Comments on: 3D Realms To Continue “Portal Race”

By: Omnibus: March 16th - 22nd | Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Pretentious, moi?

Omnibus: March 16th - 22nd | Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Pretentious, moi? — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:54:28 +0000

[...] Sins. EA sponsor sci-fi cinema festival. Play Spore and Dead Space there. Eurogamer MMO channel up. More from Scott Miller, talks up “portal race”. Epic on Steam. Hurray. Diablo 3, still not confirmed. Mass [...]

By: Leelad

Leelad — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:51:43 +0000

I think it’s a hard thing to get right. Prey got it spot on portal make it fun..you take it too far and you have a game that’s like the portal hard levels that no one can play.

Interested to see what they come up with.

By: Faust

Faust — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:20:07 +0000

I actually really liked Prey, I thought there was a lot of really nice bits and I even enjoyed what story it had…..

But the portals weren’t really a big part of it.. I thought the gravity element was much more prevailant than the portals, which seemed to be used only as a transport method as they were static.

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:59:27 +0000

Anyway competition is good if they can come up with some good portal ideas that improve the FPS game play all the better (Portal was a puzzle not a shooter game some folks seem to forget).

Surely the mediocre FPS part of the Prey mix was what dragged the game down, though.

I mean, it’s great to want to improve shooters as a genre, but the first step surely would be to make a decent FPS first.

By: Duoae

Duoae — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:06:31 +0000

@Flint

I’m left wondering what sort of new and exciting things can you come up with from a subject like portals? They’re gateways you can go in and out from, like doors. In Prey you used them as passageways, in Portal you created them yourself.

What’s left to explore with them?

There are several things you can do with Portals and portal technology. Ironically, the unreleased Prey (based on an actual portal engine) was the most innovative and difficult to implement version of the technology and idea of the game. The portals in Prey, Narbacular Drop and Portal are ‘hacked’ into the BSP engine… they are all compromises and not true portal implementations.

I suggest that people read and watch the videos on Lon Meteo’s Prey page for the history of the 3D Realms’ developed title.

Another project which is similar is ‘The Room’ which was developed by Lionhead studios.

You’ll notice that they use portals in that too. Portals are dynamically scalable – something that was used once in Human Head’s Portal (under used if you ask me)…

Anyway… hopefully it will be interesting.

By: Scandalon

Scandalon — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:06:25 +0000

xeallos, you beat me to it! The story goes (IIRC) that Unreal was already using “portals” internally as a way to speed up rendering, after Prey was announced (and the non-euclidean space gimmick was explained) Tim Sweeney went “Oh, I’ve already got the pluming in place, just never thought of using it like that” and got portals in the current sense of the term working in a day or so.

It was pretty cool walking into a tiny shack (or dropping into a little hole in the ground) and emerging in a much larger room.

I can’t find a screenshot from the original, I did find a post from 06 where someone tossed together a portal gun in the then-current version of the Unreal engine after seeing valve’s video: http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=530848

Also, Quake3 had some limited portal usage.

By: Taxman

Taxman — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:04:36 +0000

3D Realms didn’t make Prey (the one that was released) Human Head did, 3D Realms were just there publisher though they do own the IP.

I think it took Human Head about 3 years to do Prey so assuming they are building off what they have already done they could probably shave the development time down & push out Prey 2 in 2009.

Really Prey is much like Duke Nukem Forever except everyone new Prey was canned internally at 3D Realms, until the current version was released & surprised everyone.

Duke is the same they are on their fourth (I think) version & we shouldn’t really think of it as being in continuous development all these years, just development was terminated then restarted so whatever DNF comes out isn’t the culmination of all these many years just whatever they have been doing for the last 3-4.

Of course that isn’t going to stop the tide of media when DNF comes out from stating this is what they have been working on for so long etc.

Anyway competition is good if they can come up with some good portal ideas that improve the FPS game play all the better (Portal was a puzzle not a shooter game some folks seem to forget).

By: nowak

nowak — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:42:41 +0000

Going by Valve’s and 3DRealm’s development times, I can’t wait to see Portal 2 one-up Prey 2 in 2014.

By: Funkula

Funkula — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:31:09 +0000

Serious Sam had portals too. I think it was also the first FPS to feature directional gravity.

By: Vinic

Vinic — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:26:09 +0000

The next few years will probably yield some pretty interesting portal gimmicks. I can see portal-based multiplayer battles being very interesting — and hell of frustrating.

By: Fazer

Fazer — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:12:13 +0000

There was no portal race. Valve didn’t want to leapfrog 3DRealms. They didn’t pioneered the portal technology. They’re just trying to look smart and important.

By: Dan Forever

Dan Forever — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:00:08 +0000

Has anyone else not, upon seeing “the portal race”, thought “portal wars”? As in Half Life 2, as in Xen invasion. As in we’re all doomed! Run! Save yourselves!