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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>

<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">New!!</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments <a href="../../../index.html">on the front page</a>!</font></p>
              
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                &quot;loonyboi&quot; Bergman took a moment to thank them all.</font></p>
              <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"><img src="../../images/cover1.36_sml.jpg" width="230" height="230" align="middle" hspace="4"></p>
        <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><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yep, that's right, <b>Spectre</b> 
          was to be Raven's own 3D, massively multiplayer engine. And from the 
          way the programmers describe it, it was a hefty one at that. "[<b>Spectre</b>] 
          did not contain any BSP [information] at all. It was all portal-based," 
          explained Gil Gribb, whose main project at the time was <b>Spectre</b>. 
          "It also had the ability [to create] 'instant rooms.' So rather than 
          each level being made as an individual, you could make rooms and corridors 
          and things like that and string them all together. Other features it 
          had were related to scalability, whereby if we wanted to take this to 
          a massively multiplayer setting, all the data structures were designed 
          so that what isn't here doesn't effect you at all, and it doesn't bog 

          down the server. The approach that <b>Spectre</b> took is that the server 
          basically would know the limited range of the player, and consider sending 
          down only things that were close by him."</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">While no game was ever really 
          slated to use the <b>Spectre</b> engine, the programmers were envisioning 
          a sort of <b>Ultima Online</b> style game. "That was kind of what we 
          were thinking it would be like, it would be like that with this huge 
          persistent world." James Monroe recalled, "things had to be network-friendly. 
          It wouldn't be quite the same as a first person game that required lots 
          of special visuals in your face." As for the perspective, that wasn't 
          really set in stone. "It was both…it was first person, it was third 
          person…you could do anything." Perhaps <b>Spectre</b>'s biggest technological 
          jump, however, was its use of 3Dstudio Max as its editor. "Anything 
          that Max could do [<b>Spectre</b> could do]. It had specular highlighting, 
          bump mapping, colored lighting, animated colored lighting, fog." But 
          with all these features, you'd expect all kinds of software and hardware 
          limitations. "I surprised Gil one time when I ran it on [Windows] NT," 
          Monroe told me. That may not seem like a big deal, but you have to understand 
          something - <b>Spectre</b> used DirectX for its visuals, not OpenGL. 
          And…DirectX isn't supported by Windows NT. "So I ran it, and it opened 
          up in emulation mode. It was in a small window, and I was like, 'that's 
          odd…it <i>runs</i>!' I didn't expect the emulation to work at all, it 
          actually ran at 10 frames per second on my test machine, a Pentium 133. 
          I was getting 30 frames per second using DirectX."</font></p>
        <p> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Spectre</b>'s main goal, 
          at least for the programmers, was an interesting one. "Our design goal 
          [from the beginning] was to take away all restrictions from the artists. 
          That's what I spend a lot of my time doing, is explaining to the artists, 
          'you can do this, you can do this, don't do this because it effects 
          the surface cache.' So the idea was to build a system that could handle 
          everything dynamically, and the designers could just do whatever they 
          wanted."</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Unfortunately, <b>Spectre</b> 
          wasn't meant to be. Shortly after Raven's merger with Activision, work 
          stopped on the engine. Brian Raffel explained, "Activision was saying, 
          'we didn't pick you up because of your technology, we picked you up 
          for your content, your art, design, and your innovations within the 
          technology.' So we thought we could better use Gil for things inside 
          the game, which helped a lot for <b>Heretic II</b>. We were trying to 
          focus." Don't worry…some of the technology behind <b>Spectre</b> has 
          been moved into other Raven projects, including <b>Heretic II</b>, and 
          their current project, <b>Soldier of Fortune</b> benefits greatly from 
          the GHOUL modeling system, which grew out of <b>Spectre</b>'s ashes.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">So with <b>Spectre</b> canned, 
          <b>Hexen II</b> on the shelves, work began on <b>Heretic II</b>, which 
          was to be (horror of horrors!) a third person action game. "After <b>Hexen 
          II</b>, we wanted to continue with the <b>Heretic</b>/<b>Hexen</b> franchise," 
          explained Pat Lipo. "<b>Hexen II </b>was pushing into a sort of RPG 
          direction, so there was a desire to go back to the pure action, arcade 
          kind of stuff that <b>Heretic</b> had. With perhaps one character, we 
          could focus on a large array of weapons…so we kind of started with that 
          thought, and almost immediately the third person [idea] came into the 
          mix."</font></p>
        <p>&nbsp; </p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><i>(<a href="index7.php">Continued 
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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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