What's crazy is realizing that's in 1998. Those graphics are past anything that was out at that time. Fuck, why did this game never get released in the first place?
Prey failed due to poor management according to this link. Don't all games? Too ambitious it seems.
I read an interview long ago by the 3rd Game Designer on Prey (Paul Schuytema) and he explained how the tech never really came together. They had huge problems getting the enginetech done. Apparently every room was an entity and connected through portals. This created problems with collision detection, sound, lighting - everything! And the other games were catching up visually.
Watching that demo from 1998 the tech seemed pretty ok, but it's hard to judge a demo offcourse.
I actually have a alpha demo I downloaded off a BBC back in 97, earlier than the video shown. It had only 2 small maps, showing off textures and teleporters btu had no weapons or NPCs.
I rememeber comparing it to Quake 1 and it looked a lot better, if I remember correctly it required 3DFX to run.
__________________
Beer: The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
Working or not, I think this is what Mark Rein was talking about a few weeks back when he torn into the current state of gaming. And the lack of innovation. What if this had come out in 99 or 00. I just watched the portals demo for hl2 and almost crapped my pants. If this kind of thing would have come out in 6, 7 years ago, OMG!! Before gfx took over as the only important thing in games we had great innovation. Massive gibs in rise of the triads, greatly and massively modable engine with duke nukem 3d. Creative gameplay and great story line with hl. Destructible environments with red faction (which was able to run on the ps2, which is a wonder in and of it self). Flying around multiplayer in tribes. Could have had portals and dynamic portals with prey. fps/rts with vehicles in battle zone (which may have been the most underrated game of all time). Team based and role choosing with team fortress (not a retail game but that’s not the point). What do we have now? The havok engine which is nice, but not much else. People need to realize that gfx are not the only thing, and in my mind are not even or shouldn’t be #1. It should have and should always be gameplay. Why are we really playing? If you want something to look at go watch pbs on an htdv. I for one want to have fun!!!!
And yet Duke Nukem Forever gets more press than this, despite it being in development for more than 11 years. Dukes what, nine?
Maybe the case, but Prey was thought to be cancelled many many years ago. It just recently got reannounced and released. It was a surprise to many, personally I just think someone wanted to use the IP to make some cash and they threw it together, if thats possible.
I don't think DNF has ever stopped being in development, what makes it unique. But yeah, had Prey come out in 98, we'd of had a very different history these past 8 years or so.
What I heard was that this Portal tech was a nightmare to work with and they never got it stable enough to ship anything. William Scarboro, the guy who wrote the original engine, wrote something about how an engine like that was a mistake and he would never do something like it again.
I found where I read the info. Check here for a report on the years that went by. Still a mystery why they suddenly scrapped the entire thing. Perhaps it became too complex and with the engine programmer gone everything went down.
Quote:
Been there, done that. I coded what was going to be the Prey engine for the game Prey from 3D Realms; there was an exodus of people from the team, including myself, and the engine has since been scrapped. I'm really not a big fan of portal engines anymore, especially where all rooms are relative (which is what I had) in the manner you propose. There are many ugly problems in maintaining such an engine: two rooms linked by more than one portal (which results in rendering a room twice, basically, and even though they won't overlap, all the culling and transforms are duplicated), graph maintenance with spatial discontinuities, collision detection through portals, handling sound where one sound can seem to be coming from many different locations, rendering characters moving across portals that the z-buffer won't handle correctly, etc. It wasn't fun. The effects were really awesome, though.
They changed producers a number of times. I had been in contact with Paul Schuytema about getting a job there.... I didn't get it, and then he got fired shortly after. Corinne Yu I think took his place, and was also fired. To me it sounded like scope creep (DNF anyone?) that made the game unfinishable at the time.
__________________
DON'T WIPE THE SWEAT OFF YOUR INSTRUMENT. You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music. - Captain Beefheart
And it was a different team entirely.
