Tom Hall I've always loved games, from Sea Wolf in the arcades to that incredible Christmas when we got the Atari 2600, but on June 9th, 1980, our family got an Apple II+. From that moment on, it was all over. I saw the computer as an amazing medium for creativity and exploration. The excitement I felt that summer-just typing in commands and having the computer do the cool things you told it to-changed my life's direction. I always wanted to do this, but realistically, I felt I'd be in educational software or something. I got a job doing monthly software at Softdisk, in Shreveport, Louisiana. Then I met two of our contributors, John Romero and John Carmack. They later started work on a Gamer's Edge disk, and I snuck in after work to do levels and design. A few months later Adrian Carmack (no relation) started doing art for the disk, and well, I think you know the rest.

Titania Now you're working on Prey for 3D Realms. Tell me more about the game, story and all.

Tom Hall You are abducted from Earth, and wake up with a biotech suit on. Not only on you, but parts of it are woven into you, tubes and wires enter muscles, joints, and so on. You'll never be the same again. Alien races are studying six different disciplines of fighting, and you are grist for their mill, meant to be killed as they practice and perfect their study of their chosen discipline. Your job is to survive, which means you must learn how the world works, how to use the alien weapons, and what tactics will work against the strong attackers you're pitted against.

It's a first person action game. The engine has six degrees of freedom (which means you can look in any direction and move in any direction). That's as good as you can get, freedom-wise. The lighting is both pre-computed _and_ dynamic: lights around the level cast soft-edged shadows, but also searchlights can scan around the room. One of the characters is going to have a flashlight on its gun, so if you're in a dark room, you'll see the beam searching around for you.

It's going to be straight action, but the theme of the game provides a much richer texture than other games in this genre. Everything will fit together well, all thematic to each of the disciplines. For instance, there is a Temple of Might, and the inhabitants will be solely concerned with using force to wage war against you. The environment will be suitable to creatures of Might: heavy, oppressive architecture and all very sturdy to withstand the amazing battles that take place within it.

Titania Judging from the look and feel of Prey, it seems you're looking to create a contender for id's Quake. Was that the motivation behind Prey, or did something else influence its design?

Tom Hall Well, if Quake didn't exist, we'd still be making this game. We set out to make a scary, intense sci-fi game with unparalleled action and user-customizability. The Prey engine or the Quake engine are the logical next step in making 3D games: computed lighting with polygon- based characters. We already did light sourcing in a limited fashion on the walls of Rise of the Triad, but here it is done in full splendor. :)

Titania From what we're told, there's less than a dozen people who are physically working on Prey. Still, they encompass a wealth of talent. Was the assemblage of "elite" designers and programmers intentional, so as to make Prey a more advanced game?

Tom Hall We're pretty much the people that worked on Rise of the Triad. That was our warm-up game. As far as having the elite, well, we try not to hire bozos at Apogee. ;^) William Scarboro is finally getting to do what he was hired for. He studied both computer science and high-end math, so he's the perfect person for making a 3D engine. It's weird, when you go through geometry and calculus and think, "When will I ever use this stuff?" Well, you have to use it all the time writing 3D games!

Titania The engine used to create the game doesn't seem to be very similar to the Build engine, but technology is always evolving. What is this new engine called, and is it a relative of 3D Realms' Build technology?

Tom Hall Well, we usually call it the Prey engine, but at times it's been called Tears (as in what our competitors will be shedding when they see how cool it is) and a bunch of other inside joke names. It has nothing to do with Build, except they are both 3D engines. The Prey engine is much more advanced. Without getting abysmally technical, the world is a bunch of polygons. A tree of these polygons is made by seeing what polygons are in front of a given polygon, and what ones are behind it. This allows you to know what things are visible from a given place. (It is so much more complex that this, but...) Then all those polygons are lit up by light sources placed in the level. I won't even go into how that is done. Let's just say it looks really cool.

Titania Could you describe what this new Prey Engine is trying to accomplish?

William Scarboro The whole idea behind the design of a graphics engine is to provide the most realistic environment possible for a first-person action-oriented game. We plan to achieve a frame rate in the game around the mid to high twenties on a P90. It also has to look incredible. Static environment lighting will provide close to photo quality, while real-time dynamic lighting will put an end to the dull, placid look of most games of this genre. Finally, there are no restrictions whatsoever on architecture, since the engine is true 3-D. Prey will take full advantage of this with impressive and very alien levels for the player to explore.

Titania Some of the things depicted in current screen shots are ray traced lighting, unique architecture, shadows & detailed textures. Apparently this is an effort to make more realistic environments for tomorrow's games. What barrier's had to be overcome before this technology was developed? And what sort of visual and artistic advancements are you attempting to make?

Tom Hall Well, first off, computers needed to have the number- crunching muscle to do all the calculations necessary. Now we have Pentiums. The formulas are all there waiting in books for anyone to read. The big problem is finding shortcuts and optimizations so that you still get perfect-looking places but you can also draw them fast enough to have a "fun" frame rate.

The lighting is just beautiful. As one of the level designers has said, "even if there were no monsters, I'd buy this just to walk around are see the environment." We're striving for a completely real-looking places, while setting a bold, alien style. You could call it Alien Industrial Gothic.

Everything in the place will look like it was made with thought behind it--not just a bunch of rooms! For a place to look real, it needs to look like someone a while ago actually made it, with some intent, alien thought it may be. You may not recognize everything, but it all makes some sort of intuitive sense.

Titania Passing through the graphical content, what efforts are being made to compose a sound track and aural effects for Prey?

Tom Hall The "music" will be more of a threatening alien atmosphere, sort of an ambient malevolence. That and the sound effects are being composed by our resident musician, Lee Jackson. We've got a few sound effects in now, and man, Prey is going to sound awesome.

Titania A cornerstone of first person entertainment is serial gaming. Doom seemed to revolutionize the way we think about modem and network play. It seems that Prey will push the envelope even further in this regard. What features are being included so as to make Prey a terrific multiplayer experience?

Mark Dochterman Prey will be a great multi-player game. The multi- player architecture has been built in from the start, which will mean multiplay will have our full attention, not just be a tacked-on afterthought. The type of gameplay we're designing for single play incorporates all the elements of an awesome deathmatch while still also being a cool one- player game. The enemies in Prey will behave as much as possible like a human player. They share the same weapons, and use the same ammo as you do. They will have intelligent tactics, and suffer the same needs as human foes. The multi- player game will not be a totally different game, but really the same game in which there are just more humans playing. Upwards of 30 players will be able to engage in a single Prey-match if the Prey server is being run on a separate machine. You'll be able to use the server machine as a client but at a loss of players (probably less than 10). Prey is also being designed for the Internet. Prey servers will be popping up all over the Internet. Hopping from server to server will be as easy as running around on the World Wide Web is now.

Tom Hall Multiplayer network games have been around since the old UNIX Mazewar game, which was a little text maze you wandered around in, shooting other network players. That was over ten years ago. DOOM brought it to the mass market. With Prey, we are setting the game up from day one as multiplayer-oriented. When you exit a Prey level, you won't go to "level + 1", you'll go to what is basically a World Wide Web address. It may happen to be on your computer, but it could be on some far-away server. You could exit the level and find yourself in the virtual lobby of a company in Brazil or something. Users will have our level editor, as well as a built-in assembler, so they can make programs in any language that actually run IN Prey. Prey is going to be an awesome game, but it's also going to be an amazing development environment. You could even write a word-processor in it, if you really want to. Jim DosČ is writing the code interpreter, and he's making it ridiculously powerful. He wants to be able to compile the compiler from within itself (kind of pointless, but it is somehow satisfying in a masochistic programmer way...). Jim also wrote the editor, and as you can see from the first levels, it works pretty well.

Titania Beyond human players, what can you tell me about the game's AI? And what sort of opponents can we expect to face?

Tom Hall We are taking steps to have the opponents think much more like human opponents. You both use the same weapons system. You both need health. Apart from a strong understanding of how to use things in the level, they'll also occasionally do things so intelligently, you'll swear you were playing against a human. We'll see how that goes.

The opponents will use many different tactics against the player, and it will be up to the player to figure them out, and figure a good defense and offense against them. Sometimes it will be brainless shooting. Other times, you'll need a lot of smarts to get out alive.

Jim DosČ Prey's AI engine is designed to be expandable on an extreme scale. We have a script based system that uses fully C-compliant script code. This allows us to program our actors in the same language we program the game in, plus it allows us (and those who buy the game) to create add on packs that completely change the way the game works. In a way, Prey is not only the game we're making, but it is also the game development system that we use.

Since we want the game to be this flexible, the player actually controls a camera which in turn sends its controls to an actor in the game. This allows the player to choose which character in the game they want to control. If they get tired of playing the 'hero' of the game, they can choose to play as a monster. You can also choose to have robot players cooperatively play along side the user, or they can play against you for deathmatch without a network.

Titania What sort of weapons and tactics can be used to survive in this alien world?

Tom Hall The tactics are borne of the six disciplines, which form a thing called the "Warrior Wheel". To fight against a certain discipline, you must practice its opposite.

Weapon-wise, we will have a set of incredibly awesome-looking weapons, and also weapons that are more like tools.

Titania Any other features of interest?

Tom Hall We are really dedicated to making each part of Prey of the highest quality. The engine is great, the sound will be awesome, and the gameplay, most important of all, has to be superior. There are a few advancements we don't want to talk about yet, partly because we want to be the first to have them, and partly because they are in development and we're not sure which path we'll take with them!

Titania Prey seems to be on a smooth road so far. There's news that you're already working on the network play capabilities. Is there a demo in the near future? Give me a rough estimate as to when Prey should hit the shelves, or perhaps a status on current completion.

Tom Hall We're mentally oriented towards Christmas, but realistically, we'll probably wrap in Q1 next year. We won't put it out until it is the game we want it to be.

Titania Do you think Prey will be "the next big thing"?

Tom Hall Well, I can't really predict the future, but it has a number of innovations that will make it a remarkable game, and it is open-ended, so it can be enjoyed with enhancement packs and user-created stuff for a long time. The "next big thing" is usually something that the media embraces and gets behind, and that's how people get to know about it. One of the few next big things that didn't really develop this way was Wolfenstein. That really grew from grass roots and word of mouth.

Prey is going to rock. Lots of people are really going to like it. That's about all I can predict. It'll be somewhere between a rather successful game and a virtual movement that will take over the world. Somewhere in there. ;^)