[Topic Ufficiale] : PREY

[NoSf3rA†U]

AGGIORNAMENTO


Prey Weekly Development Update #7



Welcome to this edition of the Weekly Prey Update. This week, we're focusing on some of the questions we've received recently from you in our "Ask Prey" question a few weeks ago.

We received some really great ones -- far too many to be able to answer all of them in this one update. I'll save the other questions and try to answer many of them in a future Prey Update.

Without further ado, here are the questions and answers:


Travis asks:


Prey's caught my eye for a lot of its original and forward-thinking ideas. But there's a couple in particular that I'd like to hear more about. I hear that the game has a self-adjusting difficulty level. This worries me, because it supposes that there is a set degree of challenge that all gamers enjoy. Some less skilled players may want to play the game at a higher level because they enjoy a better fight, and some experienced gamers might just want a cakewalk on the first time through. Will there be a way to "bias" to difficulty adjustment to skew it higher or lower?
Also, I was wondering how the game is being balanced to preserve challenge with the Deathwalking element? Will enemies heal or respawn while the player is deathwalking so that when he returns he still has a real fight?"


The Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) system has several different layers to it, the main one of which is based around combat. As you fight the various enemies the DDA system constantly monitors your progress: how quickly you kill each enemy, how much damage each enemy inflicted upon you before you killed it, and if the enemy managed to kill you. After the battle is over, the game uses that information to calculate how skilled you are against that particular enemy and slowly adjusts that enemy’s difficulty.

The DDA system also has the ability to do "spot fixes" where it detects if you are dying repeatedly in a given section. In that case, the system will slightly adjust the game to help nudge you past the section. Again, just a slight adjustment. The key to the whole system is to never make any dramatic adjustments, as that would be obvious to the player and break the immersion of the game.


You will be able to turn the DDA system off if you so desire.


DeathWalk: Enemies do not heal or respawn, but we are building in systems so that the player has a few seconds to get their bearings before the battle resumes -- for example, enemies are more likely to ignore you until you attack again after you resurrect.


Hayden asks:


"Of all the features of your game, the spirit walking interests me the most. How does it work? Is it an automatic trigger or manual trigger? Does it time out? Do you need some form of item to support it? If it's a manual trigger, how to you keep it from overpowering the gameplay? It seems overuse of that feature could make the gameplay too easy, making the game rather boring."


Once the player has obtained the ability to SpiritWalk (you cannot do this from the start of the game), they can SpiritWalk at any time, whenever they want.

We decided to not restrict the player from SpiritWalking, because so many puzzles rely upon leaving your body behind and venturing ahead in Spirit form to unlock areas or transport your body.

However, to balance this, you do not always have the ability to attack when in Spirit form. Only if you have enough Spirit Power can you use the Cherokee bow to attack enemies. Without that power you can still SpiritWalk, but you cannot attack.

We are pretty generous with Spirit Power, though as it turns out that it’s really fun and useful to leave your body behind and kill enemies with the Bow. And, it all depends upon how you want to play the game. Some of our internal testers like to leave their body and use the Bow often, whereas others prefer killing enemies with the more conventional weaponry.


Super_CK writes:


"I'm really looking forward to Prey, it's gonna be one of the best FPS' to come out in awhile. One thing that really has me curious though is the music. Most FPS games aren't really known for great music, but with Prey, it seems like there's a great opportunity to really have some good stuff going, considering the story and the main character. It kinda seems like the kind of score Jerry Goldsmith might write, if Prey were a big sci-fi action movie. Anyway, who's doing the music for the game? I really hope y'all got someone good."


We have about two hours worth of level music composed by Jeremy Soule and his brother Julian Soule, which is used both for ambient environmental music, as well as specific music (for boss battles and level stingers).

In addition, we have licensed various popular tunes for the bar scene in the game. I mean, what better way to get the feel of a roadhouse bar than having Judas Priest or Ted Nugent blaring out of the jukebox?


Spooger writes:


"I've read that Human Head is trying to make Prey as emotionally-charged as possible. Without giving away much story, what exactly is Human Head doing to ensure that Prey establishes itself as more than just a shoot-'em-up in terms of the story, character development, and how those elements will be presented."


Great question. As you mention, I can't say much without giving away too much of the story -- especially about the emotional moments. But, in terms of character development, very early in the game we deal with the theme of Tommy rejecting his heritage as he's talking to his grandfather and his girlfriend.

In terms of fleshing out the character of Tommy -- in true 3DR fashion the main character talks throughout the game. However, he's not just spouting out one-liners (Tommy does, however, have a number of amusing comments). Tommy's dialog is intended to reflect how a real person would react if put into this horrible situation.

Also, dude, you need a new handle.


Kreg asks these three questions:


"Will Duke Nukem get a special appearance in Prey ?
Will there be puzzles in Prey ?
Will there be space war (dog fight) in Prey ?"


1) Probably not. There are some fun secrets in the game, though.

2) Yes, definitely. The gameplay mechanics of SpiritWalking, WallWalking, Gravity Flipping and Portals all lend themselves to making some really mind-bending puzzles. We'll definitely be releasing more videos showing some of these puzzles in more detail.

3) Oh yes. The main vehicle in the game is a flying shuttlecraft (it's shown briefly in the E3 video). In that ship, you engage in space battles against flying enemy creatures as well as enemies piloting other shuttlecrafts.


Lionel asks:


"I was wondering what kind of (new) tools/features are included with prey for the mod community?"


We will be releasing all of the primary built-in tools for the game. We've made a number of minor changes to the Doom3 level editor (now dubbed Preditor). But, overall, if you're familiar with Doom3 level editing, you'll have no problem making Prey levels. Although, it will take a bit of a paradigm shift to think about ways to structure your levels around gravity flipping, wallwalking and portals.


Jouni had this great question:


"I'd love to know how much of the original 3D Realms design can we actually see in the final game? I mean, are some monsters / weapons / settings based on the original designs, or was the entire game "re-imagined" (as Hollywood likes to say it)? And if so; Was it hard to improve something as solid and innovative as 3DR's original Prey concept?"


Not much. When Human Head started on Prey, we worked from the core concept of a Native American reluctant hero who is abducted by aliens, and must fight his way back home. This was the core element that 3DR required carry across from the original design (well this, and of course portal technology).

While working with Scott and George, these elements were the ones they required. A few times we started to stray from these core elements, but they ensured that we stayed on track.

Everything else in the game, we were given free reign to design as we wanted. So, all the creatures, weapons, and other gameplay elements (such as wallwalking and gravity flipping) were designed here at Human Head. Of course, 3DR gave feedback and suggested enhancements to all these gameplay elements as we they were designed and implemented.


Kevin asks:


"How many vehicles will be in the game? Will vehicles be featured in any of the multiplayer maps?"


The primary vehicle in the game is the Shuttle, which is a one-man hovercraft which has a rapid projectile attack and short-range tractor beam as a secondary ability. The Shuttle is featured heavily in several maps, as the player pilots across enormous outdoor spaces in the game, fighting flying creatures and using the tractor beam to clear away obstacles.
The Shuttle is also available in multiplayer -- two of the DM maps are based around Shuttle combat.


Daniel asks:


"I was wondering what the difference will be between the PC and Xbox 360 versions of Prey. The best example I can think of was in Doom 3, the levels were "shortened" but you wouldn't know it without a side by side comparison. Quake 4 had something similar, but nothing really that noticable."


The content between the two are identical. No drastic changes were needed for the levels to get them to run on the 360. When 360 development was just starting, we did split several of the levels in half for memory reasons, but that was done to the PC version as well.

That said, we aren't opposed to making changes to the levels if necessary. Ideally, though, we'd simply do those changes to both versions to keep them identical (and to reduce the headaches of maintaining multiple versions of content).

Doom 3 was on the original Xbox, so I can see why those levels were shortened and altered. If Prey had to fix on the original Xbox, we would have had to do some pretty radical changes to the levels to get them to fix and to run at a decent framerate.





*Well, that wraps it up for these questions. Again a huge thanks to everyone who wrote in with such great questions.

Next week's update should be damn cool as we talk more about Prey on the Xbox 360, with an update by the Studio Head of Venom Games, Peter Johnson.

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studis

[NoSf3rA†U]

Prey Weekly Development Update #8


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

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

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




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

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




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

*Action/Puzzles: Any long stretches of the game without any action or puzzles? (not many!)

*Tommy comments: Making notes of additional comments needed and which current comments could use reworking.

*Combat frequency: Is there not enough combat in areas, or too much? Do certain creatures show up too much?

*Death frequency: Did I die too many times in a given area before I was able to get through?

*Animation tweaks: Which animations could use reworking

*Sound tweaks: Any sounds that could use tweaking, or any places where the volume mix is off.

*General bugs: Just anything that seems wrong or is broken.




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




More voice recording fun:

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

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

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

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

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




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

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




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

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




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




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

-New weapon selection menu

-Multiple quick save slots

-New wrench alt-fire raise animation

-DeathWraiths now have a probability of 50% blue, 50% red

-Many more mutilated humans working on stuff and shuffling around throughout the game

-You have three seconds of invincibility when you return from death walk

-New initial load screen

-Beer bottles no longer float in Roadhouse

-Jenny properly holds and throws the sponge now

-JukeBox should always have a mouse cursor

-Roadhouse: Timing is different on the dialog now, so you can play with the games all you want, going back down by the bar will continue the dialog scripting

-Drunks have fight animations -- still need stagger around animations, though.

-FTC: New Hider sighting -- dialog is temp, though

-Art Bell radio sequences now start and end with music snippets. Recognize it?

-Hunters are toned down slightly -- bigger pauses between their shots. Maybe toned down too much right now, though?

-Spirit Arrows are much more dangerous now. Also, more spirit power is given from enemies. This seems to be creating a positive feedback loop that we don't necessarily want, though.

-Leech Gun: The tips are in, but we are going to add a picture of the leech gun itself to make it more clear.

-Swipe animations are in for using things (especially in Roadhouse). Anims will be tweaked further.

-Many more leech nodes added throughout the game. Pass isn't final, though...will still be more added.

-You can shoot the robot vacuums (done especially for George)

-Laser beam eye stalks can not longer be shot. You have to avoid the beams, trigger them, or spiritwalk through them now.

-LOTA D: In progress, but new set-up for Grandfather. Play it to see where he's located now.

-Cilia are triggered by spiritwalking players (so you can't walk through them)

-Jetpacks rockets are slower

-Four-legged Harvesters have been debuffed slightly

-Head shots from the sniper rifle decapitate the mutilated humans

-Poker/blackjack rules fixes in Roadhouse

-Lots and lots of bugfixes




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

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios

[Jamyx]

Bello verso fine marzo finalmente se potrà giocare

[NoSf3rA†U]

Jamyx ha scritto lun, 06 marzo 2006 alle 18:29
Bello verso fine marzo finalmente se potrà giocare

...fine MARZO??? e dove l'hai letto


Al massimo devi dire FINE Aprile - META' Maggio o MASSIMO FINE Maggio

[heXen]

io spero che esca prima di Settembre

[Jamyx]

ah ma mi ricordavo che una volta la data era verso fina marzo

[heXen]

infatti una volta era marzo

[NoSf3rA†U]

AGGIORNAMENTO


Prey fa un giro completo su console

Il diario degli sviluppatori accenna al passaggio PC-Xbox 360 e alla fluidità del titolo completo.


3D Realms ha aggiornato il suo "diario" dallo sviluppo di Prey, sparatutto in soggettiva annunciato per la prima volta nel 1997 (non è un errore di stampa). L'ultimo aggiornamento si concentra sulla versione per Xbox 360, affidata a Venom Games.

Si parla, soprattutto, dei controlli e della necessità di offrire anche su joypad quelle "finezze" presenti e disponibili agli utenti di mouse e tastiere. Restando in tema tecnico, il team creativo sta ottimizzando il codice per raggiungere l'obbiettivo di una fluidità stabile a 30FPS, cercando di sfruttare i tre "core" presenti nella console Microsoft. Già ora, comunque, viene garantito che le due versioni saranno identiche fino al più piccolo pixel.


by Nextgame.it





Per altre informazioni e dettagli,trovate QUI l'indirizzo originale in inglese,del Prey Weekly Development Update #9 e qualche screenshots sempre della versione Xbox360.




Screenshot showing controller layout



The Venom Games gang gathers for a company picture.



Screenshot from Xbox 360 version of Prey

[Jamyx]

Domanda un pò scema ma il gioco quando è ambientato?

[heXen]

ad essere sincero non lo so , penso un ipotetico presente dove appunto ci sono gli indiani che purtroppo vivono in zone confinate .

[NoSf3rA†U]

Jamyx ha scritto lun, 13 marzo 2006 alle 01:59
Domanda un pò scema ma il gioco quando è ambientato?

Non si sa Jamyx,ma per me ai giorni nostri...magari se sai l'inglese dai un okkiata a gli aggiornamenti che man mano ho postato

[NoSf3rA†U]

Ecco alcune immagini per lo sparatutto in prima persona Prey in arrivo su PC ed Xbox 360 da Take 2 il prossimo Luglio.





Scusatemi per la bassa qualità delle immagini,appena disponibili quelle ad alta qualità le EDITO


Ecco ripostati gli screenshots con qualità buona

[NoSf3rA†U]

PREY Anticipato


Secondo gli ultimi comunicati rilasciati ai maggiori rivenditori, Prey dovrebbe debuttare nei negozi il prossimo Giugno e non più a luglio come annunciato precedentemente.



Spaziogames.it



Staremo a vedere!!!

[heXen]

dopo tanti rinvii finalmente una anticipazione

[NoSf3rA†U]

AGGIORNAMENTO


Prey Weekly Development Update #10



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

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

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



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


-bug fixes from 3DR and Take 2 QA

-map optimizations: Over the past couple of weeks, there's been some pretty large optimizations done to the maps. Visually they are essentially the same -- most of the optimizations have been ensuring that entities in other rooms cease thinking as necessary, additional corridors or doors added as needed for vis purposes, removing redundant geometry where found, etc.

-feature tweaks: a number of game feature tweaks as requested by 3DR to polish the experience. For example, things like tweaks to how some of the weapons function, a screen effect when you are very low on health, some AI tweaks, etc.

-level tweaks: similar to the feature tweaks above, the level designers have been adding in sections as needed to expand the gameplay in levels, and also moving elements around so they are properly introduced and utilized.
animation tweaks: The animators have been crunching hardcore to clean up the motion capture data. A lot of work has gone into cleaning up the motion capture data. The data had a lot of hitching, and issues when blending between different

-animations. So far the animators work has fixed things up pretty well -- only downside is that it's very time-consuming for them. Once the cinematic animations are complete, the animators have a good-sized list of things to tweak throughout the rest of the game, from weapon animations to creature animations.



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

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

Check out his IMDb page HERE.




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

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



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

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



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

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



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

*Leech node hints now give you an icon of the gun itself

*Glowing blood sprays are visible when sniping an enemy

*SpindleB: Turbine Room has gotten major optimizations

*"Thin thing" portal trick added to Salvage (still requires some cleanup).

*Pretty large optimization pass across most of the maps.

*Still more optimization to be done.

*Key default changes:
- Lighter defaults to F key
- SpiritWalk defaults to MMB and E
- Crouch defaults to C and SHIFT
- Leech gun is now on key #4

*Leech gun auto switches when out of ammo

*Hunters can lean around corners to attack now. They occasionally decide to do the lean attack during normal

*attacks, too, to mix things up.

*tweaks to hud tip system

*added tips when entering a shuttle

*made spectators show up on scoreboards

*allowed spectators to go through forcefields

*added "Resume Game" to out-of-game menu

*put player portraits on scoreboard

*added gametime played to loadgame screen

*added "ready" tip to MP hud

*made shuttle not thrust until transitioned in

*tweaks to the motion capture animations for Grandfather and Jen.

*added music volume control
tweaks to help screen

*new negative feedback sound when shooting teammates in team dm, got rid of colored flash on teammates as well

*New recorded lines for Tommy yelling at Grandfather as he is XXXXX XX XXX.

*More save/load fixes

*Playtime now displayed for savegames

*Made vacuum robot explosion do radius damage

*Spirit bridge updates throughout the levels
Ambience passes to newly added areas, thin thing, XXXXX XXXXXXXXX, etc.

*Low health screen effect added



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

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios




Here's level designer, artist, and prolific toy collector Ash Welch testing Prey DM.



Jimmy Shin, programmer takes a break from working on
creature AI to read a recent forum about Prey. You'll also notice that he's not a prolific toy collector.

[NoSf3rA†U]

AGGIORNAMENTO


Prey: Demo Version Confirms


While we wait still good on Prey, before release of the Ego Shooters a demo version is to already show us, why we can look forward to the play. So human Head boss Tim Gerritsen in one Interview mit FiringSquad:


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.


To the question, when Prey would finally appear, Gerritsen answered with the famous words: "When it's done."




Prey Weekly Development Update #11


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

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

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



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

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

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



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

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


*QA reports a bug, and enters it into a centralized database

*We look at the bug, and determine if it really is a bug, or if there is a mix-up. If it's not a bug, we mark it the very obvious: "Not a Bug"

*We then determine if we will be able to fix the bug.
*Occasionally a bug cannot be fixed due to engine limitations and so forth. We mark it "Will Not Fix"

*We then try to reproduce the bug. If we are unable to reproduce it, or don't have enough information to recreate the bug, we mark it "Need More Info", and wait until we hear back from QA with the additional information

*Finally we fix the bug. And mark it "Fixed."

*Even though we fixed it, it's not closed out and considered final until QA has retested the bug. They retest it, and either mark it "Fix Verified", or if they still can reproduce the bug, then they mark it "Fix Denied"

*If the bug is kicked back to us, then we swear repeatedly and the process starts over.


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


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

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


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

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



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


*hunters have new projectile effects so the projectile stands out better

*XXXXXXXXXX at the start of the map has a new texture on it

*Tons of tweaks in the Harvester maps, in terms of creature placement and bug fixes

*New combat room added to Salvage: a cool room involving multiple portals and many enemies

*New animation for Tommy's intro

*Preparation for a door color unification pass across all levels

*New damage HUD, giving better directional feedback during combat

*Lots of great AI tweaks and fixes to the Hunters

*Animation work on various cinematics and to XXXXXXXXX-X scene

*Removal of a poster in the Roadhouse that contained unlicensed images

*New graphic effect on the health spore: much cheaper, and pretty much looks the same

*New GUIs throughout the levels, providing more information about the ship and the inhabitants

*New creature placements, providing more locations for wallwalk combat

*HUD tips for sniper zoom


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

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios




And for no good reason at all, Joe Siegler insisted upon another picture of Crystle Lightning.

[CuBo81]

Azz tutto è bene, ma quando uscirà il demo + o -, la mia hype x sto gioco sta a livelli stratosferici, quasi mistici

[heXen]

non c'è al momento una data per una demo , cmq devo ammettere che come gioco mi attira parecchio e non vedo l'ora di una demo

[NoSf3rA†U]

AGGIORNAMENTO


Prey Weekly Development Update #12


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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



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

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


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

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

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


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

-New music system implemented for fading and crossfading

-Grenade throw button - bind a key to _impulse25, should default to G

-New directional damage indicator

-tips for zooming in on the HUD

-low-health (< 25%) HUD effect

-Fixed problem with harvester gibs being nonsolid in some cases.



-Reduced grace period for ragdolls to resolve being stuck in solid.

-Fixed problem with wrench showing up in roadhouse mirror.

-All levels end with a portal fade now

-Door system: * Unlocked doors are light blue * Locked doors are red and play a locked sound when you approach * Doors that never open are dark and play a locked sound when you approach

-GUI pass throughout the level, new guis added

-Tommy Voices in progress--putting in placeholders; sound not yet ready

-SpiritWalk symbols being added throughout the levels

-All leech nodes now have a screen tip

-Adjustments of items/characters/geometry to accommodate level fades

-All music we have so far implemented (volumes need tweaking)



-FTA crouch portals can be walked around now.

-three fodders are now in the lighting training hallway

-new exit from FTA to FTB


-Item cabinet moved away from the forcefield

-The door with the raving guy banging on it is now locked

-First pod puzzle no longer has a pod right near the gak

-Vomiter removed from first wallwalk area

-Multiple Hunters now after the player wallwalks after the hologram

-Moved the autosave in the mutilated human room, so you don't fall into it.

-Art Bell gui moved to a new place



-New Tri-flip combat room w/portal crates

-Optimizations in several rooms and corridors

-Hunters on vent in breakaway room

-New airlock with keypad GUI

-Portal Crate in Catwalk Hunter Combat room
combat chains increased in several levels

-Added in additional security mounted guns.

-Dimmed the lights in the BonusCloset area to give more broken/emergency feel.

-Added in Thin-Thing (tm)

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

-Additional deathwalk map added



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


Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios

[heXen]

aggiornamente intenso, un sacco di modifichette

[NoSf3rA†U]

AGGIORNAMENTO


Prey Weekly Development Update #13


Hello again -- welcome to the thirteenth installment of the Weekly Prey Update.

This week, we have the usual weekly status, an update on in-game dialog, some talk about the 360 version, and something a bit special: pictures of the Human Head visit to Art Bell's house to record his voice for the game.


We're in full-on crunch mode here at Human Head Studios. Many people are burning the midnight oil as they work to finish their tasks before our next major deadline.

I read the last few Weekly Updates, and it seems that my mantra lately has been "bug fixing and tweaking". Well, this week is no different -- there's been a ton of bug fixes and a lot of tweaks.

We're pretty much over the feature hump, as all of the major features we wanted are now implemented. From here to end, it will mainly be bug fixing, tweaking, and any remaining minor features as needed.


A few weeks ago I mentioned that Michael Greyeyes was here recording new lines for Tommy. This week most of those lines have been processed and are being added to the game. Probably half of the new lines are now in the game with the rest planned to be implemented next week.

Today we're recording a few new lines for the epilogue of the game -- and probably getting a few more screams out of the voice actors. Can never have enough screams in a game.

Of course, this time we'll inform our neighbors of the voice recording session so they don't call the cops.



Speaking of voice recording: Several months ago, Ed Lima (Audio Director at Human Head) and Tim Gerritsen (Business Development Manager at Human Head) flew out to Las Vegas to meet with Art Bell to record specific dialog for Prey.


For those of you who aren't familiar with Art Bell, he's the infamous host of "Coast to Coast". "Coast to Coast" is a radio show where people call in with tales of the fantastic -- they cover things ranging from Bigfoot to werewolves to alien invasions. The show is regularly hosted by George Noory, but Art Bell still occasionally hosts on weekends.


Now how does this fit in with Prey? Well, when designing the game we realized we needed some way for Tommy to connect with Earth even though he's trapped on an alien ship orbiting many miles above the planet. What better way to get information about Earth than to have Tommy come across places where the aliens are intercepting Earth's transmissions?


When we discussed this idea, someone mentioned how awesome it would be to have those transmissions actually be Art Bell broadcasts. We contacted Art's people and he thought the idea was great and agreed to provide his voice for Prey.


After a few months of playing phone tag to set things up, we finally nailed down a date to record the lines. Ed and Tim visited Art at his home -- where he actually broadcasts his show. Since Art already had high quality recording equipment set-up in his studio, they literally recorded the Prey lines by having Tim call into Art's studio from a separate phone.


Art was a total professional. Without even looking at the script in advance, he nailed the whole thing in almost literally one take. There were only two times that he stopped to re-record a few lines. The whole process took about 45 minutes.


In the end, the new lines turned out great -- they convey at some information of what is happening back on Earth. Some of them even manage to inject a bit of humor into the game.



Art Bell and Ed Lima




Art Bell and Tim Gerritsen



A number of people here (and at 3DR) have been testing the Xbox360 version of Prey -- we both have several test kits throughout the office, so people can play when they have time. Ted Halsted, lead level designer on Prey, has been going through the 360 version looking for any really slow areas. I watched him play through a particularly complex level, and the 360 appeared to be handling it just fine.


Time for the weekly changelog:


-Portaling is considerably smoother. It's pretty much impossible to detect when you go through a portal now.

-Fixed some bugs with the functionality to retain the ammo type in dropped leechguns in MP.

-Fixed Prey window sometimes getting resized when using the menu options to go to driver pages and possibly other things.

-Now checking Creative driver version, and disabling on old versions so that we don't cause bluescreens.

-Tracked down and fixed a crash bug in AI navigation

-Cleaned up some client prediction misses with the acid sprayer.

-Globalizing remainder of Tommy's v/o.

-Extracting additional Tommy pickup v/o

-Selecting more licensed music to round out in-game jukebox song selection

-Writing/prepping epilogue dialog for recording

-auto detection revamp texture quality setting and removed global video quality setting.

-Changed proxdoors so they no longer snap shut when a monster dies inside one.

-Fixed IK while crouching in players in multiplayer.

-Some save / load fixes.

-Added code to prevent Harvesters from getting stuck in passageways.

-Fixed a rare crash bug related to reactions that would show up on save.

-Fixed Gasbag death time.

-made shuttles show crosshair even when no tractor target.

-plaque under "Game Saved." messages

-made normal projectiles hit spirit secrets

-made spirit arrows pass through chaff

-Misc art tweaks

-Finalizing cinematic animation cleanup

-Fixed a bug with the Spiritwalk overlay not working well with other overlays

-Bug fix so Talon properly lands on moving targets

-System in place for Tommy making comments to Talon

-Removed redundant ammo types from the levels



- Well, that's it for this week -

We decided to extend the Ask Prey submission time by another week. The original deadline was today, but if you still have any questions or anything you'd like to see covered in these weekly updates, feel free to email them to [email protected].


Until next time, stay out of trouble.

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios

[heXen]

speriamo che questi aggiornamenti precisi come un orologio Svizzero portino a notizie sul rilascio del gioco quanto prima

[NoSf3rA†U]

AGGIORNAMENTO


Prey Weekly Development Update #14


Hey all - welcome to the fourteenth edition of the Prey Weekly Web Update.

This week is a bit different in that I've enlisted the help of other Human Heads. I asked several people to write up a typical day for them to post in this update. Well maybe not entirely a typical day, I suppose, since the company is deep in crunch mode. But a day in their lives nonetheless.

The responses were all interesting, some of them rather hilarious stream of consciousness type of ramblings. I hope you find this to be a fascinating insight into the minds of people in crunch mode who apparently are slowly going insane.

I should warn you that there are a couple of minor spoilers in here, but nothing that will ruin the game - just some references to some level names and characters we haven't really discussed before.


Tim Gerritsen, Business Director

My days are a blur at this point as I'm juggling lots of constantly moving balls all at once. After seven years in the same office park, we're moving to a brand new office space across town. It's a old railroad roundhouse that was renovated for office use. It's a really unique office space and much better suited to our style of development than our current space. There's even a huge caboose in the front foyer since the builder left that in place when they renovated the building. The space is being custom fitted for our use so there's a million things to keep track of and make decisions on. It's like building a house, only worse since you'll have dozens of people working there when you're done. In addition, I've been managing the 360 efforts on our end, and we're putting the latest 360 build through its paces. I'm very happy to report that the 360 build is looking fantastic at this point. The frame rate is looking great, and the controls are being honed down to a fine pitch. The Venom guys are doing a great job on their end and I think people are going to have a hard time deciding which version to buy. Of course they could just buy both! Then there's juggling all the last minute details on the PC side, and that's just my three most important tasks right now.


Eli Quinn, Artist

Wednesday 4/12: The art tasks are slowing down so we've been trying out new software such as ZBrush 2. It utilizes a unique sort of terminology that's difficult to wrap your head around at first but it's very interesting once you get into it. The art team is also playtesting various sections of the game, as well as participating in deathmatch brawls. Of particular note was our deathmatch today where we had to test for a bug using the wrench weapon on an asteroid, so we were just sprinting around like fools and bashing each other's brains out with the wrench. Fun stuff. Occasionally people would whip out their guns again and wreak some havoc, until finally programmer Rich Whitehouse had to page the testers and remind us that this test was "WRENCHES ONLY, ON THE ASTEROID."


Brian Shubat, Animator

Don't really have time for this, due to our crunching deadline, and Leath Furniture having an inopportune moment to auction of the remainder of their "going out of business" crap at low low prices has taken it's toll. I'm finishing with all the rest of the maddening details on Grandfather's LotaD dialogs and finessing and fixing Talon. Also in progress is finishing off the hider bombing sequence in FeedingA, I think it's the single most longest sustained animation that is playing in the game. I've slept here two nights in a row on the floor already, brought in a bed roll and blankets. I woke up this morning but my leg didn't, it was the strangest "fell asleep" feeling I've ever had in an extremity before. It didn't tingle and it turned on and off like a switch, at first it was paralyzed, then it functioned, then when I stood up from my chair it gave out totally laying me out on the floor. I laughed it off and made coffee. Oh, shit! it was garbage day today! And did I forget to feed the cats?! I'm not even sure I know where they are.


Jeff DeWitt, Lead Animator

Now that all the Motion Capture clean up is done we're finally able to get back to the fun stuff.the stuff that adds personality to the game. This week I've worked with Jimmy on the Hunters (tweaking speeds, adding knock backs and pains), worked with Brian on some rifle anims (adding more personality to the weapons), implemented new models and fixed anim bugs on both creatures and weapons.tweak tweak tweak. We're getting closer and closer.which seems a bit surreal.

More on the Studios side - Ben G hurt his back again this week - poor guy. Crunch mode is hard enough without having to work through something like that. He's doing better, but as active and energetic as he normally is; to see him walking around like and old man was kinda funny (in a sick way I guess). Ed L is under the gun. That guy has really been a champ on this project.tons of behind the scene's stuff.

Let's see, what else. Ryan R cut his own hair the other day. People people.please.leave the hair cutting to a stylist.we're not in college anymore! J (I hope he doesn't read this.he's twice my size and he's been known to knock animators on their cans.just ask Shubat). AND speaking of Shubat!!! He's becoming an auction addict.seriously folks.he's developing a problem. Leath furniture (just down the road) is going out of business and they had the final day of their sale on Monday.since then every night they've been auctioning off the rest of the stuff in the store and Brian has been front and center. All I hear all day long is, YOU SHOULD SEE THE DEALS!?!? He's a crazy little man.

There have been more and more "schinc door" jokes circulating the office lately.OH.and Rich W had the "page of the year" the other day. He's running a lot of multiplayer tests and yesterday he had a bunch of guys testing "wrench only battles". So he does a company wide page and says, "Could all of you testing multiplayer go to the center sphere room and beat each other with wrenches only please". We all laughed out loud and I thought to myself. who's got a better job than me?

Chris seems to be holding up pretty well too.which is impressive. That guy is pulled in 10 different directions a day.no way I could do his job. Scott and George want this thing.but Take Two wants this OTHER thing.and then he's got all of us in the studio asking, "Well what are we doing? Huh? Huh? What about this? And this?!?!" Yea, if Chris has a full head of hair at 35 I'll be impressed. But all in all we're wrapping up.lists are getting shorter and shorter. We still have a handful of things that we want to tighten up but really.the game is very close to finished. That's it.oh, congratulations to the Badger's Men AND Women for wining National Titles in Hockey this year. Beauty eh!


Mike Flynn, Script Manager

I overslept today due to late night crunching. I got in late, checked my e-mail and grabbed some food and coffee. I ate my food and updated everything to the latest version of the game while checking the latest news and going over my tasks for the day. I got most of my direct tasks done over the weekend so all that is left is the pickier more difficult stuff. Before getting into those, I entered some new internal bugs and tasks into our wiki for myself and the other scripters. There are only a few and they are thankfully minor; this week is crazy enough with crunch mode.

Coffee. Need more coffee. Hopefully I won't get screwed with the pot having only a half a cup left and have to make more. Ah, the coffee gods smile upon me with a freshly brewed pot. I cue up some Captain Beefheart, Arcade Fire, and Daft Punk, hit random and get to work. Man, Neighborhood #1 is a great track. The day goes well into the next morning, with many bugs found and fixed, dialog added, and various game play tweaks implemented, tested, reimplemented, and tested again. In between map builds, which are needed for a conclusive test of most changed or added elements, I geek out on netside attractions or check my task list to see what needs to be done next. Sometimes building a map will take 15 minutes. If a BSP isn't needed, the turnaround time is more like 15 seconds. Amidst the more mechanical and repetitive tasks are the many gems that make it all worth while : each sweated over detail and change being instantly playable in a real time engine and finally finishing up scenes that are composed of dozens of people's work and input.


Nick Taylor, Animator

This week I am working on the main characters third person / multi player animations. This is a challenge unto itself as they must look good when the player is standing still as well as when he is running, strafing, etc... At the same time I am working on the lower body movement animations so that all of these approximately 220 upper and lower body animations all work well together.


Rich Whitehouse, Programmer

"Started the day at 8:45am when my alarm went off. Hit the snooze button. Woke up again at 8:53 upon the next alarm trigger, then hit snooze again. Somehow managed to hit snooze while in a sleep state until 10, at which point I finally got up. I stumbled through several accumulating piles of trash at my bed side, checked my e-mail on my desktop machine, browsed around for a while, then took a shower. I got to work at 11am. Upon arrival, I began re-evaluating some optimizations on a render volume tree function, and after observing through disassembly that the compiler was using stack-relative offsets to access some memory already, I proceeded with planned changes. This worked out happily. After that, I worked on some clipping performance issues on our giant sphere deathmatch map, and then began working closely with our in-house QA tester to coordinate some internet multiplayer testing, and work out issues with our Master Server. I then went home, and played Prey until 2am while noting new bugs and issues. This concludes the glorious day in the life of Rich Whitehouse."



Well that was certainly different, wasn't it?

If you enjoyed this, let me know -- post something to the 3DR forums. If people liked it, we'll see about doing more of these for future updates. I'm sure I could coerce more people from HH into writing up a day in their lives on this project.

Speaking of future updates. The deadline for the next round of the Ask Prey questions was today. So, I'll be tackling them next week for next Friday's update. We've received some pretty damn good questions, so it should make for an interesting update.

Until then, stay frosty.

Chris Rhinehart - Prey Project Lead
Human Head Studios

[NoSf3rA†U]

Prey: Collector's edition with Reaper figures


How 3D Realms mentioned now, it will give beside the standard designs also a Collector's to edition of Prey - in each case for PC and XBox 360. Details to the possibilitypossibility possibilities are shortly admit to be given. Exact contents of the expenditure for collecting tank are at present not yet well-known, surely are only that at least one of three Reaper miniatures will be thereby. The prototypes of the figures of Tommy, the Hunter and a Mutanten can be regarded by QuickTime Plugin on the firm homepage to be regarded and 360 degrees:









If this should not function against expecting, can you the QT Previews also with us in the package download. Simply with the mouse click and pull, in order to let rotate the figures:



DOWNLOAD Prey Reaper Miniatures: QT-Preview @ Doom3Maps (3.29 MB)

[Relevart]

Collector's edition! Sarai mia....

OT: mica male la tipa nella foto... ah... la primavera!