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Prey Interview March 30, 2006 John JCal Callaham |
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Summary: Human Head's Tim Gerristen tells us all about their long awaited Doom 3 engine powered sci-fi first person shooter.
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 2 ) |
Once upon a time in the mid 1990's there was a sci-fi first persons shooter game called Prey that was under development at 3D Realms. The game was supposed to be revolutionary in terms of gameplay and in graphical looks and features. However, 3D Realms pulled the plug on Prey a couple of years later. Now its 2006 and a new version of Prey, developed by Human Head Studios and supervised by 3D Realms, is getting close to release by publisher 2K Games. FiringSquad got a chance to ask some questions of Human Head CEO Tim Gerritsen to find out if this new version of Prey will be worth the long wait.
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FiringSquad: First...how did Human Head get involved in the development of Prey?
Tim Gerritsen: When we finished Rune, we sent a copy to 3D Realms at their request. They were big fans and approached us about working on something together. Eventually we discussed reviving Prey. After id unveiled the Doom 3 engine, we decided that reviving Prey using the Doom engine was the direction to go. We approached Take 2 about publishing the game and started on the project in mid-2001, though we didn't get the Doom engine until the end of August of that year.
We knew that Prey had a storied history, and knew that the Doom engine was far from finished, so we were very concerned about leaking the news of the production since we honestly couldn't predict how long the development cycle would take. Therefore we worked in absolute secrecy until last year when we decided the time had come to unveil the game.
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FiringSquad: Even though Human Head is making the game, how much influence does 3D Realms have in its creation?
FiringSquad: What can you tell us about the storyline for Prey and does it follow the same basic story that the original version of the game did?
Tim Gerritsen: We incorporated bits and pieces of the original story, and the high level elements are similar, but the implementation of that story is very different in the details and execution. The current game is a horrific sci fi story along the lines of X-Files or Fire in the Sky where people are abducted to a living starship that is experimenting on people, or worse. You enter this story as Tommy, whose Cherokee name is Domasi Tawodi (Domasi is the Cherokee version of the name Thomas). He's a modern day Cherokee living on the reservation in Talequah, Oklahoma. He and his girlfriend and grandfather get abducted onto the starship with everyone else and are just looking to escape. Tommy isn't a space marine or a martial artist. He's just a guy. He was in the army, but he was just a grunt- not a green beret or anything. He can handle a gun, but he's no killer. He's a bit of an anti-hero. He just wants to survive and go home.
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FiringSquad: Much has been made of Prey keeping the original game's use of portal technology as a gameplay device. How hard is it to incorporate those elements in the game?
Tim Gerritsen: From the get go we and 3DR wanted to keep portals. It actually took surprisingly little time to get the initial portal tech going, though it took considerably more time to refine it to where we wanted it to be in terms of features. The biggest issue was then how we wanted to use them in levels. Performance is a potential issue with them, so you don't want to put a bunch of portals in a wide open area or you run the risk of bringing your system to a crawl as it creates a series of infinite loops. So we had to develop a set of placement rules for the internal designers to live buy via trial and error. Some programmatic methods of restricting the performance hits were developed as well and eventually we got the hang of it. 3D Realms had some great ideas toward the end of the development cycle as well, so we put in a full court press to include those. As to how they work and what they do, you'll just have to see for yourself. Some are obvious, some are playful, some are actually used for mundane tasks and others are really, really subtle.
SIDEBAR: Prey will have an Xbox 360 port that's being handled by UK based Venom Games
| Prey Inteview (con't) | Page:: ( 2 / 2 ) |
Tim Gerritsen: My favorite areas are when we go in and out of the shuttles, our flying vehicles. We tried to make sure there wasn't just a 'shuttle level' as you see in other fps games with vehicles. We decided to really integrate them so that you have to get in and out of them a number of times to proceed. One of my favorite areas is a round asteroid where you can run around. It features limited gravity so you get to jump around like Neil Armstrong on this big round rock while the rest of the world you are on goes sideways and upside down as you move. It's a nice little mind trip.
FiringSquad: What are the development team's favorite weapons to use in the game?
Tim Gerritsen: Everyone has their favorite. I like the Hider Weapon, which is basically a big acid shooting shotgun. It also paints with a fluorescent yellow goo, so you run around painting up the world, and your enemies as you go.
FiringSquad: What are some of the more interesting creatures that are encountered in Prey?
Tim Gerritsen: The quadharvester is an interesting creature. It has four spider-like legs, and a humanoid torso, and shoots rockets. When you do enough damage, you blow out the legs, and the torso then crawls over to a regeneration station where it can be regrafted onto a new set of legs. Nasty.
FiringSquad: What will make the game's multiplayer elements different than the norm?
Tim Gerritsen: Insanity. There's really no other way to put it. The experience is deathmatch, but since we incorporated the major features of the single player game such as portals, gravity manipulation and the fact that you can walk up certain surfaces as well as spirit walking and shuttles it turns into an experience similar to one of MC Escher's paintings. The effect is amazing as you run into spaces that make no sense by the laws of physics of our world, but in the game you quickly come to understand them and it makes for a really intense game. Several testers have commented to us that "this makes deathmatch fun again." That really was the best compliment they could have given us.
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FiringSquad: What other interesting gameplay elements does Prey have?
Tim Gerritsen: As I alluded to above, there are a number of things we tried to do to make Prey unique.
FiringSquad: How hard was it to adapt the Doom 3 engine for Prey's needs?
Tim Gerritsen: The hardest part was really just working with an unfinished engine. Since id hadn't resolved all the issues with the tech when we started, we frequently had to merge our code and then fix the issues that new optimizations on their end broke in our game. The code itself, however, is quite good to work with, and we were able to adapt it for our needs with out much difficulty.
FiringSquad: Are there any plans for a demo of Prey to be released for the PC and Xbox 360?
Tim Gerritsen: Yes. We feel pretty strongly that a demo is pretty critical to getting people really excited about the game. We've gotten a ton of press coverage, and everyone who's seen the game in person gets really excited about it, but we need to release the demo to show gamers themselves why we're excited about Prey. We don’t have any exact timeframe for the demo, but there definitely will be one.
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FiringSquad: What is the current status of the game's progress and when will it be released?
Tim Gerritsen: The game is very close to finished. Since it is a 3DR game, the only answer we can ever give is "When it's done."
FiringSquad: Are there any plans for new content to be released for the game following its shipment to stores?
Tim Gerritsen: Absolutely. We plan on releasing material for the PC and for the 360 on Live. We'll be creating new skins and models for the game as well as new multiplayer character models to choose from. We're also releasing the editor and game SDK and plan to support the mod community heavily. Depending on sales, we hope to be able to put a lot of post release support into Prey.
FiringSquad: Finally is there anything else you wish to say about Prey?
Tim Gerritsen: We can't wait to see what the mod community does with the new toybox we've created in Prey. We eagerly await what budding gamers do with the game.
We too, eagerly await Prey! We’d like to thank Human Head’s Tim Gerritsen for answering our questions about the game, and can’t wait to check it out once it’s released later this year.