I was just wondering if anybody remembers the game 3D Realms was developing several years ago. The Prey engine they were working on was pretty neat from what I read about it--it used a portal system so you may walk through a door on the west side of room 1 and fall through the ceiling of room 3, then walk north from room 3 and end up coming in east room 1...but I haven''t heard about it since they upped requirements years ago when a P1 166 was as fast as you could buy. Anybody know what happened? -- WNDCLASSEX Reality; ... ... Reality.lpfnWndProc=ComputerGames; ... ... RegisterClassEx(&Reality); Unable to register Reality...what''s wrong? --------- Dan Upton Lead Designer WolfHeart Software

It was canned.

Well, do you know if anyone is planning on using something similar to that portal engine, or was the engine part of the reason it was canned?

3D Realms has been tight lipped about Prey since it''s inception.

Two things that I can readily see that may have caused it''s
demise are-

After a year and several months of work, only a half-dozen
screenshots were distributed...and these looked below par.
They tried to resurrect interest by having a shot of a topless
chick in some mags, but by that time, it was seen as a gimmick.
The one shot of the indian fellow looked pretty poor after
a year and a half, for whatever reason.

This lack of interest likely caused 3d realms (or their investors)to lose faith...the money quickly follows. And lest
we forget, Duke Nukem Forever (3d realms also)is fast becoming the reigning title for postponement, above even Daikatana. ..chances are that it will never get done. Oh well. That''s what
happens when you engine hop, and have either an understaffed and overworked team, or worse, an overstaffed and unmotivated one.

To the best of my knowlege portal engines are a common way of doing indoor 3D graphics, the portals are used to seperate the rooms so that only what the player can see is processed. I think that mirrors in a lot of 3D games are done by making a portal face back into the room, so when a player looks at the portal, they see themselves. I''m pretty sure that Quake 2 used a portal engine.

quote: Original post by Shudder
I''m pretty sure that Quake 2 used a portal engine.

I''ve heard it used a BSP engine. But I do understand what you mean, I did some level editing once and remember there was something where you could stop sections from being rendered until the player came into them.


Digital Radiation

While Q2''s engine may have been called a "portal engine," it''s not quite the same. At least, not what I''ve played. On Q2, when you go through a door, you''ll come out the same way you were facing, and turning around will take you back through to where you came from. The portal engine would be more like having every door as a teleport trigger, that might take you from the west door of one room to the ceiling of another room.

That could get confusing...
--


WNDCLASSEX Reality;
...
...
Reality.lpfnWndProc=ComputerGames;
...
...
RegisterClassEx(&Reality);


Unable to register Reality...what''s wrong?
---------
Dan Upton
Lead Designer
WolfHeart Software

Portals just connect 2 areas, they COULD send you to some weird unexpected place, but they are usually just used to connect 2 rooms. They are simply a way of breaking levels into smaller chunks, so that less vertices need to be processed. I think Quake2 also used BSP trees on the areas in the game, and uses portals to connect these areas.

Ohhhh...I see. So, to shift the discussion a little bit...exactly how hard would it be to implement the "weird-exit" portal system? For instance, one of the development groups I''m working with is planning on working a little with the Q1 source to do a game. Could we implement it just with a few modifications, or would we pretty much have to completely re-write an engine?
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