Prey 360 Preview

We were just made aware of another Prey preview available online. This one is for the Xbox 360 version of Prey, and it's at the Game Daily website. Their review has a lot of nice things to say about the game, here's a couple of them:

• It's the approach that'll grab a lot of gamers, and its presentation and features should very well keep them.
  
• Humanhead Studios is making sure that the AI is at the top of its game when it comes to out-thinking and out-maneuvering you
  
• It looks rather impressive, with detailed characters that seem to breathe all their own and stunning graphic detail throughout the levels.
  
• Prey is looking to be a nice surprise for the 2006 Xbox 360 line-up.
  

If you're looking forward to Prey (or even if you're not), go check out the full preview today and read some of what awaits you.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:30 PM

Bio Menace released as freeware!

We at Apogee / 3D Realms want to wish you a safe, happy Christmas / Hanukah / whatever you celebrate season. :) To that, we're repeating something we've done in the past - releasing something as a "Christmas present" to our fans. This time we dip back back back into the archives....

Thirteen years ago, our company was heavily into the old sidescroller market. We had successes with games like Commander Keen, the original Duke Nukem, as well as Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, and plenty of other titles. However, in 1993, we released one based on the Keen 4 game engine - this game was called Bio Menace. While it wasn't the runaway hit that Duke Nukem was, Bio Menace was a very successful game for its time. It stayed as a product in our line for many years, until being discontinued awhile back (mostly for technical reasons). However, now we're here to bring the game back to you - as freeware.

Continuing in our series of freeware releases from the past, Bio Menace is now available for you to download in a full registered form. This download contains all three episodes, and you can get it from our FTP site here.

In doing the work for the Bio Menace release, we managed to track down the original Bio Menace guy, Jim Norwood. Jim also worked with us on 1997's Shadow Warrior (also with another of our guys from back then, Frank Maddin).

Jim had a few words to say about the freeware release of Bio Menace..

'The good ol' days' - that's what I always say when I am referring to the times when a one person with a vision, some TLC, and a lot of time on their hands, could sit down and write a cool PC title from start to finish without a sixty million dollar budget and a team of one hundred.

I wore every hat while working on Bio Menace. From designer, to artist, to programmer - I was a veritable army of one (at least in my own mind). Alas, those days are long behind us. I have continued to be a part of the game industry as it has matured at a frightening pace over the last fifteen years, and these days, one needs be a lot more focused to find a niche among the mega-teams it now takes to create a competitive, cross-platform title.

....little games like Bio Menace still have merit as a learning tool on the road to gaining the coveted knowledge of the 'big picture' of game development that any development house worth their salt will look for in a solid candidate. Perhaps making Bio Menace freeware will take you one step further along that journey. That is my hope...

We've also got some words from Scott Miller, the founder of Apogee on Bio Menace...

Bio Menace is an interesting project for several reasons, not the least of which is that Jim Norwood created practically every asset on his own, from game code, to art, to sound, to level design. The one significant area not created by Norwood is the game's engine. It was created by Id Software, and was the engine original used for the second trilogy of Commander Keen games, starting with "Goodbye, Galaxy."

Because Bio Menace was a one-man show, it took close to two years to create, and by the time of it's release it was somewhat dated as a 16-color EGA game. Still, it sold pretty well, and allowed Norwood to pursue his next major game with us, Shadow Warrior, teaming up with Frank Madden, and using the Build engine.

Both of them have more to say in the readme file that comes with the freeware release, so make sure to check out what they say, including an interesting story from Scott on how id Software helped out with the creation of this title. We have a few more Bio Menace tidbits on our website, including our archived page of information on the game, as well as some game maps on every level from all three episodes (done by Apogee fan Frenkel). Check it all out!

For a complete list of our freeware releases (and our other games), check out our games page, which has a section on freeware releases, and what is available besides Bio Menace.

As one final Christmas present, we want to preview something we're going to be doing starting early next year. When doing research on Bio Menace, we decided to seek out quite a few of our developers from days gone by. We're going to be doing an interview series with quite a few of them based on their games, their time spent with Apogee, and how they see the industry today. Some of their answers might surprise you. Some of the names we have lined up for this series are Jim Norwood (Bio Menace, Shadow Warrior), Frank Maddin (Crystal Caves, Shadow Warrior), Mike Maynard (Blake Stone), Peder Jungck (Secret Agent), Karen Crowther Chun (Math & Word Rescue), as well as folks like Tom Hall & John Romero and many more. If you're a fan of the old school days of our company, you definitely will not want to miss this series when we start it sometime early next year. Keep your eyes peeled for more on that.

Once again, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us here at Apogee / 3D Realms!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 10:15 AM

A Tribute to Build

Our classic Duke Nukem 3D game was built on the Build engine. Get it? :) Anyway, the engine proved to be very flexible, being used in a ton of different games, on the order of another dozen or so. Two of them were by us (Duke Nukem 3D & Shadow Warrior). The remaining ones were by others. The point is that it was a versatile engine.

The website Strifestrips has done a "Tribute to Build", in which they interview Scott Miller & Ken Silverman from here about the engine and it's uses in various games. Ken also divulges a lot of information from his sequel engine to Build, codnamed "Polytex", which was never actually used in a game.

Here's a few quotes from Scott:

Q: What stands out in your mind as the defining feature of the build engine?

A: Build had a few features over the Doom engine, such as sloped surfaces, looking up and down about 30 degrees each way, variable screen resolutions, mouse-look, and we could build rooms over other rooms using portal tricks. But really, the engines where otherwise fairly equal. Duke 3D didn't succeed due to the more advanced Build engine, but because of the gameplay innovations and the personality of the lead character.

Q: The Build engine behind Duke3D went on to power many other games at a time when Quake was demonstrating the true power of 3D for games. How did you manage to get the Build engine licensed to so many developers?

A: First, it wasn't ridiculously expensive to license. And maybe most important, it was a very easy engine to use, and could be used to quickly make a game. And with the success of Duke 3D, it was a proven engine.

There's also a lot from Ken Silverman as well. Here's some of what Ken had to say:

Q: When you look back at your original code, is there anything there that makes you think "What was I thinking, why did I do it that way"?

A: I have reasons for everything in the code. Some things were certainly designed in a bad way, such as statically allocated arrays.

Q: Would you consider doing something like developing a physics engine for Build?

A: I wouldn't do it for Build. As far as I'm concerned, JonoF's port is the end of my work on Build. I would consider doing physics for a future engine, however.

There's plenty more from both Scott & Ken, as well as some stuff from BobAverill, including a few remarks about some runins he used to have with yours truly. If you're a fan of Build, you won't want to miss this, especially for the Polytex stuff, as well as the good, long interview with Ken. Check out the full Tribute to Build here. There's also more information over at the Wikipedia entry for Build.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:38 PM

Duke Nukem 3D's Shrinker is Top 10

The January 2006 issue of GamePro magazine is out, and one of their articles is "The Most Kick-Ass First Person Shooter Weapons Ever". Several legendary games are covered in this article, including Halo 1/2, Doom 2, Half Life 2, and of course Duke Nukem 3D. Duke's Shrinker weapon didn't win the contest , but it did place fifth (Halo's Pistol won - Huh ??). Here's what Gamepro had to say about it..

What other gun lets you shrink opponents down to rodent-size, only to be squashed under your might boot? Talk about cutting an enemy down toi size. But there's one key defense: You can counteract the effects by gulping a bottle of steroids. Hey. The Duke isn't exactly known for his subtelty.

Additionally in the article, they have a list of weapons submitted by folks on the Gamepro forums, and someone complained that the article didn't mention a weapon from Shadow Warrior, that being the sticky bombs. Thanks to Angel998 from the Gamepro forums for remebering them! :)

If you want to see the complete list of the top 10 FPS weapons, head out to your newsstand today and look for the January 2006 issue of Gamepro.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 4:35 PM