December 1997
| December 20, 1997 |
I'm going on vacation to Florida for two weeks, so there will be no updates on the site until January 5th, 1998.
| December 19, 1997 |
A new 3D Modeler for Prey has been hired! Here is what Paul Schuytema has to say about him:
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.
Just waiting on the new mapper from Germany, and the Prey team will be complete(hopefully).
3D Realms didn't release any orinary screenshots today, these are the first official screenshots of characters in the game!
A wallpaper was also released with a Prey/KMFDM Theme. (Looks a lot like my CD cover I posted a few days ago, doesn't it? :)
Megalomanic(5.7MB) and Inane(5.1MB), two KMFDM songs were posted on 3D Realms' web site in the MP3 format. These are a good sample of KMFDM's sound, and a good preview of what we can expect for Prey.
Preystation has posted a third KMFDM song for your enjoyment called Anarchy.(5.3MB)
| December 16, 1997 |
Here is a little something I thought I would post. The CD Cover to the soundtrack for Prey! This is just an example I made, and if you want to, it can be printed out and be put into a CD case.
Click on the image for a larger size.
| December 12, 1997 |
As Gamecenter promised, the Prey Designers' Journal #1 is online. Written by Paul Schuytema, the article gives a good overview of the game and looks at all parts. Something new that is show is wireframe and full rendered versions of environments in Prey. A good before and after look at the game.
One of the wireframes shows a reflective floor. It looks like in order to make a reflection, the room has to be copied, flipped, and put "under" the floor. Interesting.
This is only the first of a series of Journals that will be coming from Gamecenter. They will be posted every month or so.
| December 10, 1997 |
Pucky has sent this clip of text from Gamecenter saying when the Prey Development Journal will be online.
GC Prey Journal... Gamecenter's first installment of its Prey design journal, presented by Prey lead designer Paul Schuytema, will launch this Friday, December 12, in Gamecenter Features.
| December 8, 1997 |
The Prey team took a road trip to Austin, Texas this weekend to see KMFDM, the band doing the music for Prey, in concert. Paul Schuytema went all out to report this event, starting with this 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 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.
He also mentioned what the Prey team is doing right now.
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.
Go see the Digital Camera Madness page on Apogee's website to see a vast number of pictures from the event.
| December 6, 1997 |
Still no sign of the Prey Development Journal on Gamecenter. It was supposed to be posted the 24th of November, then the 5th of December. Maybe the writing of a Prey article gets delayed as much as the game? :)
The modeling tool for Prey is officially called "Skinner" now, as Paul Schuytema writes in his .plan update.
Creditor is now dead--long live Skinner! The tool, which handles our entity texturing and animating, is now called Skinner. There are a lot of origins for the name, but I prefer to think of it as an ode to the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner and his behavioral programming (anyone who's ever taken psych in college has studied his "skinner box"). Loyal says he's now 5/7 done with the gizmo (gotta love the way programmers answer direct questions, don't you).
Paul also comments on some new 3D Sound technology that will be tried with Prey. This is the first I've seen that the Prey team is actually doing something about 3D Sound. Before this, their stand as been "Wait and see" on 3D Sound APIs and Hardware.
Had Tom Tucker from Power Micro Research here the other day. They're some MIT grads who've been working for a few years on some 3D sound algorithms, and now they've got a software-API that's rocket fast, supper nimble, bypasses (yet fools) Direct X, and rocks even on an SB-16. We'll be doing some tests with their stuff in January to see how it works in the Prey engine.
Scott Miller updated his finger with this news about interest in licensing the Prey engine.
There are several significant publishers who are showing a deep interest in licensing Prey's engine and tools. No one who has seen Prey has said they've seen anything else that can compare to it, technology-wise, including the CPU makers such as Cyrix, who've visited many times recently. We're not looking to close any tech licensing deals until next year, at which time we'll leave it to the licensee to first announce.
I think many developers like Ritual and Ion Storm may look at the Prey engine next year as a possibility for their next games, after the Quake engine games are finished.
| December 3, 1997 |
Paul Schuytema has talked about the newest features in Prey level editor, Preditor in his plan update today.
William offered up a new version of Preditor for the Thanksgiving holiday that gives us a few new treats. Now, we have a Build-editor- style texture accounting screen that lets our mappers see how many textures they're using in any given area. That's very helpful since texture variety is still one of the weak points of non-AGP 3D accelerators. We can also set the 16-bit ambient light level for every room--a very cool feature!
Paul also updates us on the status of the next level designer for Prey from Germany.
All the T-s have been crossed and I-s dotted, so it shouldn't be too long until Martinus joins us from Munich. We've already been doing a few conference-call design meetings to get him up to speed on the project. It's almost been a five month process getting everything in place for the visa, but from what I hear, that's pretty darn quick for the INS. We're hoping that he'll join us in early January.
| Copyright © 1997 Lon Matero. All Rights Reserved. _ Prey is copyrighted by 3D Realms Entertainment. |
