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Proto:Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (PlayStation)/Lighthouse Demo

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

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Soul Reaver Lighthouse-title.png

This prototype, with files dated July 13th 1998 and an internal build date of June 30th, 1998, is the earliest build of Soul Reaver known to exist, predating the final game by a year. It encompasses a small section used for the exterior of the Sunglyph Altar in the final. In addition to being a part of a few demo discs, it was also included in The Unholy War and Akuji the Heartless, with minor aesthetic variations between them.

General Differences

  • The loading screen is tinted cyan in this demo, but green in the final game.
Demo Final
Soul Reaver Lighthouse-loadscreen.png Soul Reaver Final-loadscreen.png
  • Raziel has access to swimming, but not the Soul Reaver, something impossible to do in the final as accessing the Drowned Abbey is dependent on having the Soul Reaver.
  • When pushing against a wall, Raziel will simply place his hands forward until the directional buttons are let go. In the final, he performs a small animation before giving up.
Demo Final
SR1lighthousepush.gif SR1finalpush.gif
  • The area is populated by a few Melchahim vampires. Later builds replaced the vampires with Dumahim, which were later replaced again with Turelim after Turel's Lair was cut from the game.
  • When attacking an enemy, the motion lines first are blue, before becoming yellow, then orange. They always stay blue in the final game.
  • The camera is prone to zooming out or directing itself to fixed locations, such as pointing itself to the Lighthouse when on the opposite cliff-side. This type of behavior never happens in the final outside of cutscenes, and you otherwise maintain control of the camera at all times.
  • It is impossible to die or manually shift to the Spectral Realm. Attempting to bring up the Glyph menu with Select just exits the demo.
  • Pressing Start will give a very basic menu, and upon exiting display a short screen of information with a tentative release date of January 1999.

Model and Map Differences

  • Raziel uses a rather different model in this prototype, consistent with early footage for the game. His textures have darker shading, and his fingers use simple blue and white rather then the more realistic shading in the final. Alongside minor adjustments to the whole model, his feet and its associated textures were completely redone to have the toes be separated as opposed to a block.
Demo Final
SR1Razielprotofront.png SR1Razielfinalfront.png
SR1Razielprotoside.png SR1Razielfinalside.png
SR1lighthouseraziel.png SR1finalraziel.png
  • The demo has a very early design for the Melchahim, bearing very little resemblance to the final beyond the stitches and loincloth.
Demo Final
SR1Melchahimprotofront.png SR1Melchahimfinalfront.png
SR1Melchahimprotoside.png SR1Melchahimfinalside.png
SR1Melchahimproto.png SR1Melchahimfinal.png

Developer Texts

Although no debugging options are available, many strings from the debug menu still exist starting at 0x800 in KAIN2.EXE.

Debug Camera

Camera debug options:

Changing camera focusPoint to instance with no object
Sphere ROT = %d
Camera look XROT %d
Camera look ZROT %d
h = %d  w = %d  l = %d
xyDist %d
xyz = %d, %d, %d
focusPoint = %d, %d, %d
Camera target ROT %d, %d, %d
Camera focus ROT %d, %d, %d
FD SIGNAL %d TARGET %d ACTUAL %d
MIDDLE %d
playerSamePos = %d CFROT = %d
ERROR: No spline for cinematic camera!
LOOK MODE
DEFAULT MODE
POS STATE=%d
IDLE MODE
POLE MODE
ROT CONTROL %d
1) Couldn't find new focusPoint instance
numCollided=%d, line=%d, flags = %x
CFROT = %d
%d) No collision.
ColTimeDown %d

Generic Strings

More strings for the debug menu starting at 0x84848:

EXIT
CONTINUE
QUIT GAME

SOUND DEBUG2
SOUND DEBUG1
SHOW MUSIC VARS
VOICE ON
VV STATS
NO OPTIONAL SIGNALS
SIGNAL LOGIC VALUES
SIGNAL STATS
CAPTURE SCREEN
VIEW VRAM
STOP ACTION
C CODE
IGNORE OBJECT SCRIPTS
SHRINK CELS
MAIN MENU...

Sound Menu

Early sound menu:

G VOICE VOL
G SFX VOL
G MUSIC VOL
MAIN MENU...

Level Select

Debug level select, giving clues on what areas were available for testing at this stage of development:

INTVALY
OUT
BOSS
STONEC  
FILL  
ALUKA 8
ALUKA 1
STONE 4  
STONE 1 
SKINNR 9
SKINNR 5
SKINNR 1
TOWER 7
TOWER 1
MAIN MENU...

Going by the area names in the prototypes and final, FILL and INTVALY are areas used for the lighthouse, OUT and SKINNR is Melchiah's clan territory, ALUKA and BOSS is the Drowned Abbey, STONE is Nupraptor's Retreat/Stone Glyph area, and TOWER is the Human Citadel. The only oddity in this list is 'STONEC', which has no equivalent in any build. It may also have been related to Nupraptor's Retreat.

Memory Options

Debug options for the frame rate, memory, and loading:

FRTE %d
FRTE %d
IDLE %d PCT
IDLE ZERO
DRAW %d
INS  %d/%d
Focus XYZ(%d,%d,%d)
Far Plane =%d
Fog Near = %d Fog Far = %d
FMEM %d
AREA DRM = %s
Loading From CD: In Queue(%d)

Misc.

Other miscellaneous strings, including a build date:

This is a devstation
This is NOT a devstation
Starting kain2 game %s, %s
Jun 30 1998
16:30:08
--->DEMO: Hello, I have args %d, %d, %d, %d
--->DEMO: Bye!

Early Options Menu

There's also what appears to be a very early options menu at 0x14C4:

see password
resume play
save game
update save