Misc. Ideas

George:  Many, many random team comments and ideas.  I just copied them all into one place.  Read through and grab what you can or think worthy.

Many, many ideas from the team while brainstorming the game.

December design meetings

December 3, 1997

Had a phone design meeting with Martin—Paul, Matt, John, Allen and Scott were all there.

We discussed the idea of having certain areas in the game in which the mappers decide which weapons will work—perhaps meeting a boss with only the pistol, for example. How do we "remove" the other weapons? We could have them stolen, inactivated by a stasis field, etc.

We also liked the idea of giving the player cooler weapons earlier in the game, but then taking them away. Such as getting a rocket launcher and only 5 rockets, for example.

Martin had the excellent idea of having us all jot down the design things we like best, hate most and what we imagine games being like in 10 years. We’ll do that next week.

The most important aspect of the meeting, and what we spent the most time on was the save game system. Here’s an overview:

We have a "capture" save available at all times and for all skill levels—this let’s the player save the game at anytime (it boots them to a menu screen). When they restore the capture, they resume play, but the capture is wiped out. (note: we’ll have to make sure that this is somewhat encrypted to prevent people from just copying this file).

We use the "DNA clone" fiction for saving—Talon’s mystical spirit is nearly immortal, but his body isn’t. He has with him (given by the Keepers?) a "regeneration globe" with a limited number of DNA strands in it (this can be justified fictionally in Episodes 2-6—how do we handle it in Episode 1? Perhaps just unlimited saves at that point of the game?).

The number of DNA strands he has is decided upon by the skill level of the game (nightmare level has none, for example). Also, Talon can find additional vials of "DNA replication gel" in the game—they are very rare, but their frequency also varies according to the skill level.

When Talon is killed, his spirit sweeps away from his body as the DNA globe rolls a random distance away. In a few seconds, the DNA globe goes into action, reconstituting Talon and his spirit enters the body, and he’s ready to go again.

Talon’s weapons are scattered when he dies—he must recover them.

Problem: since restores are limited, we don’t ant Talon to regenerate and then be killed immediately—perhaps he has 5 seconds of "invulnerability or something like that. Also, creature can enter a "player is regenerating" state and move away from the scene of the kill.

Problem: we must keep saves limited enough so that a player doesn’t simply die just so that he can be respawned at full health and abilities and ready to take on a challenging situation.

Possibility: the "enhancements" that Talon gets, ability-wise, me be lessened with each respawn—it then rewards the player to stay alive longer and build up his skills—perhaps this might also cover the number of mystical spells and abilities he has.

Cool thing: the visuals for this effect can be simply stunning!!

Cool thing: this approach really gives the illusion that a play through Dark Harvest is a single thing, not a multitude of mini-games between save locations. It also dovetails perfectly with the fiction of the game and universe.

Cool thing: by limiting saves, we also increase the value of a players life- If we muck with stats and spells as well, then we up the ante even further—it’s would be very exciting and challenging.

December 5, 1997

Allen, Loyal and Paul were brainstorming in the break room, and came up with an interesting mission idea:

Jumping off from the "three ships of poison gas" idea, here’s one mission: Talon discovers the location of one of the gas cylinder ships. He tries to get to it, but he accidentally triggers its release. It is now slowly moving away from the Trocaran mothership towards Earth. Talon must find a shuttle bay. He gets in, but there is no ship—it is outside on patrol. Talon must use the computer to take control of the shuttle and guide it in—big doors open up and it flies in—through the windshield, he can see its occupant getting irate. It lands, a portal opens up and Talon must battle the dude on the shuttle. Enemy dispatched, he climbs in, closes the door and flies out into space. He must then dock with the huge cylinder drone and get inside its maintenance tubes—lights flicker on and off and strange parasites attempt to thwart him—he sets up the self-destruct sequence and must then get out, and back on the shuttle before the ship blows. Finally, the mission ends when he lands the shuttle back in the bay (or perhaps another bay?).

December 8, 1997

From an e-mail by Scott Miller:

I've been trying to think of ways to add to the game's story, *while*

the game is being played. An important part of this is for the player,

as Talon, to discover information along the way, including background

info on the Trocarans. When the game begin, Talon doesn't know that the

Trocara have been doing their seeding for 100's of millions of years,

and have wiped out and replaced 1000's of civilizations and planetary

species all the while.

This fact should be a startling discovery for Talon in the shareware

episode, when he not only realizes that Earth is the next target, but

that the dinosaurs were also part of the Trocaran seeding, and maybe he

finds a huge galactic map that shows 100's or 1000's of other worlds

that have been seeded.

The point is that this should be something Talon stumbles upon and

discovers on his own, within the game itself. After this, Talon might

get more info on this from his great grandfather.

December 9, 1997

Brainstorming the E3 demo at the end of May:

We should do a network demo—let’s have 16 stations and run 2 8 player games from dedicated servers. We can also have 2 "dummy" PCs that simply exist to send out preprogrammed camera locations to every other "high" monitor mounted above. We have 4 Multiplayer levels, and shift them every hour or two (that way, people will have to come back). We can run 5 or 10 minute games that end with cool scores, etc. A network game would offer a far more intense game experience for the show-goers, plus it would alleviate us from having to show too much of the single-play game experience. We could run a single PC kiosk for showing non-interactive flythroughs/cinematics.

December 10, 1997

From a conversation with Martin:

Let’s have "finishing moves" that Talon does with certain bosses. Martin’s idea is to have a powerup that’s very rare to find. You can invoke it on a boss who’s "got your goat" when he’s close to death—then, you can move to a "mystical" 3^rd person perspective to see the incredible killing take place.

December 17, 1997

From an e-mail from Scott Miller:

I want to recap the idea we talked about today because I think it's a
valuable idea that needs to be integrated into Dark Harvest, and also for
George's benefit.

The idea is that Talon, after reaching a certain milestone in the game
(such as after he's given the medallion, and after he's reached a level
of confidence) can go into a trance state and enter the mind and point
of view of certain enemies, controlling them much like Abe can control
certain enemies in OddWorld.

Talon should only be able to control the secondaries of *one* particular
species (by limiting it in this way mappers are better able to control
when the player is able to use this ability). While doing this, Talon's
health (life energy) is slowly draining, so there's a penalty or
tradeoff for doing this. If Talon causes an enemy under his control to
attack another enemy, then Talon's enemy is attacked as a traitor and
killed (at which point Talon reverts back to his own body).

The main purpose for taking over another enemy is not for attacking, but
for puzzle-solving, much like in Abe's OddWorld. A simplistic example:
there might be a lever across a chasm that needs to be pulled to make
the bridge appear across the chasm. Talon would need to take over an
enemy that's across the chasm and use that enemy to pull the lever, then
Talon can exit that body and go back to his own body. (BTW, whenever
Talon exits a body that's still living, that enemy knows that Talon is
in the area and alerts all the other enemies present, which is another
tradeoff for doing this.)

The whole time Talon is in another body, his body is vulnerable. Any
attack upon his real body immediately breaks the trance and his back to
his real body ready for action.

After seeing how cool it is to walk around in an enemies body, I think
this will be a very key gameplay innovation for Dark Harvest to have first.

December 18, 1997

From a conversation with Martin:

A hook weapon. You fire this hook/harpoon at a foe and it sticks in them and drives them back against the wall, where they stick, crucified. They struggle to get free (they will in about 5-10 seconds), but while they struggle, you can either run away or kill them.

Mystical power—scanning (like in the movie "Scanners"). This is a "dark" power—Talon’s great grandfather urges Talon not to use it—it drains his health. If he has line of sight, he can drain the energy from his target to the point where he makes his head explode.

An expansion of our "posses another creature" idea: say that you can "posses" the body of a freshly killed enemy for a time—during that time, your health will slowly drain and your body will be frozen and vulnerable. Now imagine this: a room, packed with super nasty creatures (no way could Talon kill them all). Talon lures one out into the hall, kills him and posses him in order to enter the room and flip a switch. If he attacks the other monsters, they’ll go after him.

A creature like the T1000. Perhaps only a huge explosion will kill it—it blows into a pile of gibs. Then, the gibs gradually started pulling back together to reassemble the creature.

Dark Harvest team mission statement

What we're striving for in Dark Harvest:

• Dark Harvest, as a game, will redefine the standards of the action game genre, in play, in story and in technology.
• Our Portal Technology engine will define the bloody edge of technology, and will allow Dark Harvest, and other games that use this engine, to achieve a "play fidelity" which eclipses anything yet seen by our players or competition.
• Talon Brave, as a character, will be the cornerstone to a long and vibrant franchise that will reach out far beyond simply PC action games, much like Duke is doing.
• Dark Harvest will tell a story to our players, the story of Talon Brave and his adventures as he struggles to understand the Trocara and their mysterious Keepers.
• Dark Harvest will deliver both gameplay and story to the player at a frenetic pace, never letting the player take anything for granted, never letting them relax their guard—the player will be exhausted and exhilarated at the end of a Dark Harvest play session.
• Dark Harvest will offer an intense and vibrant multiplay experience, offering new approaches to both Deathmatch and Co-op play.
• The Dark Harvest world will constantly react and respond to the player, always allowing the player to feel that he is an agent of change in the game universe.
• More than anything, Dark Harvest will be a blast to play!

Why we will suceed:

• Our development team is packed with the most dedicated, creative and intelligent talents in the industry.
• Our team has the confidence and desire to make Dark Harvest succeed on all fronts.
• We constantly take stock of our competition and the current state of the art, in an effort to define the leading edge.
• We identify and understand the standards of excellence in what has come before, not only in the genre of games, but across all genres of entertainment, and we use this knowledge to create our own standards of excellence for Dark Harvest.
• We are students of "the game"—we play hard and know what constitutes intense, action-packed gameplay.
• We realize that the greater our success with Dark Harvest, the greater our rewards, both intellectually and monetarily.
• We love the journey as much, if not more, than the destination!

Late 1998 design meetings

October design meetings

September 30, 1998

(Okay, so I know this is a September date, but it's the end of the month, so gimme a beak...)

Menus

The first thing we discussed was the Dark Harvest game menu. Matt put together a sample menu flow in html. We want to do the menus in the engine (makes sense), so we discussed the best way to do that. Speed of use is absolutely essential. Also, a menu is the first place that a player gets a "long look" at the feel and tone of the game.

Control configuration should be based on the "dvorak" approach--most used stuff first. Matt suggested groupings, like movement, weapons, etc.

We discussed three main ways of doing a menu, visually, within the engine: 3D version of a Q2 type menu, something with much more movement and geometry and a menu that's actually like a room. The look of the menu is up in the air--should it represent 1 species, all species, change during play?, etc. Matt's going to work on putting together a first pass menu based on the humanoids, and the approach will be a highbred of the normal menu approach (in 3D) and something with more movement and action in it.

Check out Matt's menu mock-up here.

Pushing the player on

One of the most important things that we can do is to provide the player with a sense of purpose and pressure. He needs some reason to move forward beyond the standard player expectation of "I've got to finish this level."

Scott suggested that we check out the Abe's Exodus demo for a good example of small sub missions within a larger mission.

David brought up the idea of a "most dangerous game" type of sub-plot. We weren't sure if that would fit into the game flow, but if it would anywhere, it would fit as a certain type of arena struggle.

In the Library, Matt would like to spur the player on by "pressure from behind"--at all times, creatures are advancing on the player, making him move on. Essentially, when the player hits a trigger, it "activates" a spawn location behind the player (that he can't see) that will spit forth creatures to drive the player forward.

We all agreed that it's a good thing to create multiple events when a player invokes some action (like throwing a switch)--beasts coming from one direction, a door opening up behind them, another door opening up to the side, etc. Creating a moment when the player must make rapid decisions is a great way to immerse them into the play experience.

We again discussed John's idea of "replay secrets"--of learning something or observing something during the first play that can be remembered as an "aha!" during subsequent plays, and the player then has additional knowledge to access some cool things or secrets (one example is the small shuttle onboard the big shuttle in CH2L1).

Let's make use of the Doom approach of "visual teasers"--you can see places that you can't get to by "normal" means. But once you get there (via a round-about path), you discover that you are indeed in the area you saw before, and you go "cool!"

The less you know the better. We discussed this a bit--while we do want to unfold a story for the player, we NEVER want to give them the whole picture, even at the end of the game. Leaving some gray areas only makes the story world seem more real and larger than the player's experience.

Some ideas for CH3L1 & 2:

• Early in the level, you see some transmission on a monitor, like a "most wanted" piece. It shows a Cvamp from a surveillance camera.
• Later in the level, you might get stopped by a security droid who check you out (to see if you're a cvamp)--it lets you go. It might do one of those visual "facial compare" sort of things.
• Before you get to the Cvamp area, you hit upon some sort of mission or "quest" that will get you towards your goal--freeing Mary. On your way towards that goal, something happens, and the floor gives way or something (very cool)--you fall down "into the cracks" and can't get back out. It's here that you catch your first glimpse of a cvamp and enter their world.
• At the end of CH3L1(prison), you have the tram that takes you to the library. It'd be cool if you got onto that under some other pretenses, like you're chased and it's the only escape, or you think that it will take you back to where Mary is in the prison. In actuality, it takes you off in the "wrong" direction towards the library.

Half-life

Half-life had the cool feature of a lot of rooms that you can look into, but can't easily get to--but there is always a way to get in there, if you look hard enough.

The monsters where just too easy to kill and delivered too little damage to be much of a threat.

The auto-save was far too frequent--there was no real penalty for losing your life.

Ruling on NPCs

We talked about the NPCs in the game, and certain player's compulsions to shoot them (Scott, are you listening?). With the old man, it's a no-brainer, since he's a spirit--stuff just goes through him. The Staleene Keeper is a total bad-ass with plenty of shields and other protection (like the SS). The Hegemon has guards to rule you. The only problematic one was Hataa Skeen. We decided that the best way to handle her was agility--she can dodge nearly everything, and after you try for her the first time, she knocks the gun from your hands and give you a warning. Do it again, and she'll rule you with her spear ("She'll suck you dry, man!").

November design meetings

November 3, 1997

On the way back from lunch, Scott Miller and Paul talked about a player’s characteristics, specifically in a multiplayer game. It would be great if the player could create a "character" for a multiplayer game that would be a species, a skin variation, and a budget of "points" to add to the various capabilities to create a unique character.

Some possibilities are: speed, "sixth sense," weapon accuracy, stealth, etc.

In addition, we could have a "mundane" and a magical game—the magical game would allow player to take on the role of Talon and be able to spend points setting up their mystical powers (sort of like the force powers in Jedi Knight). We may even give players a power bonus if they are limited to melee-only weapons.

We just need to make sure that the various abilities actually mean something in the game.

November 6, 1997

A review of some conversations between John and Paul concerning water:

How do we do water in Dark Harvest? As we thought about before, the surface of water is a portal—what is under water is a complete room with the movement, gravity and viscosity properties that make it water. If you are part way in the water, then you take on water properties.

We can use an extrusion as a cutting plane to sever geometry into above and below water rooms.

How do we do the surface? We could do it as an animated texture on the surface of the portal. Another possibility, to get some dynamism to the surface, is to have the surface of water be an animated mesh object with a translucent texture (animated or not) applied to it. It rests just above the water portal plane and undulated to give a really nice effect.

How do we do rising (or lowering) water? In both the above water and below water room, we have their geometry extend beyond the current water portal. When the water rises or lowers, we transform the portal in both rooms, and the effect will be the same as the water rising or lowering.

November 14, 1997

A few important excerpts from Martin’s letter:

I think one thing that needs to be changed in 3d shooters is the value of a life.

It is most important that a game is never frustrating.

Here is my idea:

I think this problem could be solved with different skill levels.

easy = you can save at any time, you can activate every cheat. you can only

explore about 70% of every level. some monsters and features are missing.

Monsters are every time at the same place when you start playing. (no bad

surprises :) Different ending, last episode is missing totally.

normal = you can still save at any time, you can activate only a few cheats.

you can explore about 90%

of the level and you have more, tougher and smarter monsters. Last episode

included, but not the real end. ( for example the boss can escape with his

spaceship, before you can fight him.)

This is the normal skill for the average player.

hard = game can only be saved* after finishing a level. No cheats are

available. You can explore 100% of every level. You have all the features of

the game and you will get the real ending.

*saving : game can only be saved after finishing a level doesn't mean that

your progress is gone when for example you have to stop playing while you are

in the middle of a level. You can actually save at any time, go out for

dinner and load the game again, but if you die, the whole level must be

started from scratch. In other words, you can save whenever you want, but if

you die, you don't have no more access to this save. You must start the level

from scratch.

nightmare = basically same as hard, but harder :)

mega nightmare = the champions league! only for a few totally diehard gamers

out there. You have to beat the whole game with only one live. This should

include a few nice surprises but be always fair and never frustrating.

Believe me. This one is pure adrenaline ;) Just imagine your heartbeat

in level 19 with only 10% health left and knowing three heavy dudes are

waiting for you around the next corner.

The harder levels cannot be chosen from the beginning on. They must be

unlocked, by beating the lower skills. This avoids a frustrating experience

for players that want to start from a higher skill right in the beginning and

it also gives a good replay value.

The few people who did beat the game on mega nightmare should get a huge

reward and should be honored.

just a few examples. Players officially earn the title of "Grand Master of

Dark Harvest" from 3DRealms and their name will be posted on a list of all-time-heroes

that can be found on 3DRealms website. There is something like a medal

available from 3DRealms that you can only get if you can prove that you have

beaten the game on highest skill. Just imagine the guys running around at one

of those big lanpartys wearing proudly these medals or special t-shirts etc.

The possibilities are endless.

November 18, 1997

We could have a "training" level, much like the introductory level in Lara’s house in Tomb Raider. This training level can take place in a canyon outside of the reservation—it begins with a 3^rd person pan around and zoom into Talon’s head. Through voice-overs from Talon, we can learn a little back story—like why he’s here—what his "spin" on life it, etc. Then, Talon (the player) can explore the canyon, run, jump, climb, pick up and through and object, etc. He can have his Colt Peacekeeper and he can shoot some cans—we could even have him hunt and kill a coyote. When he leaves the canyon, we get a voiceover of him saying something like "gotta get back to the garage to finish some work"—that gets him back for the real start of the game.

Loyal will have animated texture swatches—actually just additional swatches that will serve as animation frames. A Multiplayer tribe can then create their own team model, animation and skin (or just reskin Talon). Then, they can have something like 8 "frames" of faces—these would be the faces of each tribe member—in the game, the choose their face. Too cool!

Jumping off of martin’s idea above, what about having only certain "save points" or save stations in the game—could be at the end of each level, or maybe there are more. BUT, the player can "capture" his game at anytime. This is a save game that is a "one time use"—if the player has to quit for dinner or something, he can capture the game, then restore his play when he wants to—once he restores, he can’t ever go back to that capture point—it’s gone once reloaded.

We had a design meeting with Martin over the phone. Here are some of the key points:

Scott’s example from Duke: you’re using a shotgun on a foe, you’re close in, and the next shot will kill him. When you fire, instead if firing, Duke will kill the foe with the butt of his gun.

Scott’s example of evoking emotion: You talk with one of the other Indians, will say Bob, when you are on the Trocaran shuttle—he goes off to do something for you. Once you are on the Trocaran mothership, you run into him again, he’s in a cell and you talk about getting him out. Later, you come to a place where you can look through a window into an operating room—he’s screaming as he is being dissected. He sees you and screams for your help, but you can’t do anything.

Scott’s idea of level of difficulty: you chose a level to begin at—at certain points, the level ratchets up higher, such that you will always play the last half or 2/3 of the game at "hard" difficulty level.

Martin’s idea: each character that you can play in Deathmatch (including user-created characters) has a "victory dance" animation—this animation is shown after a deathmatch game for the winner on all the players’ PCs. Great for gloating, etc.

Another great point: let’s make sure to have "over the top" environments that just defy description. Very disturbing stuff. When juxtaposed against the standard environment, it should be a great experience.

Let’s have a room—like a cell. You’re trapped in it, and you hear sounds—only one light in the room, the walls are made up of a strange metallic substance. Then, the walls begin to fade away (we change their alpha), revealing beasts out in a larger arena (great for one of the arena levels)—finally the walls disappear absolutely, and you must face the creatures.

Let’s have a distortion on water textures like the distortion when Mario jumps into a painting like in Mario 64. When Talon jumps in or tosses something in the water.

November 20, 1997

What if, during the course of the game, the Earth (specifically humans) is being wiped out. Let’s say that the Keepers have three large gas tubes on the Trocaran ship, one on each tower. The poison gas in these tubes is engineered specifically to eliminate humans. In fact, one of the reasons the Keepers grabbed some humans was to synthesis the latest version of this toxin. Talon must discover this in the early parts of the game. He then may or may not stop the tubes from deploying. If he does, then he saves more and more humans—if he doesn’t, he learns, during the game, that humans are being killed on Earth—the end of the game, while it doesn’t alter plot wise, varies depending on how well Talon diffuses these gas ships.

November 21, 1997

Particle explosions done as actors in Max—they are flat shaded polys with an alpha value that can then be transformed or scaled in the game. Speed increase because no calculation is involved.

Things like running water out of a tube and water ripples can also be done as animated actors.

Dark Harvest’s "golden nuggets"

Rationale

This document is the repository of those ideas which we’ve developed over the last year or so that we want to get in Dark Harvest. This is a very elite, very selective list—probably 80-90% of the ideas we’ve come up with didn’t make it this far.

Rather than a standard design doc, this is meant to augment the Dark Harvest design docs with one specific focus—it outlines things that we want to do in Dark Harvest that will separate us from the crowd in this genre. Some of these ideas are risky—some take chances with player’s expectations and perceived familiarity with the genre. But it is precisely by taking chances (albeit carefully thought-out chances) that we will make Dark Harvest an exceptional game.

To review our goals for this game, here is an excerpt from our Dark Harvest mission statement:

• Dark Harvest, as a game, will redefine the standards of the action game genre, in play, in story and in technology.
• Our Portal Technology engine will define the bloody edge of technology, and will allow Dark Harvest, and other games that use this engine, to achieve a "play fidelity" which eclipses anything yet seen by our players or competition.
• Talon Brave, as a character, will be the cornerstone to a long and vibrant franchise that will reach out far beyond simply PC action games, much like Duke is doing.
• Dark Harvest will tell a story to our players, the story of Talon Brave and his adventures as he struggles to understand the Trocara and their mysterious Keepers.
• Dark Harvest will deliver both gameplay and story to the player at a frenetic pace, never letting the player take anything for granted, never letting them relax their guard—the player will be exhausted and exhilarated at the end of a Dark Harvest play session.
• Dark Harvest will offer an intense and vibrant multiplay experience, offering new approaches to both Deathmatch and Co-op play.
• The Dark Harvest world will constantly react and respond to the player, always allowing the player to feel that he is an agent of change in the game universe.
• More than anything, Dark Harvest will be a blast to play!

Major design "golden nuggets"

These ideas are major departures from current design convention or current player expectation. These are the riskiest things we will attempt in Dark Harvest, but if they work, then will have made Dark Harvest truly a ground breaking game.

General

If you get too encumbered, you get slower—this allows players to have a single, smaller weapon, but be able to outrun their opponents

Single play

• Let’s not have health powerups at all—only health stations and health objects. The player can run through health stations for a quick 10% boost, or can remain at them to gain additional health. In single play, remaining at a health station will signal an alarm. Health objects are natural objects in the game that the player must learn to use to gain health—things like rat-like creatures he can eat, energy crystals, etc.
• As Talon moves along in the single player game, he is secretly "scored"-when he reaches certain score thresholds, his demeanor will change (he is growing more confidant), so that the content of his spoken dialogue will alter. We also want to give him slight performance bonuses, as well.
• Instead of having an weapons "floating" around in single play at all, the primary means to get a better weapon is to kill a foe using that weapon—adds challenge and excitement, because you’ll have to work hard to "upgrade" your weapons.
• A new item class that we’ll call "puzzle object"—these items work in certain situations or in combination with other puzzle objects. They are a separate inventory class altogether, and accessed differently. Most are used once and then disappear forever from your inventory. For example, a wire-repair kit to repair a panel to open a door. Or a can of oil that you poor into a machine to get it working. Or a piece of paper containing a code to be used later. Basically, inventory items like you found in adventure games, and you hung onto them until you figured out how and where to use them. For example, you could find a can of gas, empty bottles, some rags, and make a Molotov cocktail. Imagine the player's excitement in figuring this out. On the other hand, the player might put the can of gas somewhere and attach a proximity fuse to it, making a gas mine. Giving the player this freedom to make objects will be seen as ultra-cool.
• Saving, difficulty levels: this is "the big risk." Here’s the best possibility to date: there are five difficulty levels: Training, Easy, Challenging, Nightmare and Over-the-top. The player can start at whatever level they want. The game, though, increases in difficulty as played: Training level only works on Chapter 1; Easy level only works for Chapters 1-2. Chapters 3-6 will always be played at Challenging or more difficult levels. If you play on Training level, you will be switched to Easy for Chapter 2. No matter what easy level you start on (Training or Easy), you’ll be switched to Challenging at Chapter 3.
• Training level: you can save at any time, all cheats are active, there are less monsters (and they all appear in the same locations), less weapon varieties, you can only explore about 60% of the environments and you don’t get the ending cinematic or character interactions (this is a big question mark in my mind).
• Easy level: you can save at any time, some cheats are active, a few more monsters (but still at the same locations), a few more weapons, you can access about 75% of the level, and still no character interactions or cinematics (also, in Chapter 2—no "awakening" of mystical powers).
• Challening level: (this is the primary design skill level—this is how we want the game to be played). No cheats are active, you get all monsters, at varied locations, all weapons, access to all pasts of the level. At the end of a level, you can do a "true" save. If you die, you restart the level. You can "capture" play at anytime (if you have to quit playing for dinner or something like that), but once you restore a capture, it is gone—there is no reverting back.
• Nightmare level: Essentially, the same as challenging, but with more monsters.
• Over-the-top level: This is the "Master’s" level! More monsters, a few new surprises and you only get one life (there is no saving at the end of levels, only "capture" saving). If someone finishes this level, they should be able to be "registered" as a master player on our web page.

Multiplayer

• Let’s not have health powerups at all—only health stations. The player can run through these for a quick 10% boost, or can remain at them to gain additional health. Perhaps the health station can sound an "in use" alarm to alert the other players.
• When you get killed, there is a time penalty before respawn. 10 seconds for a regular frag, 15 for a suicide. (perhaps this can be an option during Multiplayer setup)
• After you respawn, you get 3 seconds of invisibility (but you can’t pick anything up). (perhaps this can be an option during Multiplayer setup)
• In DM, a player can only carry 2 or 3 weapons (perhaps we should enable this number to be altered during Multiplayer setup—there can be "no limit" as in single play, or the players can select any # between 1 and 10 for maximum weapons load). He can pick the ones he wants as he runs through a level, and to get a new one, he’ll drop one he already has. This can be very cool if the majority of our weapons are very balanced.
• Not only "Multiplayer" as different human-type entities, but allow a player to become one of the alternates—for example, the Saurian Quad.
• It would be great if the player could create a "character" for a multiplayer game that would be a species, a skin variation, and a budget of "points" to add to the various capabilities to create a unique character. Some possibilities are: speed, "sixth sense," weapon accuracy, stealth, etc. We just need to make sure that the various abilities actually mean something in the game.
• In addition, we could have a "mundane" and a magical game—the magical game would allow player to take on the role of Talon and be able to spend points setting up their mystical powers (sort of like the force powers in Jedi Knight). We may even give players a power bonus if they are limited to melee-only weapons.

Major technology "golden nuggets"

These ideas will take considerable technological wizardry to pull off—we should evaluate them soon based upon their perceived technological complexity.

General

• Things like crates, rocks, cash registers, etc. are all dynamic—they can be moved, if light enough they can be picked up and thrown, pushed over a ledge, destroyed, etc.
• How do we do water in Dark Harvest? As we thought about before, the surface of water is a portal—what is under water is a complete room with the movement, gravity and viscosity properties that make it water. If you are part way in the water, then you take on water properties. We can use an extrusion as a cutting plane to sever geometry into above and below water rooms. How do we do the surface? We could do it as an animated texture on the surface of the portal. Another possibility, to get some dynamism to the surface, is to have the surface of water be an animated mesh object with a translucent texture (animated or not) applied to it. It rests just above the water portal plane and undulated to give a really nice effect. How do we do rising (or lowering) water? In both the above water and below water room, we have their geometry extend beyond the current water portal. When the water rises or lowers, we transform the portal in both rooms, and the effect will be the same as the water rising or lowering.
• Let’s have a distortion on water textures like the distortion when Mario jumps into a painting like in Mario 64. When Talon jumps in or tosses something in the water.
• Vehicles: these range from simple things, like a tram and speeder-bike, to more challenging vehicles like a shuttle that allows the player to fly outside of the Trocaran mothersip.
• General dynamically created, dynamically moving portals.
• Portal device: available in single play and Multiplayer, this is a two part object—transmitter and receiver. The player tosses a receiver somewhere and then tosses a transmitter somewhere. When activated, a dynamic portal is created between the two areas (we’ll probably have to limit how many of these can be active at one time).
• Robust camera and editing features: the ability to save demos, records 3^rd person camera locations, camera movements, cuts to different camera locations, digital and redbook playback, etc. We’ll use this for the game cinematics, as well as a cool "toy" for the players.

Single play

• AL: Neural-net based artificial learning utilized to "train" the entities in Dark Harvest. They will run with a neural-net, using defined parameters, in house-we’ll play against them and they will lean according to the behavior templates we set up. When they’re behavior is "just right," we’ll "record" their neural net to use for their AI "brain."
• AI variations: We want the entities in this game to be varied. First off, on Challenging and higher skill levels, they will not always appear in the same positions when a player replays the game. Also, and even more important, individual instances of an entity can posses unique capabilities. These will be defined by the mappers to be either absolute or random, and the various values (such as speed, hearing, health, aggressiveness, etc.) will fall within a pre-determined range for the particular entity class.
• Cinematics handled in the engine: see above for a description of the camera system. Cinematics will be entirely in engine (the actors movements will either be scripted or "played live" and then recorded). We’ll have dynamic camera movements, special "cinematic-only" animations, character speech, etc.
• Working CRT monitors: when the player gets close to certain terminals, he can access the information on those terminals and see the data scroll by on the screen.

Multiplayer

• Bot play as characters: Bots are included in the game, allowing the player to easily play against an "AI" entity. The player can save a bot as a character, after spending some points to outfit its capabilities. As an extension (now? Dark Harvest add-on pack? Dark Harvest 2?), we can have "learning bots" that react to the player via a neural-net and learn how to play better and more skillfully.
• Highlight films—perhaps in a multiplayer session, a demo can be recorded constantly—when the game is exited, the film is compressed so that only "spectacular" kills are recorded and we can then watch the highlight film. Questions: how much overhead does it take to record a whole multiplayer game (perhaps this option is only available on dedicated LAN servers)? How do we determine what "spectacular" kills are (should be fairly easy based upon our advanced scoring system)?
• Net games in which LAN players and Internet players exist in the same game.
• Opening a portal to another server.

No-brainer "golden nuggets"

These ideas really don’t stretch the technology of the game, nor to they pose a design risk—rather, these are fresh ideas that we should implement, simply because they haven’t really been done before and will greatly enhance the total game experience.

General

• We will track the projectile or energy beam accurately down along the barrel of the weapon (as it bobs and moves during a run, for example)—this will make shooting far more realistic.
• You can set certain weapons to overload (like ST phasers), so that they become like time bombs (you can suicide attack or drop it)
• You can shoot at a gun, and it will take damage—enough damage, and it becomes useless. If a gun suffers a critical hit, it can either jam, blow up or be knocked from the player’s grip.
• When you fire a rapid-fire gun, have it creep up on the player, forcing them to adjust their aim (already in Quake 2, in the rapid-fire pistol).
• You can walk, run or sprint. When you walk, your shots are more stable (they’re most stable when you’re standing still, of course), and your footsteps are silent. When you run, your shots are erratic and others can hear your steps. You can sprint—sprinting will place the gun in a "can’t fire" position. Sprinting is faster than running—you can jump farther as well. You can sprint as long as you want, but after x amount of time, you begin losing health—the more you keep sprinting, the faster your health loss. If you die during sprinting, you’ll clutch your chest and tumble to the ground. As soon as you fire your weapon in a sprint, there is a short delay as your weapon moves back into firing position and you slow down to a run.
• Modular interfaces on the screen that the player can move around and position anywhere-the game doesn't pause during the move operation, however. The player taps a key (like Tab) to activate the mouse pointer, and can then click and drag the interfaces--tapping the key again returns the player to normal control.
• Let’s have all vital information for the player (health and ammo), provided to the player in a "non-interface" manner (we’ll still have on-screen interfaces that can be toggled on or off). The health is indicated by heart rate, Talon’s sounds, etc. The ammo for a particular weapon is indicated via an animated texture on the gun.
• Talon makes panicked comments when he’s running low on ammo and is in a battle. When he reloads during a fight, have some comment like "get in there, you piece of shit!"
• Let’s really give a sense of passing time. In certain exterior areas, let’s have it deep night at times and "artificial dawn" at other times. When a player enters a hallway, for example, let’s have it fully lit most of the time, and lit by "emergency" lights at other times (presumably at "night" or other low-traffic times). When it’s lit only by emergency lights, the chance of a random encounter is less than during "normal business hours."
• Instead of having keys for a single door, have some sort of device (key, access card, access bracelet, etc.) that operates a whole class of doors. That way, a player may explore an area, but only certain doors or avenues may be open. In another environment, Talon nabs the access bracelet, so now when he returns to a previously explored level, there are new areas now accessible.
• Armor that protects specific areas of the body (helmet, breastplate, etc.)
• Critical hits (see the working design doc and entity designs for an explanation).

Single play

• Talon's default weapon, the wrench, will also come in handy during some "fix it up" puzzles and operations
• Many of the enemies use the same weapons that Talon can use—he kills them, he can get their weapons.
• Talon finds crystals clusters in certain areas of the game (probably saurian or insectoid), emitting dynamic light. Talon can smash them with his wrench or crowbar, and some of the pieces that break off are "prefect crystals" which he can pick up and use as ammunition/energy for his crystal-powered weapon.
• Let's have a "necklace of kills" that the play sees before loading a new play session (once he's played for a while). It will be filled with fingers, ears, etc. (done in cool 3D) of critters he's killed. It'll let the player see at a glance where he's at and the proud killin' he's done. As an aside, we could have a button that the player can click that will make this necklace, plus some other cool Dark Harvest stuff, into a .bmp image that it loads into the Windows directory and makes the current wallpaper.
• Mystic Walking -- After Talon first meets his grandfather, a plainwalker, he gets a medallion, which his grandfather says gives him a special ability, but doesn't say what. That ability, to be discovered by the player, is "mystic walking." The player presses a key that puts Talon in this mode, which allows Talon to leave his body and move in any direction, including up. This allows Talon to see in places he might not be able to see otherwise, and preview look around corners to see what awaits. When this mode is activated a Mystic Meter appears which shows how much time is left to do this. The whole while Talon's real body is motionless, but still open to attack. Any attack automatically pulls Talon back to his body. The journey back to his body is swift, and done using the spline method, so it'll look cool. Talon's mystic energy recharges slowly, so this is not an ability he can use often to great effect. Like a ghost, I don't think Talon should be able to in any way affect his surroundings will out of his body.
• We should have a "training" level, much like the introductory level in Lara’s house in Tomb Raider. This training level can take place in a canyon outside of the reservation—it begins with a 3^rd person pan around and zoom into Talon’s head. Through voice-overs from Talon, we can learn a little back story—like why he’s here—what his "spin" on life it, etc. Then, Talon (the player) can explore the canyon, run, jump, climb, pick up and through and object, etc. He can have his Colt Peacekeeper and he can shoot some cans—we could even have him hunt and kill a coyote. When he leaves the canyon, we get a voiceover of him saying something like "gotta get back to the garage to finish some work"—that gets him back for the real start of the game.
• Let’s have a room—like a cell. You’re trapped in it, and you hear sounds—only one light in the room, the walls are made up of a strange metallic substance. Then, the walls begin to fade away (we change their alpha), revealing beasts out in a larger arena (great for one of the arena levels)—finally the walls disappear absolutely, and you must face the creatures.
• Talon gets to a certain area of a level—on his way he heard shouting and shots. When he gets there, he sees a dead Indian captive and some guards who’ve just committed the execution. If Talon had run there right away, the would have had the chance to stop the guards from killing the individual—he might then get some vital or useful information (perhaps it unlocks a secret area, for example).
• In one level, Talon walks past an observation deck—below is an arena with some mega-creature wailing on some smaller creatures. Talon can’t get down there. In a level a little further on, Talon opens a door, only to find out that he’s opened the door to that arena and now has to battle the mega-creature.
• Scott’s example of evoking emotion: You talk with one of the other Indians, will say Bob, when you are on the Trocaran shuttle—he goes off to do something for you. Once you are on the Trocaran mothership, you run into him again, he’s in a cell and you talk about getting him out. Later, you come to a place where you can look through a window into an operating room—he’s screaming as he is being dissected. He sees you and screams for your help, but you can’t do anything.

Multiplayer

• You can "target" a player and tap a key to bring up, floating above their head, their trophy image, name, kill count, and a colored icon to indicate their health (green, yellow, red).
• A Multiplayer variation: all the time, the players are losing health. When they kill another player, an "ethereal spirit" rises up out of the corpse and remains there for 5 seconds or so. Running through this spirit cloud will give a 10% health boost. There are no other health powerups. Other players can run through the spirit of a kill you just made.
• Detailed scoring system—let’s have a very detailed, very cool multiplayer scoring system. One cool area to highlight could be suicides that you take someone else with you—either weapon overload or jump into lava or something like that. We also want to reward "most excellent" kills with some special score, like taking out someone with a pistol when they have a rocket launcher, or you have virtually no health, etc. Frags could be scored based on the difference between weapon types—if you have a rocket launcher and your target has a pistol, you don’t get much at all, but if you have the pistol and you take out a guy with a rocket launcher, then you get mega-points. You get bonus points if you have low health when you make a kill. Question: should you earn points just for damaging someone and not killing them? What about the times when you "soften up" an opponent and then some bozo comes in and gives him the final shot to earn the kill.
• Celebration animation: after a multiplayer game, the winner gets to showcase his character’s "celebration animation." All players in the game get to see this animation pseudo-cinematic. All characters that we allow players to play in Multiplayer will have a celebration animation, but players can create their own as well, both for existing characters and for their own characters that they create from scratch.
• Loyal will have animated texture swatches—actually just additional swatches that will serve as animation frames. A Multiplayer tribe can then create their own team model, animation and skin (or just reskin Talon). Then, they can have something like 8 "frames" of faces—these would be the faces of each tribe member—in the game, the choose their face. Too cool!

October design meetings

October 1, 1997

We reviewed the initial draft of the design doc, and talked a little bit more about what we want out of Dark Harvest, as a game.

Let’s really give a sense of passing time. In certain exterior areas, let’s have it deep night at times and "artificial dawn" at other times. When a player enters a hallway, for example, let’s have it fully lit most of the time, and lit by "emergency" lights at other times (presumably at "night" or other low-traffic times). When it’s lit only by emergency lights, the chance of a random encounter is less than during "normal business hours."

Instead of having keys for a single door, have some sort of device (key, access card, access bracelet, etc.) that operates a whole class of doors. That way, a player may explore an area, but only certain doors or avenues may be open. In another environment, Talon nabs the access bracelet, so now when he returns to a previously explored level, there are new areas now accessible.

Let’s make the goals in the game dynamic in some way—if a player accomplishes a goal with greater risk (attack rather than stealth, for example), then the rewards can be grander.

If possible, let’s have more "goals" or "missions" than are needed—that way, player A and player B might take on different goals during their work through the game.

In single play, Talon can’t have his arms blown off etc., but what if we make that part of "nightmare" difficulty—he can lose limbs.

Let’s allow blood to drip from severed limbs (in multiplay) or deep wounds, such that they can create a trail to your Dark Harvest (sic).

In the trailer park/gas station area, let’s have Talon see the Trocaran shuttle ship relocate to the area on the other side of the missile base—it will help to prompt him to go on.

The intelligent species in the shareware level are the Keepers, but Talon might only catch a glimpse of one or two (in the end-episode cinematic, Talon will catch a glimpse of the insectoids or saurians).

The shareware episode takes place at night, but during the small level of the exterior area with the Trocaran shuttle, let’s have it be dawn.

When you are playing level 5, you can get onto the ship either forcibly or through stealth—how you get onto the ship effects the situation in level 6.

In level 6, the episode ends when Talon gets to the bridge of the ship and attempts to take over and fly the thing—he’ll either be there alone or with some of the captives, depending on what he’s done previously. As he fumbles with the controls, the beasts are pounding at the only door into the bridge—he’s captured (triggering the end-episode cinematic) when the beasts finally break into the bridge and swarm him (it’s inevitable).

The shareware levels were agreed upon and here is the breakdown, including the mapper for each level:

1 Talon’s Apache reservation (large) – John

Trailer park/gas station (medium) – Matt

Nike missile base exterior (small) – John

Nike silo interior with alien facility (large) – Matt

Exterior area with Trocaran shuttle ship (small) – John

Trocaran shuttle ship (medium) – Matt

October 2, 1997

We talked primarily of the vampire-like humanoids and their weapons. He is what we decided:

The female vampire humanoids are humanoid alternates, however, they are very intelligent compared to other alternates. They have split off into a sort of gang (picture the gang groups in Escape From New York), and live in the shadows of the ship, primarily in the humanoid areas, but they venture elsewhere as well. While the humanoid primaries are cannibals, these vampires survive primarily on humanoid blood, gathered via their weapon. They can survive somewhat on Saurian blood (it makes them sick, though) and insectoid blood is toxic.

There are two types: basic vampire chicks and the leader (tentatively named Hataa-skeen). The basic vampire chicks are "standard" enemies. Hataa-skeen is their leader, but is also a character in the game, who confronts Talon on several occasions and even offers some assistance later in the game. Dramatically, she is the character archetype "emotion" for the protagonist Talon. The basic vampire chicks and Hataa-skeen will be different models, but they will share similar features.

Their weapon will be one of the primary weapons that Talon can use in the game (also in multiplayer). It looks like a long cyberpunkish spear. It has two attack modes—melee and vampire. In melee mode, the vampires (and Talon) can slash with both ends at close quarters—this offers a potent attack but it can also be utilized as a defensive blocking weapon. In vampire mode, the weapon fires out its tip—this tip is connected, via and energy strand, back to the spear. When it strikes a foe, it will begin draining life, which can be seen as red moving back along the cool blue energy field. The speed of this drain is based upon the distance of the target (closer is faster). The player fires again to release the weapon. Once draining begins, health will drain from the target and feed into Talon. Remember, if the target is in multiplayer or a humanoid, health will be clean. If the target is saurian, then it may give health or it may damage Talon (allergic reaction). Against an insectoid, this weapon will damage Talon. In addition to the vampire attack, this weapon can be used in two other ways—the energy filament can cause damage, so that traps and trip wires can be set by the player. Also, it works somewhat like the Quake grappling hook, allowing the player to swing and access other areas.

Matt encapsulated the "feel" of the three main species nicely: Humanoid: cyberpunk, run down, Star Wars rebellion. Saurian: Star Trek, Maya, Star Wars Empire. Insectoid: Alien, bio-stuff

October 3, 1997

From a Scott Miller email:

One of my concerns for Dark Harvest is that we strike terror within players' pounding hearts. The big question is how to do this.

In movies, such as Alien (the scariest movie of all-time, IMO), viewers were put in tense situations, knowing danger lurked somewhere, but not knowing when the danger would leap forth. This is fairly easy to accomplish in Dark Harvest by having enemies surprise the player in a *wide variety* of unsuspecting ways. These ways should be staged by the level designers.

Another good way to invoke fear is to hold the player captive, seemingly in a hopeless situation, and show the danger coming slowly but surely, such as when James Bond was on the table with the laser beam coming toward him in Goldfinger. How is this accomplished within the game? Possibly by having Talon captured and put into a situation that is certain death unless he figures the way out, such as tied to a post in a room with water rising slowly.

My concern is that, unlike in other 3D shooters I've played, we can truly evoke movie-theater-like fear in the player. This may mean slower (by this I mean less action-oriented) areas of the game, but with true haunted house style suspense as the player explores.

October 4, 1997

We reviewed Allen’s models, and sat down to discuss two saurian "alternates."

The quad-beast was decided as a "must do" model. Allen will model it with a 650 maximum poly count (because we see them moving in packs). He will model standard sever points (head, legs and tail), and other interesting variations will be handled algorithmically via some sort of splitting function.

The beast will be one of those that will appear in episode 1, as the aliens destroy Talon’s reservation. They will often appear in groups. When wandering, the bony ridges of the back will remain flat—in aggressive mode, they will raise up. When fired upon, the beast will hunch back, hiding behind its bony skull and bony protrusions. It will have a leaping bite attack. At times, it will try to leap and push its Dark Harvest to the ground—then it will mount and begin a vicious slashing and biting attack at close range. It can also slam down its tail to spawn a "sonic" shockwave. We all thought that it would be cool to play as this beast in multiplayer.

"Stumpy," the 4-foot tall Ofarian Guard, is another saurian alternate that was chosen as "golden." This creature will turn and flee if it is alone, but in packs of two or three (called Ofarian Clusters), it will attack. The creature has a wrist mounted energy weapon as well as a transforming shield/axe.

In neutral state (when the guard is simply walking around), the weapon will be in its long state, but the energy blade will be dormant. If fired upon, the weapon will transform itself into a shield. The guard will hide behind the shield and fire with the energy weapon. For a melee attack, the guard’s weapon will transform into a unique laser battle axe, which he will swing at his foes—if there’s a hit, it does a helluva lot of damage. As a surprise attack, after it swings the axe down, it can fire its wrist weapon.

These creatures attack in Clusters. One guard sets himself up as the
"target" attempting to garner the attention of their Dark Harvest. He stays at long range and fires from behind his shield. The other one or two guards will attempt to disappear into the shadows and flank the Dark Harvest, then charge in with a melee attack. If they successfully engage the prey, then the target may run up and initiate a melee attack as well.

We also talked about playing as other creatures in multiplayer. When we play as an alien, it would be nice to have the visual display change to reflect the creature, but we need to make sure that it doesn’t interfere with the player’s visual perceptions. As an example, if you play as an insectoid, have the screen chance to be a large hexagon, which is the normal view—the four "triangles" that make up the remainder of the screen can be warped like insect vision, but they can give a far greater field of view.

October 8, 1997

We talked about weaponry in general. The age-old argument of first-person specific model vs. our approach surfaced again. George thinks that we’re nuts to make it the same model, but he’ll reserve final judgement until we can get it working (or not) the way we want.

Since we want to have the third person and first-person weapon be the same thing, we need to pay special attention to the modeling of Talon’s (and other multiplayer character’s hands). This means that Allen will need to spend some polys for better geometry resolution (no fingers, though). Scott will also have to burn some more texture space, as well, on the visible part of the hands.

Talon’s "mundane" weapon will be the long-barreled 1880’s Colt peacemaker pistol. Talon got it from his great grandfather, who, in-turn got it from his father before that. This weapon and the basic version of the blaster below (plus any bludgeoning weapons) will be all Talon has for episode 1 (perhaps we should add one more weapon—something like a thrown bomb or detonator?).

Talon’s spirit guide (the great grandfather) will have left caches of shells for the weapon on the Trocaran ship—not too many, but enough where needed. In some areas, that weapon will be the only effective weapon. Perhaps, later in the game, Talon can modify and "create" some type of explosive shells for the gun.

There will be two fire modes: normal and rapid (Talon fires with two hands—one slapping back the hammer). It holds six shots and automatically reloads in a quick animation.

The "basic" sf weapon is the humanoid blaster. This is a modular weapon which has three parts: a pistol-like blaster core, a barrel and stock extension and a scope. It has two fire modes: an energy "pulse" and a standard immediate laser. The energy pulse does normal damage and possesses some kinetic punch. The laser is a heat mode—it does damage to opponents, but it can also do heat damage to locks, etc.

When the weapon is pistol only, it is nearly silent in pulse mode and totally silent in laser mode. When the extensions are added, the damage increases, but the bolts (and even the laser beam) produce more sound, alerting those entities around the shot.

The scope is a standard optical scope—when used, the entire screen becomes magnified and superimposed with some "scope metrics." Perhaps we could use short bursts of the laser mode as a laser sighting feature—not enough damage in a short burst, but it might provide some crucial targeting info and some metrics information.

October 13, 1997

From an email by Scott Miller:

This is for Duke primarily, but Paul you might want to consider this for Dark Harvest, too.

I think in Duke we should have two classes of inventory items. The first class is contains stuff like we've seen in Duke 3D's inventory and other 3D game's inventories.

The new class is what I call the "adventure game class." Accessed by a different method or button, this class contains items that are likely only used once or twice in the game to solve a puzzle. For example, a wire-repair kit to repair a panel to open a door. It's used once and disappears forever from your inventory. Or a can of oil that you poor into a machine to get it working. Or a piece of paper containing a code to be used later. Basically, inventory items like you found in adventure games, and you hung onto them until you figured out how and where to use them.

Sure, we'd already thought of this idea, but I think we need to push it and make it integral to the game. The idea of making these inventory items a separate key helps solidify this idea. And when this key is pressed a full list of all of the items appears on the screen along one side, and a moving highlight bar can scroll up and down through the list to pick the item you want to hold in your left had (which allows you to *use* the item where you want).

For the most part, these items replace keys. I think it'll add a lot to Duke (maybe Dark Harvest) to find special items and figure out where they should be used.

In Duke, for example, you could find a can of gas, empty bottles, some rags, and make a Molotov cocktail. Imagine the player's excitement in figuring this out. On the other hand, the player might put the can of gas somewhere and attach a proximity fuse to it, making a gas mine. Giving the player this freedom to make objects will be seen as ultra-cool.

October 14, 1997

Let’s have some energy weapons that you can set on "overload" mode—they then become, in effect, time bombs and explode horribly after a time—this would be great in multiplayer as a cool "suicide" to take another life when you blow up.

A "death blossom" grenade—you can set it or toss it—it detonates after a time. When it detonates, it rises up about 3 feet and spins, shooting off laser beams in all directions

Vampire spear—let’s have it only stick in biological stuff (eliminated grappling hook design problems)—can shoot it at a flying insect and fly, but only until the blood gets back and starts hurting you.

Insectoid grenade launcher (Allen’s idea). Primary fire mode is a glob of explosive goo—when you fire, a chitineous hull is put over it and it bounces and fires like a "standard" a spherical grenade. In fire mode two, the shell isn’t put on, so that the grenade sticks to targets (other players too). If it sticks on a player, they can jump in water to loosen the glue. Detonates after 5-6 seconds.

Scoring system—let’s have a very detailed, very cool multiplayer scoring system. One cool area to highlight could be suicides that you take someone else with you—either weapon overload or jump into lava or something like that. We also want to reward "most excellent" kills with some special score, like taking out someone with a pistol when they have a rocket launcher, or you have virtually no health, etc.

Highlight films—perhaps in a multiplayer session, a demo can be recorded constantly—when the game is exited, the film is compressed so that only "spectacular" kills are recorded and we can then watch the highlight film.

October 15, 1997

Perhaps there is some whole level dedicated to defeating the cyber-vamp tribe. Perhaps they all (the minions, not the leader) have tattoos on their face or something like that—you must sever their heads and place them on a tsompantli in the proper order to get a map or some other useful information. Once you rock all over the vampire minions, you will earn the "fragile allegiance" of the vampire leader, but she, via a cinematic, will tell you that she can crush you utterly—that it’s to her advantage to take you out.

Let’s see if we can have the vamp leader have red particle system hair, like it’s on fire.

If Talon attacks the vamp leader, she rocks on him, leaving him very damaged and she’ll run off, to be met later.

October 17, 1997

From a discussion with Scott Miller:

A multiplay "mystical" mode—all players are losing health all the time (1 point per 3 seconds, for example). When they kill a player, a "mystical spirit" rises from their corpse and remains there for 5-10 seconds—run through it (anyone), and receive a 10% health boost. It eliminates campers, adds a mystical feel to the game and adds pressure to the experience.

October 20, 1997

From an email by Scott Miller:

What if one of the skill levels was "Automatic"?

In this skill level, the game would automatically adjust to the players

skill level, based on how close to death the player came, how many

secrets he found, how fast the level was completed, what percentage of

enemies on the level was killed, etc.

When Automatic mode is selected, the game starts on the medium skill

level. After the first level is done, the game evaluates the player and

either stays at the medium skill level for the next game level, or goes

up or down a level. After each level the game re-evaluates the player

and adjusts the skill level if needed.

This should be *very easy* to implement, and would be another 3D Realms

first.

What made me think of this was a magazine article that was commenting on

skill levels in 3D shooters and when were they going to be smart enough

to be automatic. I think we can be smart enough to do it first.

October 24, 1997

From an email by Scott Miller:

Some ideas:

[1] Noticed that in Sid Meier's Gettysburg, that troops on higher

ground have an advantage of troops on lower ground (makes sense). In

Dark Harvest, what about doing something similar, such that enemies (or Talon)

that are higher that who they're attacking get a *slight* advantage, but

adding a few percent more damage power to their weapon, and only if the

higher enemy in at least 6 feet higher or more. Note that this will

only affect gameplay very slightly, but it *will* be an

attention-to-detail item that we can claim. And when players see that

we have a detail like this in the game, they automatically think we've

got other cool details. Same with the Press. :)

[2] What about the idea of having areas in the game that are

damaging-at-a-range to Talon. For example, let's say crystal clusters

give off radiation (which makes sense since they are unstable, can

explode, or be used as a power source by knocking off a small piece) and

if Talon is within a few feet (let's say ten feet) of a crystal cluster,

then his health drains, let's say at the rate of 1 point per 2 seconds.

Once again, another detail that shows we've given a lot of thought to

the game (just like in Q2, with the flies around bodies, and the dead

guy still firing off some shots).

[3] I want to remind you about the idea of parasites in Dark Harvest, which are

creatures that are not one of the four primary races, but still like

rats and pests in Trocara. One of these is an acid slime slug, about

six inches long and as thick as a baseball, which just moves around like

a slug on walls and floors. If you step on one you lose a few health

points, but you can also grab one and throw it like as an acid grenade

at enemies. Also, since it's organic, it goes though electromagnetic

shields.

We should have other parasites in the game, too. What about something

small (size of a big rat) that appears to come out of cracks in the

walls sometimes and feasts on just-killed actors? What might be cool is

if they sometimes came out and chowed down on fallen actors who are not

dead yet, but too weak to get up (i.e. health 3% or below triggers this

state--the player can finish them off, too), and you heard them

screaming! This would give players chills, I think.

October 27, 1997

Let’s allow the player to access our internal scoring system from within the Dark Harvest console (perhaps that’s how a player can access it anytime—otherwise, it’s only seen after a player completes a mission, level, etc.). We’ll use the score system internally to drive our invisible "confidence meter."

We could have scores like this: a kill—2 pts. (perhaps this score should be based upon the health level of the target—bigger critter, more points), finding a secret is 3 points, subtract points for all health lost from attacks, add points for health remaining at end of level (or whenever player checks the score), etc.

To reiterated what we’ve talked about before, let’s allow Talon to learn a vocabulary of limited words which can then be said from a keypress—this can be used for all sorts of things—getting something from an actor, activating a voice activated door, etc.

October 31, 1997

Scott, Steve, John, Matt and Paul all met to discuss the texture set that Scott and Steve created. We reviewed the architectural/artistic themes document, and explored the four regions (Insectoid, Keeper, Humanoid and Saurian) in light of the new textures.

We came to the conclusion that the Insectoids are easy to visualize, but we need to make sure that there is enough juxtaposition between organic and manufactured within Insectoid levels. We suggested texture sets that are membranes stretches over mechanical girders, wires, etc. Scott suggested teeth-like columns of metal grabbing into the organic goop in between.

The humanoids are the easiest for us to visualize, but we amended the themes document by enhancing the rusty, corrosion filled nature of their areas, and pulling back on their "costumed"

The meat of the discussions focused on the subtle differences between the Keepers and the Saurians. We agreed that the Saurians have evolved into a far more regal (and less animalistic) species than we first envisioned. We liked a clean, "professional" look for the Saurians, with the truncated triangle (equilateral trapezoid) as their common design motif. They often use bone-like or concrete color motifs. They also work with a very circular, but simple iconographic design motif.

The Keepers embrace the colors of royal green and parchment and they make use of semi-circular design element. Their textures show the most age and sophistication, and they have a very filigreed and curvaceous design motif.

We agreed that Scott and Steve would refine their texture sets, and then we would pick several textures for each species to serve as "reference tiles." Steve and Scott will work in all four areas, but they will work in texture sets to main continuity.

Matt and John will spend the next week building reference rooms of each of the four species, paying special attention to what they imagine to be recurrent architectural design motifs. We’ll meet on Nov. 13 to review the rooms.

Rockful ideas



* As Talon moves along in the single player game, he is secretly "scored"-when he reaches certain score thresholds, his demeanor will change (he is growing more confidant), so that the content of his spoken dialogue will alter. We may also want to give him slight performance bonuses, as well.

* Talon's great grandfather will appear to Talon as an Obi-wan-like spirit in the game, helping him at times. His spirit type is "plain-walker" and Talon will encounter other "walkers" in the game, some good, some malevolent.

* Have Talon "warp" between two separate experiences, changing location and time within the Trocara ship. This can give us a unique way to deliver the story, as well as create a sense of player tension (he may explore the same room, but it has changed somewhat, for example). One possibility is that he has made a "spirit connection" with the plain walker that is his great grandfather and becomes him, at an earlier time, during an earlier abduction (when Earth was not on the brink that it is now). Another, related way to approach it is that Talon's great grandfather is actually Talon-and the connection Talon had as a small child was a contact between and old and new "version" of his self

* At the end of the shareware, Talon is "abducted" and operated upon-he is literally disassembled and then re-assembled. This process helps to awaken some mystical powers within him. Talon is also fitted with a translation device-this allows him to, at time, decipher the alien's language (all except the insectoids-their language should remain wholly unintelligible)

* Talon's default weapon, the wrench, will also come in handy during some "fix it up" puzzles and operations

* Talon can urinate-this might just be done for relief, but may be key in some puzzle situations (like shorting out some wires to open a door, or to make some ammo insolvent).

* Maybe have the Keeper's realm be a sort of "game hub" (we can utilize this "central area concept in multiplayer as well). This is where Talon goes to choose between the many areas that compromise the Trocaran ship-the way he gets "from here to there" is varied: some are doors, some are shuttle bays, some are trams and other are portals. Once Talon gets through an area, he can return here to access other areas of the game-some area may require keys or other "tests to be passed" for access. Talon can also regroup and recharge here (an idea: this is the only place that Talon can save a game?). We could possibly do a variation on the "hub" for multiplay areas-this is where player's meet to set up a multiplay game-then move to the level in which they are playing-new passages can be added in the form of user levels and such-perhaps this multiplayer hub can handle access to up to 10 environments-when a player joins an online or Internet game, they enter the hub of a certain server, and then can check out that server's unique levels.

* Modular interfaces on the screen that the player can move around and position anywhere-the game doesn't pause during the move operation, however. The player taps a key (like Tab) to activate the mouse pointer, and can then click and drag the interfaces-tapping the key again returns the player to normal control

* "bot" play should be part of the package-let's let the player choose between three types of play experiences: single play, bot play or multiplay. In bot play, we should have two "flavors"-traditional (like Quake) bot play (coop or deathmatch) and a learned mode, in which the player can create a bot, much as we'll create an AI (with a set of characteristic values). This bot will then learn levels as the player learns, gaining more and more knowledge about the location of prime objects, as well as the player's fighting style. When the player loads the bot into a new level, it will begin learning again.

* Let's see if we can use the Dark Harvest engine for the game cinematics-that way, we can hand control back to the player without ever having a break in the action-we can even use these "engine cinemas" at certain times within the game when Talon may have some interaction (interactive or not) with entities such as Keepers or his spirit guide-the camera can zoom out to 3rd person even, and then "re-enter" Talon's view when finished (as in Resident Evil)

* Let's make the Trocaran ship look many millennia old-the humanoid sections of the ship should be riddled with insectoid infestations and saurian advances on their territory, etc. We should do this "species blending" throughout the game.

* Once Talon has gotten about 2/3 of the way through the game, he is given the "ultimatum" from the Keepers, who tell him that if he survives, Earth will then be "taken out of the game." This allies the humanoid nobles with Talon (all other humanoids and all other species will still attack him).

* Let's have some enemies group together an attack in "packs" or attempt to surround the player

* Some weapon using enemies use the some of the same weapons Talon uses-can use multiple weapons-when Talon kills one, he can grab the weapon (or ammo) of the weapon it was using

* We want to, later in the game, really convey the sense that the Trocaran species wager and gamble with each other in trials of combat (with their genetically enhanced alternates)-we need to see, hear and feel these contests and even place Talon in the middle of them, later in the game

* We most definitely want Talon to be able to blow off arms and legs of his foes (single and multiplay)-maybe we can have Talon get his arm blown off as well? He'd shriek, blood would spatter everywhere, and he'd see his severed arm twitching on the ground-couldn't use 2-handed weapons then. If he has the right stuff in his inventory, perhaps he could make a tourniquet so that he doesn't bleed to death.

* Another option is to have one of Talon's arms replaced with a cybernetic arm after his abduction and mutilation-he could then have some enhanced abilities, and when he looses the arm, he wouldn't automatically begin bleeding.

* We could have Talon, when he loses an arm, grab an arm from certain killed foes, "grafting" it onto his body, and gaining some of that creature's abilities (think of the cool, panicked hunt for a donor arm before the player bleeds to death...)

* We should allow some of the beasties to "morph" into different types of creatures, or variations with alternate abilities-keeps the player guessing

* Natural crystals: crystal formations that grow out of rocks, etc. Perhaps they glow slightly. If the player shoots a formation, the whole thing explodes violently. If, however, the player bashes it with his wrench, then he might be able to break off a "prefect" crystal that is ammo for his crystal gun.

* from the web: in multiplay, when you die, your "spirit" raises up from your body (other can see this? It'd be cool). You can then "remanifest" yourself by either just becoming corporeal again (at any spot), floating to a multiplay-only "soul-to-body conversion station," or simply by picking which start point to materialize into

* we can dynamically link areas in the game via dynamic portals-example: a burrowing insect pops up through the floor to get you (you hear rumbling first), in a shower of earth and haze. When you've killed the burrower, you see his tunnel down to another area.

* Let's have the player get things (such as keys, access codes, etc.) from in-game characters, such as the great-grandfather spiritwalker, etc. Also, we can take advantage of a DNF idea: say you enter a level, and then work your way through it-at the end, you see a dead body and several primaries with weapons, which you must fight though. But if you cruise there right away, you can possibly stop the execution, and get something useful (an object or some information) from the individual that you've just saved.

* In the first levels of the game, let's let Talon have his first cool battle in the motorpool garage, and he can grab his default weapon there-it can be something like a wrench, a crowbar, a big screwdriver, etc. Each will offer some cool type of attack and tool benefit later in the game

* Idea from Todd (DNF): let's have a large humanoid alternate-when the player sees him, he seems to have these things wrapped around him. It turns out that its actually an insectoid alternate, specifically bred to control this humanoid (to aid in their war with the humanoids). If the player kills the humanoid, then the spider thing will leap off and attack. Too cool!

* Let's have a "necklace of kills" that the play sees before loading a new play session (once he's played for a while). It will be filled with fingers, ears, etc. (done in cool 3D) of critters he's killed. It'll let the player see at a glance where he's at and the proud killin' he's done. As an aside, we could have a button that the player can click that will make this necklace, plus some other cool Dark Harvest stuff, into a .bmp image that it loads into the Windows directory and makes the current wallpaper.

* What if we have different gun positions? There is a standard "gun held at ready" position. He can run, jump, fire, etc. He can switch to a gun standby position, which will let him run faster and jump farther, but not fire (if he fires, it will switch back to gun ready position). He can also sling the gun on his back for climbing, etc. Finally, when standing perfectly still, he can raise the gun to his shoulder for a better, more stable "sniper-like" shot.

* Allen's idea: what if Talon saw a helpless woman huddled in a dark corner, moaning for help? Talon goes over to help, but suddenly she flashes out of the way, and a large boss steps into the light. The "woman" was actually an appendage of the beast, like those things hanging in front of deep sea fishes to attract their Dark Harvest.

* Let's have a "stealth" mode-no weapon drawn, slower than walking, but Talon is quieter and more difficult to see (allowing him to do sneak attacks)


-----------------------------
August 15 1997, Scott McCabe
-----------------------------

- In battle, it would be cool if the person your fighting starts
off fighting normal, if you're kicking his ass, his shots become
more aggressive and exaggerated. Once in a while if you're REALLY
kicking ass, it could do a battle cry (now this should be rare)
so spine tingling it can really scare the player.

- When loading a level, for example, have the ai take into the
account of the size of the level, fill it with monsters but
each time you play that level, the monsters start in all
different spots. So that the player cannot simply "breeze"
through the level by knowing where all the goons are.

- Sometimes in battle, being able to get close enough to someone
(ie. Saurian) to where you're waiting for him to move and he's
waiting for you...but during this tense moment, you can see him
staring you down but it can actually blink it's eyes...this can
give the player an even more frightening experience by looking
it dead in the eyes.

- Before play, the game can actually take the models and apply
different skins. By this I mean for example, take one saurian,
for that model it has 5 different skins (for 5 different looks
of the dude) and randomly apply the skins so that they also
appear differently each time you play.


- Have a Saurian that is nothing but an earth equivalent to the
elephant, it gets ridden but you can actually shoot the rider,
and take over this creature for transportation.


- At the start Talon should be Joe Normal. But as the game moves
on, he , like his past Indian relatives, can take "souviniers"
from certain "Bosses" (if the player so chooses) so that in
the end he emerges looking like a true warrior. Perhaps certain
items help him out (ie. A Claw from a Saurian boss gives him luck)
he can actually use with his character while playing on the internet.


- Twitching bodies....depending on the strength of the shot, an enemy
could fall to the ground....twitch for a bit and die but sometimes
twitch but later be able to pick up their gun for a surprise attack.

- Have a choice for a default weapon...being able to pick up a weapon
from a variety of different stuff (ie. knife, wrench yadda yadda) and/or
2 firing weapons , (peacekeeping pistol or bolt action rifle)

* Pistol that is loud, powerful, long barrel, very old (possibility of
misfire), and must be reloaded every eight or so shots.


============================================

Loyal's Nifty Ideas:
8/15/1997 Skateboarder monster (I think that Matt would like this!)
Medium that we travel through. We have seen too many lava and water effects.
Thick cloudy oddly windy and torrential mediums
Ether that gives you a wacky drug effect
Rain
Snow (good and swirling)

First person camera that is completely correct as the third person view!
Yes! it will make stuff mega-simple!
No special cases!

8/28/1997
Shrinking the weapon to make it fit into your backpack
inventory items around your belt (you look down to select something)
no numbers (health is analogue breathing heavily bad controls,
ammo read-out on the gun, inventory see above)

--Two headed monster that is controled by two different people (good for monster cam)
portal for seeing what a monster sees

William:
8/18/1997
The decal poster of the chick on the wall
when you shoot it it turns into a portal and the chick jumps out and rocks you.
Switches that are that nifty deformed geometry

UPDATED August 15th by Allen
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
*3D interactive interface for main menu.

*Setup menus and configuring should be as "graphical" and point and click as possible.

*TONS of options in the config.

*More hand to hand combat than typical shooter. Have the ability to grab an entity as you whack it or throw it. Also some kinds of "combo" moves to counter an attack or kick them up in the air to then shoot, etc. Todd's idea for DNF: grab and use enemies as shields. cool no?

*Force field corridor barriers that you can pass through, but take 1/4 of your damage(unless you turn them off). Might make for interesting puzzles. (like you're surrounded by these fields and you can only move through 3 of them to get out of a maze or you'll die.

*You can destroy sensors in a room or area to keep enemy troops from finding you immediately.

*Big crystal walls in insectiod level that refracts energy weapon shots, so you can't fire a lot (or just don't miss) without having blasts bounce everywhere and hitting yourself.

*Anitgrav rooms where you have Grav boots that you can turn off and on to get around. Like turning them off and then jumping towards another wall or ceiling and then rotate 180 and turn them on again to stick.

*Level that has transparent tube transports (like gerbil tubes) for zooming around in, and also fighting in them as you zoom around to the tubes destination.

*Level that has a cloning machine Talon can use to make a small temporary squad for co-op against lots of enemies or a bad-ass boss.

*Bots ("Preditors?") you can use for CTF levels and co-op against real players. This way you don't always need an even number of players for team games. Make the AI smart enough to be able to take orders and learn. Ex: "Bot, get flag" "defend base" "defend me" etc.

*End of a level where you start going down an insectoid corridor, then fight nursery guards who are carrying and protecting larvae. You keep going and notice you're now in a slimy, organic tunnel. As you progress you fight maggots and finally discover that you're inside a huge insectoid mother. You end up destroying her from the inside as her immune system tries to thwart you.

*Add flashlight (ala 3DFX demo), maybe Infrared lens to follow footprints?

*Primary's throw humans at lower GM's to slaughter and eat.

*Grandfather's words as Talon wakes from dream to start cinematic "The circle (cycle) begins again..." (In Apache with subtitles?)

*Enemies can run out of ammo too and also try to get powerups.

*Roll sideways and get off a few low % shots. (make it a combo move?)

*Jabba's palace door-robot sensor thingy that scans you before you can enter a room. You have to use a Personal Holographic Camo Projector belt device to look like a saurian to gain entry.

*Big, alien, floating orb-like things in levels. Possibly generators?

*Ground rumbles and shakes when close to big dinos.

*Big Roman-esque bathing house social area for saurians.

*Doors that are stuck partially open and you have to use a manual pump in side panel to open it.

*Weapons depo area or factory with moving gears, belts,etc. that you can't fire inside it without blowing it all up so you're forced to use stealthy hand to hand to reach goal.

*Dune-esque personal shield so you can't be damaged if you're still, only venerable when moving.

*Robotech protoculture-like powersource for certain weapons and powerups that can scanned and traced by sensors when in use.

*Last thing you see after bloody hand to hand defeat is the monster bending down and laughing in your face?

*AI ideas: Enemies can get frustrated, have dying/mad bezerker scream, be able to be scared/surprised by you, and some enemies have unknown intentions at first- you don't know if they're good or bad.

*Instead of boring lava (why the hell would lava be on a spaceship anyway), have flowing, crackling crystal-like substance. If you step in it, it will start to grow up your leg and crystallize, inflicting damage. If you get out before it overtakes you, you can move and kick to shatter it although the whole process will fuck you up. If you fall in a deep pool of it, you're pretty much fucked unless you have a jetpack, shield, etc.

*Talon curses and comments when you're totally out of ammo. Also he curses when a shot is close to him. Comments when loading weapon during a firefight. ("Get in there you piece of shit!!",etc.)

*Cool-ass blizzard like arctic area (probably outside in land areas up in a mountain range, and although it's closer to the "sun", the atmosphere is thinner).

*Aquatic saurian levels, maybe swampy or an awesome, huge ocean area with big alien battleships,etc. you run around on. Perhaps a waterworld type level miniadventure or underwater saurian base areas with lots of windows for great views and effects! please,please,please!!!!

*(Scott Miller's idea)In one level, let's have Talon walk past a forcefield of some sort. Through it, he can see some mondo creature/boss just rocking on "lesser" creatures, destroying them utterly. In a few levels, let's have Talon open some door and there he is, in that arena, ready to face that boss.


----------------------------------------------
Scott McCabe's Appendum [August 22 1997]
----------------------------------------------

*What about a level or part of a level, that is mostly based on speed.
Like, huge air tunnels that the player can only accelerate but never
slow down. The player(s) can fight each other or enemies wizzing along
at a smooth 200+mph. Also, there could be things that the player can
grab hold off or even switches to shoot (ie. Railroad tracks) to switch
tunnels to make things harder. These would either switch tunnel tracks
or activate traps. Example, players racing down this air tunnel shooting,
then one shoots a switch, opens a tunnel and closes off another, if the
one player manouvers over so that he gets pulled in to the other tunnel,
he's safe while the other (not knowing what happened) gets slammed into
a closed door and thus dies.

*It would be cool if characters had memory. Like if the player shoots
a family member of a certain species, the living members can seek revenge
and comes to kill the player at the most least expected time.

*Since Talon is an Indian, it would be cool if he could "track" things
but without the use of technology. He could say something to the player
that could drop a hint of what he's tracking.

*Timed events would be cool. Like for example, the humanoid section would
have timed sewer flushes. The player would die if caught in something like
this. In order to avoid it, he could pick up something like a "Trocaran Watch"
so that he could avoid such things.

=============================================
Scott Miller's Brainfarts:

* Mystic Walking -- After Talon first meets his grandfather, a plainwalker, he gets a medallion, which his grandfather says gives him a special ability, but doesn't say what. That ability, to be discovered by the player, is "mystic walking." The player presses a key that puts Talon in this mode, which allows Talon to leave his body and move in any direction, including up. This allows Talon to see in places he might not be able to see otherwise, and preview look around corners to see what awaits. When this mode is activated a Mystic Meter appears which shows how much time is left to do this. The whole while Talon's real body is motionless, but still open to attack. Any attack automatically pulls Talon back to his body. The journey back to his body is swift, and done using the spline method, so it'll look cool. Talon's mystic energy recharges slowly, so this is not an ability he can use often to great effect. Like a ghost, I don't think Talon should be able to in any way affect his surroundings will out of his body.

* Base the weapons on what the various enemies might likely use (Every weapon is alien in design, except the first which is a wrench, and/or the knife that Talon carries, if we use this weapon). The humanoids will likely have the high tech weapons and shields. The Saurians can have the stranger weapons and bio-weapons, like the Stinger (below). The Insectoids should not have weapons other than those it has built-in (they can spit acid streams, shoot stingers, shot webs, etc.) Basically, Talon can only have weapons that are also used by his foes. He shouldn't have any weapon that isn't used by an enemy. Weapons in this game are a discovery process for the player. Several might have a secondary mode that is not known until much later in the game. The game manual must not describe what the weapons do.

* Weapon idea: Slugs that are ripe with acid, and if stepped on will deliver damage. You can collect them and throw them as if they're acid grenades. They just slither around rather aimlessly. Because they're organic, shields do not protect against them.

* Weapon idea: Stinger -- A bio-style weapon similar to the wasp's or scorpion's stinger. Shoots a stinger that hits and delivers 20 points of damage (a number used just for illustration), but the damage occurs at a rate of 1 point per second. If hit several times then each stinger is delivering 1 damage point per second. Stingers penetrate all shields because they are organic. A person with 30 points of health might get hit with two stingers (40 points of damage over 20 seconds), but be able to find enough health before dying.

* Shields -- These do not protect against biological weapons, such as the slug and stinger. Shields protect against energy and mechanical objects. A shield device is worn on Talon's belt. Only humanoids use shields, not the other two species.

* Cloaking device -- Attached to Talon's belt. When standing still you're 90% invisible. When moving you're 75% invisible. When firing an energy weapon you're 100% visible while firing. Using a non-energy weapon, like a slug, will not affect your current cloaked percentage. Several tactical trade-offs are incorporated here.

* Bosses: Multi-stage bosses that are not killed via the all to common circle-strafe technique. Multi-stage means that they change at points during the attack, similar to how Hitler changed from the robot to the human-form at the end of Wolfenstein 3D.

* Natural Crystals -- These are crystals that grow out of rocks. There are two color types, one is rare and more powerful. These crystals are unstable and will explode if set-off with a blast of energy from another source, such as a weapon. If you find an out-cropping of crystals and you hit them with your wrench, you might break off a piece useful for your crystal gun--hit the crystal two many times and it'll explode in your face, so you need to be careful. You might also find smaller crystals in walls/rocks that you can take. These crystals out-croppings can be used to blow holes in walls or kill nearby enemies. The chipped off pieces (or small pieces you find) can be used in your crystal weapon.

* AI Considerations: In making actor AI, we should dissect what it is about players in a multiplayer game that makes them appear to be intelligent. The following issues make human players appear intelligent:
1. Humans react different to opponents depending on the opponents weapon. This can be replicated by a number of actors.
2. Humans use a wide range of available weapons, and make intelligent choices on which weapon to use in different circumstances. For actors, some should be able to use two, three, maybe up to four or five weapons. I do not think that it's prudent to have these actors seek out or use weapons that are available for the player to pick up. Instead, I think these actors should already have these weapons on them.
3. Humans use all of the power-ups available, which obviously shows them making intelligent decisions. This might be tough for actors to do, too, since I think power-ups, like ammo and weapons, should be reserved for the player's use and the mappers shouldn't need to be concerned if a strategically placed power-up will be used by an actor before the player gets to it. However, some actors should use certain power-ups as if they already have them in their inventory, such as maybe an invisibility device. Overall, this is a hard ability to get actors to duplicate, so it should be very low on the priority list.
4. Humans use all of the interactive parts of the level, such as doors, switches, computer screens, elevators, vehicles, etc. Some actors should also use these things.
5. Humans can fire while moving forward, backward and strafing. Actors should do the same them unless they have attacks that don't make sense for this.
6. Humans will run away and dodge when necessary, rather than always pursuing the target without personal concern for damage. Many actors should do the same.
7. Humans will seek advantage points in a level to snipe from, or to have a better position on opponents. We can flag certain level locations as "vantage points" so that certain actors (with long range attacks) can go to these points easily if they choose.
8. Humans know a levels full layout and make movement and pursuit decisions based on this knowledge (whereas in all previous 3D shooters the actors do not know a level's layout at all, and simply follow the player via a line-of-sight algorithm. Actors can be given a better understanding of a level's layout by mappers placing a "player pursuit array" (PPA) at junctions in the map in which the actor might not know which way is best to go because the player has already left its line-of-sight. For example, an actor spots and player and the player bolts away around a corner and into a room that has two other exits and a ladder going up. The mapper can place a PPA at this junction that gives each direction a percentage value (they all add up to 100%), and based on those values the actor picks a direction of pursuit rather than just giving up the chase.
9. Humans do unpredictable things while playing. Actors can be programmed to do unexpected things, too, such as randomly going into a plan (see above) that is a series of moves, such as running out of the room, waiting 5 seconds, then running back into the room guns blazing.

[Sept 20th by matt]

* this might be a bit fantasy style, but with all of exploited portal crap, we should have some sort or 'portal' container for talon to carry that can hold more inventory than it seems it could. as an example a zipper of infinate holding like the old Sorcerer game. it is just a zipper, but when you open it, it is a black hole (or PORTAL) that can hold a shit load of stuff. if we have an inventory, Talon could aquire this to give an excuse for all of the heavy shit that he will be carrying. in the beginning (before he gets it), he has to discard objects/weapons because he cant carry them.

* i want to have a firehose in a level. not necessarily a 'hose' but a nozzle that shoots water/sludge/sewage that you could pummel players/enemies with and they would totaly fly back against a wall or whatever. not really a destructive device, but a cool one none-the-less. you could really hose things down and piss people off by blocking a doorway off with it. you could even rig it to stay on and players would have to take alternate routes to get to the nozzle to turn it off.

* WE NEED A SHOTGUN! this is my excuse for having a shotgun style weapon, but not calling it that or whatever. A crystal or rock exploder or something of that nature. WTF does it underline this sheeyat?? Anyway...Judge Dredd the movie had this AWSOME shot gun thing that had this high pitched ping/hum when it shot and when you cocked/reloaded, it gave this high-pitched kick ass tech sound. It also made this fine mist when it shot (hollywood effect im sure) but it was cool. We should all watch it. Anyway, my idea was to have this kind of gun but you load a crystal/rock thing/something hard into it and it crushes it at a very high speed and projects it out of the barrel. Dammit we just need it. :p


*OLD POWER-UPS/WEAPONS IDEAS from Big Al--------------------------------------------->

GENERAL:

POWER-UPS
RC recon hovering probes (with handheld monitor?)
Digital Binoculars (X-ray too? w/ super microphone?)
Personal Shield Belt (ala Dune-equivelant to Quake's armor. Each race has it's own frequency rate, but there's also a super-shield for all rates)
Health (in a more realistic form-like food, drinks, gel-containers,etc)
SuperHealth (for all the pussies out there)
Black-Holes (the WB style Portal holes that can be thrown on the ground, etc.)
Nova Boost (Makes weapons 300% more powerfull)

WEAPONS
Hand to hand default weapon (Wrench, laser saber,etc)
Wire for choking/hanging/decapitating enemies.
Laser Grenade (pops 10' up and spins around shooting lasers in several directions)
Rift Cannon/Bomb(rare - opens a portal that sucks people in or unleashes aliens from other levels that fight/flee depending on race and situation)
M-16 (for earth level only-obviously you won't find ammo for this on the mothership)

CRAFT
Shuttle (space and flying inside ship to other towers)

INSECTOID:

POWER-UPS
Anti-Grav Belt w/ Mag Boots
Gen-Boost(Genetically inserted temp wall crawling abitlies)
Projection device (project a holo-image wherever its pointed. Images can be of you, powerups, weapons, etc. Great for causing a distraction)

WEAPONS
Cutting laser rifle (cuts enemies and other stuff in two-and maybe through walls to hit enemies with IR or X-ray scope)
Morph Gauntlet (Bio-tech living cannon that attaches to your arm and can morph into a powerful set of spinning blades for hand to hand, plasma spread shot gun or ion cannon -also it takes damage for you, but takes a bit of health to power itself too- so don't waste shots or you'll end up killing yourself)
RC throwing blade (ala Krull, Pred 2-maybe has laser blade cutting edges-you can control it for 4 seconds before it returns to you)
Energy "Hall Cleaner" trap (setup at the mouth of a hallway and it sends a wave of energy down the hall damaging anyone in it)
Electro-Net Mine (a booby trap that nails you to the wall with an electrified "web")
Bio-Cannon (Eats target's skin off and leaves a bloody, red muscle only, screaming body)
Rictor Cannon (sound based blaster that sends a high-frequency defening/damaging concentrated shockwave or a low-frequency booming shockwave that knocks you off your feet and back a few yards)
Disruptor (The longer you hold the trigger, the more powerfull this beam gets-enemy turns into particles and disolves when hit -like spinning particle system sprites-if held down long enough, it can destroy anything within a 20 feet radius)
Goo-Shooter (Emits sticky goo-crap that damages you and glows so everyone can see you)
Tentacles (Another weapon that latches onto you. It extends out (very fast) a few flailing bio- metallic tentacles that pierce targets and gut them like pigs. And can be used like a grappling hook too.( about a 35' range) Also you can grab other weapons and powerups across a room without moving-plus rip skins off people! Try this at home with the kiddies)

CRAFT
Living Shuttles (space and flying inside ship to other towers)-part bio-mech and have a mind of there own-to a certain degree.)
Living Bio-pods for traveling into "goo"- filled "cocoons" levels?

SAURIAN:

POWER-UPS
Personal "Dephasing" cloaking belt (again another Predator inspired device- you're only 100% transparent when still, say 90% when in motion)
Psionic Helmet (Several uses- can make others not see you, can be used to totally blind them,
make their movement controls reversed, make them shoot themselves, make their eyes see world upside down, etc.)
Gen-Boost (Genetically inserted temp super strength- great for knocking someone on their ass or throwing them across the room, ripping out spines, etc.)
Temporal Displacement (makes you slightly out of sync with the world, the extra friction you create when you move creates shockwaves that cause damage. EX: You can shadow- box and hurt someone across the room. But you walk slower though.)

WEAPONS
Laser-tipped Tachyon Spears (after it's thrown, it instantly reaches it's target with a wicked screaming noise and can stick into walls/characters. Throw it at an enemies chest and spear them to the wall behind them. Stick them in the wall and climb on them, etc.)
Crystal Transparent Rifle (you can see into how the gun works. Different energy crystals power it for different results and you can see the energy building up and firing inside the weapon. Possibly has it's own energy based adjustable shield projector that disminishes when firing. Possible crystal powers: a slow, very powerfull wave of energy rolls across the ground toward enemies, rapid laser firing, heat ray that sets you on fire, Sidewinder Blaster (energy blasts with trails that seek any motion and target it, Energy Regulator ( you can shoot a concentrated beam or a thin flat expanding beam-either horizontal or vertical for "sweeping" a room...)
Bio-Magnetic Mines (Low hovering mines that quickly slide toward you if you're stupid enough to walk by them)
SLAMMER (beam that graps an enemy and hold them-like an "alien on a stick". You can slam enemy into walls, floors just by swinging around.
SLAMMER POLE (trap that acts like a SLAMMER, but it leaves enemy stuck 20' in the air ripe for target practice)
Vortex Cannon (sends out a spinning vortex of energy particles that create a small antimatter implosion within any object it hits, creating a huge explosion of blinding lightrays and radiated matter particles. Very powerfull and great to use in a crowd)

CRAFT
SpeederBike-esque personal transports (very fast-plus leads to deathmatch races, and excuses for huge levels, etc)
Shuttles (space and flying inside ship to other towers)
Underwater transports (for possible aquadic levels)

HUMANOID:

POWER-UPS
Structural Integrity Scope (to analyze walls for areas that you can blow up)
Oil Slick (spray oil all over ground or enemies to make slippery or light on fire)
Cloning machine (rare-you can replicate weapons, ammo and even another you-temperarilly of course)
Cherubs (2 or 3 balls orbiting and protecting you -if you get a weapon powerup they can fire it too?-ala old arcade "SideArms" game)
Gen-Boost (Makes you faster for limited time)

WEAPONS
Ion Rifle (to knock out shields and cloaking devices, but only 1/2 damage to health -has cool electricty "shocker" frag look -like Luke getting zapped by the Emperor)
"Flaming Balls" Hall Cleaner (launches huge flame ball down hall to clear out any bad dudes)
Energy-Sucking/Transfusion Weapons (For possible vampire GM's to use)
Limbo-Mine (sends you to a Hell of visual wierdness and dangerous creatures for 10-30 seconds, odds are you won't come back alive-AAAAWHAHAHAHA <evil laugh)
Tempest Rifle (Based on sound. Small multi-ringed vertical shockwaves shoot out. Any environmental sound causes damage to expand and do more damage to target and any close-by aliens. Enemy screams and blood comes squirting out of them in different points before they fall like a limp rag -like poking pinholes into a water-balloon)
Springer Traps (thin boxes on the floor that catapult an enemy across the room (splatting into walls, etc.) when they step on it.
Acid Bombs (Canister of acid that damages enemy and also can eat away his weapons/powerups)
Gas Grenade (yep, nasty gas that can kill you if you're downwind)

CRAFT
Shuttles (space and flying inside ship to other towers)
Mechs (Robotech style, small (or medium sized ones at most), possibly transformable (like Cyclone Bike Power armor) maybe just an exo-skeleton like Aliens Loader machine)
Hoverpads (small one person pads with a control box sticking out of it to hold onto)


More Crazy Ideas from Allen (Sept 29th)------------>

Enemy (insectoid?) that uses removable bony appendages from it's own body to attack with. Ex: throwing shards, swords, etc.
Jumping attack Saurian with large umbrella-type flap of neck skin that opens up when excited.
(Tyrs?) Small Compy-like scavengers about the size of a cat that run around here and there and feed on dead carcases.
(Negs?) Small scavenger bugs similiar to above but travel in groups of 2 or 3 and can fly.
Bezerker grunt warrior (saurian?) who when low of life will go nuts and attack you hard core, during this short time, the creature's defense is double.
BOSSES:
Huge aquatic/plant -type dude that is "planted" to it's roots but has little bit of movement range, also controlls plant life in area that can attack you.
Ariel Saurian pyradactyle type thing that humanoids are afraid of and make you fight it before they help you or give you info/key,etc. Perhaps you have hoverbike/battle armor to battle it with.
To keep anymore Insectoids(since they won and are taking it over) from tearing up Earth while you're trying to save it, one "mission" is to find and blow up their main hanger bay. (maybe this is first part of trocara levels?)

*A beastie that gains HP the first five seconds after being attacked. The more you fire in the period, the bigger and stronger the alien gets. Then after this time, you can inflict damage on it. This will cause all those dumb-ass shoot-first types to get reemed up the bunghole!

*(Matt's) Sound Shockwave generating armbands, so when an enemy punches or moves it's arms, blasts come out.

*Weapons that can transform into other items.

*Still have weapon pop up when it's out of ammo. It will just "click" and do nothing, but it's more realistic than having it just disappear.

*Enemy that can grow/shrink to use different abilities/strategies against you.

*Dynamic Portals that can be "ripped" or pulled open with your hands. It keeps stretching and getting bigger as you pull on it.

*Ability to push crates, rocks, etc. Also pull open windows, vent grids by hand instead of just blowing it up and making noise that could cause enemies to come rushing your way.

*A "parasite" onboard the Trocara that will attack the enemies sometimes out of the shadows and take them away for food. Kind of an "Alien" for the Aliens.

*Level where you have to chase/hunt down a small, but fast creature who has an object you need to solve a puzzle.

*Try playing with FOV to get better gameview with realworld objects/camera. Say, 70 degrees instead of 90?

*Have less Ammo available so you think more and don't waste shots. This can be used to set the pace of a level.

*Use Power Crystals for weapons/armor in a similar way to Materia in FF7.

*Fire that is "alive" like demons or something really wicked or can form into shapes like snake, skull, sword, etc.

*Gravity controlled level where you need to manipulate the gravity sectors to solve a puzzle.

*While fighting a Boss, Keepers show up and take away your weapons so you are forced to find another way to kill it.

*Early in game, you meet a catured human (while in holding cells?) who helps you out with some brief background of the immediate area and helps you escape. A few other times throughout the game, he/she shows up and gives you info, THEEEEN...you find out that he/she was an agent of the Keepers (or a shape-changing Keeper) who has been manipulating you the whole game to do it's bidding and now has led you into a trap.

*Lose hearing for a few seconds when a big blast hits you or when a sonic weapon is used on you.

*Perhaps have Talon receive/find a device, glowing sphere, etc. that can be used throughout the game in certain spots to open doors, or make a change reaction with other such devices to solve puzzles, etc. This way you can have a small inventory of 2 or 3 special items that you can try to use and figure out how to use them throughout the game. (Kind of like in The Dig, where you'd get a strange object then get to use it much later in the game, maybe for more than one thing)

*CyberVamps that can somehow do a little mind control(mess with the player's config?) and try to lure you into their haven. You need to fight the controls to escape. Perhaps only with a Boss Vamp?

*Area where you get trapped underwater and have to blow a hole in the wall/glass to escape and you are shot out of the hole along with the water down a long tube into another room.

*Have ropes/vines/cables to swing around levels with in certain areas.

*Alien that can inhale huge amounts of air causing a vaccum that sucks in weapons, powerups, talon?
COPYRIGHT 3D REALMS 1997. CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENT

Jan 7, 98 - Tom:

) Have different keys/events assigned to the left and right hand and get rid of the Quake-like 'Attack' message. Have talon be able to hold different things in the left and right hands. For example, a pistol in left hand, and wrench in the right. Then when the user presses a key to use the left or right hand, the appropriate action will be taken. Using the left hand fires the gun, using the right activates the wrench (if appropriate) or attacks with it (if appropriate). Some items may require both hands, in which case, using either hand will activate the item, but may activate it in different ways. For example again, with a staff, left hand action can mean attack, while right means block (for medieval type battles with certain enemies). This could also mean that if the player takes possession of a three or four armed creature, he could equip each arm with a different weapon.

) Have each item have a certain weight, and each character a strength. This would mean that Talon would only be able to carry so much in his pack. At times, this would mean he would have to trade off a powerful weapon for something else. We will also have some other human characters for coop or deathmatch play with some different stats. Strength, speed, constitution, etc... to throw in a little variety. And of course, stronger monsters might carry more, while weaker ones less.

You look into a mirror and are attacked by your reflection (keeper level).

1/17 allen
*ability to become small fly/wasp, etc. as observer in multiplayer. Fun to buzz around and sting people with extreme FOV bug vision. Then some user can later make a Bug-Bot to create dangerous swarms. BAWWAAAAHAHAHAHA
2/4 DM
* Humanoids have little remote controlled vehicles that shoot. You may acquire one of these to control yourself, maybe from a position of advantage or a stronghold. In addition, this could provide a cool interface to control something else...differing perspective and accessability.

March 3
Alpha Textures an a portal that allow us to have weird shaped portals. This will be really nice on the portal device. It requires alphatesting and some funky blending modes to draw it correctly.

September design meetings overview

Tuesday, September 23, 1997

The main focus of the design discussion is what do we visualize in Prey that will set it apart and make it different from the other 1^st person games we’ve played (on a game level, not a technology level).

Environment

The game environments should be original, unique and very detailed

Very diverse environments (humanoid areas should be very different from saurian areas, etc.)

Show off the massive scale of the Trocaran ship

Play

Multiple ways to achieve a goal (blasting, stealth, puzzle solving, etc.)

Replayabiltiy (variable enemy start positions, each instance of an actor can posses unique traits—within a specified range—either set randomly or by the mapper)

Use environment as a tool (move boxes to climb up to an area, create cover, etc.)

The gun the player model holds is the gun the player sees—trajectory tracks down the gun accurately (which means that it’s far harder to shoot accurately when running, etc.)

Entities

Actor types can have "script paths" which they will move towards if there is no external stimulus—these might be guard routes, movement (with animation) from one terminal to another, working with a machine, etc.)

Enemies have very real seeming senses, especially hearing (it’ll be cool if the player must utilize stealth in the game)

Plenty of "non-classified" creatures on the Trocaran ship—non-intelligent beings like parasites, domesticated animals, wild animals, etc.

Other

Unbelievable special effects

User interface that is fully functional with nothing ancillary on the screen (heartbeat for health, ammo count and low ammo warnings on gun, etc.)—we’ll still have visual displays that can be toggled on if the player wants

Many variations on standard weaponry

Wednesday, September 24, 1997

This discussion centered around the pace of the game. Do we want it to be a twitch fest? Do we want Golden Eye type pacing? Or something completely different?

Of course, we "wandered" off into different subjects J

Pace

Vary the pace in single play

We want to make the player value Talon’s life

The frenetic "twitch and shoot" pace, particularly of multiplayer Quake, is something we don’t want to duplicate.

You can never kill everything—some creatures will always respawn (but not ammo and health)—sometimes, the respawning creature(s) will increase in power and number, so that a player cannot simply hunker down and kill forever.

Clues

Learning by dying is generally a bad design philosophy

Let’s use NPCs as a way to give Talon information at points about how to solve a certain problem

Scott Miller’s ideas about the "hawk familiar" (a different incarnation of the spirit of the great grandfather that can be summoned if Talon has enough mana points available) is a great device to allow Talon to learn about puzzles and traps

Remote camera (both a mounted security camera and a remotely controlled camera drone) is a great way to learn about hidden dangers

Question: does informing the player about dangers ahead even lessen the value of Talon’s life in the game?

Saving the game

Players will probably anticipate saving at anytime

What’s wrong with saving at anytime? It really devalues the player’s life.

Save at certain save terminals (placed wisely by the mappers).

We could allow the player to save at any time, but have a limit, per episodes, of the number of saves allowed

Scoring

What if we have a scoring system, which is reported whenever the player exits the game, at the end of episodes and after the game—this can keep track of number of saves made, number of kills (perhaps even broken down more) and the number of times the player died during the game.

Friday, September 26, 1997

In this meeting, we discussed multiplayer design issues (see separate document) as well as the "mood" we want to achieve in Dark Harvest.

General mood

Bladerunner, Aliens like

Gothic science fiction

Very alien

Gritty, grungy

A frightening play experience—tighten the player’s sphincter and keep it tight

Outlandish, cool and dramatic lighting

Intense, eclectic and crazy ambient sounds

Species moods

Humanoid

Dark and Bladerunner like

If they had a factory, it would be dirty, broken down, non-ornamental

Insane—not mentally sound

Poorly taken care of

Saurian

Regal and dripping with tradition (Mayan, Aztec, Greek, Roman, etc.)

Formal

Not so dark

Ornamental

If the saurians had a factory, it would be clean, neat, a masterwork of design and it would feature much non-utilitarian ornamentation

Insectoid

Wet, secretions

Dark, alein, thick, exotic and radical

Fog and mist

If you shot a grenade at an insectoid wall, it would make a wet sound and probably stick there

Dark Harvest standards—what we must meet and then exceed

3D Architecture

• Quake and Quake 2

Lighting

• Quake 2
• Hexen 2
• BladeRunner (movie)

Texture Art

• Quake
• Hexen 2

Weapons

• Turok (Nintendo 64)
• Hexen 2

Enemies (coolness, power, impact)

• Urotsukodoji (video)
• Doom
• Robotech (Invid)
• Quake 2

Enemy AI

• Descent 2
• MechWarrior 2 Mercenaries
• Half-life

Control

• Duke 3D/Shadow Warrior
• Descent 2
• Quake
• Jedi Knight

Interface

• Duke/Shadow/Quake/Doom (simplicity and functionality)
• System Shock (most information and supported the fiction of the game)

Story (interest, intensity, intelligence)

• Bioforge
• System Shock

Mood/environment

• the Alien movie series
• HardWired (movie)
• System Shock
• Schismatrix stories by Bruce Sterling
• BladeRunner
• Dune (movie)
• Metroid
• Jedi Knight

Central Character (depth, growth, sense of "heroism," individuality, etc.)

• Gabriel Knight
• The lead character of "When Gravity Fails" (book)
• Elric of Melnibone (Michael Moorcock series)
• Thomas Covenant (the reluctant hero from the Stephan Donaldson trilogy)
• Bruce Campbell in the Evil Dead series
• Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider series

Cinematics (excitement)

• MechWarrior 2
• Starcraft

Character Animation/Models

• Tomb Raider
• Turok
• Bioforge
• Diablo
• Tekken 3
• Quake 2

Interactivity

• Shadow Warrior
• Jedi Knight
• Tomb Raider

Single Play

• Duke Nukem 3D
• Shadow Warrior
• Tomb Raider
• Jedi Knight

Multiplay

• Quake
• Jedi Knight

Traps/Puzzles

• System Shock
• Shadow Warrior
• Bioforge
• Tomb Raider

Water and liquid effects

• Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider 2
• Turok

Level/environment design

• Jedi Knight
• Quake 2

Music

• Descent 2
• Quake
• Jedi Knight

Sound Effects

• Quake

Speed of the engine

• Quake
• Jedi Knight

Extensibility

• Quake
• Duke Nukem 3D

Totally cool, "holy shit" moments

• Seeing the T-Rex for the first time in Tomb Raider
• Swimming in Tomb Raider
• Shooting someone in the neck in Turok
• Seeing a CyberDemon for the first time in Doom
• Beating an enemy with his own severed arm in Bioforge
• Telefrags in Quake
• Body growing more and more bloody in Bioforge
• missiles and nukes in Turok
• Shodan’s threats in System Shock
• Seeing GLQuake for the first time
• The guide bot in Descent 2
• The first time underwater in Quake
• Walking through blood and leaving bloody foot prints in Duke 3D
• Seeing the scale of the tubes in the Jedi Knight demo (as well as riding up that elevator)

Team ideas '98

last updated 09/16/98

September

Some selections from cool ideas you've included in your status reports:

Allen:

I was thinking about how polished Starcraft is and what a 3d shooter would be like if they made one (thank god they don't). I can see using 5 different dialoge lines or so for each enemy/character that can speak to add to their personality. I'm sure we were gonna do this anyway, but we really need to give them cool things to say to you, just like war/starcraft did with the units to add more character to the, well... characters. This may seem very obvious, but no shooter has really executed this successfully yet. Duke started to hit on this concept, but we need to take it a step further. Kinda like if all the enemies were talking back at you like Duke would talk if he were fighting you.

Also from Allen:

Hover bike races that prelude the Arena levels in the Saurian City. Start off in a cool Ben Hur type ring, then race (on a track so you can't get off ) through the city (showcasing cool stuff/scenery) overground, through tunnels, across a u turn bridge in the bay and back again. SAme playstyle as Road Rash- go fast and beat the shit outta the other racers. The winners get to move onto the Arena fights, the losers get wacked. Also I made a cool sea cruiser that the TransJet takes off from and they would make a kickass scripted fight scene (against a renegade boat or insectiods?) in the waterways under the giant saurian statue as you look on. Of course, if you shoot the ship, you will be ruled on.

Lee:

I discussed one with Tom Pytel - implement a dynamics compressor (not a data/file compressor) to allow certain sounds like Talon voices to make other sounds "duck" out of the way, sort of like a sidechain ducking module. A software Alesis 3630, in short. See me if you want details - Tom thinks it's possible to do without a noticable hit.

David:

Darknesssssss. That scares me the most in games. They mostly come out at night....mostly...(aliens) blah blah...Even in unreal when the light went out

.....That shit always gets me. I no it may sound wimpy, but it does work. I think we should have a dark creature-race? that has eyes that shut in the dark you can't see-Glowing red-Big teeth aswell. Kind of like in out of this world when you see the big black dog thing. Black levels ..and intentionaly make the player run out of light/flares/etc.

From our last team meeting:

We talked about powerups and inventory items for a while and here's a "laundry list" of what we mentioned:

• glider
• "see through wall" sensor (just to see blips of there are life forms there)
• cameras that the player can place (and maybe even control)
• boost packs (to increase your physical abilities)
• some form of electronic armor or shileding
• the portal device
• some sort of temporary sidekick (an animal that attacks what you attack)
• a footstep silencer
• species specific weapons powerups
• the "three balls aroung the barrl of a gun" idea
• species-specfic powerups can be used in cool combinations with other species's stuff
• "combinatorial" weapons
• flashlight on gun
• really cool heat vision (can show footprints?)

From Scott Miller:

*Saw the back room private demo of King Pin at ECTS. Here's what they had in the game I thought was cool:

*Surfaces in the game had unique sounds when walked on, and when shot. I.e. gravel, sand, cement, grating and a wood floor all had different sounds.

*Brick, metal, etc. walls had different sounds when shot.

*Shooting characters puts a bullet hole at that exact spot. You can take a machine gun and rip a line of bloody bullet holes across an enemy's chest. very cool.

*Shooting through grates and fences is a 50% pass through probability. Otherwise the bullet hits the grate.

*Rain and smog effects.

*Shooting a trash can knocks it over and the lid tumbles off.

*Can push trash cans and other objects, to solve puzzles.

August

From Scott Miller:

* Rarely have weapons and ammo laying around--instead Talon is forced to kill to get his guns and ammo. (On rare occasion Talon might find an armory, and then it makes sense to pick up ammo and weapons.) Also, have several power-ups be acquired this way, too.

* Have a single player mode option in which play is timed, and by killing you get 5 more seconds.

* In Multiplayer, have a mode in which every player is timed, and extra time is only added by killing. Also, another mode to discourage camping is that each player slowly but constantly loses health, and this forces the player to run around rather than camp.

* Drop player skill level completely! Instead, the game adjusts on-the-fly based on the player's performance, kill-rate, and other easy-to-measure factors (some or all of these factors can be the same as the ones that determine Talon's confidence). This is being done in Duke 4. Console override commands can be used to set the skill level, 1 (easy) to 10 (hard), if the player chooses. Basically, eliminating skill levels removes an arbitrary game device, and makes designing levels easier because mappers don't need to design with several skill in mind. Instead, game difficult is auto-adjusted by having enemies being harder/easier to kill, increase their accuracy, and having random enemy spawn points (more of which activate at higher skill levels).

* Power Stations -- This idea may have some problems, in that players can zip back and forth over the station. I like the idea because it's new and different. Maybe a power station can only supply 10% or 25% (over whatever) health units, then it needs a minute to recharge. Talon might find a switch on a level, though, that raises that number to 50% or 100%! If a station is used twice then maybe it sets off an alarm.

* Neural Net AL -- Somewhere soon we need to determine if this will be possible. A HUGE benefit is that it will allow players to "train" bots and pit this bots against each other, a la Robot Wars. Trained bots can also be trained for capture-the-flag and other game modes. They can also be trained as Companion Bots in Multiplayer. So many possibilities...

* The game starts with a little clutter as possible. This means no company logos. The goal is to get into the game ASAP! A quick Dark Harvest title screen that fades into the game itself would be the best achievement, if possible. For the first one minute of the game, maybe have a small message on the screen in one corner, saying "F1 for Help/Options". All the game logos, credits, etc. only appear when the game is exited.

* I love the idea of Talon making panicked comments when certain events are against him (low on health, ammo, etc.) These events should slowly end as he gets more confidence.

July

Allen and Paul's banter:

When Talon is in the control room in chapter 7, he destroys part of the Trocaran ship. The part he destroys is the Saurian towers, which breaks away and spins off. None of the Dark Harvest game actually takes place in that tower, so it's "virginal" territory. Since Tyranoss is killed by Talon, there could be warring factions on the tumbling, doomed saurian tower. It can still survive for a few thousand years and some factions just want to leave things be while other want to try to get it back to become a working ship.

This is a great set up for a Dark Harvest mission pack--Talon is unknowingly transported to the saurian ship at the end of the game, and he must play through an episode there--who he allies with determines the outcome of the game.

From Rick Raymo (email):

Tiered DM's that offer the option to move to a close ping (230 max) game server that has players that are more your caliber. Thus, if you are winning up a storm at the end (say time-limit or frag-count completion) or losing (apprentice multiplayerer), you can be moved (stats-based reasoning) to a server that has a group that is closer to your ability set.

This would mean an update to the server on completion...holding stats for the regular players so that it is the filter on start-up. I could get game-spy to set the filter, but you'd have to have the info channels set on your side and a stats counter of sorts.