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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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              <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><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">One of the amazing things 
          about <b>Heretic II</b>'s development, is how fast it was made. <b>Heretic 
          II</b>, despite the licensed engine from id which wasn't suited initially 
          for a third person title, was completed in under a year. "I was a slave 
          driver," Pelletier joked. "We actually started production in February. 
          [Initially] we had all artists on the project…they'd only been at Raven 
          six months, and doing <i>gaming</i> for six months. As for our designers, 
          the only accomplishment under their belt was the <b>Hexen II Mission 
          Pack: Portals of Praevus</b>. So they'd only done like three levels 
          or something. And even some of the programmers we had, we had just hired…so 
          the first three months was just a struggle." </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Let's plot out the time frame 
          here. New staff is hired. Work begins on <b>Heretic II</b> in February…and 

          in May there's a playable demo on the floor at E3? "When we had that 
          demo done for E3, [that] was all the game we had. We didn't have anything 
          else!" If that sounds crazy, think about this. E3 was in May, right? 
          The game shipped…in November. "I think it had to do with the fact that 
          a lot of the people on the team knew exactly what this game was going 
          to be. We all shared the same vision. That's what made the game go so 
          smoothly."</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">As work on <b>Heretic II</b> 
          was getting into full swing, the rest of Raven started working on a 
          different title, <b>Soldier of Fortune</b> [<b>SoF</b>]. The game marks 
          a major turning point for Raven. For starters, it's a license, and not 
          an original creation. But also, it's grounded in realism, instead of 
          the fantasy/sci-fi worlds of their previous games. "This is the first 
          realistic, in a worldly sense, game that Raven's ever done," Eric Biessman 
          explained. He doesn't see that as hurdle so much as the sheer size of 
          everything. "The thing that is the challenge, is the scale. That's the 
          only problem. Because I can turn on the news and see all the conflict 
          and strife that's happening now, and that can give us ideas to make 
          the game more believable. But in terms of just creating the game, having 
          guys in there that actually look like, 'oh, this is a door, it's not 
          thirty feet tall.' Whereas if you're in space, an airlock, it can be 
          however big you want it." </font></p>
        <p> <font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>Solider of Fortune</b> 
          benefits greatly from GHOUL, their modeling system/creation tool. Using 
          technology originally made for <b>Spectre</b>, the applications of GHOUL 
          are really quite impressive. "GHOUL is a system for doing models and 
          artwork essentially, so it encompasses the whole process from the content 
          creation side all the way to rendering within the engine," Gil Gribb 
          explained. "It's got a lot of good features in terms of flexibility 
          of what we can do with the models. For example, a Cobra Helicopter, 
          we can put guys on the inside and have them twist their heads." One 
          of the really interesting features of this system is the way characters 
          are made up. In previous games, you would have a single model that made 
          up a character. With GHOUL, characters are segmented. They are in <b>Quake 
          3: Arena</b> as well, but GHOUL does it a little differently.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Remember when you were playing 
          <b>Half-Life</b> and got really frustrated with the fact that no matter 
          how many times he died, Barney just kept showing up again? Or the fact 
          that there were only three different scientists? Well, with GHOUL, the 
          designers don't have to worry about this problem. Each character is 
          a mixture of different body parts, allowing for a huge number of possible 
          combinations. Gribb explained, "there's multiple enemies put together 
          in the same file. Our biggest enemy, the <i>meso</i> has more or less, 
          three complete sets of enemies inside of him. He has something like 
          two hundred and fifty-six different parts. Now for any given enemy you're 
          going to see in the game, something like twenty or so of those will 
          be on. Then when he gets shot, that will cause us to turn on more parts 
          to show gore and things like that." </font></p>
        <p>&nbsp; </p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1"><i>(<a href="index9.php">Continued 
          on next page</a>)</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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