Differences

This is a sub-page of Prerelease:Prey (2006).

To do: Some guiding points: Only include levels/locations that have a definitive name/filename here. This is missing a ton of information, such as engine, story and character details. Add information from design documents. Clean-up will definitely be needed when this page is more filled out.

Owning to the long development and many creative visions of Prey, several ideas would be scrapped or changed.

Paul Schuytema's version of Prey has the most similarities with the final game, as much of its ideas, universe and documents were used during Human Head's stint on the project.

Story#

To do: MachineWorks Northwest's Prey games, like Prey Invasion, appear to be based on an older version of the final story.

Little is known about the story in the Tom Hall iteration, outside of character details of the main lead and the story being completely overhauled for unknown reasons.

it is unknown how the game's story evolved when Human Head picked up development duties. 3D Realms appeared to have reconsidered the game's name as "Dark Harvest: A Tommy Hawk Adventure" by 2001. While the game wasn't retitled, the name would continue to be used in as a codename and in design documents.

Logo#

Early 1996	October 1996	March 1997	April 1997
July 1997	October 1997	2005	Final
			TBA

The 1997 poster appears to have served as a basis to a logo as seen on a shirt worn by Schuytema during mid-1997.

Engine#

Prior to the decision to utilize a modified version of id Tech 4 in 2001, Prey had made use of three different proprietary game engines. No commercial product ever made use of these engines as they all were never finished.

Prey Engine (1995-1996)#

The engine used during Tom Hall's reign on the project, primarily developed by the late William Scarboro. Development of the engine started around July 1995. The team had considered whenever to use the Build engine (utilized by games like Duke Nukem 3D) or to use Polytex, an unfinished engine from Build creator Ken Silverman. Ultimately the team had decided to code their own engine. In 3 to 4 months, Scarboro had a true 3D texture mapped and lit engine up and running.¹

A glimpse into the early life of the engine can be seen with the 1995 prototype. The prototype's engine itself appears to be real-time 3D, processing basic collision and physics. The build is generally quite unstable and will crash often, especially with its default settings. The engine appears to have swiped some code from Doom, such as code for handling WAD files.

The engine would've been comparable to rival games and their engines in development at the time like id Software's Quake or Epic Games' Unreal.

The developers also gave the engine various inside joke names such as "Tears" which according to them is "what our competitors will be shedding when they see how cool it is").²

Animated textures were planned to be supported.³

Ultimately with the project's collapse in August 1996, development of the engine alongside the game stalled.

PreyTech (1996-1998)#

When Paul Schuytema was hired, he rebooted the project with a new vision, this also included development of a new engine, once again primarily developed by the late William Scarboro. The engine was original known as Prey Engine yet again but by January 1998, was known under its final name of PreyTech. Its unclear, how much if any code from the previous engine was recycled but regardless the engine was a total rewrite.

Rather than making use of the more standard binary space partitioning for maps (which the previous engine had utilised), the engine was to make use of "portal rendering". The version featured the much touted "portal technology".

Around July 1998, the engine was beginning to be moved over to Microsoft's DirectX 6.

PreyTech was planned to be used in a variety of games besides Prey such as the tentatively titled Duke Nukem 5.

Prey OS was simply a buzzword created by Schuytema for the engine.

> February 1998	March 1998 <

Some of the file formats of the engine are as follows:

• BRS - Brush prefab
• EDT - Editable geometry?
• ENT - Entity data
• GAM - Game optimised geometry?
• LMP - Lightmap data
• ROM - Room (possibly later amalgamation of EDT, GAM, ENT and LMP formats)

Much like before, the engine was not further developed after the project collapsed again in October 1998.

Untitled Engine by Corrine Yu (1998-2000)#

It was confirmed by Yu in a March 18th, 1999, update to her .plan file that her engine was not recycling any code from Scarboro's previous efforts.

According to Scott Miller in messages in the official 3D Realms Discord server, the engine was not used because "It just seemed like it never materialized into something the team could start making a game with."

Gameplay#

HUD#

March 1996	March 1997	May 20054	Final
			TBA

A HUD was shown to have been implemented by the week of March 29th, 1996. This HUD would be shown again in another screenshot the following week but was alas never seen again.

Screenshots from March 1997 showcase a newer HUD following the restart.

May 2005	Final
	TBA

Multiplayer#

A multiplayer mode from the Paul Schuytema iteration was "Preyball", an adaptation of soccer in Prey designed by developer Tom Pytel. This mode was only ever mentioned in an August 1997 interview with Schuytema and it is not known if it was ever intended to be included with the game had it released.⁵

Editor#

Max Payne's editor, MaxEd is supposedly heavily based on Preditor. A former developer of Paul Schuytema's iteration compared Preditor's ability with creating geometry to SketchUp.

Miscellaneous#

''Ideas considered for Paul Schuytema's iteration of the game's development include:

• Health stations in lieu of traditional health power-ups, not so dissimilar to the ones seen throughout the Half-Life franchise. No prerelease media exists showing these stations, and their only existence is various design documents, mock-ups for symbols and two mentions of them by Scott Miller in interviews in 1999.⁶⁷

Ideas considered for Human Head's iteration of the game's development include:

• An economic system (either as shops where the player can exchange items or loot for better weapons, or machines that decompose items into elements and offer other items that can be created by the player - the latter idea reminiscent of material recyclers and fabricators that appeared in the 2017 Prey.
• Power-ups for weapons in the style of classic arcade shoot 'em ups.
• The ability to stop time.
• An open world system.
• A skill system reminiscent of Deus Ex.
• Weapon modifications.

A "Nautilus Gun" is mentioned in internal documents from February 2002.

Music#

From the project's conception, Lee Jackson was tasked with both music and sound. It was stated that Jackson had done some sounds for Tom Hall's iteration in an April 1996 interview but is not known if he had produced any music during this period.

In November 1997, 3D Realms would announce that the band KMFDM would compose the score, with Jackson only doing sound effects.⁸ The only song from the soundtrack that was ever released was Missing Time in 2000.⁹

According to individuals who contacted KMFDM frontman Sascha Konietzko around the time of the demo's release he claimed that the soundtrack would never be released because 3D Realms only paid him two thirds of the agreed sum.

In a December 2023 interview, Konietzko would state that the hard dive that stored the soundtrack had caught fire. He adds that he may have a copy but doesn't currently process the hardware and software required to read it (He estimated that he would need a Mac running MacOS 5.22 and ProTools 2.61).¹⁰ Miller's newer Apogee Entertainment in an April 2024 tweet claimed to have some tracks in their archive but have not released them as of 2025.¹¹

The final game was composed by Jeremy Soule and his brother Julian. The Soules had recorded over three hours+ of music for Prey, one known song that was scrapped was a "Love Theme Sketch".

One licensed song that Scott Miller wanted in the game but was ultimately unable to feature was Cherokee Nation by Paul Revere & the Raiders, apparently due to cost issues. It was intended to be the game's credits theme, but replaced with Take Me Home from After Midnight Project.¹²

Characters#

Domasi "Tommy" Tawodi
Tommy is the only character to have been featured in every iteration of the game in one way or another. In the Tom Hall iteration, his was known as Prey of Earth. Prey of Earth was first mentioned to the public in a March 1st update.¹³ initially, he was a successful native American businessman/politician who, after losing a court case over his ancestral lands, would retreat into the wilderness to access the ruling, where his abduction by aliens would occur.¹⁴. His body would then be fused with a "biotech suit" and have to fight off various hostile threats. For reasons that are unclear this plot was abandoned, Tom Hall provided one being, "it totally obscures the character, who is the real focus of the game"¹⁵. As such, Prey of Earth was later written to be a paranormal investigator, akin to Fox Mulder and Dana Sully from the X-Files. He would be captured and thrown into an arena with a gigantic alien warrior, which at that point he would need to win the fight against it and survive to find his way back home.

Prey of Earth was dropped as a character after the team disbanded in August 1996. Outside of his native American heritage, he shares very little with his latter counterparts.

In November 1996, various names were proposed for the protagonist during the early stages of the game's restart, some of these included "Ravin Brave" and "Justice Black Claw".¹⁶ Some files from around the time also proposed a story that he be a "down and out security guard on a space station". The name Talon Brave would ultimately be chosen as seen in a January 9th trademark by 3D Realms the following year.

Talon Brave Sun was an Apache living on a reservation in Arizona. Internally called "TB".

Talon was one of four characters to have an audition document. Talon Brave, alongside Great-Grandfather are currently the only known characters with voice acting. It is unknown who had voice Talon.

Talon would still make it into the final game, in a way, with Tommy's deceased pet hawk that accompanies him throughout the game.

Little Information exists regarding the evolution of Talon into Tommy after the second restart however some titbits are known. When George Broussard began revising the Preyweb documents, Talon's name was changed many times into Tommy Hawk (however the "Talon" name still managed to slip in a bit). According to George Broussard, 3D Realms was contacted by lawyers of American professional skateboarder Tony Hawk, citing potential confusion between the two names.¹⁷

By October 2005, the name Tommy Tawodi was chosen, before being slightly adjusted by the release of the final name (with "Tommy" simply made a nickname).¹⁸.

Enisi
Known as Great-Grandfather.

Great-Grandfather was one of four characters to have an audition document. He is stated to have been born in 1890 and to have died in 1985. Internally called "GrandF".

Great-Grandfather, alongside Talon Brave are currently the only known characters with voice acting. Unlike Talon, it is actaully known who had voice him, that being John William Galt (who would go on to voice Enisi in the final game).

Jen
Known as Mary Thunder. Broussard's notes in the Preyweb suggested the idea of Mary dying around the mid-point of the game, and returning as the final boss.

Jen originally sported a different appearance, mainly being blonde. This old design was confirmed to have been axed in a 2002 internal document. The textures of this old design are still present in the final game and used by generic women seen in the second chapter, the assets for this women are internally referred to as "girlfriend_blonde".

The Mother
Known as the Staleene Keeper.

The Keepers
According to Paul Schuytema in an August 1997 interview, the Keepers were morally complex beings, much like humans.

"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".

The final game would portray them as much more clear-cut antagonistic.

The Hidden
TBA

Enemies#

While not confirmed, its very unlikely that any work was ever done for enemies in the Tom Hall iteration. Concept art showcasing some does exist, however.

Beast of Rhek'en#

Pharikus Hunter#

Weapons#

No prerelease media exists showcasing weapons in Tom Hall's iteration, but at least one weapon is known.

At least four weapons are known to have been implemented throughout the development of Paul Schuytema's iteration.

Wrench
It appears to have been the only weapon from the Paul Schuytema iteration to survive into the final game.

A wrench is mentioned as "bludgeoning weapon" (i.e. melee) in the new whole design 5.doc design document.

Rifle
The Design Document v7.0 features a sketch of the Rifle, showcasing a sniper rifle.

According to the milestone 7 documents, the rifle was set to be reworked in order to make it "look more alien and freaky".

Launcher
A missile launcher is seen in screenshots and gameplay footage, were it shoots four missiles in a scattershot manner. It was referred to as the "Drunk Missile Launcher" in a preview by OGR, it also stated that by Schuytema that the weapon may receive heat seeking missiles.¹⁹

The Design Document v7.0 features a sketch of the Rocket Launcher.

Cut Weapons#

Flamewall/FlameSphere
In a December 2014 post on his personal blog, Joe Seigler would reveal one weapon that was present during Tom Hall's reign on the project.²⁰

Below are his own words on this weapon.

One last flamewall story I wish we had a picture or video of.. (sic) This was after Rise of the Triad, when Prey had started development. William took the concept of the flamewall into the original incarnation of Prey. While I don’t believe this proto weapon ever had a formal name, I referred to it as the FlameSphere. If you remember what the Flamewall did, it was basically flame on a single plane. Given the multi dimension and total bizarreness that Prey was (especially in its early versions), you can imagine this. The FlameSphere’s basic idea was to have a moving wall of flame that burnt everything in its path (like the Flamewall), except in EVERY DIRECTION SIMULTEANOUSLY. That was all kinds of awesome to see. There were of course logistical and mapping problems with a weapon like that, but it was really cool to see. I wonder if the code for that exists anywhere anymore, be awesome to see that again

Unnamed Energy Weapon

An unknown weapon that shot energy projectiles that produce a shockwave on impact, was seen in mid-1997 screenshots and footage from Paul Schuytema's interview with infinite MHz at E3 1997. How long the weapon survived or if it was retooled into another weapon is unclear.

Melee Weapons
Various melee weapons were considered for Schuytema's iteration, but the final game only featured the wrench.

A crowbar and steel pipe are mentioned in the new whole design 5.doc. The crowbar is mentioned again in the Weapons page of the Preyweb.

the Weapons page of the Preyweb makes mention of a chain saw. The page describes the when the weapon is selected, it won't be running, the player will have to tap one of the fire keys to getting it going. It was planned to have a 20% chance each time the player tries to start it that it will fail and a 4% chance that it will die with each slash.

Colt Peacemaker/Peacekeeper
A 1880s Colt Peacemaker revolver.

X-5
One of the two weapons demonstrated at E3 and seen in various screenshots in 1998. According to a preview by OGR, "X-5" was a code name for the weapon.

Dart Gun

As seen in a design document from 2002, A "dart gun" was proposed by Human Head. According to the milestone 7 documents, the dart gun's view model was set to be readjusted.

mflynntest.sndshd in the final's files contains a reference to a removed "dart/dartload.wav" sound, likely related to this weapon.

Portal Gun
In a 2017 retrospective of the series, Scott Miller would state that he wanted to add a portal gun to the game in order to one-up Valve's own game about portals that was to release the following year. He estimated that the game needed about 4-6 more months to implement such a feature.²¹

"I felt like the game needed another four to six months,".. "Because there was some key things that weren't in the game that I really felt were important. And one of those key things was putting back in that portal gun."... "It was just... a crying shame that we didn't have that portal gun in there, because, you know, a year or two later the game Portal comes out, and... steals our thunder in that area,

Spiritual Powers#

A lot more spiritual powers were planned besides the spirit walk.

Levels/Locations#

Tommy's Reservation
Talon's was an Apache reservation in Arizona.

The Sphere
The Sphere in Paul Schuytema's iteration was known aa the Trocara. It was based on the concept of a Dyson Sphere.

Cut Levels/Locations#

Since there are likely lots of maps that were scrapped from the game, this section will only focus on maps that are of note or were extensively featured in prerelease media.

Tom Hall-Era#

DEMO4 The only map featured in the 1995 prototype. It isn't known how long it survived in the game. The first screenshots of Prey released in November 1995 showcase some differences from the prototype's version of the map.

QuadRock This level was built to test elements, it was seen in some prerelease media. An "amputated" version of QuadRock, called Lil' Rock, was made and seemingly replaced it. Reasons provided for Lil' Rock being made include that QuadRock "was too big because William's BSPer took too much memory, or Tom got too "polygon-happy"." Differences, if any between these two maps are unknown.

HexRoom2 This map was intended to be seen in a later section of the game.²²

Wells Another test level.

Core A map that was featured throughout various prerelease media.

ArtTest4 Yet again another test level, this one was intended to see how new textures looked in various lighting and next to other related textures.

Energy Monitoring Station

To do: Incorporate stuff from here without copy-pasting.

Yet another map that was featured prominently in various prerelease media. Areas included the control room, energy core, reactor core, energy cell room and auxiliary control room.

According to a May 3rd update from 1996, the core was intended to feature animated textures.

Paul Schuytema-Era#

To do: Notes about E3 1998 build menu.

Maps in Paul Schuytema's iteration were stored in a /rooms directory.

e3menu
In November 2018, Frederik Schreiber would post a video of a build from 1998 in the official 3D Realms Discord server, demonstrating the E3 Menu.

The version of the menu seen at E3 and the one shown in the video from Schreiber have slight differences, the only really noticeable one is the lack of an obscenity on the "coming from 3D Realms" text.

Labeled as "E3 Demo Menu" were

• JOHN'S CRANE (crane)
• PAINTBALL (destroy)
• CANYON (canyon)
• HOUSE (house) - Talon Brave's house.
• GYRO (gyro) - the Superportal leading to a public bathroom.
• WATER CITY (city)
• SPACE (space)
• CINEMA (cin)

Labeled as "Other Maps" were:

• MP1 (Matt's Screen Room) - Map from Matt Wood. Judging from the name, perhaps a map made for produce screenshots?
• MP2 (Matt's Mini 1)
• MP3 (Matt's Mini 2)
• MP4 (Martinus' Map) Map from Martin Goedtke. Unknown.

Miscellaneous/Other
Other known levels besides the previous ones include:

• BLOCK - Unknown, probably for testing
• CSG - Unknown, possibly demonstrating CSG capabilities?
• CSG2 - Ditto
• PORTAL - Unknown, probably for testing
• TEST - Unknown, for testing
• MultiPrey01 - Multiplayer map, unknown
• MultiPrey02 - Multiplayer map, unknown
• MultiPrey03 - Multiplayer map, unknown
• outside01 - Unknown, probably for testing
• enttest06 - Presumably a test map for entities.

References#

TODO

• Info about Tom Hall's iteration from the big man himself:
  • https://x.com/ThatTomHall/status/575086701300740096
  • https://x.com/ThatTomHall/status/1137824463246901248
  • https://x.com/ThatTomHall/status/1532037889432772608
  • https://x.com/ThatTomHall/status/1597677798277099521
  • https://x.com/ThatTomHall/status/1604668294539141122
  • https://x.com/ThatTomHall/status/1630289514576084992
  • https://x.com/ThatTomHall/status/1266034129029574656
• Tweet from Randy Pitchford about the early days of Preditor in 1996/97.