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 MultiPrey, 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 MultiPrey. 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 Prey 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 Prey 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 Prey 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 multipreyer), 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.