift appeared in the dining hall. Dozens of demons, wielding strange weapons, poured onto the cobble stones. Speaking to DeFuge in a broken and unfamiliar dialect, one of the man/monsters began to weave a tale of unbelievable proportions. These were not demons, but soldiers from the distant future-in 9 years from this date, a conflict would erupt--not in their time, but here, amidst the forests and hunting pastures of the Lord's domain. His family would be safe-they would be taken through the rift into the future, and the soldiers would remain here.
For the last nine years, the troops have moved supplies and equipment through the portal. They have worked long and hard to make a fortification within a fortification-setting up their generators, their traps, working in the sewers beneath the castle floors, building with their metal and tearing down the ancient stone. Computers monitor the portal in an attempt to predict the invasion, tactical barriers are constructed to slow the first wave of attackers. Now, in this ancient castle, once only a structure of stone and wood, now a hideous juxtaposition of steel and conduit, the soldiers wait. The hour of their battle is approaching...
John is coming to us from Lockheed Martin, where he worked for the last eight years as an engineering designer in their Space and Range Systems division. He has worked on the Green Bank Telescope (when completed, it will be the largest radio telescope in the world), on the Unified Tracking Antenna (at the Kennedy Space Center), and was most recently doing some modeling work of X-33 and its launch complex. Yet for all that high-tech coolness, he still couldn't stop himself from staying up late at night and mapping into the wee hours.
Needless to say, we're all jazzed that John will be joining the team, but I also want to send out a gigantic thanks to all of our applicants. We had the opportunity to review some works of stunning creativity. There are some serious talents hidden out there in the folds and wrinkles of society, and it was a real honor and treat for us to review all of the fine submissions. Thanks again!
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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If you get a chance to check out PC Gamer from the UK, you can read a really cool preview of Prey based upon what the editor saw at E3. The whole team is totally jazzed since we managed to shag the top billing of all their E3 games.
Here in Texas, though, we're plowing ahead, honing Prey into the kind of technology that will really deliver one hell of a gameplay punch. William has just finished another rev of Preditor, and he's put in a lot of the cool texture manipulation tools that Matt and I have been whining about. Once we get this revision rock solid, William will begin implementing some of our "dream tools" into the editor.
Tom is wrapping up some of his system level coding, which will go into Preditor and the engine today or tomorrow, and then he'll begin implementing the net code. Loyal is knee deep in one of the most innovative character systems ever. Our E3 character system was just an alpha test of some possible kinematic and interpolation approaches, and it worked out fairly well, but we have far grander things in mind, and Loyal's task is to head up that project.
We're nearing the end of our mapper search-we received an amazing quantity of excellent submissions, and we're now beginning to narrow the field. We'll be targeting a few choice mapper soon, asking to see more of their work. I'll keep you posted on our progress.
-- Paul
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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Well, it's is finally here: the time to complete our Prey team. We need two of the finest mappers available to help us craft the game the world's waiting for: Prey. You've read all the buzz-you know it's for real. If you're making maps for another company, or if you think you've got world-class skills you've learned on your own, then we want to see what you can do. Click here for some more details, and how to contact us about this.
Our goal for Prey is simple: to create the best action game ever! We're on the ragged, bloody edge of innovation with our Portal Technology engine, and mappers will have the opportunity to work with Preditor, the most advanced and intuitive environment creation tool ever. We're looking for dynamic, creative intellects who live and breathe games and understand the subtle nuances of level design. If you think you're one of the best, hop on over to our job listing page and see what you need to do to get your work considered. Best luck and we can't wait to be impressed!
Here's what Matt Wood, our "environmental alchemist," has to say about the power of Preditor:
"Put the ease of WorldCraft and the versatility of the Build editor in one room and in a few months, you'll have the almighty Preditor. This is, hands down, the best editor you could ever want to work with. Say goodbye to all the little annoyances every Quake editor ever made you deal with. Your imagination is the only limit here, pal."
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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The dull-pounding hum of E3 is beginning to wear off, and we're just starting to get our sea-legs again. All in all, we couldn't have asked for a better show. Sure, everything seemed to crap out when we went to install the Prey demos (a card was dead on one machine, and on-board S3 chip was over writing memory on another machine, no PCI slots available over here, only runs from the CD over there... arrgh!!), but we beat those machines down and got Prey up and purring. While William, myself and the folks from Remedy were wrestling with the machines, Matt, Allen and Tom were trapped deep in east Texas, after Matt's Subaru broke down. Hours later, after a bus ride, a change of cars, and a drug sniffing "hello" from the Georgia K-9 unit, the "second team" arrived at the show, exhausted but ready to go.
The show was huge, busy and as over-stimulating as always, but we did see some cool games out there that we're looking forward to playing. The response to our non-interactive floor demo of Prey was amazing-everyone was blown away, and we even caught some of our competing developers video-taping the flythrough. Those who were lucky enough to sneak back for an invite-only peek of our back room, interactive demo, really got a chance to see what we mean by Portal Technology. We're damn proud that we left so many members of the press shaking their head in disbelief at what they had just seen. As one web guru told me after the demo: "I think I know what I've just seen, but I can't seem to find the words to explain it to anybody else."
We've even learned that a major game publication is about to name Prey "best of the show" at E3... not too bad for a game that, as George put it, "is a year away, so right now it looks the worse it's ever going to get."
The whole team is excited to be back, and ready to get rocking on some new ideas we have. Loyal Bassett, our third coder, started today, and he's ready to get up to his elbows in code. All that's left to round-out the Prey team, and to get us into "full steam ahead" mode is the addition of two mappers... look for a notice on those openings real soon.
Until soon, I'll leave you with a few screens of our back room Prey demo... enjoy!
-Paul
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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We're pleased to announce that we've filled the third and final programmer position on the Prey team. Loyal G. Bassett II will be joining us immediately following E3. Loyal comes to us from Microsoft, where he worked on their Internet Gaming Zone. Microsoft tempted Loyal with an opportunity to work with them on Direct X, but once he took a look at Prey, we had him hooked.
Prior to his time at Microsoft, he served as an engine programmer for Go-Go Studios. Loyal also did co-op work for IBM in Austin, was an Honors Fellow at Texas A&M; University and taught himself C while writing a radiosity lighting system.
Loyal will be a great fit-he has the drive and talent to be a major contributor to the project. Not only that, but being a very health conscious vegetarian, he fit in well with our team dichotomy of "health and sin."
Loyal "the mercenary boy" had this to say, so very eloquently: "I am ready to rock with Prey. It's the shit! I want to make it happen! I am really excited! Wooo-hooo!"
In other Prey news, William has nailed down the Preditor UI for our portal system, and it rocks. Imagine just being able to draw a "hole in space" anywhere you'd like! The metaphysical implications of editing in 4 dimensions is just beginning to hit us-I sense impending therapy will be needed for all our mappers.
Until soon... cheers!
-Paul
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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Matt Wood, our new mapper, has taken to Preditor like a Russian fish to a vodka stream. He's been working with our last version of Preditor, but William promises to deliver and ever-so-cool new version this week. Here are a couple of screens of Matt's most recent work-he's going to be building two of the four environments for our E3 demo, working with Scott McCabe on design and implementation. Steve Hornback and I will be creating the other two environments as Allen plows ahead with character animation and weapon design.
As for the programmers? William and Tom have their hands full with a myriad of projects, from our kinematic character animation system to implementing just the right portal interface for our mappers to use within Preditor. We try to slip cold pizza and Vivarin under their doors every few hours to keep them going...
A quick terminology note: we've decided to use the term "environment" to describe the places in Prey, rather than the old stand-by term "level." Our Portal Technology engine eliminates the "level' as a defining construct in our game design, so we're working hard to remove that word from our vocabulary. It's hard, but with your help, we think we can do it...
Until next time, Cheers! -- Paul
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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CGDC was a great success, not just for Prey, but for 3D Realms as a whole. One major buzz at the show was the announcement that Duke Nukem Forever will utilize the Quake engine-for me it was a great relief to be able to open my mouth and spout about it. The next Duke is going to be a killer game--the Prey team can't wait to start playing some of the new Duke levels! Hot on the heels of that announcement was Duke 3D taking the Best Action Game of the Year, with a CGDA Spotlight Award and a Happy Puppy Golden Fire Hydrant Award.
Of course, for us here on Prey, we were totally jazzed about the response to our Prey demo. A lot of the expo-goers who saw the demo thought that we were running some sort of canned hi-res animation, rather than real-time rendering-it was great to prove them wrong. I found myself hanging back in the crowd, reveling at all the gawkers elbow to elbow in front of the monitor.
Things are cranking here in Garland-the enthusiasm is high because Shadow Warrior shareware is nearly done, and it rocks! All that energy is infectious, and the Prey team is feeding on it (we're closet vampires, after all), plowing ahead on some major Prey innovations that we want to get sewed up early this summer.
Soon, we'll showcase some of Matt's initial work with Preditor-so keep checking in!
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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(from 32,000 feet, high above the Utah salt flats, on the way to CGDC)
Since we've received a few requests, we thought that you all might be intrested in Matt Wood's map that landed him the job as Prey mapper. Matt submitted a single player Duke map, as well as a single player Quake map that got our attention, but this is the deathmatch-only Quake map that he did (in far less than a week!) in response to our description of an alien power station (don't make any assumptions about Prey based on this--it was only an exercise).
What we liked about this map were these features:
- it seems like a real place
- there is a true sense of mood (run down, chaotic, madness, etc.)
- the envrionment is creative, interactive and innovative
- it features sniping spots, seige positions, areana-like areas, etc.
You can download the file here. (915k) Enjoy!
-Paul
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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Today I'm off to CGDC, to speak "in praise of ultra violence" and to get our Prey demos up and running at a few booths on the expo floor. We'll be showing a non-interactive demo, featuring a portion of our Prey engine handling fly-throughs of a few environments, at the 3DFX booth, the Diamond Multimedia booth and at the Rendition booth. Once I return, I'll be sure to fill you all in on the "audience reception" to our demos.
The most important reason for this update is to let you know that we've chosen Matt Wood to be our new Prey mapper. Before I go any further, I want to send out a huge thank you to all of you who took the time and creative energy to send us your best works. We truly were amazed, and the decision was very difficult indeed. Again, thanks for your enthusiasm and effort!
Matt first caught our eye with a Duke map he sent in, moments after we said that we'd accept Build engine maps. He told us that he was also working on his first Quake map, and we took a look at the incomplete, un-vised map and it showed some serious potential. Finally, we took a look at his finished map and decided that he, along with a few other mappers, were good enough to be finalists. The final test for all the finalists was to create a deathmatch-only map based upon this rather cryptic description:
"The power has poured out of this energy center for hundreds upon hundreds of years. As old accelerating reactors fizzled out, new ones were built without thought. Parts that still worked were cobbled from the old to make the new. After nearly a millennia, the power facility has folded back onto itself without reason, the old mixing with the new, construction layered on top of construction, creating dark folds and caverns beneath the ancient machinery.
The power flows from the collision of high-energy particles in a super-collider reactor (SCR). Over the centuries, many of these collider rings have been built, many abandoned, creating a gordian knot of tunnels and tube... leading nowhere.
Yet, as you enter this facility on a strange and alien world, you find that it is strangely abandoned, as if the species that had built it vanished before the latest restructuring could be complete-some power still flows, enough to be deadly, enough to light the ghosts of this eerie environment, but it is obvious that the latest facilities are incomplete and were never made operational..."
Matt will be joining us in May, as the first full-time mapper for Prey. Randy Pitchford will move over to the Prey project once Shadow Warrior wraps up, and then, later this summer, we'll most likely do another mapper search for the final cog in the Prey development team.
Cheers!
-Paul Schuytema, project leader
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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The Prey team has been cranking on a myriad of projects over the last few weeks-William is working through an "Objectification" of our engine, getting it nicely object-oriented and fitting neatly within Ayn Rand's philosophy ("Who is John Galt?"). Tom is polishing our video system so that it will work as cleanly as possible with the accelerator cards out there. Scott and I have been creating some killer environments that we'll be showcasing at CGDC (the Computer Game Developer's Conference) at the end of the week-we'll be showing off a portion of our engine (we don't want to reveal too many of the cards in our hand, just yet) at the expo there. Finally, Allen has been doing some weapon design and weapon animation-we may give you a little sneak of his work in a few weeks.
Lastly, I want to thank everyone for their map submissions. After we put the word out that we were unhappy with our first "crop" of maps, our latest run of submissions have been very high quality, indeed. As of today, we're not accepting any more submissions, and will begin the arduous process of sorting through the maps we've received to find our next Prey mapper. Again, thanks for all your good work!
Cheers,
Paul Schuytema
 
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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First off, this bit of news: the name of your alter ego in Prey is Talon Brave. We all worked long and hard on this name, and we're pretty excited about it-it captures the feel and tone of our character very well.
Secondly, I wanted to let you know that Allen Dilling has joined the Prey team as a 3D artist. He rambled down Texas-way from Colorado in his rather "weathered" Ford, and has hit the ground running. He's working with Michael Wallin on some sketches of Talon Brave. He's also been designing and modeling some of the enemies you'll find in Prey... We're glad to have him aboard, but we find ourselves wondering about the pink foam pony he has next to his drafting table...
Third: We've been looking at a pile of Quake maps for our Prey mapper opening, and we're not as impressed as we want to be... so we're changing the rules slightly (see our modified job opening post for exact details). As of right now, we only want one submission from you-your absolute best work. And now it can be either a Quake map or a Duke 3D map. Yes, all you "Builders" out there can now submit! We want to see game design skill and incredible creativity-you can show us that in either a Duke 3D map or a Quake map. We figure that you'll need to learn a new tool anyway (Preditor), but what we can't teach is creativity and game design savvy-that's what you've got to show us. If we like your single submission, then we'll ask to see more work. So bring on your maps!
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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First and foremost, you'll probably want to check out our new screen shot. We'll have some more screens to show you real soon, but this can give you a hint at why we're so rocked on the Prey project right now. The only downside of this screen is that it doesn't even begin to show you the "like butter" feel of an corridor that you can zip around in at way over 30 frames per second. BTW, be sure to notice the hint of a blue glow from the monitor screen... and yes, I know it looks very "Trekish"--we were just playing around with modeling that kind of corridor with long thin fluorescents...
We just had a cadre of press folks rumble through to take a peek at what we're doing, and one of the fine gentleman of the "linear media" took one look at Prey and blurted out "Wow! Real-time Myst!"
That comment was the catalyst (do we really need a catalyst?) to head down to Two Rows, a local brew-pub, to clank some glasses of fine micro-brew together. After an evening or two of hops and bitters, it was back to our Prey-ful Pentiums.
William, our engine-guru has crafted some necromantic algorithms that really push the envelope of radiosity lighting-we've been having a ball creating environments with a dozen or so light sources, all of different colors, and checking out how the light all blends and pools together. Very cool indeed!
A few weeks ago, Scott McCabe joined us from the hinterlands of Kingston Canada, and has taken up refuge with Tom Pytel, one of our coders. Now they work through the wee hours, cranking the weirdest of music and soothing their troubled souls by the warmth of Tom's lava lamp. Scott has hit the ground running as a 2D artist, and is cranking through a very impressive array of textures.
Now, it's back into the Trocaran trenches of Prey, but I'll resurface soon with more news. Cheers!
-Paul Schuytema
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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As you no doubt know by now, we've been working through some pretty radical changes in Prey. We're confident, though, that these changes will only serve to make Prey a stronger and more intense game. The last few months have allowed us the rare luxury to do some serious R&D on our next generation engine as well as explore some key gameplay issues.
At this moment, we've just bid farewell to Gary McTaggart from 3DFX, who was on-site, helping us get our engine talking to their Voodoo chip. They seem to be striking up quite a conversation...
William Scarboro, our Prey engine-mystic, is continuing to sculpt the engine, which utilizes Portal Technology (PT), a fresh approach to 3D engine design which isn't limited by some of the restrictions of the prior-generation's engines. Architecture and interactive environments which were simply impossible in BSP-heavy engines are now par for the course. Of course you'll see wondrous architecture casting true shadows, but you'll see them in stunning 16-bit color at high resolution. It will be like nothing you have ever experienced! It won't be too long before we can post some fresh screen shots from the new engine.
We've also taken a long, hard look at the design of the game, and decided that we needed a fresh approach which will match the power of our engine. A new main character has been developed--he's a full-blooded Apache with an attitude. The story is all new, and involves the Trocara, a trinity of alien species who are kept (somewhat) in check by the mysterious Keepers.
As a player, you'll have to draw upon all of your resources--your intelligence, your physical abilities and your attitude to survive long enough to learn the truth behind the mysterious Trocara and their doubly-mysterious Keepers.
As you know, strong characters and exciting stories are hallmarks for our games, and we're really excited about the Prey story. The character is fresh, complex and interesting and the story (a dark and riveting tale, if we do say so ourselves) should have more than enough meat to entice even the most hard-core science fiction fans.
As a team, we're beginning to shift into high gear. I (Paul Schuytema) came on board as the project leader in November, and Tom Pytel, a super-talented "in the trenches" coder, just started on this week. In the coming weeks, we'll complete "team building" as we blast ahead into the content creation portion of the game's development (the most exciting part, in my opinion).
Look for more updates and some screen shots in a few weeks.
Cheers,
Paul
Posted by Paul Schuytema
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