To do:
Still a fair bit to add there, namely images.
A photo from November 1997 of the team working on Prey.1 Standing L-R: George Broussard, Allen Dilling, Loyal Bassett, William Scarboro, Scott McCabe, Tom Pytel Kneeling L-R: Doug Wood, Steve Hornback, Paul Schuytema Absent: John Anderson, Lee Jackson
Update: 01/24/97 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.
Update: 03/10/97 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!
Update: 03/14/97 Holy cow! Two updates in one week! Well, this isn't an update as much as it is an excuse to show you a few new and dandy screen shots. We've been experimenting like crazy with Preditor's ability to generate blended colored lights. We've had no problem creating a room with over 30 colored light sources, all blending together perfectly. These four screens show some experiments in saturated light (light with the color intensity maxed out) and more natural light (lessening the intensity of the blended colors for more natural look). Enjoy!
If these images are too dark on your monitor, you can look at gamma-corrected versions here, too.
Update: 03/19/97 Are you a closet 6D level design god? Be sure to check out our Get Hired postings-we've opened up the search for a new Prey mapper. If you've got what it takes, we'd love to see what you can do!
These are the first negative responses for the name we've heard. :)
Here's why we chose the name:
[1] It's very unique and original. Just like Duke Nukem, who you can refer to as just Duke or just Nukem, you still know who you're talking about. You can't do this with a name like John Hunter.
[2] The word "talon" is a claw on a bird of prey. Get the connection? ;)
[3] The word brave refers to the character's native american heritage, plus it has the double meaning of courage. Also, the name Brave is actually a shortened version of his real native american name which won't be revealed until the game's release.
There are other reasons for choosing this name, too, but I don't want to bore anyone. :)
Update: 04/03/97300px|right 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!
If the screen shot to the right is too dark for you click here for a gamma corrected version.
Update: 04/08/97200px|rightright|200px We've released two more screen shots from Prey, due the high demand for them. Click on either of them for a larger version.
PlanetQuake would post an interview with Paul Schuytema.5
Huh? What's Prey? It's a question that comes up more than you think. Overshadowed by Quake and Unreal, could Prey deliver and beat them both to a pulp? We'll have to wait until '98 to find out.. Recently, I emailed Paul Schuytema (Prey's 2nd Project Leader) for an interview.. and he agreed on the condition that I give him my left toe. I only gave him half of it though (I'm quite fond of it...doncha know).. so he only did half the interview. Without further a-doo...
Paul Schuytema Interview
FM: (Fragmaster, P.I.): Hey.. how's it going??
PS: (Paul "Don't Call me Toyota" Schuytema): Not too bad-the Texas spring is cool and bright and full of great promise. sorry, there I go, off on another tangent.
FM: So. [sic] Tell everybody who's never heard of you who you are, what you do and why you do it.
PS: I'm Paul Schuytema, project leader for Prey over at 3D Realms. I'm working on Prey because, for me, it was the creative "holy grail."
FM: You be good writer of these word thingies. You even where a college teacher for awhile? Where you a bitch on homework? :) PS: The classes I taught were all very subjective-I looked for student improvement rather than rote memorization or anything-if students liked the class, they didn't seemed to be bothered by the amount of writing I had them do-if they weren't having fun or were "slackers" then the 80+ pages of writing assignments per semester seemed like a "bitch."
FM: Is MechWarrior 3 gonna rule?
PS: I can't really say much of anything about Mech 3 _except_ that it's going to rule. The team they have on the game is comprised of some of the best talents in the business-Mech 3 will go way beyond Mech 2. It was very hard for me to leave that project.
FM: Designing a game like MechWarrior. and then going to design a game like Prey.. well.. they're pretty different. Did you feel ready to take on a project like Prey? Do you think you can bring some new ideas into an overcrowded(?) genre?
PS: Yes, Mech 3 and Prey are very different on the surface, but they're both hard and serious science fiction, which is what I love. In Prey, we have the opportunity to create our own s.f. universe, from scratch-you can't get much cooler than that. As for action games being an overcrowded genre, I disagree, to an extent. Everybody sees action games as the "cash cow" genre, and so there are a ton of titles out there, but games like Duke 3D, Quake and Shadow Warrior are really pushing the envelope, and they "feed" the expectations of the players-that makes each and every action game in development feel the pressure-we've got to deliver an experience that more exciting (in every way-gameplay, graphics, AI, etc.) than our predecessors-that's a tall order, but we're confident that Prey will bring some fresh approaches to the genre.
FM: Tell us a little more about Prey.
PS: Since Prey is still deep in development, I can't tell you all that much more than what we've got posted on our web site-we don't want to say "hey it's going to be this way" and then do something different in development. Prey isn't a "pulp" game-we're not doing a humorous game here, but a dark, gritty science fiction game. We're also making sure that our story has the "meat" necessary for it to feel like a real and plausible science fiction universe-we're trying our best to make the science accurate and the plot tight and exciting-we really want player to come away from this game with the feeling that they've just been immersed in one helluva cool adventure.
FM: Why the name "Prey"? What does it mean?
PS: Prey is a cool name because of the double-edged meaning: the prey/predator meaning and the "pray for help" meaning.
FM: How will Prey be different than Quake?
PS: In short, Prey will be a different game that Quake for some of these key reasons: -the game will have a very strong central character (Talon Brave) -there will be a detailed and involved plot -the level of interactivity will be far greater (as in Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior)
FM: How will the Prey engine be better than the Quake engine?
PS: I hesitate pulling out a checklist and saying "Prey will be better than Quake here, here and here." Quake, as a game technology, is still evolving, and when John Carmack is "finished" with it, I'm sure he'll move onto something far more advanced. As for what I feel comfortable talking about, Prey has these innovations (there are more, but I can't mention them just yet): -a Portal Based engine (no more BSPs, which means that environments don't have to be static and unchanging) -16 bit textures and 16 bit colored lighting -radiosity lighting (light will emanate from a source, but it will also bounce back from whatever it hits-we calculate this "bouncing effect" for many, many iterations, which creates incredibly realistic-looking lighting)
FM: Will you use your keen writing skills to drill out a neato plot for Prey?
PS: I'd like to think that my writing skills will help to create an intense plot for Prey (I have my terminal graduate degree in science fiction writing), but in truth, game design here at 3D Realms is a "team task"-we all brainstorm together, and build the design out of our best collective ideas.
FM: You said in a recent .plan update "But one of the real strengths of a computer is to represent something with high enough fidelity that we know unequivocally what it is, but we are still able to take advantage of the unique characteristics of the computer medium." How does this apply to Prey?
PS: Computers can do a lot of things really well-like plot the parabolic path of a spiraling jib or severed arm. What we need to do in Prey is give the player enough visual fidelity to be able to really identify with the characters and enemies in the game, but then take advantage of a computer's awesome calculating ability to make the experience intense with things like particle systems, dynamic lighting, geometry destruction algorithms and the like-if we do this, then we can create an experience that is far more intense and visceral that anything we can see in a movie. Remember, super-cool effects in a movie are usually split-second affairs (any longer, and they'll look fake)-in a game like Prey, if we've provided enough visual fidelity (enough "representation," if you will), then we can make the awesome effects last as long as we want-even in slow motion if we wanted to, and our minds, as players, will be able to "buy into" the fiction of it all. FM: Don't you need a Level Designer to help with Prey? Isn't this the perfect opportunity for someone.. maybe perhaps reading this interview. to get into the gaming biz? <HINT HINT!> PS: Yes, we sure do. We've looked at a pile of Quake maps but that certain "magic" we're looking for just didn't show up as often as we would have liked. Creating a killer map for Duke 3D or Quake really takes a whole host of skills: skills with the design tool, architectural knowledge, artistic knowledge, knowledge of play balancing, knowledge of risk-reward issues, etc. Since our Prey mappers will get an opportunity to use one of the most intense architectural creation tools out there (our own Preditor), we want to make sure that the mapper we hire has the inherent abilities to make the most of our technology.
FM: Do you miss your CGW column? Do you feel it was a success?
PS: Yes, I miss the column a great deal-it was a wonderful learning experience for me, and it was a chance to talk, at length, with some of the best talents in the business. Right now, though, I really need to focus on Prey-Scott and George told me when I signed on that they had no problem with me continuing the column, but right now I only want my mind focused on the job at hand-Prey.
FM: Have you written any other columns, magazine articles, books, movies, backs of cheap cereal boxes with crappy activity games that are WAYYY to hard, ad copy, propaganda, or manifestos?
PS: I've written a ton of articles for CGW, Compute, Omni and some other magazines, written a few strategy guide books, a pile of science fiction short stories (that have been published-I've got about a zillion that haven't been published.yet) and some scholarly works (on Mexican archaeology, Ernest Hemingway and game design), but after all of that, I still only type with my two index fingers-go figure!
Update: 04/10/97 I just wanted to check in to let you know that our latest round of submissions for the Prey mapper position have been very solid indeed. We'll probably keep collecting submissions into next week before we really start seperating the good, bad and ugly. If you've been holding out on us, but think you're a hot mapper, now's the time to send in your .bsp or .map files.
Here's another screen shot of an environment Scott McCabe and I have been working on (I did the geometry and initial lighting--Scott handled the art and tweaked my lighting). It really shows of the depth of texture detail that were able to get into Prey. Click on it for a larger version. Shot too dark? Click here for a gamma corrected version of the picture.
Since tax time is right around the corner, we thought that a little gift was in order. Scott McCabe, or resident pixel-man (he came to us but a pixel boy, but he's a man now), put together this rather nifty Prey poster for your downloading pleasure. It makes great desktop wallpaper... enjoy!
Update: 04/22/97200px|right 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. 200px|right 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!
Update: 04/24/97 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.
3D Realms announces the hiring of two new developers for Prey and Duke Nukem Forever, with Matthew Wood joining the Prey team. Only the relevant parts about Prey are noted here.6
3D Realms hires two talented developers -- one each to join Prey and Duke Nukem Forever
The Prey project also struck gold in hiring Matthew Wood, a die-hard gamer who's been making 3D levels in his spare time since the release of id Software's superhit, DOOM. Wood has since been making highly imaginative levels for Descent, Warcraft, Dark Forces, Quake and Duke Nukem 3D, and is joining Prey as a mapper. Besides his level design talent, Wood is a highly competitive multiplayer of these games, saying, "I can be found on many online services playing these games, including TEN, Kali and sometimes Mplayer. I take my gaming very seriously." And although Wood is being hired as a level designer for Prey, his artistic talent might be put to use, too. Wood has taken art classes throughout his education and won numerous awards, including four Keystones (awarded to the top one percent of all state entries).
Paul Schuytema, project leader for Prey, said of Wood: "We held a two-month long contest over the Internet and our Web site, in which we evaluated hundreds of Quake and Duke maps. Wood's maps stood out as the most ingenious, devious, structurally imaginative and fun map submitted. And with his total passion to game design, he was the clear choice to join the Prey team, which in my opinion as a long time professional industry writer and game designer, is one of the most talent rich teams I've ever seen. Wood is joining the best of the best, and should consider himself on par with his team mates."
Also on the Prey team: William Scarboro (coder, 3D engine & editor), Tom Pytel (coder), Scott McCabe (artist), Stephen Hornback (artist), Allen Dilling (3D modeler), and Randy Pitchford (mapper). "We're still looking to hire another mapper in a few months plus a network coder to handle all of Prey's multiplayer functionality," notes Schuytema.
The press release concudes with a quote from Broussard.
"If games are the sum of the individual talents of the team," adds Broussard, "and I believe that's the case--then both of these projects are reason for players to be very excited about the future of 3D gaming."
Update: 04/25/97 (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 [sic] 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 [sic] is creative, interactive and innovative
it features sniping spots, seige [sic] positions, areana-like [sic] areas, etc.
Scott Miller would particulate in an interview with The Adrenaline Vault. While the interview is mainly focused on Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem Forever, Miller cheekily brings up Prey as an answer to a question toward the end of the interview.7
AV: Where do you see the future of the 3D action game genre?
Scott: Prey will answer that question late in 1998. :)
To do:
Add a Youtube video of all the parts edited together
Miller would appear on The Mark Shander Show. Prey is discussed a little however however Miller restating why 3D Realms wouldn't use there own Prey engine for Duke Nukem Forever. At the end of the interview, Miller states the game will use TEN online exclusively but still support multiplayer via TCP/IP.8
119-3OF3.RA 26:55 Shander: Ok, maybe one more quick question before you go, (Miller: Sure), is Prey going to be on TEN?
Miller: Yes.
Shander: Ok, and...
Miller: TEN has an exclusive, when we first signed the deal, it was for five years, there's like three and a half years left in that so, anything that comes out over the next three and a half years will defiantly be on TEN,
Shander: Oh ok, great.
Miller: However, Prey and Duke Forever will be playable over the internet, freely though, we will have those options in there kinda like, what you can do with Quake.
Shander: Ok, so they will have direct support for TCP/IP?
Update: 05/12/97 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!
Update: 05/20/97 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...
The Prey project is moving along very swiftly and with amazing results. We have an amazingly talented, dedicated and focused team, and they're all doing above-and-beyond work.
Update: 05/30/97 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!"10
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
Just hired another programmer for Prey, who will primarily handle AI and other general game programming. We'll have more details about this person soon. The Prey team has nine full-timers now. We'll be looking for another level designer to add to the team soon after E3.
Our Portal Technology in Prey is utterly unbelievable to see. It is so powerful it can fry your thought process just looking at it. This is truly the future of 3D gaming technology. Prey can do tricks that defy reality. (Whoops, maybe I'm hyping a bit too much. ) [sic]
There'll be 10 of us heading to E3. Apogee/3D Realms will have a larger section of GT Interactive's (our retail publisher) than any other developer GTI works with. Plus we'll have a back room invitation-only area for demo'ing Prey and Duke Forever.
Paul Steed, the newest artist at id, visited us yesterday and saw a little demo of Prey (not our Portal Technology, though, which was broke at the time). He noted that the screen shots don't do the game justice (they never do).
(Tuesday 6/17/97 - 5:55 pm) ===========================
A bunch of us are headed off to E3 tomorrow. We're looking forward to meeting up with a lot of you we've talked to and met over IRC etc. Cya there ;)
The Prey team has been working non-stop to get a killer demo done for the show. We will probably release a lot of screen shots after we get back from E3. But the demo has 4 levels to show, an animated weapon firing a cool light source projectile, and ending in a massive explosion, complete with shockwave. There are also 3 characters in the demo walking around and doing things and they will show off the smooth kinematic control system we have. All the art is 16 bit, there is colored lighting everywhere, dynamic lights (from shot projectiles), characters and weapons will pick up light from the sources. If a character walks near a green light, the part of it's body facing the light will pick up the green. There are reflective marble floors in the demo and other cool effects. All in all, things have come together nicely and I want to take this opportunity to thank Paul, William, Tom, Scott, Allen, Matt, Stephen and Lee for working so hard to pull Prey up from it's bootstraps and get it into world class competition ;)
Prey lives, and you can see it at the GT Interactive booth at E3.
(Gotta go do laundry now and pack) ;)
The Virtual Tour of 3D Realms' offices would be updated.
Prey OfficePaul SchuytemaWilliam ScarboroSteve HornbackPrey OfficeTom PytelScott MacCabeDitto, but with the lights turned off.
Prey would be showcased at E3. Watch on YouTubeThe show Infinite MHz would conduct an interview with Schuytema. Schuytema discusses the history of Apogee and 3D Realms, Shadow Warrior, the Build engine's end-of-life and the "Apogee" shareware model. Prey itself begins being demonstrated at 5:56. First, Schuytema shoots a weapon, discusses the engine and then showcases a portal in action. He discusses the engine in more detail, describing it as "mathematically a 4D engine". Schuytema showcases another level, showing off real-time reflections, claiming that the game is running at 45-50 frames per second with a HP Vectra Pentium 166.
Producer Bradley G. Ouimette would recount his thoughts of the demonstration with fansite Preystation.11
While Producing an on camera interview with Paul Schuytema. I was amazed by the Graphics he was showing on a HP Vectra Pentium 166.
The reflections in the game from the overhead lights and a beast jumping onto a platform was amazing. Paul also was nice to show us some off camera tricks that are still secret.
I had heard of rumors of Prey, but never expected to see such wonderful graphics. On a fairly simple machine, without a 3D card, or MMX technology, this game will prove to be spectacular!
Scott Miller would update his .plan file discussing E3 and some of 3D Realms' upcoming projects. The showing of Prey is discussed.12
* Prey. The response to this game was far beyond anything we could have predicted. Every reporter to a man (and a few women) said it was the most amazing technology at the show. GameCenter wrote "Prey blew our minds...it would seem 3D Realms currently has the advantage." And Gamespot wrote "The graphics are so convincing and so fluid that they don't beg comparison to existing games like Quake, but instead to reality itself. We realize that may sound ridiculous, but it's true." Across the board, the press were all dramatically floored by our behind-closed-doors presentation, where we showed all the good stuff we kept from the on-the-floor, non-interactive demo. It was funny to see at least four other development companies video taping the floor demo, with some of them trying to hide their badges so as not to be recognized.
The Adrenaline Vault would publish screenshots of Prey as a part of their coverage of E3. The screenshots appear to have been photos of a monitor, so they aren't in the best of quality.13
Update: 06/25/97 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!
3D Realms releases a press release about the reaction from various outlets.16
The Accolades for Prey are pouring in after Prey's E3 showing, including Computer & Net Player's "Best of E3 Show!"
"Prey blew our minds," read the headline of Doug Lombardi's (on C|Net's Gamecenter at http://www.gamecenter.com) Prey article after seeing the game at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in the dark back room at GT Interactive's booth. "3D Realms fired up the latest burn of Prey and all the reporters there wet their pants," he continued. "The realism is there and the game has almost no pixelation whatsoever."
Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com) ran live coverage on their special E3 coverage site (http://www.e3news.com) for the entire three days of the show, and ran several glowing stories on Prey. In one, they wrote: "The graphics are so convincing and so fluid that they don't beg comparison to existing games like Quake, but instead to reality itself. We realize that this may sound ridiculous, but it's true. Prey will represent a milestone in game programming excellence."
It's not even a week after Prey's E3 showing and most gaming magazine are running major coverage on Prey with several magazines promising cover stories in the future. Computer & Net Player's editor, Mike Davila, wrote to Prey's project leader, Paul Schuytema, with some special news: "Prey looks absolutely amazing! The portal stuff you guys are doing is wild. We're doing a Top 20 E3 roundup in the 9/97 issue and we've decided to give the game the Best Game of the Show for the feature." A preview of Prey's coming coverage can be found on Online Gaming Review, the magazine's web site (http://www.ogr.com). The article itself says, "Undoubtedly one of the most immersive and detailed environments to ever hit the PC. Prey looks revolutionary."
One of The Adrenaline Vault's (http://www.avault.com, one of the web's top two gaming sites) head writers, Emil Pagliarulo, had this to say to Schuytema after seeing the E3 Prey demo: "I really have to laugh when I think about Prey in comparison to other 3D shooters in development. Prey is, hands down, the best looking game I have ever seen. 1998 won't come soon enough."
"The whole team is fired up after E3," Schuytema reflected. "We all know we're working on something special with Prey, but after the response we received, we've gotten the satisfying confirmation that we hit the bulls-eye with all three darts. And what's cool is that what we showed at E3 was only the tip of the iceberg."
Even though the 3D engine and its unique Portal Technology are second to none, Prey will be much more than a technical tour de force. States Schuytema: "Our goals for this game are uncompromisingly high in all areas, especially in terms of character development, story progression within the game itself, and the development of a game world that's realistic, believable and highly interactive."
Aaron Corcoran, who runs the Preystation web site (http://www.preystation.com), the Internet's unofficial home base for all news revolving around Prey, had this to say after seeing the game at E3: "I cannot even begin to express in words what went on in that room...the demonstration was simply amazing."
3D Realms Entertainment, best known for Duke Nukem 3D, is a division of Apogee Software, Ltd. that focuses solely on cutting-edge 3D action games with the goal of setting new standards in technology and gameplay content. Apogee pioneered shareware marketing for games in 1987 and has won literally hundreds of industry awards and honors. Visit us on the web at http://www.3drealms.com.
GT Interactive Software is the worldwide publisher of Prey as well as most of Apogee's games, and is a publicly traded company on NASDAQ. GTE is currently the second largest publisher worldwide. Visit GTIS on the web at http://www.gtinteractive.com.
Another development update is also posted.
Update: 06/26/97 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."
Update: 06/27/97 We know a lot of you out there have been asking for it, so here it is: a Quick Time movie of our Prey engine in action. This is taken from our E3 demo, and it shows a small combat arena, occupied by a somewhat agitated saurian adversary. You might want to take special note of the highly-polished marble floor. Enjoy!
[ Download The File Here ]
WARNING: This file is very large. It's 11.2Megs, so if you download this, and have a regular modem, it'll take a little while to download. This file requires Apple's Quicktime viewer, or anything else that can play a Quicktime Movie File. To get software to play a Quicktime file, go here.
OGR: One of Prey's many cool features is the use of "Portal Technology". Can you explain in layman's terms what that means for the action gamer and how it will revolutionize the way we think about levels?
Paul Schuytema: Portal Technology is a fundamentally different approach to handling 3D geometry. One of the trickiest problems in any true 3D engine is how do you tell the CPU what geometry NOT to pay attention to at any given moment. If the CPU dealt with all the geometry, all the time, then we're talking about a slideshow rather than an action game, in terms of speed.
The BSP approach utilized in games like Quake and Unreal precalculate a tree of potentially visible polygons-traverse the tree from any location and you then have a sub-set of all geometry to deal with. It's quite an elegant approach, but it offers-up a key draw back: since geometry is precalculated, it can't be dynamic. That's why BSP-based games only have small items, like doors and moving platforms, as their "architecturally dynamic" objects.
Our Portal Technology deals with geometry real-time, but breaks it up into manageable units we call regions all connected by portals. It's easy to imagine if you think of rooms in your office as regions, with the portals being the windows and doors.
What's unique in our approach to this type of technology is that our portals can be arbitrarily placed (ceilings, walls, floating in space, etc.). We can also dynamically create and move portals, on the fly, essentially "ripping open" space. An example might include looking down a corridor into a room, but the entire room is rotating, like a funhouse cylinder. Another example that we showed at E3 was the "Tardis effect" (for those Doctor Who fans out there)-it's essentially and out-house sized building, but step inside, and you're suddenly in a gigantic environment. Our catch phrase on the team is "Euclidean geometry be damned!"
OGR: Prey is being called the "first Talon Brave game". Are there plans already to make other games based on this universe, featuring the character of Talon Brave?
Paul Schuytema: We've learned the importance of a true central character in our action games, and Prey began evolving once we had a firm grasp of Talon, the player's "alter ego" in the game. We see Prey as the flagship-the world's introduction, if you will-to our Talon Brave universe. We've worked very long and very hard to create a character and a universe that will fascinate people for years to come. We've already done some rough design thinking about the next game, tentatively called ****. (oops, almost let the cat out of the bag on that one!). We also see stories and adventures in this universe being delivered through different media as well, such as a series of novels.
OGR: Do you plan to make Talon Brave games in other genres also or will they all be first-person shooters a la Prey?
Paul Schuytema: That's a very good question. In all likelihood, and games in which the player plays exclusively as Talon will be action games, but we've tossed around some other genre ideas that would work very nicely in this fictional universe.
OGR: One reason people enjoy Duke Nukem 3D over Quake is the interactive environments. How will Prey's environment be more interactive than other games in this genre?
Paul Schuytema: First off, our Portal Technology will allow our environments to be far more reactive to the player than any other true 3D game before. In addition, we think we've got some cool "tricks up our sleeve" that we're not yet ready to talk about, that should make the feel of the game even more visceral and immediate.
OGR: Any thoughts yet to how many different weapons will be available in the game?
Paul Schuytema: We're doing a lot of thinking and experiment with weapons right now, but we don't want to talk specifics just yet. I can say that we won't have eight zillion weapons, just a solid variety of carefully designed, carefully balanced weapons. As I mentioned at E3, we're also experimenting with having a single weapon perform multiple functions, which will add even greater play variety.
OGR: You've mentioned that Prey's storyline will contain much more depth than typical first-person shooters. Can you elaborate on this a bit? Will the game feature cut scenes or dialogue between characters?
Paul Schuytema: As I said above, one of the hallmarks of our action games is our commitment to strong central characters. But I'll go even further: a strong character without a strong story can really be a let down. One of the reasons I took the job here at 3D Realms was Scott and George's willingness to allow a far richer story in Prey. For me, the opportunity has proved to be a "creative Holy Grail." I firmly believe that we can deliver one hell of an intense, serious story through Prey's gameplay, while never sacrificing the sphincter-tightening pace of the action.
OGR: What are the advantages in going hardware only?
Paul Schuytema: "Hardware only" was only a starting point for us. Nearly all of the innovations that we're proud of in Prey are our own developments. William Scarboro and Tom Pytel have done coding wonders with the engine-couple that with the world class talents of our artists, Scott McCabe and Steve Hornback, and our "environmental alchemist" Matt Wood, plus Lee Jackson's sound effects, and you can see why we're jazzed about the project.
But I digress, getting back to the use of 3D accelerators, they really offer up some fine foundational benefits, such as 16 bit textures (which means 16 bit art and lighting) and the ability to take some geometry processing chores off the CPU's back, allowing us to spend more cycles on AI and other game play interactivity.
OGR: Are ya'll already experimenting with next generation 3D accelerators, such as 3Dfx's Banshee?
Paul Schuytema: We've looked and played around with some of the new stuff, but it's way to early to be fired up. Essentially, we're looking at the standard 3DFX Voodoo chipset as our baseline level of performance, and we're designing Prey in that direction. The problem with so many of these new "super cards" is that the drivers and APIs aren't really very stable at all, so we really can't yet reliably code for them.
OGR: Can you detail any specific multiplayer options at this time?
Paul Schuytema: We really want to remain sort of hush-hush on the specifics on Prey's multiplay features, since that's such a competitive "angle" in the market right now. Rest assured, the multiplay functionality that you find in games like Quake and the like will be there, as a minimum, in Prey. We've got some innovations in mind, but the world will have to wait a little while to see just what they are.
OGR: Thanks for answering our questions about the highly anticipated Prey and keep us informed of its progress!
Update: 07/07/97 Just a quick note for all you mapper candidates out there:
Due to some problems with our company ISP, if you sent a map submission to me between the dates of July 2-July 4, please resend. You [sic] data most likely got gobbled up in the great digital Sargasso Sea. Thanks!
There's a slight chance that we may still have one of our two Prey mapper positions open by the time QuakeCon 97 rolls around. If you're a hot-shot Quake mapper, and relish the possibility of working on one of the industry's hottest titles, here's what to do: check out our job listing, research our company, read all about Prey, then zip up your best map and give me a shout, via e-mail. I'd love to set something up to see your work. Best of luck!
The "critters" shown in the screenshots of our E3 demo are most assuredly way pre-alpha. What you can't tell from a static shot are the two innovations that we wanted to showcase: kinematic animation and true, colored dynamic lighting.
While the form and texturing of our critters suffered because we hadn't yet wrapped up our character tool (they were all done in Max--awful for texturing!), the movement was as smooth as butter and more animated than anything we'd seen before (the girl's hair bobbed when she moved, for example.) In addition, all of the critters reacted to the lights in the environment--if one was in between two differently colored lights, then each side would show the colored light, while it would blend across the middle. Pretty cool, if you ask me.
To make a long answer short: the critters in Prey will be bad-asses in every way, so don't fret :)
Update: 07/23/97 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
3D Realms' page for Prey is updated with new content.
Gamecenter publishes a bunch of previews for upcoming first-person shooters, called "The Magnificent Seven: 3D Shooter Showdown". Prey is one of the games featured, including were three screenshots.19
Imagine blowing a friend off that ledge. Ka-thump...ahh.Two words: light sourcing.Looks comfy, but I don't think I have time for a nap.
Update: 08/08/97 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!
Schuytema updates his .plan discussing a preview of Prey by Next-Generation.
I read through the Next Gen article--good writing, to be sure. But those screen shots! Ugh! Rest assured, our Prey environment isn't that washed out or color saturated! For some reason, the print quality of those screens ridiculously exaggerates our colored lighting.
Also, a point of clarification regarding the Trocara. The Trocara is a single term to refer to a trinity of alien species who all exist upon the same gigantic "mothership." I hesitate to use that term, because the Trocaran vessel is VERY large and is actually the home world for all three species. Then, of course, we throw the Keepers into the mix...
We had two people from Intel here yesterday talking about their future technologies such as APG pathway and coming chips, and of course we gave them a showing of our Prey engine to show them what we were up to. Turns out these same people had recently seen Shiny's Messiah engine. They told us that Prey's technology is ahead of anything they've seen, no contest. They said they were stunned by what they saw and specifically mentioned other still-in-development engines, including Messiah's, as being inferior.
I don't want to come off as bragging, but it's crazy for *any* company to think they're one or two years ahead of other top developers, especially developers such as us and id who *specialize* in 3D games.
The Adrenaline Vault publishes an interview with Schuytema.22
The Quest for the Holy Grail
AV:Hi Paul! Thanks for taking time out of your grueling Prey production schedule to talk with the Adrenaline Vault.
Paul: Not a problem at all. Actually, taking time out to talk about what we're doing really helps to refocus our thoughts. Sometimes, your ideas mature in a much cleaner manner when you take the time to explain them to someone on the "outside."
AV:Paul, before we talk about Prey, can you tell us about your involvement with Mechwarrior 3? Did you actually leave that project to work on Prey, or were your duties there complete?
Paul: When I was working at FIT (FASA Interactive Technologies), I was lead designer of MechWarrior 3. I actually left the project pretty early on to come and join Prey. Before I left, I had completed the rough overall design of the game, based on Jordan Wiesmans' totally cool initial spec. I had a good chunk of the "meat and potatoes" of the design done before I actually left, as well. I really didn't want to leave them in the lurch, so I worked from home for another month, before moving out here to Texas, to finish up some key design issues.
Leaving Mech 3 was a very hard decision -- I loved it there. FIT was a great place to work filled with some seriously creative talents. Prey sort of came up and bit me when I wasn't looking, but I had been following the game closely (out of sheer interest) for about 7 months prior. What Scott and George offered in Prey was a "creative Holy Grail," but it was still hard to leave. Since Mech 3 was in the earlier stages of the development, though, I knew that my leaving wouldn't have that much of an impact on the final project. I only hope that my design work on the game was helpful, even in a small way, to the overall project.
AV:What other games have you worked on?
Paul: The only other published game that I had worked on prior to Mech 3 was Mind Flight, an action game from The Other 90% Technologies, which used a revolutionary neural controller for flight.
Before that, I was a college professor and worked, freelance, as the contributing editor for game design for Computer Gaming World magazine.
I had also been working on, in my own time, something called HOWW (for Houses With Windows -- an ode to Henry James' theory on limited 3rd person omniscient narrative techniques), which is a dynamic storytelling system. Some day, I hope to get back to that project.
The Kingdom that Duke Built
AV:Well, I think any gamer worth his joystick knows 3D Realms is the place to be if you want to make a killer 3D game. Can you tell us your title and describe your duties there?
Paul: My title is project leader. I work essentially as the day-to-day producer of the game and as the "design foci." I use that term because really, the design of the game flows constantly from the dialogues we have as a team. I may spearhead the character, play and story development, but that only serves to set loose the creative energies of the team.
AV:Tell us about a "typical" day's work at 3D Realms? What's the schedule like for the Prey team?
Paul: There really isn't a "typical" day. Generally, the team is always moving as a whole towards one of our milestones, but each of us has our own corner of that milestone that we need to chip away. We're a very tightly-knit bunch, and we all know what we're all doing; it's cool, because we have all sort of tuned in to this really harmonious "Prey wavelength."
It sure doesn't hurt to have some of the best talents in the industry on this team. I wouldn't trade any of them away for any price.
AV:Which games have you been playing lately? Are you a big fan of the other 3D games?
Paul: We've been obsessed with Carmageddon around here at the office -- what a righteous, creative and insanely fun game that is! We've also been playing a lot of Shadow Warrior, the Quake paintball mod, Comanche 3 and Moto Racer. Oh, and I can't forget Preyball -- Tom Pytel's cool multiplayer Prey soccer game.
Preditor and Prey
AV:Avault got a chance to check out Prey in action at E3, and it's obvious that rumors of the game's demise were greatly exaggerated! Was that the master plan -- to keep the gaming community in the dark and then unleash Prey at E3? It certainly wowed everyone who saw it....
Paul: Um, yes, that's it, that was, er, the plan all along? Actually, there was no planned secrecy. George had been telling the world for months that we were cranking along, but with all of the focus on the other titles out there, no one really noticed (except for some of our hardcore fans who were keeping up with our web updates and screens). That was fine for us, because we could focus on what we were doing. It sure was fun, though, to blow away so many people at E3!
AV:It's no secret that Prey was delayed because of some changes in the team, but rumor has it the technology has been completely upgraded. Is this true? What was the game like in its "original" state, and how did this switch affect the game's production?
Paul: What we have now, as far as Prey technology is concerned, is completely "new" in relation to the old (pre-September '96) Prey. The "original" Prey technology was essentially along the lines of a Quake clone -- very cool, but certainly not revolutionary. True, going back to the drawing board to rethink the engine caused some delays, but in hindsight, it was a very wise move. William Scarboro, our engine programmer, deserves the lion's share of praise for his incredible amount of R&D; and conceptualization work.
AV:What kinds of challenges are presented by the everchanging technologies? Is there a danger in designing a game like Prey -- which is still pretty far from release -- that the technology might progress more quickly than the game's development?
Paul: I'm not sure what you mean by "technology." Do you mean game technology or hardware technology in general? Sure there's a risk to tackling new and original technology development, and we sure have to keep tabs on what our competition is up to out there. On the other hand, the nature of this industry today almost forces developers and publishers to talk about their projects early in the development cycle. This means that it's very rare for a developer to "blindside" us with completely unexpected technological leaps. We have a good idea what our competition is up to at the moment, and we feel confident that we're pulling ahead of them with this title.
AV:I guess I'm talking about hardware technology, and the danger that the game your team (or any development team) is making will be obsolete by the time it comes out -- as unlikely as that may seem.
Paul: If you're an intelligent developer, then you shouldn't allow yourself to fall prey (sic) to the ever-forward march of technology. It's up to the developers to keep tabs on the industry and where it's going -- we regularly meet privately with Intel, MSoft, etc. to learn of the future courses they are charting, and how we can best anticipate them. It takes some leg work, but in the end, it's worth it.
AV:How did Prey first come about? Who's brainchild was it?
Paul:Prey evolved as Scott Miller, George Broussard and Tom Hall began brainstorming their next action game beyond ROTT. For the most part, though, Prey evolved out of Tom Hall's ruminations.
Once I came aboard, though, Scott and George essentially handed me a clean slate. The game would be called Prey, it was going to be a serious tone science-fiction game using Portal Technology and a 3D accelerator, and the main character was an American Indian with a last name of "Brave." We just took the ball and ran with it.
AV:Paul, one of the most impressive things about Prey is the new Portal Technology. This really blew away everyone who saw it at E3. How much development time was put into actually developing it?
Paul: Wow . . . William spent untold hours of mental gymnastics brainstorming our Portal approach! When I came on board, William had a very cool Portal demo in place, but it took many months of hard work for it to move from demo state to the foundational (and functional) concept of our 3D engine.
AV:Do you envision Prey's Portal Technology as having a very long lifespan? Any future projects that might use the engine?
Paul: Absolutely. I really think that this approach to dynamic 3D geometry will be the next major approach, much as BSP trees have been for the last few years. We won't be the only one's with this type of technology in a few years, but I think we'll have the advantage of having worked with it and refined it for so long. As for other projects using the engine, there'll certainly be a few. We've had a number of inquiries already, but the engine won't really be ready for licensing until later this year.
AV:What kinds of advantages do the level designers have using the Portal Technology? Any disadvantages?
Paul: Portal Technology offers up a whole host of creative approaches for our "environmental alchemists." First off, it essentially eliminates the need for the concept of a finite level at all. With PT, it's a no brainer to have a single persistent game world. Is that the best way to design an action game? Probably not, but that's a question for another time.
PT also allows our environmentalists to dispense with the "petty constraints" of Euclidean geometry. Of course, this can also be seen as a disadvantage, since the designers have to deal with this added responsibility. But, man oh man, the puzzles and traps we can devise!
Our environmentalists still have to deal with the issue of framerate -- even though our 3D engine is very advanced, the ultimate frame rate responsibility still falls into their laps (in much the same way as in Duke 3D and Quake). Our designers have to think in a different way, though, since optimizing PT framerate isn't always as commonsensical as reducing the number of polys.
AV:One thing we've seen in the computer game industry is that if you give gamers the tools to create their own levels, the lifespan of a game can be increased significantly. Do you see the Internet just exploding with user-made Prey maps? What is 3D Realms position on gamers making total conversions and extra episodes for games like Prey?
Paul: Man, we want our players to go nuts with Prey! We'll be releasing Preditor (our content creation tool), along with some other goodies with the registered version of Prey. Right out of the shrink wrap you can start developing the coolest environments ever with the same tools we used. But beyond maps, we want to encourage other modifications. We're going to try to make the first layer of this far easier than it currently is in Quake -- we want non-programmers to have fun customizing gameplay too. Of course, if you want to play around at deeper levels, you can do that as well.
AV:Prey will obviously be completely multiplayer capable -- but as multiplayer becomes more common, there are some players who think that game developers have started skimping on Artificial Intelligence. Quake 2's monsters have reportedly undergone a serious AI overhaul, and will even dodge enemy fire. Just how "smart" is Prey? How advanced is the AI?
Paul: AI is not an area we plan to skimp on in Prey! After all, the hallmark of Prey playability is still the single player experience -- that's where we can really deliver a vivid and frightening experience to the player. The key, in AI design as well as interactivity design, is to really give the player a sense that he is an agent of change in the world. Entities must react to the player, and change their reactions based upon changes in the player's actions. This may seem really obvious, but it really isn't done that often in games.
A Brave New World
AV:Tell us about Talon Brave, Prey's main character. He's just a down-and-out nothing, right? How does someone like that become a hero?
Paul:I wouldn't say that Talon's a down-and-out nothing. He's a man who's loved and lost and isn't currently on the fast track to anywhere. But he's human, full of talents and eccentricities. First and foremost, though, is that Talon doesn't want to be a hero -- he's probably never thought of it. Talon is reluctantly forced into the role when he comes into contact with the Trocara.
AV:What's the deal with the Trocara? Are we talking Duke Nukem style aliens whose only wish is to destroy, or are they more friendly, E.T.-type aliens? They are a trinity species, right?
Paul: The Trocara are a trinity of alien species who have evolved, and currently live upon a gigantic, Ringworld-esque (an ode to Larry Niven) spaceship. In fact, this ship (I hate to even use that word, though) is their homeworld, and has been since the dawn of their existence. The Trocara, and a fourth species, the Keepers, are far more complex than just Duke style "evil aliens" or E.T.-like benevolent aliens. Like we humans, they just "are" -- there are good and bad facets to their culture, their methodologies, their agendas, etc., but the key point is that they aren't black and white. And also, another key gameplay point is that all four species are very different from one another, and will force the player to adopt different play styles throughout the game.
AV:Ion Storm's upcoming Daikatana is being designed with story and character development as integral parts of the game's design. How important do you see these elements? Will Talon Brave's identity actually be a factor in Prey's gameplay, or is the emphasis more on action?
Paul: Talon's identity will absolutely be a factor in gameplay. It's far cooler to play a game in which you can identify with an interesting alter-ego rather than just becoming a faceless "everyman." We want the player to experience Prey through Talon's eyes, and to really get a sense of the fear and wonderment Talon must feel as he battles with the Trocaran species. But remember, Prey is an action game, in every sense of the word. We're really doing some cool new things with character and story, but everything must point towards the end of delivering one hell of an exciting and frantically paced action experience.
AV:What is the actual story of the game? Why is Talon chosen -- is there something distinct about him?
Paul: Since you had me on a roll, you thought you could get me on that question, eh? I'll just shoot you our design bible and a bundle of our source code as well (laughs) . . . But seriously, I don't want to tell you the story of the game, not out of fear that the competition will snag its cool ideas first, but out of the sincere belief that our players will have the most fun discovering the story on their own, as the game progresses. If someone tells you all the cool points in a movie, do you still get as much out of it when you finally go see it? Perhaps, if the special effects are cool enough (more laughs!). Nope, I'll keep the story close to my vest for now -- my guess is that you'll thank me later . . .
AV:Okay, Paul -- you knew this one was coming! 3D Realms is obviously no stranger to controversy, first with Duke Nukem 3D and now with Shadow Warrior. There have been some accusations that Prey may be just as "politically incorrect," and the game's main character, Talon Brave, will be represented as a stereotypical, tomahawk-wielding Indian. How do you respond to something like this? Is it tough trying to create an in-game persona in today's politically correct, politically conscious world? Is race even an issue?
Paul: It's true that we often stare down the barrel of PC-ness and raise our middle finger. But we're not doing it out of any kind of pre-meditated agenda -- we want to deliver over-the-top, adult action games to our players, and we won't be swayed by controversy. In fact, we welcome it.
That said, I want to be perfectly clear that we are doing our homework on Talon's culture. Prey is a "serious tone" game, and caricature will not work. We want Talon, his adventure, his traditions and his culture to seem very real to the player. We're not doing this as an overt attempt to be "politically correct," but we're doing it because Native American culture is fascinating, and it will provide a rich tapestry to blend into the fiction of our game.
The Shape of Things to Come
AV:The Internet is buzzing with the news that some guy claims he owns the rights to an obscure patent, one which prevents game companies from using pre-recorded images and other such nonsense. Any thoughts on this whole "patent battle," Paul? Do you think this is something that will blow over, or will it have some widespread effects in the gaming community.
Paul: My sense is that it will blow over. My guess is that the only widespread effect it will have is that it will make it harder to push through unrealistic patents which relate to this industry, and that's a good thing. I know that there are probably a ton of patents, rights and other legal attributions that were made before anyone really understood the impact of computers, gaming or this type of technology. We're learning as we go.
AV:Paul, as a game developer, where do you see the computer gaming industry in 5 years? What kinds of games would you like to make, with the technology that will be available?
Paul: Wow, 5 years is like a lifetime in this industry. My guess is that the visual fidelity of games will be there, at a level that is just awesome. At that point, my guess (and hope) is that technology will become less of an issue and content more of an issue. There are tons of cool game approaches that no one has ever tried before, zillions of things we've never done, and I want to start seeing those innovations. My guess is that with the current push towards "better, faster, more" technology, the gameplay and type of games that we're developing isn't evolving as fast as it could. Of course I've got some cool, interesting types of games that I would like to try to develop in the future. Doesn't everyone?
AV:In your opinion, is the Build Engine dead?
Paul: I'm not sure if I would say that the Build engine is dead, but I think it reached its gameplay zenith in Shadow Warrior, and it's probably run its course, technologically.
AV:Paul, it's been great! Again, thanks for taking the time to talk with the Adrenaline Vault. Now get back to work, and finish Prey!
3D Realms announces the hiring of three new developers for Prey and Duke Nukem Forever, with John Anderson joining the Prey team. Only the relevant parts about Prey are noted here.23
3D Realms hires three developers: two joining Duke Nukem Forever and one joining Prey 3D Realms is excited to announce the hiring of three important developers, who will be taking key positions among our two internal development teams.
John Anderson joins the Prey project as a level designer, having beaten out over 100 applicants for this position by submitting three highly detailed, imaginative Quake maps, one based on a scenario given to a limited number of cream-of-the-crop, final-running applicants. (Anderson's winning map can be downloaded here.)
Anderson comes to 3D Realms from Lockheed Martin, where he worked the previous eight years as an engineering designer in their Space and Range Systems division, having worked on the Green Bank Telescope (when completed, will be the largest radio telescope in the world), and on the Unified Tracking Antenna at the Kennedy Space Center. "I was working on some very cool stuff, including the X-33 and it's launch complex," says Anderson, "but working on Prey will be the coolest thing I've done yet. After seeing the full capabilities of this game's engine, and the vision of it's content, there's no doubt I am making the right choice."
"It's always exciting to welcome new talent to our team," beamed Paul Schuytema, project leader of Prey. "We pride ourselves on finding the most creative minds out there, and it's a real boost for everyone once they come aboard."
The press release concludes with a quote from Miller.
"Getting developers of this talent level is not easy--any of these three could pick where they want to work in this industry," said Scott Miller, head of Apogee Software, Ltd. (3D Realms is a division of Apogee). "Both Prey and Duke Nukem Forever are going to be noticeably improved by their creative contributions."
Click here for more information on Prey, and here for more information on Duke Nukem Forever.
What are your responsibilities as project leader for Prey?
As project leader, I act as the producer of the game. That means that I manage the team, encouraging here, kicking a bit there, and guiding the efforts of the individual talents (and what talents they are!) towards the end of sculpting the game Prey. I'm also responsible for the primary game story and back story and I act as the design "foci" of the project-design ideas come from every member of the team, but it's my job to sift, evaluate and blend the myriad of cool ideas into a cohesive and intriguing design kernel.
How is prey development coming along? The last thing I read was that you were about to begin deathmatching. How much of the levels, monsters, etc. have been done?
Prey is an interesting project, since it is simultaneously a technology development project and a game development project.
Development on the technology front is progressing very well, and we've just completed our 4th milestone, which was the ability to play in a LAN-based deathmatch Prey game. It's totally cool to take on the other team members, and we're amassing the world's first Prey frags.
On the game side, we're refining our ideas. Allen is beginning work on the final Talon Brave model, and is completing some of the other game beasties. We've done quite a bit of "environmental testing" within Preditor and are starting to nail down the look, feel and regions of the game areas.
What is your typical day like?
Typical? There really isn't one. I usually get in before most of the team assembles (I come into work after I drop my daughter off to school), so I have time to do all that lame management type stuff (planning, evaluating, sharpening pencils, making odd patterns out of dozens of post-it notes, etc.). Once everybody is in, I spend most of my time working with the team members, seeing where they're at, if they need anything to help them test their work, etc. We also have a ton of impromptu design raps, where we wax poetic on various aspects of the game and technology. We nail down at least two or three "keeper" ideas every day.
What tools does the Prey team use?
Our 2D artists (Scott and Steve) use a myriad of paint tools, but they do the lion's share of work in Photoshop. They also use programs like Fractal Painter, MediaPaint, etc. Allen, our 3D artist, uses 3D Max for modeling and animation. Those models are then imported into Creditor, our own model tool, for texturing and "behavior assembly."
Our mappers work exclusively with Preditor (our own level design tool) to create the game environments and place the various dynamic entities.
All of our coders work in Visual C++, but Loyal is the only coder at the moment working with version 5.0 and Windows NT-William and Tom work with version 4 on Win95.
What is it like to work at 3D Realms?
This is a great place to work! Scott and George go out of their way to create a really supportive atmosphere for their developers. Beyond just 3D Realms, the Prey team is a wonderful "intellectual home." Everybody on the team is just bursting with creativity, and we all dovetail very nicely together. Coming to work in the morning is a pleasure.
Our company reputation, plus the gamers' enthusiasm over Prey does put a lot of pressure on us to deliver, but I think it's a very healthful pressure, and it's bringing out all of our best efforts.
Can you describe any of the weapons, locations, or monsters we will see in Prey?
Unfortunately, I'm going to be vague on this question-not because we don't know, but because we all have the sincere belief that a player is going to have a lot more fun discovering the world of Prey when it's fresh. I hate it when I follow a game for months, then buy it and I've already seen everything (it's the same thing as those movie previews that give too much away by showing all the killer action scenes in the preview).
What I will say is that the game initially begins on Earth, in eastern Arizona. The majority of the game, however, will take place on the Trocaran mothership. On the mothership, Talon will encounter the three alien Trocaran species, plus a forth type of being, the Keepers. Each alien species will, of course, have a myriad of variations that Talon must deal with.
As for weapons (often the coolest things in an action game), I will say nothing. I'll just cite the fifth?
Will you have cutscenes or movies in Prey to show the story?
We're going to take a number of different approaches to tell the story within Prey. Non-interactive cinematics will likely be one of the methods, but even that will be a little different than you might expect. We've got some other really excellent approaches, but you'll just have to wait and see.
Update: 09/12/97 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!
George Broussard would partake in an interview in the id.lobosoft.com IRC group.25
Q: With Prey's release so far off, are you afraid that it will be overshadowed by games coming out in 1999, such as Trinity?
GB:I'm not worried about Prey's tech edge at all. Most of the reviewers that have seen it have been floored and it's getting better and stronger all the time. We're pretty confident in it's tech. What you need to keep you going is simply a healthy respect for the competition and we have that.
Q:What sort of poly counts on actors is the Prey team going for these days, and what's the target frame rate for your benchmark system (Also, what's the benchmark system)?
GB: We're still experimenting with what we can do, so nothing is set iin stone, but we're getting away with 750-1000 polys per char so far. Since Prey is a year away we're not too concerned with a minimum system. The game will be fast, and right now the main requirement is a 3Dfx card (preferably a 4 meg or more), and a P150 or so.
Q: Any plans to incorporate 3D positional audio (like A3D) in the Prey engine?
GB: Sure, and the Prey team is looking into sound solutions now. But really with current speaker setup's a lot of that stuff is overkill. But we're open to the possibilities
Q: Will we be able to generate our own levels in Platforms like 3D Studio MAX? Or AutoCAD? We were able to do so with the Quake engine, so my colleagues and I were wondering if the same would hold true.
GB: We'll be releasing our own editor for Prey (Preditor), so you probably won't need to. But I also think the map formats will be released, so I'm sure someone could easilly write a 3DS -> Prey map convertor etc
Q: Have you tried any Prey deathmatch with the Prey team yet?
GB: I haven't personally, but they do have it up and running, with actual scores, kills, ammo etc. So, from here on out it's just add features and optimize, and keep it current with the game's progress.
Q: What are gonna be the cool features of the PREY monsters AI?
GB: That's impossible to say, as we're still developing it all. I'm sure in the end they will do much cooler things than just walk, shoot, and die. They should be smarter, more agressive, and I expect AI to keep moving towards real deathmatch players. Obviously players are tired of the same old monster ai that's been with us for 4 years now. it is time for a change
Q: How do you plan on making the players "care" for there lives in PREY and DNF... I notice that in QUAKE DM, everyone are running all over the place and shooting.. thats not a game worth buying.. after 3 hours of play, you get bored.
GB: if you play for 3 hours you can't be that bored can you? ;) In Dmatch the goal is to kill, kill, kill. If you want something different play co-op ;)
Q: Have you decided how we will be able modify DNF or Prey? Like dll's or a scripting language?
GB: The scripting for Prey is the next big thing to be worked and settled on
Q: Will prey support OpenGL, Direct3D or the native api's like GLide ? Or isnt that decided yet ? (sic)
GB: I think the Prey guys are doing Glide, but I know they wanna go OpenGL, and I think they are moving towards that
Miller updates his .plan file discussing ideas planned for Duke Nukem Forever and Prey.26
* We've got several totally breakthrough ideas with Duke Nukem Forever and Prey. Both these games, I truly think, will be seen as genre-expanding standard setters. Anything you've seen or played or heard about in other 3D shooters will not prepare you for the coolness we've got in store for you. ;)
Scott Miller has an interview with Voodoo Extreme.27
VE: Now on to the present: what's the story with Prey? I mean it's been delayed as we all know but is it going smoothly now? When will we see it happily running on our PC's?
SM: No promises, but we're shooting for a late '98 release. The game is proceeding quickly now, and I guarantee it will be a blockbuster.
VE: I was present at ECTS and I have to say that Prey will have a truck load of competition such as Half-Life, Quake 2 and SiN. So what's Prey got that'll grab people by the cahoonies and make it stand out from the crowd?
SM: Prey has got many, many innovations, both in technology and gameplay, that I've yet to see mentioned in other games.
VE: From what you've seen of the competition; does it worry you or are you so confident that Prey will blow away the others?
SM: I'm above confident that Prey will be a huge success. This does not mean that our competition will release bad games, though. But we've been making 3D games longer than most developers in this industry and we've learned a lot that can only come from first-hand experience.
VE: Have you read some of the criticism's being levelled at Prey? I mean all that stuff about,"too little too late..." does it bother you? Would you like to answer those critiques here and now?
SM: This criticism is meaningless. We take as long as needed to make a great game.
VE: How do you rate the 'portal technology' then? The press kit states it's the 'next-gen' of 3D engines but what is that in comparison too? Names drop as much as you like Scott...
SM: Portal technology is just one of many technical innovations--the others we've not talked about. Portals give us and the player many incredible benefits over BSP technology, so I see it as a technology that will be used a lot in future 3D games.
VE: Is it a dodle to use? I mean will ordinary gamers like us be able to design our own wannabe levels?
SM: Yes. Our editor, Preditor, is the best level editor yet devised that I've heard about or seen. It's easier to use, and more powerful, than anything I've yet seen by a long shot. Build was great editor, but Preditor puts it to shame.
VE: I do like the look of the graphics mind you; courtesy of one Mr. 3Dfx eh? Has everyone in the office got one of those under the bonnet of their PC's?
SM: Yes, we all have them. However, it's a mistake to think that the look of Prey all results from having a 3Dfx. The radiosity, color blending, dynamic colored lights and many other special effects are not done by the 3Dfx card itself, but by our Prey engine. 3D cards like the 3Dfx do not give you these effects for free.
VE: Has the 3Dfx enabled you to take Prey to a higher plane? Or do you still harbour feelings for software only versions?
SM: By going hardware-only, we have more CPU time to spend on gameplay, AI and other special effects. Games that also support software cannot do as much as we can do in Prey.
VE: There's a lot of hype about these 3Dfx cards right now; but hell there are so many other cards out there, will any of them work with Prey?
SM: Prey will require a 3Dfx level card or better.
VE: MMX is... er never mind.
SM: We might support this...still looking into it.
VE: Is Prey going to be orientated for the single player? I mean I love deathmatches but unfortunately I must be one of the very few that do not own a network of PC's at home, strange as it may seem.
SM: Prey will provide an awesome, unforgettable single-player experience. Prey will also provide great multiplayer fragfests and fun.
VE: Let's go on to the levels now... how many will there be? Any favourites of yours right now?
SM: Probably 20 or so levels. Not sure if we'll even call them "levels."
VE: What about AI? Do the bad guys have any? AI is real important to die hard gamers...
SM: We've given a lot of thought to AI and we have some great ideas we're not prepared to talk about yet.
VE: Will we see a demo before the finished article? If so when?
SM: Yes, probably a month before the full release.
VE: What's going to happen in the not to distant future at 3DRealms then? I mean there's Max Payne to think about too?
SM: Between Prey, Duke Nukem Forever and Max Payne, we're in a enviable situation of having three sure-fire hits. With 3D action games being our pure focus and speciality, it only makes sense that we're going to be one of the best developers in this genre. We think it's better to be a specialist than a generalist.
Miller is asked in the final question of the interview to describe Duke Nukem Forever, Prey and Max Payne in one word, he describes Prey as "terrifying".
Broussard also has an interview with Voodoo Extreme two days later.28
George Brousard is currently developing Duke Nukem' [sic] Forever and Max Payne not that any of you will have heard of any of these titles though. Of course [sic] Prey is some way off yet but how's it shaping up eh?
VE: George, can you give us a brief description of what you do at 3drealms?
GB: My primary job is being a Project Leader and main design filter for the games. When I'm leading a game like Duke Nukem Forever, I make most of the calls on what we do or don't do. A lot of the ideas come from the entire team, as we often sit and discuss options, but I get the un-enviable position of making the hard decisions and plotting the general course for the game.
VE: How long have you been focusing most of your attention on the Prey project? How is it coming along, from your point of view?
GB: My primary interest at the moment is Duke Nukem Forever. Paul Schuytema is the Project Leader for Prey and is doing a great job. I poke my head in on things from time to time, and Paul and I talk often about what to do next. But for the most part it's his show. I'm part of Prey mainly to make sure we don't the same mistakes we're made in the past and to offer Paul advice of what works or doesn't in a 3D action game.
VE: Lately there has been a lot of talk about Portal technology in regards to Unreal and Prey -- what are your feelings on this (in the aspect of Unreal actually using a form of it too, etc.)?
GB: Just more "he said, she said". All I know is we just try to keep to ourselves and make a good game. We coined the "portal" stuff for Prey and people latched onto it. I look forward to Unreal and think it has real potential to be cool. But I grow tired of all this 3D game in-fighting. Just make your games. We're either learn from them, or we won't.
VE: Prey is one of the first games to announce that it will be available on 3D accelerators ONLY. Have you found that this (using just 3D accelerators) has opened a lot of doors for you (technologically speaking) that wouldn't be there if you had to worry about those damn machines that don't have them (3D accelerators) yet?
GB: Absolutely. I'm soooooo happy we made the hard call to go hardware only in late 1996. That was a tough thing to do, because 3D cards were not the biggest thing ever then. We decided to skip the current glut of 3D games and let Prey benefit from hardware only, which immediately yielded more polygons per character and scene. Free 16 bit source art. Things like translucency and nearly free on a card. And we don't have to develop for the lowest common denominator in Prey, as you do in a software rendering engine. In Prey our biggest concern will be how much memory you have on your card. That will be the limiting factor now (2 megs vs. 6-8 megs).
VE: There are a LOT of 3D accelerators either out or just about to come out, any feelings on any of these...are there any accelerators that you are currently using as a reference board?
GB: We're developing on 3Dfx now, and have support for the new Rendition stuff as well. Our guys look at all of the cards the come out, and we'll end up supporting those which have the baseline features we need (from a 3Dfx). It takes us very little time to support a card, so I expect we will develop Prey on 3Dfx/Rendition cards, and towards the end, we will add whatever new cards look appropriate. This gives us time to let the cards grab a market share and become popular.
VE: What kind of things other than visuals, is Prey going to incorporate i.e. surround sound, force feedback, etc. (That you can discuss)?
GB: Prey is still early enough that not all of this has been decided. But the response that we've gotten from E3 and press guys that have seen the engine so far encourages us that we are doing the right things. Everyone says the game looks better than most of the other things they are seeing and that pushes us harder to do more.
VE: Prey seems to stick out (story-wise) from a lot of the games coming out, who originally came up with the story? The Native American idea kicks ass (and I'm not just saying that because I'm 1/4 Cherokee).
GB: This is an important point. Virtually everything that pre-existed for Prey was jettisoned in late 1996, when some guys split off. To be honest there wasn't much to the story then except "let's make a sci-fi" game serious in tone and nature. When Paul got here he sculpted an entirely new story and world around the "Indian" character that myself and Jim Dose originally came up with talking one night. After Paul got here, we stuck a name to him (Talon Brave) and Prey was re-born with an all new hardware only engine.
VE: Any other types of visuals that you can discuss that will be incorporated into Prey that hasn't been mentioned? The graphics, at this point, look SWEET - - are they basically what we are going to see when the game is released?
GB: I have a favourite saying. "Prey looks as bad as it ever will right now. Imagine what it will look like in a year". Go back and compare Duke Nukem 3D screen shots released a year before the game with the final results. Prey will keep improving visually. Out texture artists are unmatched and with 16 bit art to back them up, Prey will look photo-realistic when you play it.
VE: I assume its a Polygon based game, how many Polygons (a range obviously due to it depending on the seen) will be thrown around the screen at a time?
GB: This is hard to say this early, but we're doing characters now of 750+ poly's and scene complexity hasn't been a real issue. Maybe 600 poly's or more in a scene. But these are just numbers to throw around. They will increase or decrease as we learn things and the game get's more solid. I think it's a given that Prey will have more complexity in characters and scenes than other games due to the fact that we don't have to care about how it runs in software.
VE: What are the machine requirements going to be for Prey (other than obviously a 3D card)? What is optimum and how do you think it will compare to Trinity (which obviously isn't going to be out for a bit after Prey).
GB: I can't compare Prey to Trinity since there's not much known about it. I know Trinity will be very cool though just based on the fact that Carmack knows his shit and there's no reason to expect he'll blow it anytime soon. Machine specs for Prey will be what they end up being. It's impossible to "guess" a year early. We think it's best to push technology and be on the leading edge, rather than try and support machines that will be dead in a year. But with a hardware card driving the game, we should be able to get away with some very "reasonable" pc speeds.
VE: This has been asked a billion times before but is there an ETA for Prey (guestimate)?
GB: I have to bow to the great "When it's done" god on that one ;)
Paul and I had our first discussion on sounds and music for Prey. We're still in the early, early, early planning stages, but at least we're in sync now.
Update: 10/08/97 Effective immediately, future Prey Updates will not be posted here. They will be posted on the new Apogee/3D Realms News Page. All other game development updates will be there too, as well as news from 3D Realms & Apogee.
If you have any feedback on this idea, please E-mail me at joe.siegler@apogee1.com. If you think it's a good or bad idea, let me know.
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..."
Issue 42 of PC Gamer magazine would feature a cover story on Duke Nukem Forever but also included some coverage of Prey and Max Payne. Below is an interview with Paul Schuytema from page 111.32
TIME TO PREY
APOGEE'S NEXT BIG THING
PC Gamer: Why is Talon Brave fighting the Tarcara? Schuytema: On one hand, that's a question for the player to discover. The short answer is that Talon is, in every sense of the word, a reluctant hero. He's sort of abducted, in a very unusual manner, and finds himself in a place that he didn't expect to be but the Trocara didn't expect Talon either.
PC Gamer: Will Prey allow players to destroy anything? Schuytema: We could do that, but what happens when you blow the floor out of the lowest room in an environment? Do you simply fall through? Our lead programmer Will Scarboro still can't have infinitely complex environments, so there has to be a limit. We have to also make sure that we're not allowing the player to create shortcuts.
PC Gamer: It seems that Prey's dynamic technology opens up all kinds of four dimensional level design possibilities. What can't you do? Schuytema: Actually, our Portal Technology engine is, mathematically, a four-dimensional engine. Just sit down with Will Scarboro, and he'll tell you all about it until your head explodes! Any three-dimensional position in the Prey engine can posses multiple three-dimensional points, just as any 2D position in a 3D world can posses multiple 2D points – try it with some graph paper, and you'll see what I mean. The implications for gameplay are simply staggering, as you've guessed. We're going to have fun with these capabilities, but we're not going to go overboard. I need to feel comfortable that this type of "folded space" fits consistently within the fictional realm of the game universe. But secretly I hope that someone will license the engine to make a wholly surrealistic game, sort of an ode to Dali.
PC Gamer: This project sounds like a perfect fit for your background. How did you find out about it? Schuytema: I call it my "Creative Holy Grail." Before Prey, I had what I considered the cherry project in the industry: lead designer of Mech Warrior 3. I loved it there and sure wasn't looking for anything else. But Scott and George, who had known me for quite a while, heard that I'd jumped ship from academia and had entered the game industry, and Scott came a huntin'. I was flattered beyond belief, but I still didn't think it could beat out Mech 3. They flew me down, laid their cards on the table, and essentially offered me creative carte blanche with the Prey project. My wife and I talked about it long and hard for a few weeks, and we came to the conclusion that this was one of those decisions we'd second-guess for the rest of our lives if we didn't take it. So I said "Hell, yes" and I haven't regretted it for a second. This project is really a test, and it stretches the creative talents of our entire team on a daily basis. It's a daunting task, but no one on the Prey team would trade this opportunity for anything.
Can't give any specifics, but there are several prominent developers interested in licensing our Prey Technology. We're going to restrict the number of licenses, plus we're only going to license to companies who are doing games significantly different to other licensees. We're not interested in seeing a bunch of Prey clones.
whole new design 5.doc is created and last modified. Some highlights of the document include:
An estimated schedule for milestones that the team hoped to accomplish. Have the engine ready for potential licensers by January 1998, a feature freeze by March 1998, a demo/shareware episode ready by May-June 1998 and the full game out by September-October 1998.
Detailed character descriptions.
Mentions of various (currently lost) design documents.
Incomplete sections such as: Physics sytsem [sic], General Behaviors (overview), Vampire clanswomen Talon’s mystical powers, General Menus, Multiplay only levels, Talon as an evolving character and a incomplete 1.11 section.
Voodoo Extreme publishes an interview with Paul Schuytema.34
Prey has been talked about for some time now but we were desperate to fins out what in fact is going on and what's new; so who better to ask than the meat and gravy eating Prey Project Leader Paul Schuytema?
VE: Hello Paul first of all 1000thanks for doing this and as a favour could you introduce yourself to the readers? You know the usual Blind Date shenanigans, what's yer' name and where you come from?
PS: I'm Paul Schuytema, and I come from the cornfields of Illinois (where all the best beef goes to be slaughtered). I'm the project leader of Prey, over here at 3D Realms. In a past life, I was an academic, all gussied up in a tweed blazer and preaching the values of sonnets and sestinas to my wide-eyed pupils. After I jumped from the academic ship, I spent some time on the MechWarrior 3 project, as lead designer, but it wasn't too long before my wife, daughter and I traded our Midwestern wear for the rhinestones and pointy boots of true Texans.
VE: Can you dilute our head full of all things Prey then Paul? Give us an insight into the game and concept itself?
PS: On it's most base level, Prey is a first-person action game. It's a genre we all know and love, and in Prey, you'll find yourself doing the familiar killing and questing? but the entire team really buys into the idealistic notion that we can create something new in Prey. Our original goals for Prey were to develop two things simultaneously-our Portal technology engine and a game that was tremendously fresh and immersive. To date, we're right on track. Anyone who has seen our engine running interactively can attest to the fact that we're dead-on with technology. And on the gamefront, we're evolving Prey, the game, and Prey, the game universe, into something oh-so-cool.
VE: Are we going to see all the elements of search and destroy, rpg and cream your enemy before he creams you in Prey?
PS: Sure, they'll be plenty of kill-or-be-killed in Prey, but we want the play to be a little more cerebral than the games we've enjoyed in the past. At times, you might have to ask questions first and shoot later. We're also going to challenge the player a bit more-the same tactics aren't always the best tactics.
VE: Comparisons have been made of Prey before e.g. a real-time Myst but when all the dust settles what sort of gamer will Prey appeal to?
PS: The whole "real time Myst" quote came from Vik Long, over at CGW, when he first saw our engine running. It doesn't reflect on our gameplay at all, but on the visual fidelity of our environments.
Prey will, naturally, appeal to action gamers of all sorts, from those who love the twitch-and-kill aspect of the game to those who love to dive under the hood and monkey around. Prey will also appeal to gamers who enjoy more story-based games-we're pouring the best of our creative energies in crafting an engrossing single-play experience.
VE: There aren't too many shots around but the ones I've seen are stonking indeed. What sort of spec's are we going to need to fuel our fires when playing Prey? Hardware only.
PS: Not too many? True, in this world of "screenshot of the day," but sometimes we feel that there's already too much of Prey out there-we don't want to dilute player's expectations with eight zillion jpegs. We want to blow them away the moment they flare up the game.
That said, I'll get to the meat of your question: what type of PC will run Prey? Right now, it's safe to say that a solid P166 with 32 MB of Ram and a quality 3D accelerator will run the game just fine. The crazier you get with multiplay (if you're not running a dedicated server), the higher the system requirements.
We're making Prey very scaleable [sic] from the ground up, so that almost everybody can find a setup that will work for them, whether it's a modest system or some heinously-fast CPU running under AGP.
VE: What API's will you be supporting natively? Once upon a time I heard it was going to be PowerSGL the Glide then just OpenGL. Can you shed some light into what cards you will be supporting?
PS: We've been mulling over our final API for months now. Our driving question is "which API will give our players the best fidelity on the greatest number of consumer-level 3D cards?" For a while, we thought that the best path was to develop our own HAL and support the cards ourselves, but now it's pretty obvious that we need to buy into an API like Direct3D or OpenGL. If I was placing bets, I'd say OpenGL. Right now, the card manufacturers are pretty quick to "talk GL" but pretty %$#! slow in actually delivering full-compliance GL drivers.
VE: Are we going to see any benefits with the extra 2MB texture memory 3Dfx cards like the Canopus 3D for example? What about the Voodoo 2, have you had access to it?
PS: It's pretty much a no-brainer to say that if you have more texture memory on your 3D accelerator, then Prey will be happier. Our challenge, really, is to make sure that Prey runs as sweetly as possible on cards with less memory.
VE: So you've chopped an changed with the graphics engine but now settled for the Portal Technology which everyone has been raving about. Will it stand proud and tall against the Quake II engine?
PS: The real people to answer that question will be our players. Quake II is a most-excellent engine, and that's why Duke Nukem Forever is using id's technology. Does Prey stack up? Absolutely. Our portal technology gives us some very cool functionality that doesn't fit well into the Quake-style approach, and our visual fidelity is to die for. When most people think of the Prey engine, they think of William Scarboro's 3D visuals and portals, but really, Prey, as a complete game technology, is much more that that. Our entity system, which Loyal Bassett has been slaving over for months, is truly excellent and Tom Pytel's Prey OS is a thing of beauty and nimble performance.
VE: What about groovy lighting effects? Stuff like Radiosity lighting has been mentioned. I'm a fan of anistropic lighting, are you?
PS: Radiosity lighting is cool, especially colored lighting that blends perfectly. But sometimes that's not even enough to create the dramatic effects that we're after, so we have a few other tricks up our sleeves...
VE: OK so graphics are one great asset but just as important are the tools that inflict pain and death. How many are there gong to be? Any favourites or weapons that have multiple uses? Will the default weapon be a Black & Decker power saw?
PS: Weapons are cool? William wants Prey's weapon's to have the awesome "over-the-topness" of Urutsukidoji (sp?), and we think that would be pretty cool as well. Our Prey technology will let us craft some splendid pyrotechnics, so expect some firepower of a most serious nature? but probably no power saws L.
VE: We've got guns and graphics but we need a gaming environment in which to power them. How many levels and what sort of theme will the finished article pertain?
PS: The term level is one that we really don't need anymore-true, it's still easy to think in finite chunks, but there's no reason to. Giving you a number of levels won't really mean anything-it's probably just easier to say that we're planning on presenting the game in six chapters, and each chapter will have its own environmental ebb and flow...
VE: I've heard a bit about the Prey level editor dubbed Preditor. Can you tell all the DIY level enthusiasts a bit about it? Ease of use etc...
PS: When players get their hands on Preditor and Creditor, it'll be all over. Preditor is our "environmental design tool" and it simply rocks, pure and simple. It was designed, from the ground up, to be fast, intuitive and to deliver WYSIWYG functionality. Our editor uses the Prey engine, so you can build, texture, manipulate? anything, while you're in the worlds you're creating, just as they'll look in the game. Think of the Build editor in true 3D, with an actually intuitive interface.
Beyond Preditor, there's Creditor, our tool for working with "actors." Creditor also uses the Prey engine, so you can texture entities right in the game, work with their animations, etc...
VE: And least I forget the monsters. Could they scare the moustache's off of Sadam Husain's body guards? How many are we going to meet and pulverise and any chance of end of level bad-ass bosses?
PS: I'm going to keep quiet on the beasties in Prey. I read too many previews that just list all of the monsters you'll find in an upcoming game, and for me, it just ruins the experience. I want to be surprised when I play a game, especially an action game (remember your surprise the first time you met a Cyberdemon?).
I will tell you this: Prey will be a serious, scary game, so expect the monsters, both in look and in action, to truly spook our players. Also, and even more importantly, we're not designing our enemies willy-nilly. All of the creatures that Talon encounters are members of the Trocaran culture and its myriad of stratifications-everything has its place and purpose. Nothing is just tossed in for looks alone.
VE: OK what abou [sic] the AI of the monsters and indeed the environment? Will we be able to 'interact' with the environment? Or will Prey consist of great looks and no brains like so many games recently blah blah blah piss and moan etc..
JR: AI is all the rage in action gaming these days, but I've yet to really experience good AI. Hopefully, some of the games just over the horizon will raise the bar significantly. We're hoping to do the same in Prey, and we've got some pretty novel ideas that just might work, only I'll have to kill you if I tell, so my lips are sealed.
VE: How will Prey measure up in the single player mould?
PS: Single play is where the gameplay "gravy" is. Single play sells the experience to the player and it's our best vehicle to deliver an exciting adventure. Players are also much more willing to suspend disbelief in a single player game.
Our primary focus, design-wise, is upon the single play Prey experience. We want to draw the player in, not just into an action game, but into a wondrous (and frightening) world and an amazing adventure. As the player progresses in Prey, not only will the kill totals mount, but so will his identification with Talon Brave and his plight. We want players to tighten their sphincters, lean in close to the monitor and not want to stop playing the game until they discover the true meaning of the Trocara and the Keepers.
VE: What about multiplayer mayhem? What can you tell us about deathmatching in Prey?
PS: We thought long and hard about this one and decided that we're going to make Prey single-player only? ok, not really, I just wanted to elicit a gasp from you! Multiplayer Prey should offer up some seriously fun play experiences. We're going to take some chances with multiplayer, and I think the players will like it-I'm going to keep hush-hush about our specific "spin" to things. I will say this: we're planning on having several game options that go far past just "deathmatch" and "co-op" play.
We've actually been doing a lot of research, and spending a lot of time getting feedback from multiplayer action freaks out there. More than just "what do you like"-we've been studying player's perceptions in a multiplayer environment-how do they process inputs, how do they make decisions, what inputs are most significant, what's their level of suspension of disbelief, etc...
VE: Billy enjoys rollin' in his Yugo 1.0 Cabriolet to some funky groove's and tunes. The thing is will the in-game music be almost as hip as Billy's favourite Osmands or can we expect the much more appropriate ambient techno type stuff? Any big name bands signed up?
PS: A Yugo!? Man, they don't pay you folks enough! As for the texture of Prey's tunes, I can assure you that they'll be damn cool. The music will have some tribal elements and "found vocals" to it, plus a whole lot of edge, attitude and intensity. We're in the final stages of paper-work swapping with a band that's going to do Prey's music. They've got all the edge we could ever want, plus they totally grove on our game concept. Expect an announcement from us soon as to their identity.
VE: 3D sound cards are a great idea but will the likes of Prey be supporting them?
PS: It'll probably be a no-brainer to support 3D sound-the real question is this: in the frenetic pace of an action game, does 3D sound give the player more of an immersive experience? Does it give him aural cues he can use? For me, the jury's still out on that one-I haven't yet heard 3D sound that was actually useful in this genre? we'll see.
VE: Correct me if I'm wrong but Prey has been mentioned for what seems like an eternity right? What's been happening as of late?
PS: Prey, as a project, has really been "birthed" twice. The original germination never really took hold, and Prey, as we know it today, really began evolving in October of '96. At this moment, we're refining and weaving together the myriad of systems that constitute our game engine. At the same time, we're creating serious content, since we've nailed down the "larger" design of the game a few months ago.
VE: Are you on schedule for an end of 1998 release?
PS: As of this moment, yes we're on schedule to get Prey out there in '98. As a team, we're really shooting for a '98 release, so I think we'll make it.
VE: A demo to 'test' would be superb. Any chance and if so when?
PS: As you know, we traditionally market our games using Scott Miller's shareware "Apogee model." If we follow that path for Prey, then we won't have a test per-se, but a shareware episode.
VE: Ok so Prey is one of those first person 3D action games but you know there are just so many right now and others on their way. What could you say about Prey that would make the readers believe that indeed Prey will stand tall above all the others?
PS: The first person action game genre is going to be very crowded, very soon (it really isn't yet), but that serves the players very well-if the competition is fierce, then the quality of the games will go up.
On our end of things, as a developer, all that competition can seem somewhat daunting on those rainy mornings when everything wants to crash-but we firmly believe in what we're doing, and the competition only drives us to make an even better game.
What will make Prey great? First off, I'd have to say that the talent of the individuals on the development team are going to make the most difference. The calibre of their collective talent and creativity simply astounds me-if they keep their eyes focused on that brass ring, then Prey will be a knockout.
Prey will be an excellent game, primarily, because of the game we deliver. All the technology in the world doesn't guarantee a compelling experience-it's the foundation to deliver the game to the player. Our game universe, story, characters and interactive environments will all work together to deliver a play experience that will provide a wondrous escape for our players. That's what it's all about, and that's what we're all committed to creating.
Beyond that, Prey is built upon truly exceptional technology. We can offer amazing visual fidelity, incredibly life-like characters and places and situations that just couldn't exist in our "mundane" reality.
Finally, Prey will be a ball to customize. The game will ship with our content creation tools, so players can start creating their own environments immediately. The core game itself is easily expandable as well-amateur game-heads can do significant tweaking while the hard-core set can create some intense new content for all of us to enjoy.
VE: Speaking of the 'others' any that you are looking out for?
PS: Wow, a tough question! Games are so cool, sometimes I lament not having all the time in the world to just sit and play. When Quake II comes out, I'm sure we'll all log some serious hours on that (just like Jedi Knight sucked up a week or so around here-now it's Total Annihilation!). I'm really curious to see how Daikatana pans out, as well as Unreal. Both have the potential to give players something very cool and very unexpected.
Are we fearful of the titles on the horizon? Not really. We just need to focus on developing the game we want to play, and we'll be fine. That doesn't mean that we have blinders on-it's important for us to continually take stock of the current "state of the art" in order to assess the validity of our efforts.
VE: OK so Paul even though this question might seem odd I shall press on; what have you got planned after Prey? More Portal Technology type games?
PS: Well, we've already started thinking about the second Prey game (though Prey 2 probably won't be the title, it'll probably be something like "xxxxxx: A Talon Brave Game"). While we hope Prey becomes the game we're all striving towards, there are some significant advances that we just don't have the time to get into Prey, so we'll need a second Talon Brave game (at least) to deliver all the tech we're currently brainstorming. Duke 5 with the Prey engine? A serious possibility...
VE: Cheers ever so much for letting us bug you like this.
PS: Not a problem-it's healthy now and again to take a pause and reflect on what we're up to-it helps us to focus a little better... now back to our gaming muse...
Paul Schuytema sends Lon Matero a screenshot, Lon would publish the image.
Scott Miller updates his .plan file stating that the third level designer for Prey, Martin Goedtke, is will soon begin working at 3D Realms, noting many of the hurdles they had went to get him, due to him having come from Germany.
Nov 11, 1997
We're very close to having our 3rd Prey level designer, Martin, join us. This is an interesting hire because Martin is from Germany, and we've been working with our immigration attorney for over five months to bring him into our country. One of the big problems is that there's not an official job for level designer within the Immigration Services' national database, so matters were not as clean-cut as they could have been.
But all the hurdles have finally been jumped, and I just got done signing a dozen signatures on a multitude of documents, petitions and forms that will finally clear the way for Martin to make the move. Why go through all the trouble and expense to hire him? I'll let Paul answer that one...
3D Realms announces that the band KMFDM will be providing the soundtrack to Prey.35
3D Realms signs the alternative band KMFDM to provide the original music for their upcoming PC game Prey
Alternative band KMFDM is joining forces with the developers at 3D Realms to provide the music for the upcoming 3D action game Prey. KMFDM will create completely original music for the game.
KMFDM [sic] and 3D Realms have been in communication for several months, and after Prey was shown to them in Seattle, both parties knew that this was a collaboration that just had to happen. KMFDM's music, a truly unique blend of energy, intensity and attitude, dovetails perfectly with the goals of Prey.
"Before we even started putting together our short list of bands we'd like to work with," explained Paul Schuytema, Prey's project leader, "our entire development team was listening to their music. It was natural that they were the top of our list. We're completely thrilled to be working with them."
"Their music is so unique and that's what drew us to them. They don't just mimic the hundreds of alternative bands out there-they've been creating their own musical vision for over a decade. That, coupled with the fact that we both share the same visceral vision for Prey, makes this a potentially awesome collaboration," continued Schuytema.
"When we first heard about this project, we were very interested," explained KMFDM's Sascha Koneitzko. "We'd been asked to work on games before, but nothing felt right. We did some research, and realized that Prey had potential. After we took a look at the game, I knew this was the right move-no question about it. It's the coolest thing I've seen."
Prey: A Talon Brave Game, 3D Realms' ultra-ambitious action title, will be a first-person, true 3D game which will feature 3D Realms' own Portal Technology engine. The technology utilized in Prey will offer the player unprecedented visual fidelity and realism. Beyond simply awesome technology, Prey will deliver an intense science fiction story, placing the player into the shoes of Talon Brave, a modern-era Apache Indian who is forced to become a reluctant hero as he comes up against the awesome power of the Trocara.
KMFDM was formed in Paris in 1984 by Sascha Koneitzko and Udo Sturm-currently, the band is based in Seattle. KMFDM stands for the German phrase "kein mehrheit fur die mitleid," which, roughly translated, means "no pity for the majority." To date, the band has released 9 major albums, culminating in their recently released Symbols. Called "the inventors of electronic angst music," KMFDM's music is infused with an aggressive intensity and a message that shuns the "me too-ness" of our modern culture. To KMFDM, individualism is the key.
For Symbols, Sascha Koneitzko, En Esch and Gunther Schulz were the core team, and other friends and collaborators included Tim Skold (Skold), Orge (Skinny Puppy), Raymond Watts (Pig), Abby Travis (Beck, Elastica), William Rieflin (Ministry, RevCo) and Michael Bassin (Treponem Pal).
KMFDM has just finished up a European tour and is currently on tour in the United States. The band will begin major work on Prey in January 1998. Visit KMFDM on the web at http://www.kmfdm.net.
3D Realms Entertainment, best known for Duke Nukem 3D, is a division of Apogee Software, Ltd. that focuses solely on cutting-edge 3D action games with the goal of setting new standards in technology and gameplay content. Apogee pioneered shareware marketing for games in 1987 and has won literally hundreds of industry awards and honors. Visit 3D Realms on the web at www.3drealms.com.
GT Interactive Software is the worldwide publisher of Prey, as well as most of Apogee's games, and is a publicly traded company on NASDAQ. GTIS is currently the second largest game publisher worldwide. Visit GTIS on the web at www.gtinteractive.com.
Another update is also made.
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
We snapped this pic when we were out in Seattle, showing Prey to KMFDM.
From left to right: Paul Schuytema, Sascha Konietzko, Rick "GT" Raymo, Tim Skold.
Miller updates his .plan file with various news, he gives a small update on Prey stating 3D Realms is still looking for a 3D modeler/animator for the project.36
Prey is still looking for a 3D modeler/animator, but due to some layoffs at Ion Storm, we might be close to filling that position.
Prey Development Update Wow! That's all I can say for our Friday night adventure down in Austin to see KMFDM. It was one of those nights when so many things could have gone wrong, but nothing did. It was one of thos [sic] magical, once-in-a-blue-moon adventures. Our entire road-trip down there was one side-splittingly funny sick joke that had us all in tears from laughing so hard. And the show? Go check it out over at the page we set up about our trip (has 30 pictures, and some captions). We definitely nabbed the right band for Prey, that's all I can say! We'll be sending them some more Prey shirts to wear for the rest of their tour (they wore out a set in Europe), plus a few copies of Duke 3D for their Playstation to help their bus rides pass a little more violently.
Right now, we're kicking off a 2 week crunch period before the X-mas holidays settle in. We've got high hopes for this final burst on 97 energy - I'll keep you posted.
To do:
Add the column here (the collum is fairly long, so perhaps it could be better to summarise it).
Gameceneter would publish the first instalment of the "Prey Designers' Journal", a series of articles written by the Prey team, mainly by Paul Schuytema.
3D Realms would post an update releasing various material; two screenshots of the game, a desktop wallpaper and two MP3s of KMFDM songs, Megalomanic and Inane (neither song was intended to appear in the Prey soundtrack.)
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:
Two new screens ripped from the belly of our Christmas milestone.
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. :)
Joe Siegler posts a final update on 3D Realms' website for the year, he states that he doesn't have any news to post but states to look out for 3D Realms' upcoming games, Prey included.38
John Anderson (Not from ion) will be joining the Prey team soon as a map designer. Prey is about to launch into overdrive as the tools are nearing completion. Tom even has rudimentary net code up and running. Prey is....well....scary. It's got us Duke guy's scrambling to outdo it ;) So customers will benefit from this friendly little intra-compay competition.
all new screen shots from the Prey engine are a sham--the engine isn't really that far along at all. we've just been stalling. our artists Scott McCabe and Allen Dilling actually created the screen shots in 3D Studio so we'd have something to show. but the truth got out somehow--right now, the Prey engine can only show polygons and we're struggling even with that... etc.
I've attached a "screen shot" of the "actual" Prey engine in action--now the truth is out there...
Design documents (don't add everything from here, summarized what is said and make note of anything interesting.)
rockful - Ideas from a period of (no later than) August 15th-September 29th
Paul Schuytema would partake in a RealAudio Webcast from Gamecenter with other developers from the Dallas area released during the week of July 27th-August 3rd. Unfortunately appears to have become lost. Some choice quotes by Schuytema:
"We're doing a trillion different things, we're actually getting close to wrapping up a milestone. We're talking multiplay first before single play. That will help us nail down some of the design issues that go along with doing a net game so we don't have to retrofit all that stuff. So we're putting together some deathmatch maps and finishing up our mapper search which has been kinda fun because we have been getting all these quake maps. And yes, we do play Quake a lot on the Prey team. It's a cool game. By Monday we should be announcing our final team, we will all be together, and we are all excited about that. William Scarabro, our engine programmer, is finishing up the last rev of Preditor, which is our sculpting tool for doing environments, and we are having a lot of fun debugging that. That is kind of where we are at right now."
"...one of the things we are doing with Prey beyond the Radiosity lighting is Area Light sources. An entire area enmities light rather than a point. But is offers up a whole new set of problems that we just discovered, it tosses a larger responsibly to the artists..."
"Single play is where the game is, that's what sells the products. Not from a marking standpoint, but from an experience standpoint... You can deliver emotion, you can deliver a storyline."
"Our relationship with GT [Interactive] from what I've seen from the Prey site of things...they are extraordinary supportive. But my guess is some of that supportiveness comes from they know that we are proving, we deliver what they want delivered. We follow through. It's an interesting relationship. It's kind of fun working with a larger company because in a since the market is so large right now a company like 3D Realms can't do it alone right now."
Broussard comment published by Lon Matero on January 22nd: "Editor is working and we can make levels."
Misc images.
Prey TeamPoster. Seemingly was an early logo.Another poster. Was also included alongside other images in the Art folder of development materials sent off to Human Head Studios by George Broussard in 2001.Logo introduced in March.Logo introduced in May.Logo introduced in July.Logo introduced in October.Paul with a Prey shirt from GDC 97'. Same shirt as E3 1997.
August Video from Next Generation showing a level off.
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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...
Holy cow! Two updates in one week! Well, this isn't an update as much as it is an excuse to show you a few new and dandy screen shots. We've been experimenting like crazy with Preditor's ability to generate blended colored lights. We've had no problem creating a room with over 30 colored light sources, all blending together perfectly. These four screens show some experiments in saturated light (light with the color intensity maxed out) and more natural light (lessening the intensity of the blended colors for more natural look). Enjoy!
I just wanted to check in to let you know that our latest round of submissions for the Prey mapper position have been very solid indeed. We'll probably keep collecting submissions into next week before we really start seperating the good, bad and ugly. If you've been holding out on us, but think you're a hot mapper, now's the time to send in your .bsp or .map files.
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.
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."
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.
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.
