Alien Versus Predator : 10 ans déjà - Page 1

Hello !
voici un petit topic pour fêter les 10 ans de notre jeu fétiche

Si vous avez des choses à dire n'hésitez pas et puis si vous n'avez pas encore lu les articles précédents :

topics/35101-dossier-alien-versus-predator-jaguar-dans-edge

topics/31946-avp-le-film

topics/34541-interview-exclusive-du-developpeur-dalien-versus-predator-andrew-whittaker

Je n'allais pas créer un sujet sans l'alimenter de quelques petits documents originaux :

- organisation de la mémoire pour une cartouche de 2 Mo 24/11/1993
- courrier de Michael Beaton à James "Purple" Hampton 26/07/1994
- courrier de Michael Beaton à John Mathieson 08/04/1994
- AVP keys location ( touches et commandes utilisées ) 13/04/1994

To: Purple Hampton, Atari Corp FAX: +1 408-745-8861
From: Michael Beaton FAX: +44 482-573136


Hi Purple,


As ideas for improving gameplay are flying thick & fast, here are
three of my own which you might like to run by the game design crew
over there:


1) to give progressive difficulty as you get further from the game
start point, make the number of aliens on levels 1 to 5 go something
like:
level 1: 150
level 2: 100
level 3: 50
level 4: 100
level 5: 150


2) if Mike Pooler has the time to insert a difficulty level selection
screen, then it would be very easy for us to implement this by simply
multiplying the standard number of random aliens on each level by a
difficulty scale, e.g. 1/2 for easy, 1 for standard and 1 1/2 for hard.
By the way, I know that the difference between 1/2, 1 and 1 1/2 sounds
like quite a lot: it would mean, e.g., 50, 100 or 150 aliens, but actaully
you need big changes like that for the difference to be obvious straight
away to the player.

A similar point about big changes applies to Lance's idea about the
Predator score. I would like to see the different scores for different
vision modes, but the percentages need to be more like 50%, 75% and 100%
if we want it to make a real difference to game-players.


3) I had an idea that we could use the charge bars on the alien and
predator weapons, what happens is that each time you use a weapon the
charge drops by a fixed amount, so if you use it a lot, like about
20 times in a row, then the charge will sink to more or less zero, but
what happens is that while you are not using the weapons, the charge
goes back up again slowly, so that after not too long it's fully
charged again. The damage a weapon does depends on the charge, so it
never really gets to completely unavailable, because it's always
recharging, but still if you use one attack continuously without letting
it recharge, then it will become pretty feeble.
This idea would force players to use all their array of weapons and
it would mimic the effect of a real person using up their own strength.


Let me know what you think,



Mike.

To: John Matthieson, Atari Corp FAX: +1 408-745-8861
From: Michael Beaton FAX: +44 482-573136


Dear John,


Here are some more reports on observed behaviour of the blitter, along
with some further ideas for minor(?) mods which might be useful in
a future chipset.

I hope this stuff is reasonably useful; do let me me know one way or
the other.


BLITTER
-------

When rotating from one 1 bit per pixel bitmap to another the image gets
corrupted, apparently because the choice of source pixel from within each
input byte is not correctly calculated on a pixel by pixel basis (the
image only looks correct when the scan is straight left to right).

The clipping mechanism generates write inhibits, but unlike the other
write inhibits on the blitter, these can't be overridden with BKGWREN
to cause the destination data to be written back instead of no write.
If the clip write inhibits could go through the same path, then, for
example, a small window which is filled with a blit from a larger
bitmap could have zeroes written outside the edges of the valid
data from the larger bitmap.

It would also be useful to have a PATDBKG bit, which causes the pattern
data to be used as the background colour rather than the destination
data when a write inhibit occurs. Then you could do the above 'window'
effect, even on blits of less than 8 bits per pixel for which the
destination data register is already in use.

Did you have any further thoughts about whether it would be possible
to initialise pixel mode bit-to-pixel expansion differently, so that
it will select the correct pixels whatever the size & shape of the
blit? (And, on a similar vein, although I've never needed it, is it
possible to remove the restriction on phrase mode bit to pixel
expansion that the source start must be on a phrase boundary?)

I hope you're still considering the idea of DDA's (& prefarably
clipping) on both address registers. That would give all the
texture mapping performance that most people need.


OBJECT PROCESSOR
----------------

I don't know whether the firstpix field is used much by anyone, but I
personally would find it very useful to have a bit which modifies
the effect of firstpix, so that the data at the right of the picture
gets filled out all the way to the end of the last image phrase (as
opposed to the current system, where zeroes get shifted in), this
would enable the effect of scanning a small view window over a larger
data area within the object processor.

It would be very useful to have a mechanism in the object processor
whereby an object whose top coordinate has gone off the top of the
screen gets fixed up automatically (i.e. the data start, height
and even scale info, if appropriate, all get stepped forwards by
the number of lines missed, the first time the object is
encountered). Any hope of that one?!

Here's one I mentined ages ago, which should be very easy: sign extend the
data width field, this would let you flip bitmaps vertically as well as
horizontally within the object processor. (I can't believe that anyone's
really got a data width which uses the top bit of this field; just how
compatible do you have to be, anyway!?).

I don't know if you know that you can make an RMW CRY object appear
transparent in its original colours, if you XOR each pixel of the image
with 0x8880 before setting the RMW flag; so a bit which modified RMW to
do this for you on the fly would come in handy.



O.K., that's it!


Yours sincerely,



Mike Beaton.

AvP key allocation, Fri Apr 15 13:36:48 1994
############################################

All players
-----------
U,D,L,R Move forward,back turn left,right
OPTION + L,R sidestep left,right
We were using 7,9 for sidestep left,right, but prefer the above idea. We could
allow both versions at once as 7 & 9 are not otherwise used - PLEASE COMMENT
*,# reset

8 map on/off
0 toggle all sounds on/off (not implemeted yet, I think Atari guidelines
are that 0 toggles music, we could implement this fine if you prefer, but
after all if the player wants to change music/sound they can use Pause
so 0 would be a nice way to let them shut the whole game up - PLEASE COMMENT)


- - -
*** NB: In current game OPTION is used like a shift key to allow a whole
set of debugging features which will not exist at all in the final game,
these keys are as follows -
1,2,3 - reset as human, alien, predator
4,7 - HUD bright up/down
5,8 - upper access code up/down
6,9 - lower access code up/down
A,B - change current level up/down
0 - show debugging coords and make score digits actually show player's energy
- - -


Pause - Pause game then access HUD brightness, sound volume & music volume
(when paused you press option and PAUSE icon is replaced by three
sliders, you change highlighted slider with up/down & slide the
slider with left/right - you un-pause by pressing pause again
whether sliders or PAUSE icon are on screen, you take sliders
away and stay paused by pressing option again)

Not decided - PLEASE COMMENT
Option 1:
Current version: the keyboard overlays for the human would need to keep
the numbers as well as the weapon icons because in the computer interface
section you use the numbers to navigate between screens
Option 2:
Redefine computer interface so that you highlight options using joypad
U,D and select highlighted option using FIRE; then the keypad overlays
don't need numbers on at all and we would probably remove the key numbers
which are currently on the HUD next to the weapons


HUMAN
-----
A - fire current weapon
B - open doors/operate lifts/enter airducts
C - launch grenades (pulse rifle only)

select weapon
1 shotgun
2 pulse rifle
3 flame thrower
4 smartgun

5,6 unused

7,8,9 see all player comments


PREDATOR
--------
A - fire current weapon for human & predator
B - open doors/operate lifts/enter airlock
C - select different targets for predator targetted weapons
(probably just the laser, even though the Predator disc is
'in reality' a smart, targetted weapon)

6 - change between Predator vision modes

select weapon
1 combi stick
2 laser weapon
3 smart weapon (disc)
4 knife punch
5 invisibility (current plan is you have to select invisibility which will bring up
predator wrist then press fire A and he will operate his wrist computer and go
invisible/go not invisible again) the Predator's arms will go translucent when
he is invisible

7,8,9 see all player comments


ALIEN
-----
Have not decided yet - PLEASE COMMENT
either:
A,B,C operate tail,bite,hand
or:
1,2,3 select tail,bite,hand
A - operate current selection

depending on choice just above either 1,2,3 or 1,2,3,4,5,6 are currently unused

7,8,9 see all player comments


The code is written to allow key remapping, but it would be very complicated with so many keys
to do a remapping screen which helps the player not to completely screw up the controls, I
would prefer fixed controls, just for this reason - PLEASE COMMENT


Some HUD comments:
##################
For predator punch and all three alien attacks the weapon charge does not make much sense right
now, but one possibility is to have the attacks get weaker if used a lot and recharge slowly
using these bars to show strength.

Predator score can either be as now, with a minus sign in front if -ve, or it could be changed
to something along the lines of HONOR:00000 or SHAME:00000 for +ve or -ve and maybe SHAME scores
could be in red. Some people here think the second idea is too comical. If you don't have a strong
opinion then leave us to decide this, if you do - PLEASE COMMENT.

Predator sound display will react to in-game sounds.

AVP Memory for 2048k Cartridge ==============================

Description: Memory (k for kbytes ) ------------ --------------------------------
Jaguar statup code 8k

65 wall panels at 32k each with 6.5:1 JPEG compression (we have tried this now on a lot and 320k
of panels and get very good results at up to this ratio or slightly higher). There are more
than 65 panels because all the signs (armoury, medlab etc.) are saved as one base panel plus
overlays, but the artists have accepted the equivalent size of 65 panels to work within.
The true value will probably around 70 as not that many panels benefit from these overlays.

Animations and objects in maze: these are stored in the same format, and a further complication
is that they can be run direct from ROM if required. In fact there is not enough room in RAM to
have all these items in RAM so we store some uncompressed in ROM and some compressed and then
moved into RAM. Uncompressed there are 747k of animations and 150k of maze objects. The compression
ratio from simple LZW compression (i.e. we can get it done sooner rather than later) is 1.5:1.
There is 600k of RAM free for this data therefore we have:

600k of compressed anims: 400k
300k of uncompressed anims: 300k

Mission screens: 3 full screens at 320x240 pixels CRY, with 4:1 compression using JPEG (generated
scenes do not compress as well as scanned scenes) 115k

Computer screens and overlays: the equivalent of 6 full screens' worth (i.e. 3 screens plus overlays)
in 256 colours using LZW compression i.e. 6x320x240x2/3 307k

Intro and game completion screens: 2 320x240 generated screens 77k

Sound: see attached comments from Chris 256k

Explosions 80k

Gun overlays 80k

Code 64k

HUD overlays 30k
----- Total: 2037k


RAM Allocation
==============

Expaned panels (max. of 32 different 32k panels per level) 1024k

RAM buffers: 2 320x240 screens and all other buffers as currently used by game system (i.e. clipping
buffer, GPU code overlays, current HUD weapon overlays, object lists, JPEG decompression tables) 424k

Uncompressed anims in RAM (see above) 600k
-----
2048k

et moi qui ne l'ai tjs pas ouinnnnnnnnnnn

va bosser pour te le payé au lieu de pleurniché

Kuk vient de se faire un nouvel 'ami'

sympa , pour le va bosser, surtt ds la situation actuelle.....Merci

En parlant de AVP il me reste un EDGE N°104 dans lequel il y a une interwiev de Andrew Whitetaker.

Et il était pour qui ?

fredifredo je crois mais je crois qu'il l'a déjà.

non j'ai oublié de le prendre à la JC !!!!

Bon ben voila

Pour fêter l'événement, freddifredo nous invite à l'avant-première du film

super ces lettres que tu as fait Fredifredo, on va y apprendre pleins de choses, enfin pour moi ^^

Oui merci Fred pour ces docs

J'ai trouvé ça sur le net :

http://msb.neostrada.pl/chosneck/mag2/ART39.html

Très intéressant

pas mal.


Au fait c'est drôle, mais j'ai commencé à jouer sérieusement à AvP il y a deux jour
du coup je suis nu peu décu pour les sauvegardes... à chaque fois il faut se rettaper les aliens et en plus ça sauvegarde pas les ouvertures des portes ni le trajet sur le plan....

trop facile sinon...

je viens de jouer cet aprem et c'est dur dur ... j'ai perdu la main... avec le predator je me suis fait calmer en 2 minutes et puis avec le marine même si on survit faut trouver ces put... de cartes qui sont cachés partout ...
Avec Miki on avait fini le jeu avec le Predator ( trop facile un fois qu'on a toutes les armes ) et l'Alien ( avec le systèmes des 3 cocons de "sauvegarde" on ne meurt jamais ) mais jamais avec le marine !

bienvenue au club

oué .. 'fin reste à savoir si ça été voulu ou pas mais c'est clair que ça rajoute de la difficulté et que ça va faire glonfler bien fort notre score

bah mes meileirus scores il me sembles que c'est avec l'alien.

Oh oui qu'il est dur...quand j'ai acheté ma Jaguar (en 1994 j'hésitais entre une 3DO et une Jaguar et c'est le prix a été le facteur déterminant) c'est le premier jeu que j'ai acheté...en y jouant jour et nuit, ça m'a pris plusieurs semaines avant de terminer tous les différents scénaris...mais quel pied !!
C'est le premier jeu qui m'a foutu autant la pression (et la trouille), un vrai bonheur !!

chercherv buine dans les entrailles du forum vous verez ce que j'en pense de ce jeu

merci pour toutes ces infos,...va falloir que je décrypte

Je croyais que Pocket aurait mis un petit message mais il doit être overbooké, je vais le faire :

sur Jaguar sector Two, Jason Smith parle d'une version d'AVP qui fonctionnerait avec le Jag VR !

http://jaysmith2000.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=566&st=15