Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[MU]

Prey is a first person shooter, based on a heavily modified Doom3 engine.
It requires a modern computer with fast graficscard.
You already could play it in wine, but now also as native Linux game.
As it was released as Windows game CD 1-2 years ago, you now can get it very cheap, in germany you pay around 10 Euro for the Windows CD.

Info german:
http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2008/13558.html

Info english:
http://icculus.org/prey/


There also is a demo version available:
Info german:
http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2008/13384.html

Info english:
http://icculus.org/prey/

I think on my computer (Pentium 700, 1 Gigabyte Ram, Ati Radeon 9250) it will not run.
I could play Doom3/Quake4 on this computer with Puppy 1.08 and the Ati fglrx driver 8.28.8, but only 1 hour, then I had to reboot to avoid freezes.
Also the quality settings were set to very low values.
In Puppy 2, they freezed after a few minutes.
Maybe it will work in Muppy 008.4c with the included fglrx driver 8.28.8 and the included corresponding Xorg 7.1, but I did not try that yet.

If you have a Pentium 4 with 2 gigabyte Ram and a newer Nvidia card with working Nvidia drivers, it should work.
Check out the puplets "wNop2" and "Tigerpup", that have drivers pre-installed.
Or the game CDs like Growler:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=34037
or hurtmeplenty:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=28179
Nvidia driver for it:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=22272
Mark

[MU]

ok, seems to work.
I attach a screenshot.

My card often freezes with dri enabled, no matter if I use the free drivers or fglrx.
I think it overheats, and added a fan now. Hope that fixes it...

For testing Prey, I used Puppy 4.12 with the fglrx driver.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=256623#256623

Low resolution, low to medium quality.
I played the demo, it starts in a bar, then you find yourself in a spaceship.
In the bar with not many details, the gameplay is quick.
In the huge spaceship it sometimes is slow, but playable.
I have not yet fighted, from experience I know that the effects then can slow down gameplay considerably.

So in the next days I will try the retailversion that I bought a while ago.
Seems to be a very nice game!
Mark

[MU]

I now inserted an *extremely* old Winfast Geforce 2 GTS, Chipset is: nVidia Corporation NV15 [GeForce2 GTS/Pro]
I used a fresh Puppy 4.1.2, and just installed NVIDIA-71.86.06-k2.6.25.16.pet and Prey.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=34001

It has only 32 MB Ram, but I could play the retail version of Pray 15 hours without crashes.
In the Bios setup, I chose 256 MB agp aperture, this means the amount of system memory taken, if the video memory is not sufficient.
Prey itself said it assumed that 64 MB are installed, as 32 MB could be not possible.
To play I used 1024x768 with high texture resolution.
But I activated no special effects like high resolution particles or antialiasing.
Could be faster, but is playable, also if I fight with several enemies.

This is pretty impressioning for an old Pentium III 700, if you take in account, that the minimum specs for Windows is a Athlon or Pentium IV with 2 gigahertz, and a more expensive graficscard with 512 MB Ram (Direct X 9.0c compatible).

Here is a page that compares benchmarks of graficscards.
The Nvidia is between Radeon 7000 and Radeon 9250.
http://freestone-group.com/video-card-stability-test/benchmark-results.html

So now there is another one converted from Ati to nvidia
Mark

[MU]

Gameplay
You can find a visual walkthrough with dozens of screenshots here:
http://www.visualwalkthroughs.com/prey/preywalkthrough.htm

Prey is really great.
My favourite still is System Shock, one of the first 3rd Person shooters from 1994.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Shock
In that game, you had to read carefully data-disks that you found in the game.
They contained informations like Emails from the craft of space station citadel.
Prey, too, plays on a huge space station. Like in System Shock, you often hear a female voice, "the boss", that tries to frighten you, or to convince you, to join her.
Prey has less of these "detailed" characters (e.g. there are no data-disks), but a bit I feel sent back in the early 90ies.
E.g. to open a door, you need a code, that you find written on the wall with blood - the "author" is lying dead in front of the wall.
This chapter of the walkthrough shows you a red indian location, where some shorter episodes take place.
http://www.visualwalkthroughs.com/prey/ritesofpassage/ritesofpassage.htm
Such scenes make the game more interesting than Doom, where you just stumble from one room to the next, all looking somehow the same.

The fights remind more to Quake than to Doom.
Not 1-3 monsters, but groups of 5 or more alien intruders.
Aliens, robots, and some very huge guys like the centurion: http://www.visualwalkthroughs.com/prey/sacrifices/27.jpg

It took me 1-2 days to play 3/4th of the game, so it has not the depth of system shock.
But if you look for a good 3D shooter with story elements, that make it more interesting than Doom 3, Prey is definately a great choice.

Mark

[ecomoney]

Looks like an interesting game, I would like to try it out

How would someone download and install it? is there a .pet ?

[MU]

installer and info on:
http://icculus.org/prey/

Download the installer, then type in the same folder:

[puppyiso]

Mark, I don't think my 256MB RAM computer would run it.
Looks very interesting, though.

Anything lighter? I am a great fan of Quake.