Development:Prey (2006)

This page details development materials of Prey (2006).

This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes.

To do: Lots of stuff, including: Documents section will need finishing. There is apparently leftover sounds, models and textures from Prey in the 2001 builds and 1999 Asset CD of Duke Nukem Forever. 1995 textures released by talonbrave.info. Do be warned however, the textures available for download on the Prey Museum are up-scaled using AI. The use of AI upscaled images is against this wiki's image policy so DON'T add those textures! Many of the textures are seen in the 1995 proto, so it might be better to focus on graphics not present there. Lots of audio, like lines from Great-Grandfather (Enisi in final) and Talon Brave (Tommy in Final). On a similar note, to the 1995 textures, sounds effects and music from the 1998 trailer available to download on the Museum website were extracted with AI. Don't upload them! The game's SDK might have something of interest. When it was first released, it unintentionally included source code for the collision model, which was removed in a later release. A CD of reference photos from the late Steve Hornback called "Cards", some of the photos from here had been turned into textures in the 1999 Asset CD/2001 builds of Duke Nukem Forever.

Documents

Human Head Documents Various documents from the Human Head Studios-era of development.

On July 10th 2016, duke4.net user Mr. Tibbs would make a thread discussing various development materials of Prey from 1997-1998 that was uncovered by them. Among them was various design documents of the game.

All content on these sub-pages is written as is, outside of some slight reformatting. You can download the full release from Mr. Tibbs here

Preyweb A series of documents outlining ideas and specifications from 1997 and 1998 with some revisions from 2001, the most complete look into Paul Schuytema's iteration of Prey

1997

Plot1 A super barebones plot outline. Last modified on September 24th, 1997

PREY Concept Short Story

Audition Docs Various audition documents for the game's main characters. All of them last modified on October 13th, 1997

New Whole Design 5 Last modified on October 29th, 1997

Master Plot Synopsis Last modified on December 12th, 1997

Dramatica Text Last modified on December 15th, 1997

1998

Chapter 2 and 3 Gameflow Last modified on June 11, 1998.

Full Prey Story Treatment 1 Last modified on June 11, 1998.

PREY Story Treatment 6 Last modified on June 11, 1998.

Whole Gameflow Working July 14 Last modified on July 14, 1998.

Working Ch4-7 Last modified on July 30th, 1998.

readme.txt

A readme including with the files released by Mr. Tibbs. It explains the folders and their content, notably making mention of a physical tape that is currently lost.

Prey Stuff:

/Story Files - Just some general story files I found on Paul's old cd's.  These are about as current as I could find.  I've merged most anything important here into PreyWeb, so this is included just in case you find something I missed.

/Voice Acting - Some character descriptions (may be useful), but mainly here for the WAV files of Tommy Hawk and the Grandfather.  Should give you an idea of their characters.  Most of this dialog was intended to be from vision quests levels, or just general battle talk.

/Art - Not much here at all.  We really didn't do concept art back then.  Most notable thing is the Trocaran mothership design.  Sun in the middle and the 3 core races on the outside of the ship.

/Preyweb - This is the good stuff.  It's a web page that contains all the design doc stuff I could find.  Just load the index.htm file in a browser and start poking around.

Finally you have the video tape.  This contains a few things (I can't recall the order).

- Really bad E3 back room demo of a vision quest sequence with Tommy/Grandfather.  Off a camcorder so it's total ass - but you get the idea.

- E3 1998 video.

- Some more general game footage.

- 20 minute tech demo.  There are a couple of 20 minutes tech demos showing potential licenses what the engine could do, and how the editors worked.  Pretty interesting stuff actually - especially for its time.

Missing Documents

Documents mentioned in new whole design 5.doc.

• Color themes 13.5.1
• Prey Standards
• Reference Bible-architectural-artistic themes
• Rockful ideas
• Texture specs
• Prey fiction
• Prey team mission statement
• Sept design meeting overview
• 3D card specs
• Prey one interactivity catalog
• The seven stages of game design

Assets

Voice Acting Voice acting of Great-Grandfather (Enisi in final) and Talon Brave (Tommy in Final).

Leftovers In Duke Nukem Forever Why with such a frantic development spanning 15 years, who could blame 3D Realms for wanting to recycle a few assets?

Misc. Stuff

SDK Content Stuff found in the official SDK released by 3D Realms in October 2006.

Love Theme Sketch

An unused music sketch of a love theme by Jeremy Soule that was released onto the YouTube channel of Apogee Entertainment on February 14th, 2023. It was put aside and intended to be used for another game (likely either Earth No More, Incarnate or Prey 2, games that Scott Miller was working on with his Radar Group venture after Prey was released).

Judging from the song's name, it may have been intended for a scene between Tommy and Enisi or Jen.

(Source: Jeremy Soule's Missing Theme FOUND! - Apogee Entertainment, YouTube)

Quake Developer Levels

To do: Add gameplay video of the levels, along with providing more detail about them.

3D Realms released various levels for Quake that were done by members of the Prey team. 3D Realms had asked aspiring Prey map designers to send them levels to demonstrate their map making ability. These levels would get the map makers hired on the project.

• stationt, Matt Wood - Released on April 24th, 1997.
• JACastle, John Anderson - Released on August 9th, 1997. Note: When you load into the map you may be stuck in the collision of a tree, simply use noclip to get yourself out.
• iam1, Martin Goedtke - Released on February 6th, 1998.

In addition to these, there exists a Prey_Quake demo by John Anderson that is currently lost. It supposedly depicted an event that the team was hoping to replicate in Prey.