Comments on: Portals In 1998

By: Watcher95

Watcher95 — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:19:15 +0000

Wait a second, The original Descent used portals and it was released Feb 1995.

Prey Schmey!

By: Coherent

Coherent — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 22:25:46 +0000

I’m looking forward to the sequel to Prey, hopefully where they expand some of the more mindblowing gameplay concepts that they had with regards to the portals and size-changing.

By: madhaha

madhaha — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:25:52 +0000

Prey had some great puzzles but the fact you could never really die made the combat rather pointless. The puzzles stopped after a while and the whole ghost children haunting thing never got resolved. I’m still glad the game got released though I traded it in soon after playing it.

By: Craig

Craig — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:34:37 +0000

That was my first thought, Dave. although he didn’t sound like him.

By: Dave Johnston

Dave Johnston — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 08:43:58 +0000

Two things:
1. The moustached guy in the video looks astonishingly like Richard ‘Levelord’ Gray.
2. Considering that’s from 12 years ago, it still looks pretty damn good. Apart from some Quake-ish scale issues (look at the brickwork in that kitchen!), it’s all quite impressive, even if it is only running at 640×480 (or perhaps less)…

By: schizoslayer

schizoslayer — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:43:43 +0000

Back then all the major game engines used BSP and Portaling to create 3D spaces. The Duke Nukem 3D maps were actually all 2D in a way. Any point where you were ever above somewhere you could walk you were often in a completely different area of the map and looking through portals.

Prey was clever because they made the portals dynamic. Static Portals however were the meat and potatoes of how those engines worked at all.

By: Thiefsie

Thiefsie — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:32:02 +0000

Unreal did infact have portals, I can’t quite remember the specifics but I remember I either downloaded or made a map that was essentially a cube with walkways in it but each side of the cube warped you thru to the opposit side, so if you fell in, you would fall indefinitely much like portal. I remember giving it a whirl with bots and it was kind of fun, even if it killed my pc of the time. You could see through them too, however they were fixed and large (entire wall size).

Forsaken (descent clone) also had evidence of portals throughout the game, which was REALLY mindbending to me at the time being it was full up/down 3d as well.

Remeber Duke3D? haha there were some crazy teleporter maps, but alas not that you could see through. Only shoot and walk through!

Interesting that the size thing in prey hasn’t really been done in any other game… closest I can think of is the CS maps that made you mouse size. In Prey it was impressive… and I recall it was in the demo too… so I think a fair few people experienced it at least.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:25:53 +0000

As far as i remember The Room was never something they wanted to release, it would be cool to nudge for it as it’s definitely seems impressive, and to this date nothing have really approached it in the same way.

You had Prey where the character became smaller/bigger, but here you could manipulate objects into being smaller or bigger, which is an interesting idea.

I’d definitely give 5-10$ for a release, so it does have some value, that is if it can keep what it promises, which of course seems to be the main problem with Molyneux/Lionhead.

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:12:11 +0000

Prey the final edition had some really nice gameplay features: the portals (including the size changing scene in particular), the wall walking, room flipping, spirit walking, and death sequence. The problem with the game is that they introduced you to all of these concepts within the first 1/2 hour of the game. It was alot of fun during that 1/2 hour and story was being ramped up nicely. Then… the game stagnated. It didn’t progress any of the concepts. It just became a generic shooter. All the potential the game had was ruined by the fact that nothing happened after you were first introduced to the concepts. Could have been one of the greatest games ever, shame that it became something of a waste.

By: Nuyan

Nuyan — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 17:38:36 +0000

UT had portals you could shoot through and so did Quake3.

By: Jonathan Burroughs

Jonathan Burroughs — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:39:57 +0000

What became of Lionhead’s “The Room” stuff?

By: Pod

Pod — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:18:33 +0000

Aent for change ramifications batman!
All that, on a 266 with a vodoo?!

Also: I don’t remember the UT portals rendering the other side of the portal, as Prey or HL2 do. I could be wrong though!