Playable Dinosaurs - Coming to ORION: Prelude!

So the curtains are pulled back and our large announcement is finally revealed!  We are extremely pleased to announce Playable Dinosaurs are coming to ORION: Prelude!

(^CLICK IMAGE FOR HD) We have heard the question “Will the dinosaurs be playable?“ time and time again and now we can officially say “Yes.”.

I was looking at how our A.I dinosaurs were setup and the systems already in place and noticed it wouldn’t be much extra work at all to effectively achieve super polished and super fun playable dinosaurs.  I talked it over with our Technical Artist, Scott and our Head Honcho Programmer, Chris and they green lighted everything in terms of work load.  The best part it is it will in no way affect our current deadlines or milestones and we are very much on track with development.



We will be premiering a new mode under our ‘Cooperative’ game mode branch currently being labeled as “Dino Attack”.  We will be revealing more information on this game mode in the near future but right now we can share the following with you:

FACT 001 - Each Dinosaur will have it’s own “archetype” and abilities.  Our Dinosaurs both in the A.I modes and playable modes all have their own personality traits and behavior styles.  

FACT 002 - These are very akin to Left 4 Dead zombies in the sense that we have multiple roles such as the T-Rex being similar to the “Tank”, the Raptor being similar to the “Hunter” and the Triceratops being similar to the “Charger”.

FACT 003 - Each playable Dinosaur will have it’s own attacks and special attacks. 

FACT 004 - All of our dinosaurs will be playable except for the Argentinosaurus.  He will be present in these modes as an A.I piece.



We are still currently in “Pre-Alpha” and this announcement marks the game as feature-locked.  We are right around the corner from hitting “Alpha” status and are on track with our internal “Beta” milestone.

GAMESCOM / PAX 2011 PRE-ALPHA GAME FOOTAGE

BRAGGING RIGHTS:

So what do you officially have to look forward to from ‘ORION: Prelude’?

• Best Dinosaur A.I - ever!
• Playable Dinosaurs
• Jetpacks
• 8 vehicles spanning Buggies, Hovercrafts, Aircrafts, Tanks & Mechs
• Destruction
• Bots
• Single-Player
• Cooperative (Multiple modes)
• Competitive Multiplayer (Multiple modes)
• 30 Weapons, Items & Grenades
• 32 Player Count confirmed for PC 
• Dedicated Servers
• Tons of FREE DLC
• and much, much more!

SPIRAL COMMUNITY

Come interact with the developers and share your thoughts and opinions over in the Spiral Community:

REGISTER FOR THE ‘ORION: PRELUDE’ MULTIPLAYER BETA

We are still taking Multiplayer Beta applicants for the ORION: Prelude Multiplayer Beta. This will be made available on Steam and we will be discussing more details about it in the near future as we are still in heavy development. Simply visit orionprelude.com and create an account.

5 September 1 Permalink

A Spiral August

We are back with another update.  We are so pleased that August is now behind us.  It wasn’t that it was a bad month - not by any stretch.  But it was an insanely busy one.  GamesCom 2011, PAX Dev 2011, PAX Prime 2011 and internal milestones all landing in the same month?  Absolutely crazy!

We have been all over the globe and we are now here to share it all with you.  We have a lot to talk about so brace yourselves.

GERMANY

We kicked off August with our premiere in Germany for GamesCom.  I had arrived in Frankfurt and took a bullet train straight to Cologne where the conference was being held.  I had stayed in a hotel literally right outside the famous Catherdral.  An absolutely beautiful city and luckily had perfect weather the entire time.

GAMESCOM 2011

This was easily the most insane conference that I have ever attended.  The complex it took place in was absolutely massive - an entire city complex.  There were multiple main halls split into two sections - one for developers and trade visitors and another for the entertainment expo where fans could play games and sweat profusely in sea of people.  GamesCom broke a record this year with the highest level of attendees reaching a whopping 271,000 visitors.  They actually had to lock the complex down due to hitting capacity on Saturday at around 2:00pm.

ORION: PRELUDE - NEW FOOTAGE!

(CLICK IMAGE TO PLAY) We didn’t come empty handed to GamesCom - not one bit.  We were bunkered down for the weeks leading up to GamesCom developing a significantly updated Pre-Alpha game build.  We have just published the HD Direct-Feed video footage to our Spiral YouTube and we hope you enjoy.

VIEW TRAILER

*NOTE - This is a pre-alpha game build that was developed in only 20 weeks.  We ask that you keep that in mind and understand that much of what you see is either going to change or be improved. 

SEATTLE, WA

Literally two days after getting back from Germany and GamesCom I was on yet another flight to head out to Seattle, WA - the best place in the world.  It was a celebration of sorts as I was attending the very first PAX Dev - ever.  It consisted of a variety of developer interactions and many industry folk residing under one roof.  I had the absolute fortune of having one of the coolest lunches in my life.  

PAX DEV 2011

I ran into a fellow developer friend out (Keith) who invited me to a lunch with some of the people I was originally inspired to get into the video games industry.  This included Jaime Griesemer, the game designer for Halo 1-3 and 13 year Bungie Veteran.  Also present was Keith, producer on games like Call of Duty: Black Ops, Jedi Knight: Outcast / Academy, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and also Dennis, Producer at Blizzard for games like StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3.  They were all super awesome and the food was nice too.
 

 

MY VISIT TO VALVE

So I had a days worth of time to kill. I shot an email over to our partners at Valve and told them exactly that and that I would love to come and see the studios. They replied “Be here at 10:00am tomorrow”. I did exactly that.

I was fortunate enough to see literally everything. This included all stories of development, the meeting room, tester room, the 3D modeling machines, Gabe’s office and his sweet knife collection and plenty more.  I also had the great opportunity of having a 40-minute cigarette with both Erik Wolpaw and Jay Pinkerton, the brilliant writers behind Portal 2.



I will be doing a full write-up on ”My Visit To Valve” over in the Spiral community which will include plenty of more pictures, videos and information.  Stay tuned.

PAX PRIME 2011

This was the craziest PAX even that I’ve been to yet.  I wasn’t even able to stay for the whole thing but the amount of people inside the place was overwhelming to say the least.  Plenty of awesome games were up for play including the new SSX, FireFall, the new Tribes and my personal favorite - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.  The place was a mad house but I highly recommend any gamer that has the chance of going to PAX to do so.  Very fun.

So that is a quick update with what has been going on around here.  Over the next week or two we will be putting out a new video that shows plenty of footage and images taken over the course of August 2011. 

Don’t forget.  Large announcement is coming on Monday, September 5th, 2011. 

30 August 15 Permalink