Proto:Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (PlayStation)/January 23, 1999

This is a sub-page of Proto:Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (PlayStation).

To do: Add in missing info.

The earliest full prototype of the game, recovered and released by Gh0stBlade and other anonymous community members on May 13, 2020, alongside the February 4 and February 16 prototypes. This build was created before the decision was made to cut the last third of the game, and thus contains a large amount of different and unused content.

Sub-Page

Areas "Look around you, Raziel - see what has become of our empire."

General Differences

• There are no voice or movie files present on the disc yet.
• Pressing Square and Circle together opens the debug menu.
• Holding Start and pressing the movement keys enables debug fly.
• Pressing Triangle and X can clear certain puzzles automatically, usually with a note saying 'CHEAT ENABLED! PUZZLE SOLVED!'.

• Two cut levels are present - the Undercity and Turel's Lair, along with most of the cut Forges. There are also references to Kain's Mountain Retreat, but nothing has been implemented yet.
• Raziel takes a bit longer to reach full running speed, and his animation for sucking souls is much slower.
• Like the Lighthouse demo, Raziel has the ability to swim by default. It also can't be disabled in the debug menu, possibly meaning the code for Raziel drowning hasn't been implemented yet.
• Constrict is also available from the start, and activates much easier. This tends to result in a trail following Raziel, which was toned down in the final.
• Shift-At-Will, an unused ability in the final, is also present from the start, allowing shifting between the Material and Spectral realms at any time outside of the Underworld.
• Raziel has a vaulting move, allowing him to cross low obstacles automatically without jumping. He can also attack in the water, and climb in multiple directions. All of these were removed in the final.
• Many objects in the Spectral Realm have a different coloration, being more multi-color then the blues and greens of final, or sometimes lacking any colors at all, resulting in a black void.
• The lighting in many areas is often different.
• Many textures are higher quality than the final, doors don't appear to exist, tunnels used to mask loading are not present, and finally duplicate files are not present to reduce search times for loading. All of these create massive problems when loading larger areas, resulting in graphical glitches, areas failing to load, or crashes.

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  A texture not loading quickly enough, resulting in graphical glitches.

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  A room failing to load in Turel's Lair.

• Most cutscenes are missing. The ones that are present are missing audio and use placeholder camera angles.
• No tutorial text is present.
• The health system is functional, but a bit odd. Health looks the same in the Material Realm, but in the Spectral Realm Raziel has a glow around his head, similar to most spirits. This was probably changed to help clarify when Raziel has enough health to shift.

• The start menu is very similar to the Lighthouse demo, only lacking the exit button.

Lighthouse Demo	Jan 23 Proto	Final

• The same goes for the loading screen, still tinted teal as opposed to green.

Lighthouse Demo	Jan 23 Proto	Final

Debug Menu

To do: Add more pictures. List every map in the game compared to final in notes. Some of this information may be inaccurate, re-check. Compare Raziel's ability order to later builds/final.

The debug menu is fully functional, and contains a variety of features.

LEVELS

This is the level select, allowing quick access to every area in the game.

• 'RELOAD CURRENT LEVEL' will reset the map Raziel is currently in.
• Kain's Mountain Retreat is already listed, but wouldn't begin implementation until the Feb 16 prototype, where three of its rooms are present.

SHORT SHORT STATS

This displays basic debug information on the game.

• 'FRTE' is the frame rate, usually hovering around 30 FPS in small areas. This tends to rapidly dip in larger areas, shifting realms, or when many enemies are on-screen.
• 'FMEM' is the amount of free memory the game has available. This can easily be overloaded, resulting in situations where no rooms will load.
• 'AREA DRM' is the current map.
• 'CAM TILT' tracks the camera's angle vertically.
• 'DIST' is the camera's distance from Raziel. 1600 is the default, 650 when looking around with L2 + R2.

SHORT STATS

More stats!

• 'IDLE' appears to be the game's frame rate per frame.
• 'DRAW' is the amount of polygons loaded.
• 'INS' is the amount of objects on-screen vs the total amount in memory.
• 'FAR PLANE' is the draw distance.
• 'FOG NEAR' and 'FOG FAR' determines where fog in the distance starts and ends.

CAMERA MENU

Options to manipulate the camera.

• 'DEBUG CAMERA' will detach the camera from Raziel and leave it in its current position.
• 'GHOST CAMERA' allows the camera to clip through any objects and geometry.
• 'LOCK CAMERA' simply turns DEBUG CAMERA on. This may indicate that DEBUG CAMERA had an earlier functionality that was removed by the time this build was created.
• 'CAMERA STATS' does nothing. Most likely it was dummied out and merged with SHORT SHORT STATS/SHORT STATS.
• 'MOVE CAMERA FOCUS' also does nothing. Perhaps this used to be a free look option?

RAZIEL MENU

Options to edit things relating to Raziel.

• 'ENABLE HEALTH SYSTEM' turns health on or off.
• 'SPECIAL ABILITIES' lets you enable or disable any of the abilities Raziel can obtain, although swimming will remain on no matter what.
• 'FORGED ABILITIES' lists every version of the Soul Reaver. In the final, only the Spectral, Material, and Fire Reavers remained.
• 'GLYPH ABILITIES' lists every glyph, including the deleted Spirit Glyph. Oddly, Shift-At-Will is listed here, but that may be due to its functionality being handled similar to glyphs.
• 'IMBUE SOUL REAVER' lets you enable/disable the Soul Reaver, and change its elemental property.

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GHOST CAMERA

• 'GHOST CAMERA' is a duplicate of the function in the CAMERA MENU.

GOODIES MENU

To do: Research this section more in-depth.

These are more advanced debugging features. The vast majority of them do no not work, implying they were used in conjunction with an external system, such as a developer's workstation.

• 'SHRINK CELS' and 'DECOUPLE' don't appear to do anything.
• 'IGNORE OBJECT SCRIPTS' disables objects, including Raziel.
• 'C CODE' and 'STOP ACTION' don't appear to do anything.
• 'VIEW VRAM' makes the game's VRAM visible and scrollable. Press 'SQUARE' and 'CROSS' again to disable it.
• 'CAPTURE SCREEN', 'SIGNAL STATS', 'SIGNAL LOGIC VALUES', 'NO OPTIONAL SIGNALS', and 'VV STATS' do nothing.
• 'VOICE ON' enables or disables voices. Pointless in this build, since no voiced dialog is implemented yet.
• 'SHOW MUSIC VARS' displays music variables.

• 'QUIT GAME' crashes the game.

SOUND MENU

To do: Is there unused music here?

Settings for music and sound effects.

• 'PLAY MUSIC' will play any music in the game. This is pretty useful, since in this build only the Underworld theme triggers automatically.
• 'MUSIC VOLUME' and 'SFX VOLUME' control the individual volume of both music and sound effects, something the final has as a separate menu.
• 'SOUND DEBUG' displays a lot of audio information. The lower columns track the music, while the upper columns track sound effects.

• 'SHOW MUSIC VARS' displays music variables.
• 'PRINT SRAM USAGE' does nothing.

DEBUG CD LOADS

• Displays information on the room loading queue. Once all rooms in the queue are loaded the text disappears.

STATS MENU

• All options that do nothing, but would presumably help with seeing what is loaded into the game on a given frame.

DEBUG EVENTS

Information to help debug events.

• 'SHOW EVENT VARS' tracks variables an event is using on a given map.
• 'SHOW EVENT DEBUG' tracks event timers.
• 'SHOW GAME TIME' displays 1200 military time. Both it and 'GAME TIME MULT' don't appear to do anything.