Early Prey Demo

Someone posted a 1998 video of Prey being demonstrated at E3. I guess 3D Realms did come up with the idea of Portals after all! Too bad this version of the game never was released as it featured some darn good looking graphics for it's day. It ran ultra fast on a 266 MHz Pentium and Voodoo 2 video card.

The guy giving the demo was Paul Schuytema, who was the project lead for Prey before he got fired/quit.

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I just noticed this earlier video from 1997 that also gives a demo of Prey. The graphics look blocky and the frame rate slow despite Paul saying it's over 40 fps. What a difference a year makes in development. He also talks about their next project, Duke Nukem Forever!

Blog Count

I was curious to see how many blogs each of us have created on Saint Cafe since the beginning and came up with this tally...

Marcos = 76
Robert = 33
Kruddler = 10
David = 5

Considering that Kruddler just joined the group recently, his posting activity is very high. Rob started the whole thing but only has 33? Should we even talk about Dave's total?

:)

Kevin Yee Attacked!

In case you're not a regular MiceAge reader, Kevin Yee is one of their regular columnists. Personally I don't care much for his articles as he normally tries to come across as some kind of Disney expert just because he worked at Disneyland for a few years (If you want the real scoop, ask the Krudd!). He never offered any real insider information, just a layman's opinion.

Back on July 13th he wrote an article called Kevin Yee Setting Sail that chronicled his adventures on the Disney Cruise Lines. If you read it you will discover that he gave it mixed reviews, primarily because he thought it was too expensive compared to other cruises and that he felt that Disney didn't properly warn him that more formal attire was encouraged for some of the onship restaurants.

What was interesting was not his article itself but the severe backlash he received from the majority of the MiceAge readers. It's over 9 pages worth but it's a funny read if you got the time. Basically he's getting slammed for not doing his homework and also for comparing the Disney Cruise Line to other cruises although he hasn't actually been on any other cruise lines. Apparently MiceAge wanted to quiet down the controversy by taking his link off their homepage.

Episode Two Portal Trailer

I didn't mean to create another blog about Half Life, but this video was too cool to pass up. Valve released a video that showcases a new first person shooter element called Portal that will be introduced in the upcoming HL2: Episode 2 game. Portal allows you to enter one area and come out the other.

Portal is a new type of single player game that changes how players approach, manipulate, and surmise the possibilities of any given environment in a manner similar to how the Gravity Gun changed our approach to how an object may be leveraged in any given situation.

You might be thinking, "Didn't Prey have this feature before?". Technically no, since apparently Valve hired the team from Nuclear Monkey Software who created a game with this feature back in 2005. Besides that, didn't The Twilight Zone feature this concept in Little Girl Lost?

When Good "Lost" Titles Do Bad Things

As you might already know, I'm a huge fan of the hit ABC TV series Lost and wonder why all primetime shows can't be as original and captivating. It's a near flawless show but one thing that always bothers me during the beginning of each episode is their minimal but effective animated title sequence. (Screen capture shown here.)

As you can see, the enormous gaps generated by the 3D rendered type are large enough to drive a Hummer through. It seems that some art director didn't care enough to edit what should have been an easy fix, despite attempting to hide it with a focus blur effect.

While reading through a typography site, I discovered that other people felt the same way.

Surprisingly what I found out later was that the"art director/designer" was none other than J.J. Abrams, the executive producer and co-creator.

According to the Fuselage's Ask the Staff forum, J.J. had this to say about it:

JJ Abrams

11-06-2004, 02:20 AM

Funny thing, the title card...

While we were in post production on the pilot (a VERY rushed experience, that), I made the floating "LOST" word on my trusty 12" Apple laptop.* It was always meant to be temporary.* The weird tones you hear was something I did on the Mac as well.* Before we aired the first episodes, we actually hired a pro title company to put together a title sequence.* I wrote a theme song (even recorded an orchestra playing it), but at the end of the day, it all felt... well, not like the show.* While it was FINE, what it FELT like was a typical TV show, and it just didn't get us excited.

That one 3D word, just floating toward the camera, out, then in, then out of focus, just felt like LOST.* So we kept it.* And now, every time I see it on air, it makes me laugh, 'cause it was just a goofy placeholder that's now on national TV every week.

Continued props to the Macintosh.

Well good for the Mac, yes, but here's to hoping they fix this by next season. Or maybe the rendering artifacts are a hidden clue? Hmmm...

The Art of the Recut

Entertainment Weekly had an article last month about Internet phenomenons but what caught my attention the most was a recut trailer for the movie The Shining. Pretty clever. And while researching something about Lost yesterday, I came across this "reimagined" opening. Not as clever but funny nonetheless.

Cars Review

I haven't had a chance to talk about Pixar's latest animated film, Cars, even though I did see on the opening weekend.

The Good:
It's an animation masterpiece. You would think that a movie about essentially inanimate objects (cars) in a dusty old town with no people or animals that there wouldn't be much to animate, but you would be wrong. The wizards at Pixar breathed life into these objects in a way no other studio can match. They are always one step ahead of the competition when it comes to how good these movies look. In my opinion only Blue Sky Studio's work can come close.

The Not so Good:
John Lasseter said one time that he disliked when people called animation a genre because it isn't. Drama is a genre, comedy is a genre but animation is an art form. Ok I agree, but then what is Cars? I assume it's supposed to be a comedy, but I didn't think it was funny as the other Pixar films. I understood the humor but didn't laugh out loud very much with the exception of one grown up joke about the "Piston Cup".

The other weak point was the story. It was OK but not as strong as the other films I've enjoyed from Pixar. It wasn't until after the movie did I find out why. Apparently it's not an original storyline but was "strongly influenced" by the 1991 film Doc Hollywood starring Michael J. Fox. Perhaps Lasseter was out of idea's and wanted to stick it to Disney for their last film before joining another studio (which of course didn't happen).

Recommendations:
So do I recommend you go see this in the theatre? If you have kids, you absolutely have to. Even though I didn't enjoy it as much as most of the other Pixar films, both Ari and Tu Tuz loved it.

If you are a CGI fan like myself then you should see this on the big screen. Again, I was very impressed with the visual effects... the gleaming chrome, the neon lights and the desert environments looked photorealistic in most of the scenes.

Another bonus is all the extra's you get from watching the film at the theatre. I got to see the new trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the new Pixar short called One Man Band , the trailer for Ratatouille and those always entertaining closing credits at the end of each Pixar film.

If you are in neither of these categories and you are hurting to see other films (Superman Returns, Pirates, Lady in the Water, ect...) then waiting for the DVD might be prudent.

Episode 1 - Final Review

I did end up finishing Half Life 2: Episode 1 the other week. It's a terrific game and there's quite a few excellent reviews of it online so I won't bore you with more blogs about it. I do recommend you watch the entire credits after finishing the game so you can see the teaser for Episode 2.

It looks like Valve updated the game to make a specific level easier. I'm playing the game again but this time with the commentary turned on, so when I get to this level I suppose it will be a little less challenging, but to be honest I don't remember what section they are talking about...

Half-Life 2: Episode One Update Released
July 7, 2006, 1:00 pm · Jason Ruymen

Updates to Half-Life 2: Episode One have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. Based on the statistics gathered from people playing through Episode One, we're making a small balance change to the elevator battle before you head back up to City 17. The specific changes are as follows:

Half-Life 2: Episode One

• Added some more health for players to pick up
  
  
• Added more cinderblocks and barrels for physics ammunition
  
  
• Added some extra shotgun shells at start of the fight
  
  
• Slightly reduced the number of zombies attacking the player

Gelato 2.0

I'm not sure if Rob seen this yet, but NVIDIA has released a free version of their high end hardware accelerated non-real-time renderer, called Gelato.

We saw this being promoted at last years Siggraph in Los Angeles. I've already downloaded it and played with some of the test renders but it appears that you get the most benefit from it by using the included plugins for Maya and 3D Studio (2 applications which I don't have). Perhaps Rob can try it out and give us the low down in a future blog.

Prey

If you attended the last round of iChat Wars we hosted last week (Dave disappoints again!) then you know I promised a blog about the history of Prey but it looks like Apogee beat me to it. I remember first hearing about this game back in the late 90's from my Multimedia World magazine (now no longer being published).

Prey is the new soon to be released (7/11/2006) game developed by Human Head Studios (makers of the Blair Witch II: The Legend of Coffin Rock and Rune). What's interesting is that this game is being produced (basically they helped fund it, not develop it) by 3D Realms, yes the same 3D Realms hard at work developing the upcoming Duke Nukem Forever game.

The demo for Prey has been out for a while and I just completed it the other day. I have to say its very well done. Since it's using a modified Doom 3 engine the graphics are top notch and it was nice that they included some outdoor scenes in the demo. The sound effects are superb, especially when using OpenAl. I literally jumped in my seat a few times thinking that someone was in my office behind me since the sounds from my rear speakers were discrete. The only negative of the demo was the unnecessary cursing that the main character uses. In my opinion its not needed and it sounded very forced. Like with F.E.A.R, I hope this isn't a current trend with the latest crop of games. There is an option to turn it off but it didn't seem to have any effect in the demo. Despite this, I still think you should give it a try. It features some new effects never seen before in a first person shooter.

CrossOver

Bigger news than BootCamp!? This is indeed big news! If CrossOver works as well as they report, then I'll have no need to even install windoze! The only thing that would hold me back however is will they actually support games or not.

CrossOver gets rid of having to install windows altogether, and just letting you run the apps on OS X. As reported, it works because the new macs work on intel chips. However, if the only support is for normal apps and not games, then I'll have no need to even get it. BootCamp is free and I already have win xp and the only reason I have xp is for games. I don't use xp for anything else, it's just a game machine for me.

Hopefully more info will be released soon with a beta soon so I can try it out! This could be very exciting!

Krudd