[PikaCommando]

Just finished Prey recently, it was quite an enjoyable playthrough. It was quite awesome seeing the spinning portal ring thing from the 1997 trailer to appear again.

But of course, the game is not without its long history. Reading through old magazine scans, it's pretty funny to see that Prey was once about alien martial arts. Even after the story changed to the final one (the plot seems to stay the same ever since, along with certain enemies), the biotech parts (and The Sphere itself, it seems) didn't come to be until after the revival with Doom 3's engine because all the levels in the screenshot are relatively techbase. It's pretty cool to see the old alien city and the "plasma rifle" in this interview. I wonder if the Preditor is as intuitive as the people in the magazines said it to be?


However, that's all in the past. My judgement of the final game so far is that I feel that the portals are used too normally. As in, there's nothing special with them save for a few parts. Most puzzles in the game involves wallwalks and gravity switches instead. The weird paradox maze part was quite smart though. A lot of people doesn't like the respawn system, but I think it was a pretty good idea for this game.


What about you guys? Which part of Prey wow-ed you the most?

[Mr. Tibbs]

I think the part when you enter a room with a model planet in a glass case, jump through a nearby portal and end up shrunk down on the model. It's around the 7 minute mark in the video below.



One crazy thing that people tend to forget, is that Human Head's Prey was originally going to published by Rockstar Games (2001-2003). They arbitrarily wanted Human Head to include features from other popular games at the time, like the vision visors from Metroid Prime, regardless of whether it fit within the game. They had a huge falling out, and Rockstar tried to buy the studio through milestone abuse. Human Head had to return to the two internal teams model, and sign with Atari for Dead Man's Hand to keep the studio afloat. Until they found another publisher, 3D Realms paid for the rest of Prey's internal development costs until 2K signed on.

When 3D Realms greenlit Human Head's Prey in late 2001, they gave them preyweb (3DR's internal vision document/development blog), art, story files and voice acting from their internal Prey project.

[LkMax]

Mr. Tibbs, on 19 August 2015 - 01:18 PM, said:

One crazy thing that people tend to forget, is that Human Head's Prey was originally going to published by Rockstar Games (2001-2003). They arbitrarily wanted Human Head to include features from other popular games at the time, like the vision visors from Metroid Prime, regardless of whether it fit within the game. They had a huge falling out, and Rockstar tried to buy the studio through milestone abuse. Human Head had to return to the two internal teams model, and sign with Atari for Dead Man's Hand to keep the studio afloat. Until they found another publisher, 3D Realms paid for the rest of Prey's internal development costs until 2K signed on.

When 3D Realms greenlit Human Head's Prey in late 2001, they gave them preyweb (3DR's internal vision document/development blog), art, story files and voice acting from their internal Prey project.

Poor Human Head, abused two times over the Prey IP (first Rockstar, later Zenimax/Bethesda). Is that crap commom pratice in the industry? If so, that's probably why it's so easy to huge Corps like EA and Activision to buy all studios they can (and then ruin them all and close them due to less them expected results).

Props to 3D Realms in this case. I quite enjoyed Prey.

[Mr. Tibbs]

LkMax, on 19 August 2015 - 02:50 PM, said:

Poor Human Head, abused two times over the Prey IP (first Rockstar, later Zenimax/Bethesda). Is that crap commom pratice in the industry?

There's a reason there's very few independent developers left. The business model that supported them is gone.Lorne Lanning (Oddworld) talked about it last year.

Quote

GC: Now I fear that Bethesda story is even more likely to be true.

LL: What was it?

GC: Well, it is just a rumour, you understand. I don’t know whether it’s true. But the suggestion is that the game was almost finished and then ZeniMax [Bethesda’s parent company] started pretending the developer, Human Head, were missing their milestones, so they didn’t get paid. The idea being they could then buy them up for a cheap price, but instead Human Head went on strike. Apparently they did something similar with Arkane Studios [makers of Dishonored], where they were loaning them money just to purposefully get them in debt. I mean, like you say, you never find out if these things are true, but I do know ZeniMax owns Arkane now and Prey 2 never did come out…

LL: That’s a standard play. That’s not a unique story. Without going over who did what to who through the 20 years I’ve been in the business, that’s not a unique story at all. In fact that became more of a common practise… I’m not commenting on Bethesda because I don’t know the story but what you’re telling me is a rumour, I’m not pointing fingers at anyone as much as… as a practise for the industry that was not uncommon.

In the case of Human Head and Zenimax, it is absolutely what happened.

[LkMax]

That's fucking disgusting.
I mean, the interview imply it's commom pratice since a long time.

[HulkNukem]

I remember first downloading and playing the original Prey's demo. I had heard barely anything about it besides a magazine article and that 3DRealms was involved.
When it started up, a new 3DRealms splash screen came on, a ton of press quotes started covering the screen, then it all blows up and the main menu appears with the main music playing.
Then it starts in a bathroom; classic. Oh wait, you can use things? Turn on the sink, turn off the light, turn on the hand dryer? The main character talks? Awesome the arcade games work! Oh wow the bar is being ripped apart by aliens and Don't Fear the Reaper is playing!
Fucking intense and amazing. That demo was so fucking A grade it just might be my favorite demo ever. It was really long too, like 1/4 or 1/5 of the entire game.
Its a shame most of the good parts are in the demo though. Tommy gets a bit quiet for the rest of the game and there isn't as many unique things that happen.

[Tea Monster]

As to the 'business practices' - Look what happened to 3DR

I loved Prey. Nicely imaginative levels and gameplay.

I would be interested in seeing more of 3DR's original version, but only as an exercise in gaming archaeology.

[Steve 64]

I played the prey demo while back it was a really great demo

[PikaCommando]

Tea Monster, on 21 August 2015 - 05:21 AM, said:

As to the 'business practices' - Look what happened to 3DR

I loved Prey. Nicely imaginative levels and gameplay.

I would be interested in seeing more of 3DR's original version, but only as an exercise in gaming archaeology.

Are you talking about old or new 3DR?


Also only after playing Prey do I realize that the Hive section of Duke Nukem Forever was based off Prey :V

[OpenMaw]

Demon Duke, on 21 August 2015 - 06:22 AM, said:

I played the prey demo while back it was a really great demo

I remember the Prey thread on 3D Realms back in the day when everyone was getting hyped for the release.


Shit I miss those days...

[PikaCommando]

The source is the August 1997 issue of PC Gamer UK.

A lot more cool screenshots can be found here, whether you've seen them already or not.

[deuxsonic]

I thought Prey 2 looked interesting even not being a direct sequel to the first game (which I enjoyed but I did want closure which we may never get now) but then they killed that too.

[PikaCommando]

Found some old magazine articles on Prey, though it's just telling us what we already know.

[leilei]

my favorite part of Prey is the nice effort to make censorable strong language. I wish more games had a switch to turn off the "mature edge" which seems forced for hyperbolic target rating enforcement reasons these days. because that ....is .....d up.

[HulkNukem]

New game is simply called Prey
Its going to be a psychological thriller and has fuck all to do with the original

[Lunick]

Let's keep the new Prey stuff in the reboot thread

[HiPolyBash]

A completely pointless use of the Prey IP but I suppose this is the end result of a failed hostile take over and wanting to use the IP they purchased anyway. Go fuck yourself Bethesda.

[OpenMaw]

Saw that coming from miles away. None of the color or flavor of the original at all.

[PikaCommando]

Re-reveal of Prey.

[deuxsonic]

Feels bad that they're writing this one out of history.

[PikaCommando]

Does anyone know how true portals and six-axis gravity is done in Prey? I heard the original engine had troubles running because of the portals, so how did they implement that in idTech 4 without causing issues?

The only other game that I know to have true portals (everything goes in will come out the other side including hitscan attacks, instead of just teleporting players and projectiles to the other side like in Unreal) is Portal and Portal 2, although I suppose it was all just a really well-hidden teleportation effect. I heard Valve had issues implementing portals into Source too, but they finished all that within one year whereas it took Prey as long as it did.

[AP Dukefan94]

I played and beat Prey earlier this month as part of my little tradition I do when I go on winter break from college. It was really interesting and fun to play. What I find interesting is looking at aspects of Doom 3 and Duke Nukem Forever share with this game.

[Mack]

E3 Prey shirt acquired from Joe (Siegler) several years ago.

Attached File(s)

•  2091761979.jpg (271.37K)
  Number of downloads: 40
•  900389582.jpg (367.71K)
  Number of downloads: 47
•  1843520261.jpg (222.78K)
  Number of downloads: 39

[Altered Reality]

PikaCommando, on 25 December 2016 - 09:56 PM, said:

Does anyone know how true portals and six-axis gravity is done in Prey? I heard the original engine had troubles running because of the portals, so how did they implement that in idTech 4 without causing issues?

William Scarboro's Prey engine was supposed to actually "think in 4 dimensions", with mathemtically functional portals. This was a mess and caused the engine to be scrapped.

On the other hand, the portals from Human Head's Prey are game entities (like monsters, guns or ammo) that exist in a purely 3D space, and can be connected together to give the illusion of a 4D space. The model of a Prey portal is a curved 1-sided surface: on the concave side you see a surface; on the convex side you don't, as if the object wasn't there.
The visible surface is textured using a variation of the render-to-texture concept, where, unlike what happens with a TV screen, the point of view of the rendered scene varies with the player character's position, relative to the portal. This texture is only generated when a pair of connected portals exists, in which case, what one portal "sees" is rendered on the other. If a portal is not connected to any other, it will display a default texture that does not vary and makes it look like the flat surface it actually is.
The final feature of a portal as implemented in Prey is a variation of the teleport concept. Like the classic teleport, an entity cannot be partly on one side and partly on the other, it's all-or-nothing. Unlike the classic teleport, a portal has no single destination point; instead, where the entity reappears depends on its position it occupied, compared to the pivot point of the portal, when it passes through the portal's axis. This almost completely removes the "jump" effect of teleportation and adds to the illusion that the player character or other entity actually passed through a hole in space.

Gravity zones have nothing to do with portals. They are just that: 6-sided box "zones" that overlap with geometry, with three parameters specifying how much force gravity must exert in that zone, along each of the Cartesian axes. The vectorial sum of those parameters gives the intensity and direction of gravity.

Wallwalks are also a completely different concept. First of all, in order to work, the player character needs to have picked up an invisible object (gravity boots, represented as a dashed box in the editor and invisible in the final game). With the gravity boots in the inventory, the player character will stick to active wallwalks perpendicularly to the surface, and will instead fall along the local gravity direction should he decide to jump. Wallwalks are actually derived from the ladders that can be found in Doom 3.

TL;DR: portals, gravity zones and wallwalks were implemented as tricks, not as geometric effects, because attempting to implement them as geometric effects was the reason why the original iteration folded.

[Micky C]

Is it even possible to implement them as geometric effects? Sounds like some pretty high order physics is required, and if so I'd guess it'd be beyond the capability of the average engine designer?

[Skulldog]

prey 2006 - steam keys at gamingdragon $ 4.61
https://www.gamingdr...y-download.html

[MusicallyInspired]

I redeemed mine from the retail box I found a few years ago. Would like to find a Wolfenstein 2009 one sometime. Just because.

[Skulldog]

MusicallyInspired, on 11 February 2019 - 01:22 PM, said:

I redeemed mine from the retail box I found a few years ago. Would like to find a Wolfenstein 2009 one sometime. Just because.

I am glad I got that one back then.