Prey Weekly Update #20

I'm writing this amidst the dust and piles of unopened boxes of our new offices. That's right, Human Head has moved offices -- not to a new city, just across town. We're still here in Madison, Wisconsin.

Why did we decide to move now? Well, there were these stalkers... no, just kidding. We decided to move office space about a year-and-a-half ago, because we wanted a larger space and a better layout for our workflow. That, and we were just getting sick of the old place and wanted a change. We tried to schedule the move until after Prey was complete, but due to various timing issues as the place was built, the move was eventually scheduled for this week.

Overall, it's going smoothly -- we packed everything on Monday, the movers moved everything on Tuesday, and then we started the process of unpacking. There's still a ton of stuff to do, but we finally have the server back up, and we all have internet access again.

Only a few annoying moments so far -- they didn't have the air conditioning up until late yesterday, so the movers had to move everything in the sweltering heat. Glad that none of them collapsed from heat exhaustion -- it was pretty rough.

Two nights ago it rained horribly -- turns out they hadn't completed everything with the roof yet so we were getting leaks in about seven places here in the office, including directly onto my desk. So now I'm typing this with a very large bucket sitting on my desk to catch anything should it rain again today.

Still, the new offices are considerably better. Our old space wasn't optimal, because it was divided in half (the reception area was in the center of the space, so the team was split up). Interestingly enough, we divided into artists/animators on one side and programmers/level designers on the other side. So, Human Head was unconsciously split into a right brain/left brain arrangement. Weird.

The new space has no more cubicles. We have decent-sized offices, in which we have 2-3 people per office. Sliding doors adjoin many of the offices to facilitate cross-discipline communication.

And, of course, there are the nice amenities such as a large breakroom, multiple conference rooms, showers, and a theater room (of which the inaugural movie we watched was BloodRayne.)

Once the space is finished and we're all moved in, I'll post up a bunch of pictures of the place.

Anyway, on to stuff about Prey: The move ate into our development time, of course, but we are doing our best to not let it sidetrack us too much.

Venom is cranking on 360 bugs and tweaks -- they fixed a couple of pretty heinous bugs relating to memory management, and they are working their way through their bug database, eliminating bugs or throwing them our way should the bug turn out to be in the PC version of the game as well.

We're also still working on the PC demo. Nearly everything is together for it, we're working on the intro and exit screens for the demo. Once we have everything together, all the text in the demo has to be sent out for translation, and the demo itself has to go through QA.

Venom will be working on the 360 demo, which should be pretty much identical to the PC version.

And, let me say, it's a pretty big demo. It's not exactly like the shareware days of old -- we aren't giving away a third of the game, but there's still a ton of content there. I estimate it should take the average person an hour or two to get through it.

I'm very much looking forward to everyone's reactions to the demo. Not that much longer now!

Anyway, I need to get back to unpacking and going through my mountain of email. Until next time, stay out of trouble!

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios

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Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:22 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Wins Best FPS of E3 Award

Over the weekend, Voodoo Extreme handed out their best of E3 awards, and they gave Prey their "Best First-Person Shooter" award. Here's what they had to say about Prey:

If there was an award for "most fun playable game" at E3, Prey would get it. Since Prey happens to be a first person shooter I'm afraid we'll have to settle with that. What can I say? Prey is fun to play! The gameplay is polished to a high sheen and it makes me appreciate the finer points of deathmatch. Something I haven't enjoyed in quite a while.

You can check out all their awards over at VE3D here.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:52 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #20 - Joe Siegler

This week's edition of the Apogee Legacy series reaches a milestone with it's twentieth edition. I think when we first came up with the idea, we didn't expect it would run this long. We are reaching the end of the series, as there's only a couple left after this one. This week, we're running a slightly different edition for our twentieth. This twentieth interview is with well.. myself, Joe Siegler. Now I hadn't planned on doing one of these myself, as I didn't think there was a point. Scott Miller asked me to do it, and when I objected, he said "consider it an order", so here I am. :)

The short intro to myself is that I run the website here at Apogee, amongst other things (a more complete list is here). Yeah, I know most people know us as 3D Realms, but I've been here for a long time since before the name 3D Realms came up. Those who know me know I tend to resist change, so even 12 years after we came up with the name, I still refer to ourselves as Apogee.

One of my concerns is that I'm not a traditional developer, and as such some of the questions wouldn't apply to me directly. While that is true, I have a lot of friends who are, and also having read all the interviews before mine, I'd like to think I have some not completely off base thoughts on the matters at hand. As I've already started talking, let's get to the actual questions.

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

Trying to imitate James Hetfield, circa 1993

Well, that would require the firing up of the wayback machine. I started here in Dec 1992, but I was "involved" before that. I was a customer of this company for awhile. I'm not sure which was the first game I ever bought - it was probably either Keen 4 or the original Duke Nukem game. I was working at a computer repair facility at the time, and on the repair floor, Apogee games were used a lot on the computers. You had to test something, and quite frequently to test repaired floppy drives, some Apogee game would get installed. I also was running a BBS at the time, and Apogee's games were quite popular on the BBS scene.

In fact BBS's are the reason why I'm here. Back in the day, I used to dial up Software Creations all the time looking for the latest shareware releases and updates by Apogee. I would download 'em, and then upload them to several BBS's around the country on my own dime, all not knowing Apogee at all. So on May 5, 1992, along with most of the rest of the world, I was totally blown away by Wolfenstein 3D. It was some seriously good shit at the time, and I knew then that I wanted to try and work there, although I didn't know as what, because I was not an artist or a programmer. After the v1.2 update of Wolfenstein 3D came out, I shortly after that saw a "user hack" version of Wolfenstein pruporting to be "An adult upgrade of Wolfenstein 3D to v1.3". I contacted Scott Miller on Software Creations about it, since this file did not orginate there, like all the others did. Scott thanked me, and Apogee/id issued a statement about it, saying it didn't come from them, there is no "Porn" version of Wolf from them, and it was for this reason that there is no v1.3 of Wolfenstein 3D. Not long after this I decided to leverage this and ask Scott if he needed any help being a beta tester. He said yes, and I was added to the beta testing team (which I later on ending up being the head of, which was amusing to me). At the time, Math Rescue was in beta, so that was my first project.

At the Ft Worth Duke3D Rodeo Shootout, 1996. More Info

After a short time doing beta testing of that (and Major Stryker), Scott posted a message in the beta area asking if anyone from the beta team was intersted in coming to work for Apogee. Originally, I was hired to be telephone tech support for Apogee. Somewhere in my dusty archives is the original message he posted, but I can't locate it now. One highlight in his "incentive" package was that the Coke machine at the office cost only a quarter per can. I figured any company which talked about "Wearing what you want", and offering Coke for a quarter in it's "Come work here" pitch probably was pretty cool. So in October of 1992, I made the decision to move to Texas from Philly to take this job. I was to replace Shawn Green, who was the first employee of the company (outside of Scott and his family) who was being bumped up to the newly created "Online Support" position. However, inbetween my getting hired and coming down, Shawn quit to go join id Software. I then told Scott I wanted that job, since it was exactly what I was doing anyway in terms of file releases, support, etc.. So they gave me that job instead, and to this day I thank Shawn for making that move allowing me to get this job. It's kind of amusing, 13.5 years later I'm still here, and I'm still technically in the same job, as I've never really been formally promoted or anything like that. It's just evolved from BBS's to the Internet and websites/email.

It's exactly the kind of job I would have wanted had I actually stayed in school and got a degree (which I didn't).

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

Well, unlike the 19 folks who have preceeded me in this series, I'm not a real game developer as such. Sure, I write tech docs, I do support, maintain the website, and I even dabbled in level design awhile back with Rise of the Triad, but I hold no illusions. I'm not a game developer, I just work at a game company. Back in 1992, it wasn't an issue of working for anyone else, I didn't know anyone in the game industry. Scott offered the job to our beta team as I talked about above, and I took it. So working for anyone else was not an option.

With Joe Selinske (TRI, Ritual, EA, Black Label) at E3 2001

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

Well, I do have two games under my belt as a formal developer, and those are Rise of the Triad, and Extreme Rise of the Triad. For ROTT, I got paid "per level", it wasn't a royalty type of issue there, I got "x" per level I designed. For EROTT though I got paid royalties. EROTT was totally done by Tom Hall and myself, no one else from Apogee worked on that. So I was definitely excited about getting a royalty check.

I did get a couple of good ones right after release, but it started tapering off not long after that. That's the one beef I had with the game back then - Extreme ROTT was the only game at the time we had no advertising for. We advertised ROTT, and all the other games released back then, but EROTT came out after the 3D Realms label started, and I think the marketing was there for Terminal Velocity, and Duke Nukem 3D was well underway at that point, so EROTT got kind of forgotten about, and if we had marketed it, there might have been more sales for a product that I felt was a lot better with it's level design than the original product was.

It's not a major thing now, because I'm sure EROTT would have been discontinued awhile back anyway, and I thorogouhly enjoyed the experience both from the work done, and working solo with Tom Hall. I'll always treasure that.

With The Levelord (Ritual) & Jim Dose (Ritual, id, Valve) at a Mesquite Outback in Feb 2005.

One final story to this is that the last couple of royalty checks I got were under $10, with the last one I think being about $2. After that, George Broussard (who handed out royalty checks for the company) came to me with a buyout offer, so he wouldn't have to go through all the records just to arrive at a check for $2. So I got a $300 buyout somewhere in early/mid 1996 on my EROTT royalties, which I figured out back then would carry me over to around the year 2035 if I spread out the diminsihing rate at which the checks were coming in, so in the end I made out OK with that in my opinion. :)

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

Well, again only having one game under my belt makes this a bit different, as I'm not sure how to answer this. I'd say the game was fine the way it was. Sure, I know there was a chance to use Build back then instead of the Wolf engine, and I'm sure that might have made the game better had it been used, but to be honest, I rather like ROTT the way it was.

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?

Well, again I don't own the IP to Rise of the Triad, Scott & George do. I think it's a great idea for the designer to retain IP rights. That is however they don't own it just to bury it like some companies do with some properties they own ( that fans have shown there is an interest in reviving).

With Tom Hall at E3 1998.

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

This is not applicable to me at all. No comment.

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

Well, there was already the aforementioned addon pack for my one game, that being "Extreme Rise of the Triad". While I'm not Scott & George, and I can't speak for them personally, I seriously doubt they'd ever want to do another sequel to that.

However... If I ever ran across the kind of stupid money that would allow me to never have to worry about money ever again, I'd personally fund a Rise of the Triad sequel. I still think there's potential for a killer game in the ROTT franchise, and I'd probably try and hire back as many of the original team as I could. Most of what made ROTT "ROTT" IMO was Tom Hall's silliness - the same zany stuff that made Keen "Keen". There's a bunch of other cool things there too, but this game was very much (to me personally) a Tom Hall game.

However, the amount of money required for that dream is far beyond what this Webmaster will probably ever see in his lifetime. So while I WANT to say yes there will be, the answer is probably no.

In a stretch limo with the rest of 3DR on our way to a good dinner at a Steakhouse in Dallas in Nov of 2001.

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

Oh dear God, there's way too many of them! I've seen an awful lot of people come through here, and have been friends with most of them, I probably could tell a story on all of them. The problem is I know so many stories here, how do I pick for this? OK, I'll do a few of them.

Ken Silverman's US Maps

A few issues back, Ken Silverman did a bit about his drawing the United States anywhere. Here's a story I remembered about that. "One time the group of us were out to lunch at one of the local restaurants. This was one of the places that lets you draw with crayons on the table on paper they put on it. As Ken stated, he generally was pretty quiet, so most of us weren't paying attention, just talking the usual trash nonsense. After awhile one of us looked over at what Ken was doodling, and went "What the hell?" Ken was sketching the United States Map. He apparently has the ability to just draw the entire US map on anything. It pretty much took us by surprise, as he was roughly half done at that point, and from that point on we just watched him finish the map. So if you go anywhere with Ken, don't let him wander off on his own mentally, he'll draw the United States somewhere. :)"

ROTT Release power outage

In December of 1994, we were about to release the v1.0 shareware version of Rise of the Triad. As any game developer can tell you, the day before you release is one of the most stressful and worrysome times, as even if you think your game is going to be good, there's that one moment of "What if it sucks?" Anyway, it was the middle of the night and we were all testing, tweaking, packing, etc, as any end of project was. We were just about done, doing final checks, and then we lost power. At first we thought we blew a fuse, and then we noticed the whole building was out, and then we went outside and noticed that nothing had power anywhere that we could see. It was as if the whole power grid up and died. I recall someone at the time saying "id Software did it!". It was both a relief and a stressful thing as we wanted to finish and get the game out. Some of us handled the break differently. William Scarboro slept on the floor of his office. Some of the rest of us (myself, Mark Dochtermann) went downstairs into the lobby of our office building and brought a water rocket. We were bored, and with no computers to use, we had to resort to other juvenile attempts at passing the time. We chose setting off a water pressured rocket inside the lobby of our office building. So we filled it up with water (there's a picture of this rocket on the ROTT CD), and got all excited. Pumped it up, and the stupid thing went up about one foot, and as I recall got Mark completely wet. It was complete failure. We tried again, but the stupid thing never worked right. For some reason we felt it sounded cooler to name it, so the water rocket from Planet Failure was called "The Avenger". Power came on a short while later, and the game was released without further incident, but the water rocket story from the night of release was one I'll always remember.

At SWC BBS in 1994.

Monty Python Tech Support

Back when ROTT was being developed, the Tech Support department in 1994 consisted of Kevin Green, Steve Quarrella, & Lee Jackson (picture). From time to time I'd need to jump in and help them as we were pretty busy at the time. When the four of us were together, it seemed to prompt what I called "Monty Python Tech Support". You see, Lee, Steve, & myself were huge fans of British Comedy. Monty Python & Red Dwarf in particular. The three of us knew the routines, the lines pretty darn well. At a moment when relief was needed (or more likely) when the group of us were just goofing off, or when we wanted to mess with Kevin, one of us would start a Python routine. Since the three of us knew 'em so damn well, we could do them, and we'd do 'em rather a lot. Ended up driving Kevin bananas. That issue aside, it was cool that the three of us had that kind of rapport where we could do that.

More ROTT Development

There's a couple of stories from ROTT development that I'll tell here (although I could do a whole entry on that game's development too). The first is one called "50 Kills". The second is called "Death to a Coffee Cup".

Towards the end of ROTT development, we (even then) were hearing the cries of "You're taking too darn long". So Tom Hall, in his bizarre sense of humour, decided to make a video out of that. We had made this video where he pretended to be an undercover news reporter, and I was his cameraman. We "broke in" to the Apogee HQ, and he was going to do this expose as to why it was taking so long. We ran upstairs, into our offices, and looked around at people's desks, and there was no one there. We eventually found a couple of guys playing ping pong in another office, and it was something along the lines of "Hey, it's game research" or something liek that. My memories of how the video ended are fairly cloudy now. We had Rise of the Triad running in the background on various people's computers, but the funny part of this for me was when Tom got into the offices and looked at one of the computers, the rather distintive sound of a ROTT multiplayer game came up. Tom yelled out in a rather dejected sounding voice "50 KILLS!" - he had set the game's kill total to 50, so the game ended. This compltely ruined his "crazed undercover news reporter" thing and we had to shoot the video again. This was never released, unfortunately - and is lost to the ages. I tried finding this a few years ago to release, but no one knows if it's even around anymore. Shame, as it was pretty darned funny.

Also as a side story to this, the story of losing to an inanimate object in ROTT deathmatch comes to mind. Back then, ROTT had a record for allowing 11 people to play at once in a deathmatch game. Doom was the king of deathmatch, but it was limited with the number of players. With all due respect to Spinal Tap, Rott "Went to 11", and when we were testing deathmatch we didn't always have that many people to play. So we'd fire up ROTT on other computers, and stick down the fire button, so that player would at least be doing something, if not actually "playing". The sad part of this is that we used coffee cups on a lot of the computer keyboards to wedge down the fire button. More than once, one of the coffee cups managed to win the game. I've been accused of not being very good at deathmatch games, but losing to a friggin coffee cup is rather embarrassing.

During a voice recording session for Duke Nukem Forever in 2001.

Mt. Xenophage

Back before I started working here (and right when I did), we used to take our own 1-800 phone calls for orders. Back then we had a guy working for us who took orders named Jason Reed. When we put Xenophage on sale, like every other title we sold, we got a bunch of stock to sell. Jason went and sat on top of the pile of Xenophage boxes, and we took his picture up there. For some reason the image of this picture has stuck in my mind over the years, and it's come to be known as "Mount Xenophage". We ended up using this picture as a Camera Captioning Contest entry back in 1997. The memory remained, as some years later in 2002, we recreated the picture with Bryan Turner on a pile of boxes.

Blackburn on the log

We haven't done this in ages, but from time to time we used to go out collectively as a company and do something outdoors. One day many a moon ago we had rented (or just took over, I can't remember) a park in Garland where we had our own private BBQ. The majority of the company came, and we had a great time playing volleyball, having a cookout, and just generally hanging out.

After awhile we started exploring the grounds behind the picnic area in the park, and ran across a creek with a big tree that had fallen over it forming a bridge to the other side. Since it looked pretty unsafe, it instantly became a dare as to who would have enough balls to cross the thing. Funny thing was that the daughter of one of our employees was the most nimble, going across it like there was nothing to worry about. Some of us tried it but without as much aplomb.

Eventually, Steve Blackburn crossed over, got to the other side, and the got stuck there. He apparently was afraid to come back either because of abuse he was taking, or he just got scared of crossing - don't remember that now. Anyway, this prompted mass taunting and abuse from the others here, particularly Scott & George, who were calling him several names I won't print here. Even the aforementioned kid ran up to him, stole his hat, and came back.

The climax to this story was when Scott Miller got out halfway on the tree, and started throwing things at Steve. No one was hurt, but damn were those of us watching this laughing our asses off. There's a picture of Scott tossing another tree branch at Steve online here. We haven't done anything like this in awhile, and I miss these kinds of company outings.

There's so many others, I could spend all day recounting stories. Some of the others I thought about using here were the story of when we shipped Max Payne, how Corrinne Yu loved to eat cereal in the lunchroom, the entire company going out to dinner to celebrate completing Duke Nukem 3D, Tom Hall's "Iced Tea, No Lemon, No Spoon", Mark Dochtermann's "Lookin' for some Hot Buns!", there's just too many, man!

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'm gonna pass on this one. I think the folks in this series have already said way better what I could possibly do with this one. Check out the other entries in this series for that.

As Heinrich Krist during the video recording session for Rise of the Triad on Jan 22, 1994.

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

Well, I'm still here, so the "when you worked" doesn't apply. :) But my answer is the same as most people's. Money. Size. Scope. The industry is not what it was when I got hired. Gone are the days like that. There might be a few small independants around on the scale of the old days, but as a whole, the industry has gotten much larger, and much more expensive.

I've always said for years that this kind of thing would come, because there's always this drive from customers for the latest, the newest, the best graphics, etc, etc, etc. Companies that didn't move forward or just stayed at the current level they were at generally got left behind, and nobody wanted that. So the drive internally and externally to provide something bigger and better has gotten us where we are as an industry.

Game budgets are stupid huge, I often wonder how in the heck money can be made given how much these things cost (or so I'm told they cost, anyway). The days of things like Crystal Caves, Cosmo, or other games like that where you could have a team of at most two or three people doing everything, or in several cases one guy doing everything are dead, gone, buried, decomposed, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. The public won't allow that level of game anymore, unfortunately.

Packing Foreign Max Payne Orders - July 2001

We tried a couple of years ago to have a throwback game like that, which evoked memories of the past (this would be Duke Nukem Manhattan Project), but it sold poorly. My gut feeling is that we won't see any more of those old school kind of things from us, unfortunately. I could be completely wrong, but I don't think so.

Of course, "casual games" have their market too, and things like the games on Xbox Live Arcade on the 360 have proven to be rather popular. Plus there's other things like Gold Miner Vegas and things of that nature which aren't going to set the world on fire sales wise, but are darned entertaining games, so what the hell do I know? :)

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

Well, I'm still here, so this doesn't apply at all.

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

Well, this sort of applies to me, as I do work here, but I don't "make games" in the classic sense of being a game developer. I've often thought about doing maps again. I have dabbled a bit with "Duke's Enormous Tool", as well as having several ideas for Prey levels, having played it a lot in the last few months. I might do something after the fact - we'll see if I have the time. :)

Scaring Bryan Turner & Nick Shaffner at DFW Airport on the way to E3 2001.

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

Not really. I'm pretty happy here, and the company has been pretty nice to me over the years. I guess the opportunity I was offered some time ago and did not take was a good one, so it's a "reverse missed opportunity". I was offered a job working for Dan Linton up in Massachussets at Software Creations. It would have been a pay increase as I recall, but I turned it down, because I am a creature of habit, and I didn't want to upset the apple cart and leave Apogee. Good move, as Software Creations ceased to exist within two years of that offer.

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

Let's see, since I can't say ROTT (ha), I'll go with Monster Bash, Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen, Death Rally, and Raptor. I liked all of our games for some reason or another, but these are my favorite "games", or old some special meaning to me. Keen 4 was the reason I got my first sound card - I was a PC Speaker person, but at my computer repair job I mentioned above, one of the test machines had an (original) Sound Blaster card in there, and I loved the extra sounds - so I ran out that night and bought my first sound card just to hear the cool sound and music in Keen 4. :)

Joe at his desk (holding Alf) on May 22, 2006.

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

Oh dear, there's way too many! I don't know where to begin. I am a fan of Sports games (baseball & football mostly), as well as open ended things like the Sims and GTA, and the like. Some other games I've enjoyed in the past are Unreal Tournaments, Quake 3 Arena, Doom, Monster Truck Madness 2, Big Rigs (just kidding), and .. there's just way too many.

I have a shelf full of games, a lot are there because I know someone from another company who worked on it. A lot of old friends of mine from other companies (Joe Selinske, Levelord, Jim Dose, etc) are people whose games I like to have on my shelf, it makes me feel good. Also seeing all those games by friends reminds me of how lucky I am to be in this industry and to have survived as long as I have. Granted, my not being a formal game developer has a lot to do with it I'm sure (not the same pressures and issues), but so many of my friends have bounced all over the place, and several aren't even in the industry anymore. It's probably silly, but I like seeing my friends work on my bookshelf.

But for things I truly enoy from other companies, I'd say the ones in the first paragraph, plus Animal Crossing. I wasted a lot of time on that one, and I can't wait for Animal Crossing Wii. :)

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

Thanks for buying our games over the years and keeping me employed. ;)

---

Thanks to myself for doing the entry. :) Yeah, this is the bit where I usually thank the person doing the interview, so how do I thank myself here? The series is winding down, there's only a few left, so make sure and stick around for the finale of the series. Here's a few pages about myself or other things I've done.

• My bio page here
• Our Rise of the Triad Catalog Page
• My Page on Wikipedia
• My Page on imdb.com
• My Blog
• My Black Sabbath Fan Site
• My Texas Rangers Fan Site
• My Anti Dallas Cowboys Fan Site

Another thing I'm proud of in having done this series is getting a lot of other games released as freeware. Given this was my own entry, and my stuff is either still available for sale (ROTT), or is freeware (EROTT), I decided to look into the past and see what obscure thing I could get released. Found one. Some time ago we released an addon for Wolfenstein 3D called "The Wolfenstein 3D Super Upgrades". This package consisted of a boatload of extra levels for Wolf (over 800), a level editor, and a random level generator. This is pretty obscure, in fact, most people don't even know we sold this for awhile. But it's another step in my goal of getting everything we don't sell anymore released as freeware. You can download it from our downloads page in the Wolfenstein 3D section. Enjoy.

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 2:42 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Weekly Update #19

Well here we are. Update #19. Since E3 was last week, seems about right that I update on the big show.

Before that, though, I first want to extend a huge thanks for Jason Blair and Eli Quinn for writing excellent updates over the past two weeks.

As usual E3 went by very fast. Always feels like I never have enough time to see everything I want to see, talk to all the people I haven't seen in person in a while, and still spend a lot of time showing off the game.

Last year at E3 we showed a 12-minute video showcasing some of the new gameplay elements we've created in Prey. It mainly focused on the single-player. This year, we focused on the multiplayer, with systems set-up for people to actually play the game.

Prey was featured in four places at E3:

• The 2K booth, of course, had eight-player PC multiplayer set-up, with a major tournament scheduled throughout the show (more on that later).
• Creative had a very nice eight-player PC set-up as well. They were running tournaments and giving away t-shirts and other prizes to the champions of each round.
• Logitech had a four-player PC set-up of the game in a good location where people could very easily stroll up and play the game. They also had an announcer there who publicly called the matches and taunted the player. It was also conveniently located close to the Sin girls, so I imagine that helped, too.
• Lastly, Microsoft had a four-player Xbox360 set-up, where people could frag each other in the console version of the game.

We took along enough Human Head people so we could make the rounds and ensure that there was a Human Head employee at each of these four places at all times. Turned out, though, that each location did such a great job showcasing the game, that our job basically turned into a constant wander around from location to location just making sure that nothing was going wrong.

We did spend a lot of time at the 2K booth, helping people and showing them some of the less obvious features of multiplayer. As mentioned in previous updates, I was still impressed with how quickly people acclimated to the wallwalking and gravity changes in the game. No one puked on their keyboards, so that's a good sign!

Here's a brief rundown of each day:

Tuesday, May 9th:

Our flight left at the crazy early hour of 7:40. I didn't get any sleep the night before, so I literally slept the entire flight. Fell asleep when we took off, woke up when we landed. I tell you, it's like a portal opened up in front of the plane.

When we arrived, we first had a panicked call from 2K asking when we were showing up, as the machine needed to be tested. We headed straight to the convention center to start setting up the game.

Of course, something went wrong right away. The map cycle script wasn't working. In fact, it appeared to not be included in the build at all! A bit more investigation and I realized that we had brought along the wrong build. See, we generated two builds for E3, the recent one and one from a week before (as a backup stability build in case there was anything wrong with the newest one). We brought along that older build, but neglected to grab the newest one. Oops.

No big deal. 2K had internet access so we quickly snagged the proper build and installed that instead. Problem solved.

We tested all the machines, dealt with minor issues with drivers, plasma tv setups, etc. All was in working order.

That night we had a great dinner at Fogo de Chao, then had a few drinks at the hotel bar before crashing.

Wednesday, May 10th:

Morning came way too fast. I still think I was sleep deprived from the lack of sleep the night before. Oh well.

We arrived at the show a bit late, so had to scramble a bit to set-up on all the various places throughout the show. But, we made it about on time as journalists started to pour into the convention center.

The first day was mainly us walking around and watching for any crashes or freezes or anything. No major problems, other than a few issues over at Creative, which we fixed by tweaking a few things in the audio settings.

The first day of the show is always more chaotic than the others. People are getting into the groove of explaining stuff about the game, kinks are worked out in the setups, and so forth. Overall, it went really well, though. The dedicated servers ran all day without any problems.

At 5 PM, James Sumwalt (co-owner of Human Head) and I were scheduled to be featured on G4's E3 special, showing off Prey on the 360.

We had to arrive at the G4 location around 1:30 for a tech check. Glad we did. See, Prey is a mature rated game, so there is a bit of swearing in there. There's a profanity filter in the PC version, but not in the 360 version we had with us, so we had to tech check the swearing for approval. Some of it was okayed, but a few lines were not approved.

Unfortunately, we had no control over some of the line (as they are randomly played when the player is damaged). So, to fix this, G4 had us on a seven second delay so they could bleep out any swearing that inadvertently gets into the broadcast.

If you've seen it, you know they didn't have to bleep us. Still, damn cool that they had to delay us just in case. :-)

At the end of the show, we removed the game from all the various machines at 2K, Logitech, and Creative, just as an additional step of security. This would mean that we would have to reinstall the game again the next day, but luckily the show didn't start until an hour later on Thursday.

Wednesday night, we had a fantastic dinner with some friends at Katana in Hollywood. Many good stories were told, many good drinks consumed. I'm not a tequila fan, but one of the shots we did was absolutely fantastic.

Didn't get to bed until late.

Thursday, May 11th:

Again, morning came way too fast. Seems that's another staple of E3: Not quite getting enough sleep.

This time, we got to the show very late -- turned out that we thought the show didn't start until an hour later than we originally thought. So, again it was a scramble to get everything set up on each machine. We got things done roughly on time, though.

Thursday was very similar to Wednesday, walking around, making sure that everything was in order. Again, the dedicated servers were totally solid, and no major problems occurred.

That night went to dinner with Scott Miller and few people he knows. It was an odd dinner -- the place was way too loud, and it was hard to hear people even sitting right next to me. Note to self: In the future for dinners like this, we definitely need a private room.

Thursday night, ended up hanging at the hotel bar again. And, once again, didn't get to sleep until late.

Friday, May 12th:

I was starting to get used to waking up without enough sleep.

Friday was the day of the big finale to the 2K tournament (the grand prize was a $5000 Prey-skinned VoodooPC decked out with tons of great shit).

The tournament was fantastic -- the final game came down to the wire. The top two players had 25 kills to 24 kills. Literally at the last second, right before the scoreboard pops up, there was the loud splat of the Acid Sprayer. On the final scoreboard: 25 to 25.

There was a stunned pause then the crowd erupted in cheers. It was a tie! So the top two guys would have to face-off against each other. Unfortunately, the maps we brought along were all designed for 6-8 players, so they would have been rather empty for just 1-v-1.

As a compromise, we threw in two Human Head people (James and me), and Luna from 2K. After a harrowing battle, one of the guys emerged victorious to win the Prey PC.

How did we do? Yeah, I came in dead last. Embarrassing, but these guys were damn good at the game. I was impressed!

After the tournament, there were a few on-camera interviews with various magazines, and then the show was over. We did our final install of the game, ensured that we had all the CDs with us (wouldn't want that getting out!), and left the convention center.

Overall, the show went very well for us. The feedback I received in person and online has been extremely positive. Plus, we've received two nominations and an award thus far:

• Nominated for Game of Show by IGN
• Nominated for Best Shooter on the PC by 1Up
• Awarded Best Shooter by GameTap

That about wraps up the details of the E3 trip. It was tiring, but very much worth it.

So, until next week. Stay out of trouble.

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios

P.S. Oh, and here are a few pictures taken during the actual trip!

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 2:33 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey for June 22nd!

June 22nd is a date that an awful lot of gamers will be waiting for. On that day, the Prey Demo will be released.

Available that day on the PC as well as in the Xbox Live Marketplace will be a 5 level demo containing both single player and multiplayer modes of the game. The size of the demo, which levels, what time it is to be released has yet to be determined, but June 22nd is Prey Day - you're going to want to keep an eye out for that!

Don't forget about the Prey Pre-Order Program which is ongoing - you can get further details about that on our Pre-Order Page here. Finally, here's a few more resources for Prey news on our site:

• Prey Weekly Development Updates
• Complete Prey News Archive
• Prey Catalog Page with screenshots and gameplay videos!

Mark your calendars for June 22nd, 2006.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 11:40 AM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Wins Best Shooter of E3 from Gametap

Well, the annual sensory overload in Los Angeles known as E3 is over. Now come all the game websites giving out their awards for best of show in various categories. Today we bring you the news that Prey has won in the "Best Shooter" category from Gametap. Here's some of the text from the press release:

LOS ANGELES - (May 18, 2006) - GameTap, the first-of-its-kind broadband entertainment network from Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (TBS, Inc.) today announced the winners of its first annual "E3 2006 GameTap Picks" awards. While scouring the vast Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) show floor at the Los Angeles Convention Center from May 10th - May 12th, GameTap created its nominee list. And now, after careful deliberation, GameTap editors have selected the best of the best in 20 categories.

Some of the other categories they listed were Best Simulation Game (Spore), Best Sports (Wii Sports), Best Action Game (Assassin's Creed), Best Platform Game (Super Mario Galaxy), and even Best Swag!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 5:17 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

New Prey Ad in Magazines

There's a cool new Prey advertisement now hitting magazines, and we thought we'd bring you a peek at it. This ad is currently running in the July 2006 edition of PC Gamer, but should be turning up elsewhere soon. There's some cool copy in the advertisement, here's some of it:

• "Imagine a place where gravity isn't always down! it can be controlled, twisted, flipped, and even wrap around small planetoids. Imagine walking on walls and ceilings. Can you handle this new challenge?"
• "Multiple gameplay innovations from the developer that brought you Bullet-time, including Deathwalk (dying is no longer annoying, it's fun) and Spirit Walk (leave your body to explore, ambush, and solve mind bending puzzles)."
• "Portals change everything. Experience for the first time the reality bending effects of a portal world. Prey sets a new standard that will completely mess with your mind."
• "Living Weapons, a faithful sidekick, vehicles, giant environments, jaw-dropping memorable moments, a story of redemption and destiny, and a 3-hour epic soundtrack by Jeremy Soule (Oblivion, Guild Wars). The FPS of the year is coming."

Posted by Joe Siegler at 4:10 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Booth at E3

While 3D Realms as a company did not attend E3 2006, Scott Miller did go. Likewise some of the guys from Human Head went to E3, as well as some other folks connected with Prey. Jeron Moore, who is Prey's music producer was there, and sent along a few pictures of the Prey booth in the 2K area at E3. You can check 'em out in our photo gallery here.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:45 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Vote for Prey

A quick story. Voodoo Extreme is currently running a poll asking folks what they thought the "Best of Show 06" was. Head on over there and vote for Prey!

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:42 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #19 - John Romero

Anyone that knows our company should also know the name John Romero. If you don't know him, you haven't been paying attention. His name as been attached to some of the most notorius games in our industry's past. Both with us (Commander Keen & Wolfenstein 3D), and not with us (Doom, Quake, Daikatana).

John has bounced around a bit since his id days. He's been involved with Ion Storm, Monkeystone, Majesco, Midway, amongst others. His name carries a lot of weight in our industry, so we were glad to have him participate in the series.

Enough of this lame introduction for someone who shouldn't need introducing anyway. :)

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

Scott Miller had several of his games published through Big Blue Disk and had a monthly subscription to it. He saw one of my games, Pyramids of Egypt, on BBD and was really excited by it - seeing an opportunity for me to take the game, create additional levels, then publish it through Apogee Software.

Scott knew I worked at Softdisk and knew they filtered mail to make sure no one was trying to steal their programmers and artists. So he sent me about 4 letters in the mail, all of them pretending to be someone who played the game and wanted me to write them back for various reasons ("I think I found a bug, write me back!" or "Please write back - I'm 67 years old!"). The names were all different but the mailing address was the same on them all.

I didn't pick up on the duplicate mailing addresses until I was reading PC Games magazine and read an article about Scott and his Kroz games. At the end of the article was the address and I was thinking "I know that from somewhere. Where could it be from???" as my head slowly turned toward my wall where I had my prized fan mails. WTF!!??? I admit I went nuts. Mostly because my ego was instantly gibbed because I realized those weren't really fan mails they were just some guy trying to get me to contact him.

Well, I wrote Scott back and we got in touch and very quickly we settled on doing a trilogy of games for him titled "Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons". We worked day and night for 3 months and Apogee released the trilogy on December 14, 1990. If you want more detail the book Masters of DOOM does a good job with this part of the story.

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

Well I wasn't trying to moonlight while at Softdisk since I was really focused on my work there - Scott just provided an opportunity and I took it. Regarding why I didn't do a startup instead: before Softdisk I had already had two startup companies where I had about 17 published games between the both of them. I wanted a break from it for a little bit.

John Romero, recent vintage

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

Apogee did a wonderful job getting the game out in front of people. Software Creations was a great tool in that respect. It was probably the biggest and best BBS back then, run by Dan Linton.

Apogee could have done a better job with taking orders in the early 90's by using their income from Wolfenstein 3D and buying a networked order-taking system instead of the "stacks of paper" system where operators took the phone orders, wrote the info down then entered all the orders into a computer at the end of the day. We had a talk with Scott about this and gave him some time to implement it but he didn't - that's why we self-published DOOM.

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

I don't remember getting much creative feedback from Apogee because we were fairly experienced at game design and development - we just finished the game and handed it over.

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?

We wouldn't have signed a deal with Apogee back then if we couldn't have retained our IP. Besides, Apogee didn't pay for the development of our games - they gave us a $2,000 advance during Keen1-3 development but that was all for our entire relationship.

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

id Software definitely benefited from retaining ownership. If you look at the time period from 1990-2005 you'll see that the Keen and Wolf3D properties have had sequels and made money for id and Activision.

John & Tom Hall during the Ion Storm days

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

Yes and there have been sequels made. I don't doubt more will be made in the future.

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

There are actually many fun stories about that time...but I'll bring one almost forgotten story up here.

I remember when I had discovered Raven Software in Madison, Wisconsin and gone over to meet with them and came back impressed with their team. I talked to the other 3 id guys and then Scott Miller (over the phone) and we both came up with a development budget that I could propose to Raven if they'd move over to PC game dev (they were Amiga guys) and license our Keen4-6 engine and make games for Apogee.

They declined the offer and one of their founders quit because he was upset with the decision.

Not 6 months later they had a deal for a PC game with EA and so we modified the Wolf3D tech and licensed it to them for Shadowcaster. Id saw no money from this engine license - the only time that had ever happened.

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)?

Did you know that I helped Human Head Studios become a company? I gave them $250,000 so they could leave Raven, get an office, buy computers, etc. and start making a game for me using Unreal tech.

Actually, most big publishers find and publish outside projects all the time. In fact, they are always on the lookout for unknown teams with talent because the cost is much cheaper especially when the studios are outside the USA.

Much rarer is having a developer (not publisher) help other developers with their businesses and game designs because most developers are always struggling to stay alive. Id Software was one of the first to do this (Raven, Valve, Parallax, Rogue, Ritual).

John at the Ion Storm Dallas offices.

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

Well, the PC gaming industry is much more mature. We were there at the very beginning of when the hardware was just starting to be something you could do smooth scrolling and animation like console systems (with a lot of tricks and fancy coding).

Nowadays the gaming world is all 3D thanks to Wolf3D, DOOM and Quake. The world has definitely changed since those days, each of those games forever altering the course of 3D game development.

Quake brought the world into high-speed full 3D games then Quake II brought 3D acceleration and color; everything since then has been icing on the cake.

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

Games! I'm currently on my 7th startup company and I've returned to the PC from five years of mobile games and then console games. And now I'm developing in the genre that I consider the future of PC games - MMOG. If you want to know exactly what games I've been working on you can simply check my MobyGames profile.

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?

The only opportunity that I'm aware of was when Paul Neurath asked me to join him as his first employee at Blue Sky Productions (later Looking Glass Technologies). I didn't take the offer because I had already planned on starting a company with my boss (Inside Out Software). If I had taken the offer at Blue Sky then an incredible amount of things would have been different. I'm glad I did what I did.

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

Duke Nukem 3D, hands down - I love that game so much it's crazy. I actually listened to the music from Duke 3D for about 5 years every day while I worked....THAT'S how much I loved the game (and music). It was such a fully featured and well done game - and it was truly the very last of its breed when it was released just before Quake hit the scene.

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

My favorite OTHER games: Chrono Trigger, Resident Evil 4, World of Warcraft, Half Life 2.

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

If you're a fan, there's a lot of pages out on the net about the games! And if you want to know what I'm up to just check out http://rome.ro. Over and out!

---

Of the games that John did with us, we still sell them all, so check out the links below. John is also a record holder with us - having the longest hair of any developer we've ever worked with. ;)

• Our History of Keen Page
• Our Keen Vorticons Catalog Page
• Our Keen Galaxy Catalog Page
• Our Wolfenstein 3D Catalog Page
• John Romero Page on Wikipedia
• John's Homepage
• John's a cartoon!

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 4:51 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Weekly Update #18

Hi everyone, welcome to another Prey Weekly Update. I'll have you know that this is not Project Lead Chris Rhinehart speaking (or typing) to you right now, he is currently a bit swamped at E3 showing off the madness and mayhem of Prey. This here's Eli Quinn, I am an artist at Human Head Studios. I worked mainly on the environmental textures in the game, along with various skins, GUI's, etcetera.

The art tasks for Prey are pretty much wrapped up so the art staff is focused on playtesting right now. We have a number of XBox 360 development kits in the office so we're banging on Venom's version of the game. It looks and sounds great. Although I'm a PC gamer at heart it is a refreshing change. Speaking of the PC version, we are certainly still tearing into it as well. With a portion of our staff gone at E3, Prey Art Lead Rowan Atalla has taken on the not-so-glamorous burden of compiling the list of bugs and fixes. I'm sure that his nigh-legendary coffee intake has only increased in light of that!

The single-player version of Prey has truly come together. I've worked on the game ever since 3D Realms decided to relaunch it with us as the development team in 2001, which feels like roughly a billion years ago. The learning curve with the Doom3 engine was pretty fierce for all departments. You see, back then us texture artists had to paint all the highlights and shading onto one layer, like a photograph. We had to walk twelve miles to school in a blizzard and it was uphill both ways. We had dirt for breakfast. Lead paint scrapings for lunch.

Where was I? Oh yeah...

All of a sudden this new technology came along and we were able to model normal maps and paint diffuse, specular and height maps. Needless to say, it took a while to perfect the look we wanted. It was both intriguing and frustrating much of the time but all that toil has certainly paid off.

Multiplayer Prey (or MultiPrey, as it has been so coyly coined) is one hell of a good time. I can't say I'm the greatest at it compared to others on the team but I still have fun. I don't really sweat when I'm sitting still but I've found that after a good deathmatch round I am covered with a sparkling sheen, like a nerdy James Brown. It's intense, man! A really fun trick that I haven't mastered yet is to hide your body and spirit walk out to the battle, you can't be harmed by a physical body in that mode so you can essentially chase everybody around. Until someone finds your body of course, then you get violently pulled back into the physical realm and you're probably toast. I look forward to getting my ass handed to me by all you deathmatch experts out there once the game is released! Or "pwned" or whatever the hell you kids say these days. Learn to speak English! Pull up your pants! Put that visor right-side-up and turn it around! Pardon me, I have misplaced my cane...

Congratulations are in order for Human Head Concept Artist/Level Designer Ashley Welch, whose dazzling rendition of the sphere in Prey was chosen for the "Into The Pixel" show at E3 this year. What is that, you say? Well, from their site, "Into the Pixel is a juried exhibition of the art of the video game, curated by experts from world-renowned art museums, cutting edge galleries and interactive industry veterans." You can read about it and see Ash's art at this site: http://www.intothepixel.com/view-art.php?year=2006

Well, that's about all the rambling I am capable of. I'm not a writer really, I just draw the purty pitchers. Chris will be back next week to fill everyone in on the happenings at E3. So far it sounds like the reception is amazing so he should have some good news for us.

Take it easy y'all, I'll see you on the Prey Forums where I can rid myself of this dastardly punctuation.

Eli Quinn
Texture Artist
Human Head Studios
(still not Chris Rhinehart)

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 2:44 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

E3 2006 Prey Trailer

If you have an Xbox 360, you should go to it right now. In the Xbox Live Marketplace is a new Prey Trailer. It is under the name of "E3 06: Prey Trailer". This is a new trailer, not having been seen anywhere else. Once we get more information on availability of said trailer outside of the Xbox 360 Marketplace, we'll have more information on that.

But for now, head to your Xbox 360 and download this new E3 trailer. This is part of Microsoft's "Xbox Live: E3 Bringing it Home" program. They have tons of other trailers avialable now on your 360 besides Prey. But you should go download the Prey trailer first. :)

The trailer offers these quotes about the game..

• "Doom 3 hiked the bar.. Prey may transform the bar altogether." - 1up.com
• "Prey looks like one of the best first person shooters of the year." - IGN

UPDATE MAY 12: The video is starting to show up elsewhere on the net after originally being on the Xbox Live 360 Marketplate. Here's some links you can grab it from. Unfortunately, most of the people who would post this on their sites are at E3, and aren't as quick to respond to video requests at the moment. :)

• 3D Gamers
• Fileshack
• Fileplanet

UPDATE MAY 13: You can now view the video streaming on our site through Google Video below.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:26 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Soundtrack Released

DirectSong, the world's first official game music expansion service offers a musical experience you won't forget! Spanning across two full volumes, Jeremy Soule's monumental score from 3D Realms' and Human Head Studios' Prey is now available. Long awaited and highly anticipated, Prey sets the stage for the ultimate gaming experience. With Prey, DirectSong's British Academy Award-winning team explode out of the Fantasy genre and into the world of Sci-Fi Action-Adventure. The game's beautifully developed orchestral score turns FPS conventions upside down - the likes of which you'll only find in Hollywood's biggest blockbuster hits!

DirectSong is proud to present the Prey original soundtracks at a sample rate of 320kbps. This is in response to an overwhelming demand by fans for the highest possible fidelity delivery of Jeremy Soule's symphonic scores. This exceeds the sample rate found at iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster ensuring an unparalleled listening experience!

Scott Miller of 3D Realms has this to say about the soundtrack.. "The three-hours of original scoring in Prey elevates it to a Hollywood blockbuster level. I couldn't be happier with the final result, as Prey has become a far more enriched, emotional experienced from start to finish. We will definitely be working with DirectSong in the future."

You can get your copy of the Soundtrack right now, by heading over to the DirectSong website.

Jeron Moore, who was the producer of the material, chimed in on our forums with some details about the soundtrack and it's production. You can view that post here, where he talks about various aspects of the soundtrack's release. Here's a quote from Jeron talking about the music:

Personally, I think the music in Prey eclipses all music to-date in the FPS genre. In fact, the classification "First Person Shooter" does Prey no favors. Prey is a First Class, Cinematic First Person-Action Game. Those who decide to take the leap and explore the music of the game in its full glory will experience this impression first hand.

And as an added bonus, we have some images for you - they're small versions of CD art for the two Prey soundtrack CD's on DirectSong. When you buy these CD's, you will receive a pdf with higher quality images from DirectSong pre-formatted for you to print the art and create a CD insert.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:06 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #18 - Petri Jarvilehto

Our Legacy series marches on today with it's 18th entry in the fifth month. Today's edition is with with Petri Jarvilehto of Remedy Games. Petri has been involved with several games with Remedy and 3D Realms. The first one was a car racing game in 1996, called Death Rally (one of the final games under the old Apogee label). Remedy then went on to make the runaway hits "Max Payne", and "Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne" that 3D Realms produced.

Petri has some interesting insight in that he worked with us under the old Apogee label, as wel as the 3D Realms label more recently. If you were a fan of Remedy and Petri's work, you'll want to read his interview, which he wrote a preface for:

[ Remedy has worked with Apogee both with the older shareware concept/label (Death Rally), as well as with the 3D Realms label (Max Payne games). Considering that this is a legacy interview I'll just focus on the older times :-)]

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

Back in '95 when Remedy was starting, we did a quick demo of the racing game we wanted to create and sent that over to all of our publishing contacts. Apogee was looking like the best fit for the game, so we ended up signing the game with them.

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

We were just starting up, so going on our own wasn't really an option.

Petri during motion capture sessions for Max Payne 2 in New York.

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

Not much. Getting GT Interactive involved and eventually having them handle the retail box sales and still retaining the direct shareware distribution was a really good combination at that time.

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

Death Rally definitely benefited immensely from having Scott and George involved. We were quite newbies at that point, so having people with their experience levels working with us made a big difference.

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?

IP rights can be incredibly valuable, and it's always fantastic if the developer can retain those rights. Developers who own their IP usually have even stronger motivation to create the best possible game out of it.

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

Definitely.

Petri in Feb of 2006

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

Well, as much as I would love to see Death Rally 3D (or DR 2), I don't think that'll ever happen. As to the Max Payne series, I definitely wish that we'll see a Max Payne 3.

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

Loads of stories. We did hide some of them as easter eggs in Max Payne 1 and 2 :-)

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's pretty risky, especially nowadays that the investments involved are so much larger.

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

The industry has changed vastly. Sometimes it feels like the industry in its current form was only begun in the early nineties, and everything operates on massively different scale nowadays. Production has changed from a bunch-of-guys-in-a-basement into massive almost movie-scale projects. Game design, code, pretty much every aspect of game development has seen radical changes in methodology and process.

In early 90's gaming was pretty much only something the nerds would do, whereas nowadays the mainstream acceptance is pretty much a given and game productions are high profile stuff that get a lot of visibility.

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

We'll around the time of shipping Death Rally, Apogee re-branded into 3DR and shipped Duke Nukem 3D. We had a good development relationship going forward and created the Max Payne games (where again, the input from Scott and George was invaluable, especially on Max Payne 1). I worked as the Project Lead on Max1 and in the Lead Game Designer role on Max Payne 2.

More recently, Remedy is now developing the Alan Wake game series, and I'm leading the game design on those.

Death Rally Screenshot

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

Still here, and no plans of leaving the industry. With the increased budgets and production capabilities, it's all just getting even more interesting.

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

Not really. I think we've always been pretty good at taking advantage of the most promising opportunities and the ones we haven't jumped on... well, usually there's been pretty solid reasons why they wouldn't have worked for us, so there's no point in second guessing them now.

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

Out of the older Apogee classics, Raptor is something that I really got a kick out of. Any arcade game where you're never supposed to let go of the fire button is ok in my book.

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

Nowadays, I'm finding myself playing more and more semi-obscure japanese RPG variants. Games like Disgaea or Fire Emblem series and so on. The most recent game that I found completely stunning was Shadow of the Colossus. The sheer audacity of the game design is fantastic (even if the control scheme is a bit borked ;).

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

Not that much. We're grinding away with Alan Wake, and I'm really excited on how the game is shaping up. Can't really talk about it yet though.

---

Thanks to Petri for taking time out of his busy Alan Wake schedule to help out with the answers and some pictures. All of Remedy's games are still available for sale, so check out these pages (please not that 3DR no longer sells Max Payne 1 or 2).

• Our Death Rally Catalog Page
• Our Max Payne 1 Catalog Page
• Our Max Payne 2 Catalog Page
• Death Page in our Online Store
• Death Rally Homepage
• Death Rally Page on Wikipedia
• Max Payne Page on Wikipedia
• Max Payne 2 Page on 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 3:31 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey "Portals and Gravity Flipping" Video Trailer Released

Available now on IGN is the second "Countdown to Release" Gameplay trailer. This new trailer (dated 05/05) is a new trailer which is being released as part of the "Prey Countdown to Release" video series. This new video totals 2:30 in length, and is has plenty of gameplay footage, focusing this time on 'portals & gravity flipping'.

Of course, if you don't want any of this spoiled for you; wanting to experience the gameplay for yourself when you buy the game, then you'll want to skip this video.

UPDATE SAT MAY 6: This file is now available at other sites besides IGN. Links:

• IGN
• Fileshack
• 3D Gamers
• Fileplanet
• Gamershell
• Xbox Core
• Playwhat.com
• Worthplaying.com
• Doom3maps.org
• Filefront
• Gamezone
• Totally 360

Posted by Joe Siegler at 7:45 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey Weekly Update #17

I'm not Chris Rhinehart. That's my usual greeting when meeting people, not just the opening of this weekly update. I just like to make sure there's no confusion. My name is Jason L Blair, though, and I'm the Director of the Adventure Game Division here at Human Head Studios.

Chris asked me to write this weekly update because, as you can imagine, everyone here is going through a hardcore crunch right now--not only with finishing the game, but preparing for next week's computer and video game extravaganza, E3.

Prey will have a strong presence at this year's E3. It will be shown not only at 2K Games' booth but Creative Labs' and Microsoft's booth as well. All three spots are amazing traffic centers and I'm confident folks will be blown away by what they see.

Both the PC and Xbox 360 versions will be shown at E3. A MultiPrey tournament will be going, showing off Prey's mind-bending Death Match experience. As you're reading this, you are probably fully aware that Prey plays hell with gravity, wall-walking, and even allowing your spirit to leave your body during game play. Not only is that an amazing part of the single-player game but it opens up entirely new dimensions in MultiPrey. You'll have enemies coming at you in true three-dimensional space. The potential to frag and be fragged by people behind you, in front of you, above you, and underneath you cranks up the tension and anxiety that make Death Matches so much fun. And be sure you stash your body someplace safe if you decide to let your spirit roam.

The Xbox 360s that will be running the game will also be sporting a snazzy Prey faceplate, made exclusively for the show. There is a picture of what this faceplate looks like at the bottom of the update. Future public availaibility of this item has yet to be determined (in other words, we don't know if you can buy them or not), so there's your answer before you ask it. :)

If you're a person who is not going to E3, like me *ahem*, you needn't worry about missing out. Prey will be receiving full coverage by the major video game news outlets and I'm sure Chris will be back next week with a full summary of everything that happened.

As part of finalizing Prey, we've had some beta testers from 2K Games in the office the past six weeks. This is an official shout-out to Larry and Darren who did phenomenal jobs in working first-hand with the development staff to knock bugs out of the game. While, yes, this made more work for the poor developers, it also helps make Prey that much more of a great gaming experience.

My main job is creating and overseeing the development of board, card, and roleplaying games for Human Head, and I am a writer at heart - that's my passion - so I felt very fortunate to be brought in on some of the writing of Prey. With a script already in hand, the task of the in-house team was to focus on bringing together the artistic "big vision" of Prey's story with the technical realities of creating the game.

The core story of Prey is a classic hero's tale so the work that needed to be done was punching up the dialogue and making Tommy's transition from reluctant hero to possible savior smooth, gripping, and dramatic. Tommy is a guy with a lot on his plate and, working with the original script, the in-house team was able to fully meld the narrative with the game aspect of Prey.

Of course, Prey is also a love story and it is Tommy's love for Jen that propels him into the world of Prey and, once in, even more starts to unfold as he encounters obstacle after obstacle and even becomes embroiled in another, overarching plot that truly puts the weight of the world on Tommy's shoulders.

As a gamer and a writer, I find Prey fully satisfying. Folks may think I'm biased but this isn't my game. This is just a game I was fortunate enough to assist with - from helping with dialogue, to writing ad copy, to writing the manual. But the game play experience is what I'm talking about here, and Prey delivers. I'm excited to read and hear the reactions from E3 and, later, from gamers and reviewers who get a chance to play the final game.

This is going to be an exciting time for Prey, from E3 on through gold, now is the time where Prey truly gets to shine. I can't wait for you guys to see it.

I'd be remiss not to talk about what I do here at Human Head. As stated above, I'm the Adventure Games Director and it's my job to produce our company's traditional games. This spans from the latest entry in our GOTHICA line of horror-themed board games, released last year, to VILLAINY - The Supervillainous Card Game, coming in July, to our upcoming pen-and-paper roleplaying game, NORMAL, TEXAS. You can read more about what I do at http://www.humanheadgames.com.

So, that's the update; the outside-insider's view of Prey. Thanks to Chris for asking me to write this and thanks to me for giving Chris this update off to get back to the grind.

Thanks to you for reading. Chris will be back next week, exhausted from all the debauchery at E3. If he doesn't have pictures, I'll kick him for you.

Jason L Blair
Adventure Games Director
Human Head Studios
(aka Not Chris Rhinehart)

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 6:41 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

Prey goes Into the Pixel

Some of the art from Prey has been chosen as a winner in the "Into the Pixel" exhibition to be shown at the E3 show in Los Angeles next week (May 10-12). What is Into the Pixel? Well, from their own site..

Into the Pixel is a juried exhibition of the art of the video game, curated by experts from world-renowned art museums, cutting edge galleries and interactive industry veterans. Now in its third year, Into the Pixel is videogame artists' one annual opportunity to receive recognition for their creative achievements by peers in both the digital and fine art worlds.

If you are attending E3, you will be able to see the artwork in the Los Angeles Convention Center Concourse Foyer.

Back on April 27th, a ceremony was held, in which the pieces of art for the E3 exhibition were selected. Being selected for this exhibition is prestigious, as it allows an artist to get their name out there and have people see the artwork in a different kind of format than they normally would (inside the game). Ashley Welch from Human Head Studios was selected for a piece called "The Sphere".

You can check out all the winners (which include art from such other games as Metal Gear Solid 3, Turok, The Godfather Game, Guildwars, as well as Ashley's entry for Prey. You can also download a hi-res version of the Sphere artwork for yourself there.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 10:38 AM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Music of Prey

A lot has been made of the atmosphere and environments of Prey. A large part of that atmosphere is the music in the game, and we're here to draw your attention to a great article published last night over at IGN. This is an article by Jeremy Soule entitled "The Music of Prey". In this article, Jeremy talks about writing the music, and how he feels it adds so much to the overall game experience.

If that wasn't enough, the entire six minute Prey Overture as well as a full song from the Prey Soundtrack are also available over at IGN. The song is "Take Me Home" by the band "After Midnight Project".

This is a great read which will give you some insight into a part of game design that you might not otherwise be aware of. Definitely go check it out over at IGN today! But before you do that, here's a few quotes from the article:

Much like in Half Life 2, there are scripted and epic events in Prey. The game is just loaded with content. Tommy (the main character) has a very simple objective but his struggle is very complex. The landscape shifts, the storyline makes hidden twists and turns. Music was needed to help make sense of everything because of the emotional impact of the game's visuals and story.

There's just something about having the senses be fully embraced when you're playing a game. After all, our brains want stimulation and we will often logically pay good money to have a great gaming experience. Music is just one component but it's an often overlooked and very important part of a game's experience.

People want a whole experience, not just a fancy rendering engine and a $50 price tag. As the bar continues to be raised, the main questions in game development will be more directly connected to entertainment value ideals rather than obscure mathematical achievements.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 10:08 AM | Discuss this story on our forums

New Prey Gameplay Trailer Released

Available now on Gamespot is a new Prey trailer which is being released as part of the "Prey Countdown to Release" video series. This new video totals 3:23 in length, and is teeming with gameplay footage. Of course, if you don't want to see that, and want to experience the gameplay for yourself when you buy the game, then you'll want to skip this.

But it does look cool - and it sounds.. awww you don't want to listen to me. Go to Gamespot and check out the video. It is listed on their page as the "Official Prey Trailer #3". If you're a Gamespot Complete member, you can download a 133Mb HD version of the video, too! If you're not a member, you can still check out and download the video. Go! ;)

UPDATE MONDAY MAY 1: Here are some more links where you can download the video. If you are a gaming website and wish to be on this list, please [email protected]. Thanks. These links are all the 130Mb Super High Quality version unless otherwise specified.

• Fileshack
• 3D Gamers | 3D Gamers Standard Quality
• Fileplanet
• Gamershell
• Worth Playing
• Doom3/Quake4 Maps.org
• GameZone Online
• Strategy Informer
• Team Xbox
• Totally 360
• Xbox Core

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:00 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #17 - Mark Randel

Mark Randel is the subject of our latest legacy Interview. Mark is one of the founders of and is the current CEO/Owner/President of Terminal Reality. Terminal Reality (or TRI) is another local gaming company here in the Dallas Metroplex. Their first game was published with us back in 1995, and that was "Terminal Velocity". Mark Randel came from Microsoft, and was one of the folks responsible for (at that time) the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. He took that knowledge and founded TRI. They have gone on to publish many games through many people, including the little known two sequels to Terminal Velocity (Fury3 and Hellbender) through Microsoft. They're also responsible for BloodRayne 1 & 2 as well as many other titles. For us they only did the one title, but it was an important one.

Terminal Velocity was also the launch of the 3D Realms brand name. As such, TRI had a lot of added pressure I'm sure in that it was the launch of our new "3D Games" brand. This branding was later continued with the Pinball Wizards line (of which we have a Legacy Interview pending for that too). However, TRI and Terminal Velocity was the first foray into this concept of branding. Of course, since then, the 3D Realms brand has been used almost exclusively, and has become the defacto name of the company, but back in 1994 when the idea was first originated, "3D Realms" was a gamble.

One other final note. This interview comes out on May 1, 2006. That's 11 years to the day that the original v1.0 of Terminal Velocity was released; happy birthday! Here's Mark's interview; enjoy!

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

We first came in contact with Apogee due to proximity; they were already well established in the area when we started up in the Dallas Metroplex.

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

The potential for working with Apogee was really attractive: at that time they were the premier publisher for independent game studios trying to make it big in the industry.

Terminal Velocity Artwork

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

I think Apogee/3D Realms did a great job marketing Terminal Velocity. As is their policy even now, they were really careful with every aspect - from picking the title to positioning the logo on the box for maximum visibility. At the time when they started the 3D Realms brand, it was scary being the first title under it. Nobody knew it, and everybody knew Apogee. Nowadays, it is kinda the other way around.

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

Definitely the game was made better. We had a flexible schedule, which we ourselves finally pushed to get the game out the door. There were a lot of ideas that Scott & George had that in hindsight would have made the game even better, but we really wanted to get our first title shipped and probably rushed it out too quickly.

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?

Of course, it is always better for the developer to retain full IP rights to its titles. It is not always possible in this day and age for many reasons. Very high development budgets often call for licensed properties such as movies, comic books, etc., so there is no way to own that yourself. Also, publishers see a lot of risk in taking on new IP, so they would like a cut of that if they are fronting the development money for it. We have always kept the license to our engine, which for us is very important.

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

We have benefited from owning our IP and engine. It makes us more valuable as a company. Also, we are going to get into the engine licensing business starting with our full featured Infernal Engine for PSP. We have the first full development platform for the PSP, with radiosity lighting, physics, vehicles, indoor/outdoor rendering, streaming, etc., that we will be announcing formally soon.

Mark in 1999 at the Fly! Release Party

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

I would love for there to be a sequel of Terminal Velocity someday--if it made good sense. If everything were to come together - a great idea, funding, etc., then it would be really cool to work on again. Scott, George, care to fund Terminal Velocity II?!?!?!?

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

Any interesting story during development of Terminal Velocity? Sure! He'll probably hate me for this, but Tom Hall was our producer at the time, and every time we went out for lunch, he would order "ice tea with no lemon and no spoon" every time to drink. I guess that little bit of eccentricity is what makes him a really creative individual.

Ed Note: There's a website about Tom's Iced Tea thing here.

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's different for each developer. We're so completely focused on producing our own titles (especially moving into next-gen production) that we simply don't have the bandwidth. We are working with a few developers in various capacities on some unannounced projects right now.

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

The biggest difference from now and when we worked on Terminal Velocity was the budgets and team sizes. We made it with less than $500K with about 8 people, now it takes over ten times that amount of money and at least 5 times that many people.

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

We've been busy making games for the past decade. We did the Monster Truck Madness series for Microsoft, The Fly! series, 4x4 EVO series and Nocturne for Gathering of Developers. We made the BloodRayne series a big hit for Majesco. We are currently finishing up Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run for Midway. Those are some of our highlights, and we have some new stuff in development as well...

Terminal Velocity Screenshot

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?

Sure, there are always missed opportunities--we passed on one development opportunity that went to another developer and wound up selling millions of copies. That's life. But there will be plenty more of them to miss in the future. You make the best decision you can at the time given the information you have, and use what you continue to learn to shape later decisions.

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

Other than what we released, we loved Duke Nukem, and are still waiting for Duke Nukem Forever.

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

Favorite games by other people? There are probably dozens - Katamari Damacy comes to mind. The new Prince of Persia series. GTA on the PSP is really fun. Ico, a long underappreciated PS2 game that everyone in this industry needs to play.

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

Checkout our website at http://www.terminalreality.com for a glimpse of what we are currently working on. And we always love to hear from our fans!

---

Thanks to Mark for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions about the past. We still sell Terminal Velocity today, so you can check out these links below:

• Our Terminal Velocity Catalog Page
• Terminal Velocity Page in our Online Store
• Terminal Velocity FAQ by Adam Williamson
• Terminal Reality Homepage
• Terminal Velocity Page on Wikipedia
• A visit to TRI in 1999
• Fly! Release Party Info from 1999

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 1:27 PM