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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 36</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
                in loonygames:</font></b></font></p>

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              <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><a href="http://www.raven-games.com">Raven-Games.com</a>: 
                A great resource for classic Raven games.</font></p>
              
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        <p align="center"><font size="+3" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8">Inside 
          Raven Software:<br>
          <font size="+1">the definitive history</font> <font size="+1">(part 
          three)</font></font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Jason &quot;<a href="mailto:jason@loonygames.com">loonyboi</a>&quot; 
          Bergman</font></b></font></p>
        <p>&nbsp;</p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">If that made no sense to 
          you, let me give an example. Let's say I wanted to have some fun…I spawn 
          two enemies. One behind the other. Now I can shoot the second guy from 
          between the first one's legs, arms, or any other teeny space you can 
          find on his person, because they're all different parts (in previous 
          <b>Quake</b> engine games, the enormous bounding box made this impossible). 
          I can also shoot off his gun. Or sunglasses. Or his holster. Or his 
          hat. Or anything else I can think of, for that matter. Not to mention 
          the fact that I can shoot him in the legs, hands, arms, neck, heck, 
          anywhere you can think of on his person, you can shoot him (and yes, 
          there's even an animation when you shoot guys in the crotch).</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The weapons have presented 
          a minor problem for the developers, as Eric Biessman explained. "The 

          only bad thing about making a realistic game, is that most guns fire 
          bullets. Finding a way to differentiate between each weapon has been 
          a pretty big challenge." But the big question on a lot of people's minds 
          (at least mine) is, "what the heck are they doing with the license?" 
          Raven could have made a realistic first person shooter without the <b>SoF</b> 
          license, but with it, they've added some unique features. "What we did 
          was make the magazine into a sort of web site where you get various 
          offers [and] missions. So you can buy your weapons, and use the magazine 
          to find out where the hot spots are…that's pretty much how we tied in 
          the title." Expect to rescue hostages, storm military installations, 
          and just be a totally badass mercenary in <b>Soldier of Fortune</b>. 
          If that sounds intimidating, don’t worry…you'll have a couple of friendly 
          sidekicks to back you up.</font></p>
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              <div align="center"><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">Don't 
                get too excited...that's just a logo.</font></i></div>
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        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">And then there's that other 
          title Raven's working on…<b>Star Trek: Voyager</b>. There are so many 
          horror stories about working on <i>anything</i> <b>Star Trek </b>related. 
          What's Raven's experience been like? Apparently, they've had no problems. 
          "I was worried about that," Brian Raffel explained. "But they realized 
          that they should give us free reign. And we've already come up with 
          some unique things that they've seen and hey…maybe they'll wind up in 
          the series."</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">While Paramount might be 
          giving them plenty of room, the fans won't be so forgiving, as Brian 

          Pelletier pointed out. "We want to have free reign, we want to say, 
          'yeah, it's a licensed product, but we're just going to do what we want 
          to do.' We want to make this really cool action game…but, it's <i>Star 
          Trek</i>. So we really have to make sure we please those <i>Star Trek</i> 
          fans. Not just the action gaming fans, but the <i>Star Trek </i>fans. 
          It is a balance, and that's going to be the main issue here, trying 
          to get that right balance. I actually look forward to it."</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">No doubt about it, Raven's 
          come a long way. In the years since their inception, there have been 
          some pretty strange legends about them. My favorite one, is that there 
          is a reference to <i>Welcome Back, Kotter</i> hidden in <b>Hexen II</b>. 
          If you ever played<b> </b>the game, chances are you remember the sound 
          that the Archers made when they first saw you. Take a sample of about 
          four guys at random and ask them, and chances are that they'll all tell 
          you it's, "Horshak" a reference to the character Arnold Dingfelder Horshak 
          from <i>Welcome Back, Kotter</i>. I asked Chia Chin Lee, the author 
          of that sound for the real story. "That was actually Mike Werkle [one 
          of the 3D artists on <b>Hexen II</b>]. It wasn't intended to be 'Horshak' 
          at all. I didn't even hear, 'Horshak,' I just heard some weird syllables. 
          But what I did was, I took a whole bunch of [samples] of his voice, 
          and reversed little parts, and did all these little strange manipulations 
          and came up with a sentence. And then we put it in the game, and the 
          programmers, they thought it sounded like 'Horshak,' so they put in 
          the game, 'the Archers horshaked you.' But it was totally unintentional."</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The other most common misconception, 
          is where the name, "Raven" comes from. I had always assumed it was an 
          Edger Allan Poe reference, but it turns out to be much different. Brian 
          Raffel explained, "my brother and I, when we started the company, we 
          were heavy into role-playing [games] at the time, we were making a <b>D&amp;D</b> 
          style game, and one of the guys we played with, his character's name 
          was Raven. We said to him, 'well, we're doing a medieval game so what 
          do you think [we should call our company]' and he said, 'well, how about 
          Raven.' And we said, 'okay.' I mean, when we started the company, we 
          never expected to be in this situation. We were going to write a <b>D&amp;D</b> 
          module and submit it to TSR…that was going to be our business. And then 
          we started thinking, 'well maybe we can get a game published,' and before 
          we knew it…we were here."</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Whether they saw it coming 
          or not, Raven is definitely set to make a splash at this year's E3 with 
          both <b>Soldier of Fortune</b> and <b>Star Trek: Voyager</b>. They do 
          have plans to start work soon on a third title, although nobody has 
          any idea what that will be yet. No matter what that turns out to be, 
          you can bet that it'll be another massive, art-intense Raven game.</font></p>
        <p>&nbsp; </p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><i>- 
          Jason &quot;loonyboi&quot; Bergman is the editor-in-chief here at <b>loonygames</b>. 
          </i></font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT">&nbsp;</p>
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      <p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
        Illustration &copy; 1999 Rowan Crawford. This article is &copy; 1999 Jason 
        Bergman. All other content is &copy; 1999 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
        productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so 
        don't try it...or we'll peck your eyes out. </font></i></p>
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