Prey Weekly Development Update #12

Wow... Friday already. And time for the Weekly Prey Update. Let's get right to it...

The animators are working hard on cleaning up the motion capture data, and tweaking the cinematic animations to blend together smoothly. It's been a hell of a lot of work, and they're doing a great job.

Well, I use the term cinematic loosely -- as Prey doesn't actually have any cutscenes. The game is always from Tommy's point of view, and the story unfolds around the player as they progress through the game.

So, I use the term cinematic animation to apply to any animation for a specific NPC. An example of this would be if a character has to point in a certain direction, or run over and kneel by another character. That type of stuff.

As mentioned in a previous update, we recorded around 250 new lines for Tommy. A good chunk of those were re-recording old lines to either fit the story better, or because we were unhappy with the previous takes, as opposed to totally "new" dialogue.

And of those 250 lines, we recorded multiple takes of each. Depending upon the line, there were anywhere from two to six takes of each. Ed, our audio director, will go through and choose the best take of each and add them into the game.

However, the level designers were ready now to start adding in the dialog. To multitask, we set up temporary sound shaders for each of Tommy's lines, which the designers can then incorporate immediately.

The end result is that there are a lot of default beeps throughout the game now -- but in less than a week, all of Tommy's new lines should be in the game.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing how the game feels like with all this additional dialog.

We've also been incorporating all the latest music from Jeremy Soule. There's still about a quarter of the music yet to come, but they are cranking away on it, and we should be getting it very soon.

If all goes as planned, we should have all music implemented in the game by next week as well.

Talking to 3DR, we discussed reviving the Ask Prey email address, and answer questions again in an up-coming Weekly Update.

I still have all of the unanswered questions from last time, so I'll look through them again. However, if you have any other questions, or anything you'd like to see discussed in these updates (that hasn't been discussed before), feel free to email us: [email protected] (Make sure to remove the NPSPAM. before sending)

Please have your questions in by next Friday, April 6th. We will answer as many as possible in a future Weekly Update.

The changelog for this week is pretty sizable, as we didn't send a new build to 3DR last week. Here it is:

• New music system implemented for fading and crossfading
• Grenade throw button - bind a key to _impulse25, should default to G
• New directional damage indicator
• tips for zooming in on the HUD
• low-health (< 25%) HUD effect
• Fixed problem with harvester gibs being nonsolid in some cases.
• Reduced grace period for ragdolls to resolve being stuck in solid.
• Fixed problem with wrench showing up in roadhouse mirror.

• All levels end with a portal fade now
• Door system: * Unlocked doors are light blue * Locked doors are red and play a locked sound when you approach * Doors that never open are dark and play a locked sound when you approach
• GUI pass throughout the level, new guis added
• Tommy Voices in progress--putting in placeholders; sound not yet ready
• SpiritWalk symbols being added throughout the levels
• All leech nodes now have a screen tip
• Adjustments of items/characters/geometry to accommodate level fades
• All music we have so far implemented (volumes need tweaking)

• FTA crouch portals can be walked around now.
• three fodders are now in the lighting training hallway
• new exit from FTA to FTB

• Item cabinet moved away from the forcefield
• The door with the raving guy banging on it is now locked
• First pod puzzle no longer has a pod right near the gak
• Vomiter removed from first wallwalk area
• Multiple Hunters now after the player wallwalks after the hologram
• Moved the autosave in the mutilated human room, so you don't fall into it.
• Art Bell gui moved to a new place

• New Tri-flip combat room w/portal crates
• Optimizations in several rooms and corridors
• Hunters on vent in breakaway room
• New airlock with keypad GUI
• Portal Crate in Catwalk Hunter Combat room

• combat chains increased in several levels

• Added in additional security mounted guns.

• Dimmed the lights in the BonusCloset area to give more broken/emergency feel.
• Added in Thin-Thing (tm)

• Lighting adjustments in Big Asteroid room to allow for smoother enemy lighting

• Additional deathwalk map added

And that wraps up another Weekly Prey Update. Next week will be a bit of a detour from the usual updates. And, the week after that, will be the next Ask Prey questions. So, if you have any questions, make sure you email them to [email protected].

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios

Additionally, if you are a gaming news website, and wish to be updated directly with notification of these updates, please email us with a link to your website and a request to be added, and we'll email you with the next update.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:47 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Inside Prey with Computer Games Magazine

As you can see by the image to your right, Computer Games Magazine has a cover article on Prey. This is the May 2006 edition of the magazine, and is now hitting subscribers' mailboxes, and should be on stands now.

Computer Games Magazine author Tom Chick has written a piece entitled "Ghost World" about Prey. He has a somewhat lengthy subtitle for the article which does a nice job of summing up the game. That is..

"Aliens and Natives
Organic & Steel
Upside Down, Inside Out, and Dead-Alive
The Many Paradoxes of Prey".

In all, it's an eight page spread including several screenshots not released before. It's got gobs of information on the game. Here's a few choice quotes:

• "The first thing you see when Prey starts is a view of someone talking to you about what a loser you are. Wait - that's you, looking at yourself in the mirror. It's a sort of teaser for the way Human Head plays with perspective throughout the game."
  
• "The aliens suck up bits of the bar, while the jukebox plays Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper". You can bet the jukebox will be back - 3D Realms didn't license music from Ted Nugent, Judas Priest, & Heart for nothing."
  
• "Human Head has taken this concept (portals) to some brain twisting lengths. In addition to glowing dimensional portals floating in midair, there are boxes that tip over to reveal new rooms inside."
  
• "We want to avoid that shelf moment, when the game goes back on the shelf and you leave it there."
  
• "Combat should be filler between memorable bits. No one remembers a game as 'So I turned the corner and fought these guys'."

There's plenty of other goodness for you to check out. Some you've heard about, some you have not, including a few screenshots never seen before. If you're not a subscriber to Computer Games Magazine, then you'll definitely want to head to your local newsstand and grab a copy of the May 2006 edition of Computer Games Magazine today!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:53 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Duke and I

In addition to their Prey cover story, Computer Games Magazine (in their May 2006 issue) had a small piece on Duke Nukem Forever, which they titled "The Duke and I". Here's some small quotes from George Broussard from this piece:

• 3D Realms' trademark sense of humor is still intact. "Duke is a man's man. He drinks He smokes. He enjoys women. Every other game that comes out is World War II or dead serious. Duke is about being the ultimate alien ass kicker".
  
• "We've been tech complete for a year. The last year has been making the game, putting the pieces together."

There are no screenshots with the article, but there is some more Duke goodness there for you to check out. Don't want to give away all the good bits here in this story (there's a cool bit where Tom Chick from CGM was asked for his email address).

Oh, and as usual, "When it's done".

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:54 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #12 - Mike Maynard

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series finishes up it's third month with an entry from Mike Maynard. Mike and his group ("Jam Productions") put out two games through us. The first was released on Dec 3, 1993, and was titled "Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold". The second was put out on Oct 28, 1994 and was titled "Planet Strike: A Blake Stone Adventure".

Mike was one of the three guys who made up "Jam Productions", and had the arduous task of working on the first 3D action game by us in the post Wolfenstein 3D era. Blake Stone had many firsts in 3D gaming, one of which was the rather common practice of NPC's, or "Non Player Characters". These were characters that would give you helpful information, so just going in and shooting everything you see was not the way to go here. Some other novelties in Blake Stone was the fact that you could go backwards to levels you already had visited. In some cases this was necessary to unlock certain locked areas in upper levels.

Planet Strike was also novel in our company history, as it was the first time we ever put out a game in the retail channel directly. Later on, some of our earlier games ended up there, but Planet Strike was our first ever foray into the arena of "Hey, pay attention to my box on the store shelf!" (that's why there's a woman on Planet Strike's cover art when there was no woman in the game at all).

Anyway, Mike has continued to stay active in the gaming industry since his time with Apogee in 1994. He's worked at such gaming companies as 7th Level, Ion Storm, Third Law Interactive, TKO Software, and is currently employed at id Software. Read on to hear what Mike has to say about his time with us (now 13 years ago).

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

The JAM team in 1993 (Mike's on the left)

In 1990, I worked at Softdisk Publishing in Shreveport, LA. It was a very interesting time because all the original guys that ultimately formed id Software also worked at Softdisk. Of course they ultimately left to form id and work with Apogee on the Commander Keen series and eventually Wolfenstien. With the success of Wolfenstien, Apogee wanted more games using that technology. John Romero recommended a friend (Jim Row) and me to Apogee and we signed a deal to create the shareware version of Blake Stone.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

We weren't necessarily shopping game ideas to different publishers and we certainly couldn't fund ourselves. (However, we did create a side-scrolling, space-themed shooter for the Amiga in our spare time called Outpost 13. We ended up selling it to Compute! magazine for $1000! woohoo!.)

Apogee was looking for a team to create a game using id's Wolfenstein technology. We had experience making games and had worked with id's previous technologies.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

At the time, Apogee did several things to market their games. The most cost-effective was to send nice, color fliers to previous buyers of their games. For instance, anyone that bought Wolfenstien 3d was sure to get the advertising flier since they were similar games (FPS, using Wolf 3d technology). I believe they also included fliers with actual products that people bought, too. They also placed general 'Apogee' ads in magazines that listed several games so the cost of the ad could be spread over several products. We were fairly pleased with all of these methods.

Mike in 1992 before Blake Stone development started

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

They made certain areas of the gameplay better by taking out monotonous gameplay (for example: traversing back and forth through various floors of the buildings) and adding bosses throughout the game to give the game intermediate goals. However, these changes (and others) were made fairly late in the development cycle which actually delayed the release a bit. I really don't remember a lot of input or even a need to see the game on a regular basis until at least 12 months of development. While that made for 'no-hassle' development I think it hurt us in the end.

Considering Blake Stone was released one week before another little game called DOOM, that delay pretty much sealed our fate. We had decent pre-orders and the first couple of months were pretty good but sales dropped pretty quickly. Had we gotten more input from Apogee earlier on in the development process I think we could've released the game 3-4 months earlier than we did.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

You could argue either way on this topic. Since I'm not a publisher, I'll go with the argument that the developer should retain all IP rights.

Simply put, a publisher isn't going to fund a project that they think won't make them a reasonable profit. So whatever they fund (whether they own the IP or not) they're betting that the game will make them money.

If they own the IP and the project fails, the IP is worthless so it doesn't matter who owns it. If they DON'T own the IP and the project is a success, they'll still make money (and profit) on the HUGE percentage of royalties they'll get from that project. So a publisher taking ownership of a developer's idea is purely for control and greed.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?
5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

We did the sequel to Blake Stone shortly after it was released; it was called Planet Strike and published by FormGen. :)

As far as a sequel with up-to-date technology, I doubt it. I've talked to people that think a new game (FPS or otherwise) based on the Blake Stone IP would be cool. However, the IP alone wouldn't attract more than a handful of old-school gamers. Any new Blake Stone game would pretty much have to reinvent the IP and stand on its own.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Blake Stone Artwork

There's nothing that really stands out but some details about development include:

• After a couple months of dealing with art problems Apogee was generous to increase our monthly funding so we could bring in a full-time artist, Jerry Jones.
• Dr. Pyrus Goldfire was originally called Dr. Goldstern. One person sent an email to Apogee complaining about how the name "Goldstern" portrayed Jewish people as evil. So we had to change the name.
• Joe Siegler sent an email on Thanksgiving Day saying that the version we uploaded for testing didn't work. So I went up to the freezing office and uploaded a new version of the game. I ended up calling the management at his house bitching about the lack of heat in the building.
• Some people (bank tellers n such) would ask us if JAM Productions was a music company. JAM was Jim And Mike.
• The game was so successful at one point we were making $1 million a month. .. Oh wait, that was Doom. Nevermind. haha

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

It has to be money. Otherwise, every studio would be working with external teams and try to become the next EA or Activision. I know at Third Law Interactive and TKO Software / Dallas, we were happy just to get projects for the internal teams to work on. Working with external teams was the last thing on our minds.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Everything associated with making games has gotten bigger.

• The size of the development team - While JAM Productions did contract out music and a small amount of art, the majority of the game was created by 2 programmers and 1 artist. We did our primary jobs (programming and art) as well as game design, level design, business matters, production, and publisher relations.
• The budget needed to create the game - JAM's total budget for Blake Stone (18 months development time) could barely pay for a small team of, say, 12 people for 1 month. If you're licensing a quality engine, be prepared to spend the salary of several quality people.
• The technology needed to compete against other games - The technology used in today's AAA games are much more impressive and more complex than when we created Blake Stone. And that doesn't just pertain to the graphics engine. Other things like AI, physics, networking, and animations have become much more complex.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Planet Strike Artwork

Making video games, of course! Ask me in another 12 years and the answer will be the same; that is unless I'm able to get my PGA Tour card! ;)

Here's a quick rundown of companies and games (newest to oldest):

ID SOFTWARE
<< wouldn't you like to know >>

TKO SOFTWARE
Call of Duty (Nokia NGage)
Leisure Suit Larry (Nokia NGage)
Ms Pacman: Maze Madness (PS2 / PC)

PARADIGM ENTERTAINMENT
Terminator 3: Redemption (PS2 / XBOX)

THIRD LAW INTERACTIVE
KISS: Psycho Circus (PC)
Aliens vs Predator 2: Primal Hunt (PC)
NOLF: Game of the Year Edition (PC)
WWII: Normandy (PC)
WWII: Iwo Jima (PC)
Minigolf Megaworld / Minigolf Master 2 (PC)

ION STORM
Daikatana (PC)

7TH LEVEL
Return To Krondor (PC)

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

N/A

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

I had the chance to join id Software early on but I was already knee-deep into JAM Productions and Blake Stone. I'm not the kind of person that just quits something I've started unless I'm really forced to. I wanted to finish Blake Stone and try to grow JAM into something cool. Besides, I finally got the chance to work at id Software again (been there about 6 months now) and I'm excited about helping them create their next generation of games!

Even still, the companies I've worked with has allowed me to interact with a lot of talented people and different technologies. But mostly, I really like the fact that I've been able to work on many different genres of games including: First Person Shooters, Real-time Strategy, Third Person Action, and even a couple games my son has been able to enjoy (Minigolf and Ms Pacman). There's nothing cooler than having your son enjoy games you've created.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

The games I played the most were Wolfenstein 3D and Balls of Steel.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

(in no particular order)

Quake
Unreal Tournement
Tiger Woods Golf
Grand Theft Auto
Rollercoaster Tycoon / Sim City (sim games, in general)
Any game my son wants me to play with him.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

Of all the games I've worked on, Blake Stone was probably the most fun and intense at the same time. Simply because there were only three of us (Jim Row, Jerry Jones, and Myself) to do pretty much everything. We did the Game Design, Programming, Art, Level design, Working with contractors, Business matters, and LOTS of other little things that simply take a ton of time and effort. It was the first big game I created from the ground up and except for the timeframe, I think it turned out pretty good.

---

Thanks again to Mike for helping out with his questions. Since Mike was local, it was easy enough to go over to id and say Hi. Was nice to go back and reminise with Mike about his time with Apogee back then. We still sell both Blake Stone & Planet Strike, and if you're interested in trying them out, you can do so with the links below. One other thing Planet Strike is notable for is being the only game in our history that does not have a shareware/demo version. As it was our first retail game, the decision was made back then not to have a demo. It was thought that the existing Blake Stone game was enough of a "demo" for the retail Planet Strike game.

One final comment about Blake Stone.. Just where were all those medics? ;)

• Our Blake Stone Catalog Page
• Our Blake Stone Catalog Page
• Shareware Episode of Blake Stone
• Wikipedia Entry for Blake Stone

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:04 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Weekly Development Update #11

Hey all; welcome to the eleventh edition of the Prey Weekly Web Update. As usual, this week has been rather busy here at Human Head. We've been splitting out time between implementing new feature requests from 3DR and fixing bugs.

At this point, though, many of the feature requests are fairly simple tweaks, things like adding in screen tips in sniper mode so you know how to zoom in and out, changing the HUD damage feedback system to something more intuitive, etc.

Check the changelog at the end of this update for even more info on what's happening with the game.

Typically (at least on nearly all the projects I've worked on), there comes a point where staff members start wrapping up their normal duties and transition over to game testing. We're nearly at this stage with the art staff. Oh, there's still a number of art tasks remaining and things will still crop up as we're headed towards gold, but many of the artists have been transitioning over to bug-finding.

Rather than have them try to play through the entire game over and over, we've split the maps up into groups and are having each artist concentrate on a group of maps for a short period of time. We'll then rotate them into different groups of maps to keep putting new eyes on each set of maps.

Next week, we're planning a more hardcore test of deathmatch. We have been regularly testing deathmatch both for bugs and balance, of course, but next week we want to get into it hardcore. There are a couple of bugs that QA is able to reproduce that we have yet to see in-house. Next week's hardcore test should flush out those issues.

2K has sent a tester on-site to work with the team directly for the next few weeks. So far, he's been working out well, and has been diving in and showing us bugs that we've had difficulty reproducing, as well as helping out with regression testing bugs after we've fixed them.

In case you aren't aware of how the process of QA works, here's a quick outline:

• QA reports a bug, and enters it into a centralized database
• We look at the bug, and determine if it really is a bug, or if there is a mix-up. If it's not a bug, we mark it the very obvious: "Not a Bug"
• We then determine if we will be able to fix the bug. Occasionally a bug cannot be fixed due to engine limitations and so forth. We mark it "Will Not Fix"
• We then try to reproduce the bug. If we are unable to reproduce it, or don't have enough information to recreate the bug, we mark it "Need More Info", and wait until we hear back from QA with the additional information
• Finally we fix the bug. And mark it "Fixed."
• Even though we fixed it, it's not closed out and considered final until QA has retested the bug. They retest it, and either mark it "Fix Verified", or if they still can reproduce the bug, then they mark it "Fix Denied"
• If the bug is kicked back to us, then we swear repeatedly and the process starts over.

We received more music from Jeremy Soule last week, and are expecting more music from him early next week. We're close to having all music for the game in our hands for implementation. All told, we should have close to 2 hours of music in Prey.

A few Human Heads attended GDC this week, shmoozing with other developers and attending talks. As mentioned last week, our very own Ed Lima is giving a talk today (the 24th) on sound in the Doom 3 engine and on many of the enhancements that have been added both by us and by Creative Labs.

Yes, Ed will be showing some sound stuff in-engine. Don't expect a huge Prey demonstration, though -- it's tailored towards the sound, so he's just showing off a couple of rooms as he's demoing the sound enhancements. But, we did choose two pretty cool rooms. :-) One of them has one of my favorite portal effects.

Speaking of GDC. Every year, when I realize that GDC is upon us, I always start thinking about E3, since it's a bit less than two months away. We've already started discussing what we'll be showing of Prey at E3.

No final plans as of yet, so I can't mention anything in this update -- but we will be showing off Prey in some form at E3.

Okay, arguably the most popular feature of the weekly updates: the changelog. As we've been working on a number of things near the end of the game, quite a few spoilers had to be removed this week:

• hunters have new projectile effects so the projectile stands out better
• XXXXXXXXXX at the start of the map has a new texture on it
• Tons of tweaks in the Harvester maps, in terms of creature placement and bug fixes
• New combat room added to Salvage: a cool room involving multiple portals and many enemies
• New animation for Tommy's intro
• Preparation for a door color unification pass across all levels
• New damage HUD, giving better directional feedback during combat
• Lots of great AI tweaks and fixes to the Hunters
• Animation work on various cinematics and to XXXXXXXXX-X scene
• Removal of a poster in the Roadhouse that contained unlicensed images
• New graphic effect on the health spore: much cheaper, and pretty much looks the same
• New GUIs throughout the levels, providing more information about the ship and the inhabitants
• New creature placements, providing more locations for wallwalk combat
• HUD tips for sniper zoom

As always, thanks much for reading our Prey update. We have some pretty exciting Prey related things happening over the next few weeks -- can't talk about them just yet, but just keep your eyes peeled! Until next week....

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios

Additionally, if you are a gaming news website, and wish to be updated directly with notification of these updates, please email us with a link to your website and a request to be added, and we'll email you with the next update.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:26 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Q&A with Tim Gerritsen

In addition to today's latest editon of the Prey Weekly Update series, we also have a short interview with Tim Gerritsen of Human Head. He talks about the overall game concept, multiplayer features, weapons, downloadable content plans and more. Here's a few morsels:

"Absolutely we'll have downloadable content (on Xbox Live). The extent of it really depends on how the game does, but we have plans to support the game with new characters, maps, skins and more. If the game does well, we definitely want to add new multiplayer modes."

"We're releasing the sdk and editor (Preditor) for Prey PC and will be actively supporting the mod community. However, to really make mod materials, you'd need a full keyboard and mouse set up, so the majority of the mods are developed for PC."

"There will be a demo on PC and 360, though dates have not yet been confirmed. We've not announced our next game yet, but the reaction to Prey had led to some very unique opportunities for us. We would love to see Xbox Live Tournaments for Prey and support them in general. I'd like to have a nice spectator lounge, though, with cocktails. :)"

Tim tells more in the full interview, available here over at totally360.com. Check it out!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 11:48 AM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #11 - Dave Sharpless

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues with a trip way into the past. Today we're going to bring you an interview with Dave Sharpless.

Dave is not a name that is known to most fans of our company, simply because he did one title with us, and it was withdrawn quickly after its initial release. This title was Jumpman Lives! which was put out in early 1991. For various reasons the game was withdrawn from distribution shortly after release, and (to this day) we no longer offer it in any capacity. The game however, has enjoyed a cult following over the years - mostly since the rise in public use of the Internet. To this day there remain fans who still create new levels for the game, which brings me to my next point. Jumpman Lives is a first in PC shareware gaming - it's the first game we're aware of that contained a level editor with the full product. This practice is common now, but back in early 1991 when this game was first released, it was quite a novel concept for a PC title.

Dave continued on with gaming after his brief time with Apogee about 15 years ago, and was glad to contribute to our series.

Dave during the Summer of 1990, about 6 months before Jumpman's release.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

Sometime around January 1991, I was a student attending the University of Toledo for a CSE degree and living in an apartment in a really bad neighborhood just off campus when I received a typed letter from Scott Miller. Scott got my home address from my shareware "Joust" and/or "Mario Brothers" games. In it he wrote about his appreciation for the two games, explained the Apogee business model a bit, and asked me to give him a call at the 800 number. During our phone conversation(s) we both agreed that JMLives would be a good game for Apogee to sell and for me to make.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Yes, to try something new. My last two games were circulated on my own via BBSs, etc and generated very little revenue and I hated preparing the disks, mailing labels, and mailing them out.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Yes, somebody could have read the Jumpman owner's manual and realize he was from Jupiter and not Saturn! (The introductory screen to JMLives shows Jumpman coming from Saturn). Seriously, it would have been nice to avoid the legal issues that eventually surrounded JMLives by spending more time creating a variant of it instead of an exact copy. At the time Jumpman was still property of Epyx and they forced Apogee to discontinue selling it just months after it was released.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

Better... and definitely faster. Scott often let cash do the talking which is great motivation for a starving college student. Some folks at Apogee also contributed in the way of screen graphics and levels which was a big help at crunch time.

From 1992 - Employment badge of one of the coolest places to work in the world at the time.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

If you're the creator, then of course it is! Back in the days of JMLives, Apogee didn't start paying for the game until it was mostly done so the IP rights were going to the right party.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

This isn't really applicable.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

No.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Not particularly, since my time working with them was so short.

Jumpman Lives! Title Screen

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Good question. It seems like big companies would rather let the studio prove themselves by making a hit and then buy them outright.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

The size/complexity of projects and the size of the development teams required to create them.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

I finished school and took a job with WMS Gaming (casino & lottery games) in Chicago. It wasn't my dream job but it did land me in the same building with sister companies Midway, Bally Pinball, and Williams Electronics. After a few years of that I joined a startup company down the street in Chicago called GameWorks doing wacky products for the casino environment. Spielberg wanted the name so we became High Impact. High Impact was purchased by Anchor Gaming which relocated me to Las Vegas in 2001. Anchor was then purchased by the market leader International Game Technology and I'm still there today trying to give you the best possible gaming experience while money is slowly being extracted from your wallet.

Jumpman Lives! Level Editor Screenshot

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

All the time. I'm just waiting for the right opportunity I guess.

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

No, I'm pleased with the way things turned out. Life is good!

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

I don't have a favorite Apogee game because I never played any of them. I don't mean any disrespect because I have seen most of them and it's obvious that they're of very high quality. Maybe I just don't allocate as much time as I should toward playing games!

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Another World (Amiga). Magic Carpet (PC). Carmageddon I (PC). Conker's Bad Fur Day (N64).

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

Thanks for reading the interview. Keep up the good work. Feel free to contact me via email - don't be shy (and remove the "-nospam").

---

Thanks again to Dave for helping out with the series - his was one interview we were eager to have here given the uniqueness of his title in the past history of our company. While we don't distribute this game anymore (either in shareware or registered form), we are making available for the first time online the original hint sheet that we sent out for a brief time when we did ship the game. Back then, all of our games came with a "hint sheet" which contained tips & cheats. In 1994, these things were done away with and converted into on disk files, but this one has never been available since the game was discontinued 15 years ago.

Additionally, there is plenty of information about the game on the web. Check out these links below:

• Matty's Jumpman Lounge - by Matt @ classicgaming.com
• Apogeegames.com Jumpman Page by Lon Matero
• Interview with Dave Sharpless by Matt @ classicgaming.com - Sep 2004
• Apogee's Jumpman Lives! Hint Sheet - in pdf format

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:37 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Weekly Development Update #10

Hello again and welcome to this week's edition of the Prey weekly update!

First off a huge thanks to Peter Johnson at Venom for taking the time out of his schedule to write the great update last week on the Xbox360 version of Prey.

Wow, so what's been going on here? It's been a crazy busy week:

In terms of production, we've been focusing on:

• bug fixes from 3DR and Take 2 QA
• map optimizations: Over the past couple of weeks, there's been some pretty large optimizations done to the maps. Visually they are essentially the same -- most of the optimizations have been ensuring that entities in other rooms cease thinking as necessary, additional corridors or doors added as needed for vis purposes, removing redundant geometry where found, etc.
• feature tweaks: a number of game feature tweaks as requested by 3DR to polish the experience. For example, things like tweaks to how some of the weapons function, a screen effect when you are very low on health, some AI tweaks, etc.
• level tweaks: similar to the feature tweaks above, the level designers have been adding in sections as needed to expand the gameplay in levels, and also moving elements around so they are properly introduced and utilized.
• animation tweaks: The animators have been crunching hardcore to clean up the motion capture data. A lot of work has gone into cleaning up the motion capture data. The data had a lot of hitching, and issues when blending between different animations. So far the animators work has fixed things up pretty well -- only downside is that it's very time-consuming for them. Once the cinematic animations are complete, the animators have a good-sized list of things to tweak throughout the rest of the game, from weapon animations to creature animations.

A new contract animator has joined us to help finish Prey. Eric Weiss has a background in both film and computer game animation, having worked on such movies as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Godzilla, and most recently, Superman Returns.

On Prey, he's been focusing first on learning the animation pipeline from Maya into Prey, and has been doing work on one of our boss creatures. Very cool having him aboard and helping make the animation rock.

Check out his IMDb page here.

Michael Greyeyes, the voice of Tommy, was here at Human Head on Monday and Tuesday recording new lines for the game, and re-recording some older lines. It was a busy couple of days, but we managed to record around 250 lines. Will we use all of those? Probably not -- our goal is that Tommy comment mainly about critical things. While it's very cool to hear his voice as you're playing, you obviously wouldn't want to hear him comment every 5 feet - you'd likely be saying "Shut up Tommy!" :)

As always, Michael was ever the professional who clearly enjoys his job. He nailed most of the lines in only a few takes, and had fun joking around a bit and ad-libbing a few lines.

Ed Lima, Audio Director at Human Head, along with some folks from Creative Labs will be giving a presentation at the Game Developers Conference next week on audio in Doom 3 engine games. Ed will be discussing some of the audio features added to the game to not only make things sound more realistic, but also features added to make the game more enjoyable. An example of this is voice ducking technology which lowers surrounding sounds when an NPC is talking, so their voice stands out above ambient sounds.

If you are at GDC, make sure you stop by and check out the presentation by Ed and Creative Labs. Additionally, Ed's talk at GDC will be next Friday the 24th at noon EST, so if you happen to be there, check it out to hear Ed's insight into Prey.

From the "No TV and no beer make Homer go something-something" department:

Of course, during all this hardcore crunching, we still have to take the time to blow off some steam. Now that the Guitar Hero craze seems to have all but died down here at the office, it's been replaced by some new sounds: The clang of swords and howls as heads are lopped off. A few of the guys here have taking up playing Rune Deathmatch again. Brings back such memories to hear those sounds once again echo through our offices.

We received some great feedback on the changelog from two weeks ago, so here's this last week's changelog as sent to 3DR. Warning, some spoilers might be in here -- but any major spoilers have been removed:

• Leech node hints now give you an icon of the gun itself
• Glowing blood sprays are visible when sniping an enemy
• SpindleB: Turbine Room has gotten major optimizations
• "Thin thing" portal trick added to Salvage (still requires some cleanup).
• Pretty large optimization pass across most of the maps. Still more optimization to be done.
• Key default changes:
  - Lighter defaults to F key
  - SpiritWalk defaults to MMB and E
  - Crouch defaults to C and SHIFT
  - Leech gun is now on key #4
• Leech gun auto switches when out of ammo
• Hunters can lean around corners to attack now. They occasionally decide to do the lean attack during normal attacks, too, to mix things up.
• tweaks to hud tip system
• added tips when entering a shuttle
• made spectators show up on scoreboards
• allowed spectators to go through forcefields
• added "Resume Game" to out-of-game menu
• put player portraits on scoreboard
• added gametime played to loadgame screen
• added "ready" tip to MP hud
• made shuttle not thrust until transitioned in
• tweaks to the motion capture animations for Grandfather and Jen.
• added music volume control
• tweaks to help screen
• new negative feedback sound when shooting teammates in team dm, got rid of colored flash on teammates as well
• New recorded lines for Tommy yelling at Grandfather as he is XXXXX XX XXX.
• More save/load fixes
• Playtime now displayed for savegames
• Made vacuum robot explosion do radius damage
• Spirit bridge updates throughout the levels
• Ambience passes to newly added areas, thin thing, XXXXX XXXXXXXXX, etc.
• Low health screen effect added

Thanks as usual for reading, and make sure to check in again next week.

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios

Additionally, if you are a gaming news website, and wish to be updated directly with notification of these updates, please email us with a link to your website and a request to be added, and we'll email you with the next update.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:39 PM

The Apogee Legacy #10 - Allen Blum

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues into its tenth edition, this time with long time Apogee staffer, Allen Blum.

Allen has had his hands in a ton of titles of ours, and goes all the way back to some of the earliest works of our company. He's been involved as a developer on all the Duke Nukem games released by Apogee/3D Realms (Duke Nukem I, Duke Nukem II, Duke Nukem 3D, & Duke Nukem Forever) directly. He's also been involved in many others such as Shadow Warrior, Dark Ages, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, as well as the aforementioned Duke games. He was however, the lead designer for our 1993 title, Major Stryker. Stryker was an (EGA) scroller game in the vein of our other such titles like Stargunner & Raptor.

Allen's also one of our internal beta test team, so even if's not listed above, he's played through it a lot and had input into the titles (some titles under this category are both Max Payne games as well as the forthcoming Prey). Allen (and his hats) have been a major part of our company history, and it's a pretty safe statement to say we wouldn't be where we are without him.

Allen with Randy Pitchford, Doug Wood, & Dirk Jones.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

In 1990 my High School friend Todd Replogle was working on some games for Apogee such as Caves of Thor and Monuments of Mars. At the time I was into the graphic abilitys of the Amiga and was working on a Super Mario Brothers 3 clone for fun.

Todd started working on Dark Ages and needed a level editor so we used my Mario clone editor on the Amiga. I ended up doing art and level design on the Amiga while the game only ran on the PC. After that we did Duke Nukem 1 the same way with most content made on the Amiga and the game running on a PC. It was pretty nice being able to see most of a level and all the textures for the game on one high-res screen on the Amiga while the PC was only able to do 320x200 EGA. With the success of Duke Nukem 1, Todd moved to Texas to work closer to Apogee on Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure while I continued school at the Univisity of California at Santa Cruz. I little while later while I was out visiting Todd and checking out Apogee, I was working on a top down shooter for fun called Dr. Protons Revenge. Apogee happened to see it and asked me to make it into a complete game which was released as Major Stryker in 1993. After that I moved out to Dallas and did Duke Nukem 2, Duke Nukem 3d and currently working on Duke Nukem Forever.

Allen holding his gift from the gift exchange at the 2005 3D Realms company Christmas Party.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Back in 1992 the "Shareware model" seemed like a great way for me to make my own game. It was easy enough to just release it on bulliten boards for people to play and if they liked it they could buy it.

I'm glad to see that a simular thing is part of the Xbox360 with the Live Marketplace. They just need to get rid of the "old tech" games like joust and have more games like Wik or Geometry Wars.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Other than bulletin boards and flyers sent out to thousands of people, I would have really liked a Superbowl commercial. :)

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

No response to question.

Allen averting his eyes to the light at his desk at 3DR - May 2005

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

This didn't really apply to Major Stryker.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

Not really, as I never did anything with the Major Stryker franchise. Can it be a franchise with just one title in the line?

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

Duke Nukem Forever is getting closer to being done day by day.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

It's all a blur, man!

Allen at the 2001 company Halloween Party

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

I have no idea! Money? It's all about the bling-bling now, isn't it? You want to have the largest piece of the pie, I'd suppose, and that's diluted this way.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Back when I started you could really make a game from home. Major Stryker only had 3 people working on it, Bobby Prince in Florida doing music, Gary Sirois in the north east doing art, and me in California. We never worked in the same room and actually never even saw each other. We only worked over the phone. I'm sure you could probably do the same thing much easier and faster with todays tech and such for small games. But for anything else like DNF you need a big bunker filled with people. At least now I get some excecise running around to the other side of the building to the coders area.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Since? I'm still here!

Just WHAT is Allen doing with this Lara Croft statue at E3 2000?

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

I'm still here! Are you trying to get rid of me or something?

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

OK, why do all these questions make it seem like I'm some old fogey who has retired in a corner and drools on themselves? I'm still here!

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

There's other games besides the ones I worked on?

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Seeing that I live in an FPS working on DNF and play most all FPS games, I would say almost any racing game would be my favorite, just becuase it is completly different from an FPS. And I like to drive fast without worrying about wraping my car around a telephone pole. Current top of the list would be Trackmania, Burnout or Flatout.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

....need more stripper research.

---

Thanks to Allen for sending in his answers, and being a good sport about so many goofy pictures of him being taken over the years. While Major Stryker was discontinued some years ago, here's a few links about some of the other games Allen has worked on over the years you might find interesting:

• Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure Page
• Duke Nukem I Page
• Duke Nukem II Page
• Duke Nukem 3D Page
• Shadow Warrior Page
• Major Stryker Page
• Freeware Registered Version of Major Stryker

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 4:09 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Weekly Development Update #9

Welcome to the latest edition of the Prey Weekly Update series. A few weeks ago you were told you'd get an update from Venom games in the UK on the Xbox 360 version of Prey. That's what we're bringing you today. This week's update is not from Chris at Human Head, but it's by Peter Johnson at Venom Games in the UK.

Chris will return next week with the next Prey Weekly Update. There's plenty to read in Peter's update, so let's get right to it....

We started work in earnest on bringing Prey to the 360 in late June 2005, although we had been looking at the code a little before that to ready ourselves and plan our attack. It was amusing to see on some gaming forums that some posters seemed to think that the announcement about it last month meant that we had just started work on it, this is far from the case.

As our aim was to keep everything as faithful to the PC original as possible, we knew it would be mainly a coding job, with relatively little work needed on the art side. It broke down into a number of tasks - converting the engine itself to get it running on the 360 platform, and the areas where we needed to make changes to better suit the platform - such as the control system, the front end and the integration of Xbox Live.

Peter Johnson of Venom Games

THE ENGINE

As I am sure regular readers of Chris’ column will know, “Prey” is based on an enhanced version of the Doom3 engine. It was initially suggested to us that we would use the conversion of this engine that was being done over at Raven to bring “Quake 4” to the 360, but after waiting nearly 3 months for sight of that code, and it being apparent when we saw it that those guys were very much still in the process of development, shall we say, at the time- we felt that we had little choice but to do it ourselves rather than spend the next six months simply merging their code with Human Head’s without any forward progression ourselves. Taking this approach meant it was then much more likely that we would be in a position to resolve any problems we encountered.

In the last week of June 2005 Kevin Franklin, our lead coder here, and Ben Cosh rolled up their sleeves and started to convert the Prey code base from scratch. Their first move was to get the engine running on the PC in Direct X rather than Open GL, and then port that code across onto 360. The approach of hitting the PC first had the advantage that the turnaround time for compilation and execution could be much shorter than it currently was on 360 at the time. The guys did a great job- getting it running on 360, albeit at a low framerates, in around 8 or 9 weeks. There were still plenty of effects and graphical tricks to add at this point, but already it had the distinctive look of “Prey” and now we could let the rest of the programming team loose on it.

Prey really stretches the Doom3 engine, sometimes in ways it wasn’t designed for. It aims to create a convincingly organic-looking alien world full of curves and natural shapes from an engine designed around box-shaped rooms, and features many additional shaders and special effects that take the visuals far beyond the original Doom3 engine. This extra load meant the coding team had to work hard on optimising the code, removing bottlenecks and spreading the load across the three cores at the heart of the 360 to hit our target of a constant 30fps framerate. We have also had one coder, Mick, working for the best part of 6 months using the 360 performance analysis tools to identify the slower areas of code and rewrite, or in many cases replace routines with low-level machine code to squeeze the best from the machine.

I feel confident in saying that we are now graphically pixel-perfect with the PC version.

MULTIPLAYER

After the departure of our network programmer in the last week of November 2005, we had a difficult choice to make - whether to take his code and complete it, fixing any bugs we found and hoping we could patch around any problems we uncovered, or throw it all away and start again. This was a difficult call, as time was running short for an area of the game which is always known to be a challenging one to implement.

We took the option we all felt was right, which was the braver/more foolish one of replacing it all. Steve Sharp, the coder we tasked with it has done a great job in a short time in a coding area he was previously unfamiliar with, and we now have all of the Live support in place and working well. The recent addition of speech to the online game over the past few weeks has also added greatly to the player experience.

Screenshot showing controller layout

CONTROL SYSTEM

Over to Mark Sample, normally our game designer/ producer here, for a little on the controller code.

Our task for Xbox 360 was to make sure the game played right with the console controller. This is harder than most think as many gamers take the highly responsive keyboard and mouse feel of the home PC for granted and we knew from the outset that we wanted to be as faithful as possible to the way the game plays on PC rather than changing the experience for the gamer.

Assigning the action buttons to the pad was easy, however the fun started with getting the feel of the player movement and looking around right with the sticks. Using a vast array of tweakable values we set about tuning the turn-rate and acceleration. From the get-go we knew it was vitally important that the player felt completely in control at all times. They need to have enough low-down sensitivity to make small delicate moves, as well as fast response for sweeping, super-quick 180’s – as you never know who might pop up behind you =). After much testing and tuning, the stick controls now feel robust and razor-sharp; we’re really pleased with the results and think the gamer will be ready in no time to take out a hunter or two with what we have delivered.

Our QA team in LA recently suggested that the game could also benefit from a facility for user-assignable weapon switching on the D-pad, and we added this into the game. We designed a method which allows the player to assign and re-assign weapons to those buttons quickly at any time as they play, as simply as programming stations in on a car radio. It works great, and we confidently expect to see other games following suit soon.

FRONT END

Over to Phil Nixon, the artist redesigning the front end for 360.

“We had to replace the existing front end to allow for input via gamepad rather than mouse-driven “point and click” of the PC, and the idea behind the user interface we chose to adopt for 360 was to try and get as far away as possible from the established look of PC FPS’s.

I like the idea that the user interface should relate to the theme of the game itself as much as possible. I'll try and explain a little better what I'm on about...Tommy is aided throughout the game by Talon, his hawk, and we thought it would be cool to use this idea as a concept for the user interface. We focused on a super close-up of the eye, making the pupil dilate and contract in response to flashing lights around it (representing gunfire, or perhaps a smashed up computer). Occasionally the eye looks around too, adding movement in the background. The deeper you get into the interface, the deeper you zoom into Talon’s eye.

Stylistically, as far as the menu graphics, framing graphics and fonts are concerned, I tried to draw cues from the GUIs and designs that are featured in the game, again trying hard to ensure that our front end matched the 'look' that Human Head already had in place. Overall it works well, and I like to think it ties the game elements together a little better than some titles out there manage to do.”

XBOX LIVE ACHIEVEMENTS

Achievements are becoming a big thing within the Xbox 360 community, with websites springing up to cover the topic and gamers competing for bragging rights based on which achievements they have unlocked in the games they are playing, so we wanted to make sure we included a very full implementation of achievements in Prey. Over to Bruce Brodie who helped design this part of the game.

“The achievements have been a lot of fun to create! Currently there are 33 achievements in “Prey” which will be worth a total of 1000 points to a player’s Gamer Score. These achievements are spread out between single and multiplayer modes. Major achievements such as game completion and death match kills are all present and correct, level-specific awards have also been included for players that attempt the game on the “Wicked” difficulty – we want people to explore the world of Prey and really master it in order to unlock some of the harder achievements – be warned, some of the multiplayer ones will take a lot of skill to unlock!

There are also a number of secret achievements that players will have to look harder to find, which will be worth a good haul of points when discovered.

Our artists have created some great icons for the achievements, and they are looking good (I hate it when a game uses the same icon for everything). The final number of points to be awarded for each is still in discussion and tends to change depending on how evil the designer is feeling that day.

Here are some of the achievements that we have created, one from the single player, one from multiplayer and a secret achievement that we will leave to you to discover for yourself!

And finally...

THANKS

Doing “Prey” has necessitated putting progress on our other, unannounced, next-gen title on hold for over 6 months, and I’d like to acknowledge the patience of our art team assigned to that project for soldering on with their work on it whilst almost all of our programming resources were diverted to bringing “Prey” to 360. Thanks Guys!

Peter Johnson - Studio Head
Venom Games - Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Additionally, if you are a gaming news website, and wish to be updated directly with notification of these updates, please email us with a link to your website and a request to be added, and we'll email you with the next update.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:01 PM

Prey is "Worth Playing"

Another day, another Prey preview. This time we have one from the gaming site "Worth Playing". This one talks about the usual suspects, single player, the Cherokee influence on the title, Wallwalking, all the cool stuff you've been reading about. Check out what Worth Playing has to say about Prey:

"Prey strives to deliver the rise of a hero through the conduit of a fantastic voyage aboard a ship that's a living entity."

"Beginning with the engine and environment, Prey pulls some smooth moves and some fast tricks to create the user experience. Conceiving the environment as a living ship allows Prey to have a very organic look, which not only allows for a different appearance, but also enables a great deal more creativity in the design, threats, assets, and functions throughout the game."

"The Spirit Walk is truly something to behold. Tommy takes ethereal form, just like Talon, leaving his body behind to venture forth only with a Spirit Bow as a weapon."

"Taking Wall Walking into multiplayer action is where the sweet spot of Prey truly lies. One level we got our hands on was like being in the midst of an M.C. Escher drawing, with almost all of the walls turned on."

"The day of a 3D compartmentalized structure is attacked by Prey, as gamers will be forced to grasp both space and gravity in an environment where "top" and "bottom" will be difficult, if not impossible, to identify."

Make sure and check out the full preview over at worthplaying.com today!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 11:40 AM

The Art of Prey

If you're a subscriber to the Official Xbox Magazine, then you have a treat headed towards your mailbox. The newest issue of that magazine is hitting subscribers' mailboxes now (the April 2006 issue), and there are two Prey segments on the disc.

The first is a photo gallery called "The Art of Prey". This is a screenshot collection which has about 30 shots which are a mix of screenshots as well as concept art. In addition to that is a video feature on Prey. It's a a video interview with Chris Rhinehart of Human Head in which he talks about Prey. The interview is also intermixed with plenty of game footage, too!

Here's what the magazine has to say about the interview...

Take a look at the gravity bending upcming Xbox 360 shooter Prey in a special video feature where we take you inside developer Human Head's studio in frosty Madison, Wisconsin. The game is much hotter than the weather!

If you're not a subscriber to the magazine, then you should head out to your local newsstand and pick up a copy of the April 2006 edition of the Official Xbox Magazine to get plenty of Prey 360 goodness!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 4:50 PM

The Apogee Legacy #9 - Lindsay Whipp

Today our "Apogee Legacy" Interview series continues on with the latest edition, this time with programmer Lindsay Whipp. Lindsay was the author and developer of one of the more amusing titles in our line, "Mystic Towers". This featured a character that originally was in someone else's game, "Baron Baldric: A Grave Adventure".

Baron Baldric (the character) was funny in that he would scratch his butt and fart while during the game - something that was definitely not the case in any other game of ours at the time. Lindsay only worked on the one title with us, but it was definitely one of the funnier titles in our product line. Read on to hear Lindsay's opinions on the Mystic Towers development, and how he has a connection to the current "Destroy All Humans" game.

A Lindsay Whipp "toon"

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

...I was referred by the Australian distributor Manaccom.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

...Working out of Australia, I needed a bigger market, and one world publisher was the best option.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

...No, I was pretty happy with the results. Modest by today's standards, but, hey! We're talking 286 computers and the end of the DOS era here!

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

...It was made DIFFERENT. What started off as a comic graphic adventure ended up as a comic shoot-em-up. I went along with that quite happily, but still think it lost some of its original humor along the way.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

...In my case, that didn't apply. I approached Apogee with a completed product, although it changed radically during Beta. These days, the budget demands are too great to allow small developers to do that, which is a pity in many ways - it cuts out the quirky individualism, and everything has the same blandness. My daughter recently worked as lead artist on Pandemic's "Destroy All Humans" and had to work damned hard to allow that element to be retained.

Lindsay in 1989 on the computer the original Amiga that Baron Baldric was written on.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

...In my case - no.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

...What, Baron Baldric for Geriatrix? Barren Baldric more like...

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

...Yes. George telling me that there were 3 important aspects of all games and they were, in order of importance: 1. interface 2. interface 3. interface - not the sort of advice one forgets!

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

...The cost! The complexity of todays games are horrifying. The days of the maverick like me are simply long gone, or even small studios.

Mystic Towers game manual cover art

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

...The scale of all productions, and the size of the teams needed to produce games at that level.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

...Working with software publisher and distributor Manaccom in Australia - the company that distributed my stuff here at the time the Baron was active.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

...I have a daughter in the games industry, one son in the media business, one in the IT business - enough is enough, already!

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

...No - I made products for public comsumption, and that's what happened.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

All the Dukes of course! (funny - my tongue seems to be glued to the inside of my cheek...)

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Abe's Odyssey, GP3 (great driving fan)

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

...Get a life!

---

Thanks to Lindsay for sending in his answers, as well as the "toon" of himself used above. We still sell Mystic Towers, so if you've never checked it out, you can check it out with the links here:

• Apogee Mystic Towers Page
• Download Mystic Towers shareware
• Buy Full Version of Mystic Towers
• Mystic Towers Page at Wikipedia

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:44 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Weekly Development Update #8

Hey all -- welcome to the latest Prey Weekly Update. Originally, Peter Johnson from Venom was going to update this week on the status and progress of the Xbox 360 version, but due to their crunch his update will have to wait until a future update (possibly next week).

Like Venom, we're in crunch here at Human Head as the game is in late beta. We're getting tons of feedback from 3D Realms, Take2 QA, and other beta testers. Every day the game improves pretty noticeably.

I'm going to update with little snippets of thoughts on various things that have happened around here. Like I said, we're incredibly busy, so there's way more than this happening, but here are just a few:

Last week I was in Dallas visiting 3D Realms. Tom Chick from CGM flew in for the first single-player hands-on demo of the game. We showed him the first two hours of Prey, and then jumped around and showed him a few cool areas later in the game.

The game pretty much shows itself off now. In the past, it was 80% talking and 20% showing -- as we discussed the story and what we planned to do in certain sections. But now, those numbers have flipped. Most of the demo was just seeing the game and experiencing the story -- the 20% was us talking about what we had yet to fix and tweak, and talking about the history of the game and its development.

Recently I speed-ran through the entire game, taking stock of the following items:

• Action/Puzzles: Any long stretches of the game without any action or puzzles? (not many!)
• Tommy comments: Making notes of additional comments needed and which current comments could use reworking.
• Combat frequency: Is there not enough combat in areas, or too much? Do certain creatures show up too much?
• Death frequency: Did I die too many times in a given area before I was able to get through?
• Animation tweaks: Which animations could use reworking
• Sound tweaks: Any sounds that could use tweaking, or any places where the volume mix is off.
• General bugs: Just anything that seems wrong or is broken.

Michael Greyeyes (the voice of Tommy) will be visiting us in a couple of weeks to record new lines and re-record some previous lines that didn't work well, or had to change due to story tweaks. I'm compiling a (pretty large) list of comments culled from suggestions here and from suggestions from 3D Realms. I doubt we'll have the in-game Tommy say everything from that list, but we're going to record all these lines just in case.

More voice recording fun:

We brought in a local actress/singer named CJ Schellback to provide additional female voices and screams for the game. She did a fantastic job, with some excellent screams of pain and yelling such things as "Help me!", "Where am I?!", "What's going on?!"

Our recording booth is apparently not entirely soundproof as her AMAZINGLY LOUD screams of pain heard by one of the offices directly below us.

After several minutes of her screams -- someone from the office finally came up stairs and asked "Is someone being raped up here?"

Seriously. They didn't ask if someone was hurt or needed help. They go straight to raped.

In the future, we'll be sure to inform our neighbors of our voice recording sessions.

We're reworking the final sequence of the game. The previous version was a bit abrupt and didn't properly convey the story in the way we wanted to wrap things up -- the new version is longer, better explains things, and is damn swanky-looking, too.

Can't mention more of this, though -- as it would be spoilers. I will say, however, that the end sequence has the coolest Earth model I've seen in a game yet!

Music: We're incorporating the latest Jeremy Soule music into the game. Very nice stuff. It's amazing how the mood of an area changes radically when music is added. There's still quite a bit more music from him coming soon -- all in all, Prey will have about 2 hours of music from Jeremy.

We're also looking at getting more bands for the jukebox (which is in the Roadhouse near the start of the game, and also makes an appearance a few times on the alien ship). We already have some major label stuff in the jukebox and Ed is looking at some more indie-bands as well. Also, music related and interesting: Killer music from development materializes.

Later today, we're having a multiplayer stress test here at Human Head. We have weekly multiplayer tests to check for bugs and generally playtest the levels. Typically it ranges from 4-6 people playing (whomever is free at the moment to test). Today, we're focusing on all 8 players in the game, and are looking for bugs and any places in the maps where the flow chugs down.

Each week, 3D Realms receives a new build from us. Typically, I include a changelog of some of the more interesting things that changed (based up their feedback of what they wanted changed/fixed). George mentioned that it would be a cool thing to include in this update. So here it is:

• New weapon selection menu
• Multiple quick save slots
• New wrench alt-fire raise animation
• DeathWraiths now have a probability of 50% blue, 50% red
• Many more mutilated humans working on stuff and shuffling around throughout the game
• You have three seconds of invincibility when you return from death walk
• New initial load screen
• Beer bottles no longer float in Roadhouse
• Jenny properly holds and throws the sponge now
• JukeBox should always have a mouse cursor
• Roadhouse: Timing is different on the dialog now, so you can play with the games all you want, going back down by the bar will continue the dialog scripting
• Drunks have fight animations -- still need stagger around animations, though.
• FTC: New Hider sighting -- dialog is temp, though
• Art Bell radio sequences now start and end with music snippets. Recognize it? :-)
• Hunters are toned down slightly -- bigger pauses between their shots. Maybe toned down too much right now, though?
• Spirit Arrows are much more dangerous now. Also, more spirit power is given from enemies. This seems to be creating a positive feedback loop that we don't necessarily want, though.
• Leech Gun: The tips are in, but we are going to add a picture of the leech gun itself to make it more clear.
• Swipe animations are in for using things (especially in Roadhouse). Anims will be tweaked further.
• Many more leech nodes added throughout the game. Pass isn't final, though...will still be more added.
• You can shoot the robot vacuums (done especially for George)
• Laser beam eye stalks can not longer be shot. You have to avoid the beams, trigger them, or spiritwalk through them now.
• LOTA D: In progress, but new set-up for Grandfather. Play it to see where he's located now.
• Cilia are triggered by spiritwalking players (so you can't walk through them)
• Jetpacks rockets are slower
• Four-legged Harvesters have been debuffed slightly
• Head shots from the sniper rifle decapitate the mutilated humans
• Poker/blackjack rules fixes in Roadhouse
• Lots and lots of bugfixes

Well, that's all for this week. Next week (hopefully, if he can tear himself away from crunch time), Peter from Venom will update on the 360 version and anything he feels like talking about with that. In the meantime, stay out of trouble.

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios

Additionally, if you are a gaming news website, and wish to be updated directly with notification of these updates, please email us with a link to your website and a request to be added, and we'll email you with the next update.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:40 PM