September 1997

• Interviews

Voodoo Extreme has interviewed the owners of Apogee, Scott Miller and George Broussard. Questions were asked mostly on Prey in these interviews.

• Scott Miller Interview
• George Broussard Interview

• Broussard interviewed on IRC

Friday, #idsoftware on Undernet interviewed George Broussard with questions from the public. Below are the questions about Prey that were asked. To read all of the Questions and Answers, click here.

Question (DuvalMagic) : 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)?

Answer (George) : 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.

Question (SkipMc) : Any plans to incorporate 3D positional audio (like A3D) in the Prey engine?

Answer (George) : 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

Question (Soul Blaze) : 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.

Answer (George) : hmmm, 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

Question (Iceman) : What are gonna be the cool features of the PREY monsters AI?

Answer (George) : 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

Question (Hexagon) : Have you tried any Prey deathmatch with the Prey team yet?

Answer (George) : 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.

Question (O3DFX_C1) : Will prey support OpenGL, Direct3D or the native api's like GLide ? Or isnt that decided yet ?

Answer (George) : I think the Prey guys are doing Glide, but I know they wanna go OpenGL, and I think they are moving towards that

Question ([MA]Sub) : You said Prey will prob require a 3Dfx video card w/at least 4 megs of RAM, don't you think this will hurt sells considering most people wont just go out and buy a card for on game?

Answer (George) : Prey should run on a 2 meg card too. The way we see it, software renderers are dead. Everyone will have some sort of 3D acceleration in a year or two.

Question (Hudson_cm) : Do you expect Prey Tech. to be as widely licensed as Quake Tech. was?

Answer (George) : Probably. We licensed Build 7 times, and we're already getting offers for Prey. So yes, I expect Prey-tech to be widely licensed

Question (Cereblis) : George, what sort of music is Prey going to use? Midis seem to be heading "out", which pretty much leaves MODs and CD audio forms...Will you use one of the latter two and still have support for MIDIs or if no what are you looking at?

Answer (George) : We prefer CD music at the moment. We "might" still support midi's for shareware releases, but also like what id did with Quake shareware (having no music and CD on the store version)

• Prey Sound

The first word on sound and music in Prey is first seen in Lee Jackson's finger update.

"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."

• Development Update

Project Leader, Paul Schuytema, has updated us again on the status of Prey on the Development Update page. 3D Realms showed us some key things about the game in the update this week. A major editing tool, and the main character, Talon Brave. Paul talks about the object creator for Prey, called Creditor, as it's working name. Creditor will be used to make all the objects in the game, and texture them.

In the update, Paul included the first Talon Brave picture that we've seen in a year. As seen on the right, this is a model of Talon setup in Creditor. You can start to see some basic features of Talon Brave in this picture, including the Prey logo on his belt, and his tooth necklace.

I will be creating a section on Creditor on this site just as I have for Predtior in the future.

• New Interview with Schuytema

PreyWatch has interviewed Paul Schuytema about the game Prey. Click here to read the interview and read about the tools used by the Prey team and an update on the game's development.

• Prey: The Hunted

Prey: The Hunted is a new website about Prey run by Void. It's hosted by 3D Alpha, a site that holds may 3D game pages.

• Magazine Excerpts

The September issue of Boot Magazine has some mentions of Prey. Here are some quotes I pulled out of the magazine.

In a column by T. Liam McDonald about E3, he says, "The best-looking title was Prey..."

In an interview with two Unreal developers, they are asked this:

boot: What do you think of Prey, from what you've seen?

Sweeney: What I've seen looks really cool. It makes good use of colored light and radiosity.

Schmalz: Yeah, it's definitely going to be a great game. [3D Realms] will take the time to make a good game. I don't think that's the problem: it's just a matter of when it comes out.

• More on John Anderson

The new hire to the Prey team as a mapper has made more announcements. Below is a portion of George Broussard's finger talking about the hiring and an update on Prey.

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 firendly little intra-company competition.

A press release posted by Apogee also mentions the hiring of John Anderson.

• Coffee Mug

There has been a sighting of a coffee mug at the Apogee offices with the Prey logo on it. Here is a picture.