1up.com's Week of Prey Coverage

[Malgon]

Excellent, more Prey goodies.

And the 1UP preview was very cool by the way, I quite liked the idea of it all.

[Cerberus_e]

I finally started reading

Despite the "3D" right in the title of the company's flagship game under development at the time, the Build engine that powered Duke Nukem 3D wasn't running in 3D. True, it looked three-dimensional, but that was a clever trick. Technically, its world was created on a two-dimensional grid with the addition of a height element, and the objects in it were flat, 2D sprites. Duke made it out in January of 1996, before things had changed, but the handwriting was on the wall: Quake was coming.

That made at least part of the decision for Hall's team. Starting their game in mid 1995, they knew there was no way it would be out before Quake, which meant that using the Build engine for a premier shooter was out. Its author, Ken Silverman, was already at work on a true 3D engine (code-named Polytex for its use of polygons and textures), but it wasn't coming together well enough at the time. That left building an engine from the ground up as the only viable alternative.

Question: If they were looking for a 3D engine, and say making an engine themselves was the only solution available. What about licensing Quake then?

[Kristian Joensen]

I don't quite undestand your post, if writing their own engine was the only option then why not go with the Quake engine ?

Isn't that obvious ? Because in that case writing their own engine is the only option. That excludes the Quake engine as an option.

I MUST be misunderstanding you here. I know I am misunderstading you. What is the correct understading of your question ?

[Micki!]

Kristian Joensen said:
I don't quite undestand your post, if writing their own engine was the only option then why not go with the Quake engine ?

Isn't that obvious ? Because in that case writing their own engine is the only option. That excludes the Quake engine as an option.

I MUST be misunderstanding you here. I know I am misunderstading you. What is the correct understading of your question ?

I rarely see you being confused Kristian..!
But yeah, i didn't quite get the point either...

Yeah, i could re-read it, but i'm LAZY..!

[Kalki]

Can I try?

Cerberus_e said:

Question: If they were looking for a 3D engine, and say making an engine themselves was the only solution available. What about licensing Quake then?

a) If you mean that they could have licensed Quake itself, it wasn't done yet(1995).

OR

b) If you're implying they did license Quake, er... they didn't. Prey never touched the Quake engine. (That was DNF and they used it a bit to learn and experiment with, before licensing Quake 2)

Hope that helped but if you meant something completely different, ignore this post.

[Cerberus_e]

Kristian Joensen said:
I don't quite undestand your post, if writing their own engine was the only option then why not go with the Quake engine ?

Isn't that obvious ? Because in that case writing their own engine is the only option. That excludes the Quake engine as an option.

I MUST be misunderstanding you here. I know I am misunderstading you. What is the correct understading of your question ?

Kalki's a) was close.
I mean, they were looking at their options:

- Build
- Building their own engine

Goal: have a 3D shooter because it will be released after Quake.

Then, why isn't licensing Quake an option?
They'd have a 3D engine right away

And Kalki, Quake might not have been ready yet, but what does that matter? Lots of games are already being made for months on UE3, when it wasn't done yet as well. Also, This incarnation of Prey already has Doom 3 licensed since 2001! 3 years before it was ready so Quake not being ready yet doesn't matter

They were thinking like this:

- Build: No, it isn't 3D
- Building own engine: only solution left

Why not think like this:

- Build: No, it isn't 3D
- Quake: a solution
- Building own engine: also solution

I can't explain it better

[Kristian Joensen]

Now I understand you. Well I think their might be several reasons for that:

1) Pride.
2) Not thinking licensing an engine was an option, because it was a relatively new thing.
3) Wanting to beat Quake and not seeing the Quake engine to be sufficient without to large modifcations. They might have considered it to be too static because to fht lack of portals.
4)Thinking that Id was the competetion and they wouldn't license it.
5)They actually tried to license it but got turned down.
6)It simply didn't cross their minds.
7)Licensing not giving them a big enough benefit to be worth it.
8)Wanting engine licensing as a revenue source.
9)Building a new engine was more challenging for the programmer/was a learning experience.
10)A combination of the above.

[Cerberus_e]

Kristian Joensen said:
1) Pride.

Then why mention Build even?

Kristian Joensen said:
2) Not thinking licensing an engine was an option, because it was a relatively new thing.

They used a lot of engines from ID for their sidescrollers and ROTT

Kristian Joensen said:
3) Wanting to beat Quake and not seeing the Quake engine to be sufficient without to large modifcations. They might have considered it to be too static because to fht lack of portals.

From what I get from the article, portals weren't part of the plan then, and even if it was, why mention Build as an option again, before they wrote it off because of the lack of 3D?

Kristian Joensen said:
4)Thinking that Id was the competetion and they wouldn't license it.

They also licensed the wolfenstein engine, and gave them various engines for sidescrollers.

Kristian Joensen said:
5)They actually tried to license it but got turned down.

Then why isn't it mentioned in the article? Seems to be a major point.

Kristian Joensen said:
6)It simply didn't cross their minds.

I doubt that, but it's the only thing I can think of as well.

Kristian Joensen said:
7)Licensing not giving them a big enough benefit to be worth it.

Then why mention Build?

Kristian Joensen said:
8)Wanting engine licensing as a revenue source.

Then why mention build?

Kristian Joensen said:
9)Building a new engine was more challenging for the programmer/was a learning experience.

Then why mention Build?

Kristian Joensen said:
10)A combination of the above.

In that case, a combination of my above replies

[Kristian Joensen]

Then why mention Build even?

Good point, I don't know.

They used a lot of engines from ID for their sidescrollers and ROTT

Yes but that was different none of those where full 3D, they where scrolling engines and in the case of ROTT a 2.5D engine that was much more limited then Build. Quake was a very big achievement for Id. The first true 3D polygonal engine.

3DR might have assumed(and even been correct) that Id was reluctant to license the Quake Engine out to others, I mean they almost turned down Valve. Especially before it was out.

From what I get from the article, portals weren't part of the plan then, and even if it was, why mention Build as an option again, before they wrote it off because of the lack of 3D?

Because with Build you CAN achieve impossible geometry. even if it doesn't use portals.

They also licensed the wolfenstein engine, and gave them various engines for sidescrollers.

Already covered this in my answer to your second point.

Then why isn't it mentioned in the article? Seems to be a major point.

Perhaps, what they mention in such a article is entirely upto them.

Then why mention Build?

See my point about impossible geometry above.

Then why mention build?

They DID get licensing revenue from Build.

Then why mention Build?

Well it is all a matter of tradeoffs. Wanting a challenge could well be what tipped the scale in favor of not licensing Quake, while not beeing enough to do the same with Build because of the above mentioned impossible geometry. We don't know how much weight they have put to various engine features.

They might very well have been willing to forego the challenge of writing their own engine if they where to use Build since it was inhouse and presumably wouldn't have cost them a dime to use. However it turned out that they where not willing to trade off true 3D for using the cheaper Build engine.

[Kalki]

Cerberus_e said:
And Kalki, Quake might not have been ready yet, but what does that matter? Lots of games are already being made for months on UE3, when it wasn't done yet as well. Also, This incarnation of Prey already has Doom 3 licensed since 2001! 3 years before it was ready so Quake not being ready yet doesn't matter

Ah, but that's not the way things were done back then. The original game featuring the new tech was released before the engine was licensed. Same thing with Quake 2. George said he got the code in Dec. '97 and that was weeks(?) after the game's release in November. And Id and Apogee have always been close.

Things began to change later in this aspect, perhaps with Epic releasing Unreal updates earlier or Raven after SoF 2, etc. who began to work closer with Id. Can't talk about other engines setting an earlier precedent but this was definitely the way deals appeared to be made around id. Edit: And if I'm not mistaken, 3DR(HH) and Raven are the only ones we know of who got to work on Doom 3 code so early.

[Kristian Joensen]

According to Wikipedia:

Builds 1-226: The original Unreal Engine was publicly started with the release of Unreal 1, although licensees like Legend Entertainment and MicroProse had possessed the technology much earlier. 226f was the final patch to Unreal 1.

You are correct about Raven and HH/3DR getting access to the Doom 3 Engine much earlier.

Edited:
Also America's Army was released using UE2 prior to Epic's own UT2K3:

Builds 500-2227: The builds of the second generation Unreal Engine started at 500, licensees first saw them after 600, and they were publicly available as build 927 with the release of America's Army. When Epic took over finishing UT2003, build numbers jumped to 2000+.

[Cerberus_e]

Really? Why did ID refuse Quake to Valve after they were nearly done with Half-Life then? (Seems like they managed to complete H-L anyway).

[Kristian Joensen]

You are misunderstanding me, they ALMOST refused to license the Quake Engine to Valve. This was before HL entered full scale production.