Retrieving graphics from AvsP

[Mutantant]

Thats looking excellent. Good job.

 

Shame we cant have both, I'd love a faster running "same" version but also an updated one.

 

Perhaps a good compromise would be same level layouts with more atmosphere as you said.

Well, that is possible. I can't swear I'll do it that way as it will complicate things, but ZDoom has no real level limits. In other words, I can recreate the maps pure vanilla (which I would do before modifying them anyway) and then copy those to a separate section of maps, and make a "game+" version. Then when starting the game, much like one would select the "episode" to play in Doom, you'd select Vanilla or AvP+. Plus could have the ceiling aliens, moody levels, alt fire weapons, acid that melts away, while Vanilla is as much like the original, flaws and all, as I can make it without access to all the art assets.

[ZylonBane]

So has anyone dumped all the graphics into a ZIP file yet?

[Mutantant]

Last update before I move this to its own thread. The mod is up on ModDB: http://www.moddb.com/mods/jaguar-alien-vs-predator-doom/

 

Some images of WIP (note the original Jag version screenshot in the lower right):

 

 

 

 

Thanks again to those who enabled me to get at the wall and floor textures and threw in some comments. Expect credit in the mod

[+Stephen]

This is great! Looks amazing.

[Goochman]

Wow - really nice. The Jag textures fit in pretty well in a Doom environment.

[Mutantant]

This is great! Looks amazing.

 

Thanks!

 

 

Wow - really nice. The Jag textures fit in pretty well in a Doom environment.

 

Yeah, the engines are as similar as they are different. Same basic resolution, texture size, etc. The only odd thing is how the textures are 128x128, which is square, but the game squishes them on the y axis, making them wider than tall. Sounds like an extra step on the already taxed processors, so I'm not sure why they didn't just have the textures at the proper aspect ratio and save cycle. /shrug

[+save2600]

Amazing work here!

[ggn]

If you use the blitter you practically have zero overhead regardless if you want the textures squashed or not. So just a bit of RAM wasted. And of course it probably made testing and the artists' work much easier.

 

That said, the screenshots look extremely cool, well done! Glad I could give a hand .

[ZylonBane]

I was bored and had a look into the files, most of them are 8bpp, there are no textures.

I was even more bored and extracted and named (most of) the bitmaps. Converting the 16-bit bitmaps to the Jaguar palette was beyond my means.

 

Interestingly, the computer log system was originally planned to support images in addition to text, as there are several unused images that correspond with log entries.

 

For instance these guys:

 

 

Obviously go with these entries:

 

andytext:

ANDREW WHITTAKER

WANTED FOR IMPERSONATING A POLICE OFFICER

 

miketext:

MIKE BEATON

WANTED FOR WANTON DISREGARD FOR MILESTONES

 

tobytext:

TOBY HARRISON-BANFIELD

WANTED FOR SULKING IN OFFICE HOURS

 

stutext:

STUART WILSON

WANTED FOR POSSESSION OF AN AMIGA COMPUTER

In fact I'd like to identify who's who in these pictures. Anyone know?

avp_bitmaps.zip

Edited September 22, 2017 by ZylonBane

[JagChris]

...so I'm not sure why they didn't just have the textures at the proper aspect ratio and save cycle. /shrug

Because they...uh, oh nevermind.

[ZylonBane]

Every surface and sprite in AvP is being scaled and redrawn every frame, so a little squashing along one axis is nothing. Worst side effect would be slightly non-square texels.

 

I imagine they did it to bring the ceiling height down so things would feel more cramped and claustrophobic.

[ZylonBane]

And here are all the JagPEG textures, thanks to ggn's player.

 

Would be nice to rip all the sprites and sounds too, but I have no idea how to go about that.

avp_jpegs.zip

[PeterG]

I was even more bored and extracted and named (most of) the bitmaps. Converting the 16-bit bitmaps to the Jaguar palette was beyond my means.

 

Interestingly, the computer log system was originally planned to support images in addition to text, as there are several unused images that correspond with log entries.

 

For instance these guys:

 

 

Obviously go with these entries:

 

 

In fact I'd like to identify who's who in these pictures. Anyone know?

I thought I remembered the person on the left to be Whitakker from some interview I read years ago about the coding for AvP.

I looked for it but didn`t find it. But I found another very interesting article about this person and the name actually being Jane and not Andrew, don`t know if you have seen it already. Doesn`t help to answer your question but I thought it was an interesting read.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-10-death-threats-false-personas-and-philanthropy-the-untold-story-of-jane-whittaker

 

Also there is this picture which which might resemble the one on the left the most?

https://web.archive.org/web/20031206194334/http://andreww.atari-users.net/index.htm

[darkfalzx]

I see this topic hasn't been updated in a while, so maybe I can give it my own try.

 

Have the in-game sprites (enemies, weapons, pickups) been dumped by anyone into a PC-friendly format, and if they have, may I please have them?

 

Thank you in advance!

[Tempest Nut]

On 11/26/2015 at 11:51 AM, Mutantant said:

 

Nice document, thanks. Using the ram dump idea, I loaded t2k_0.06c and loaded the game. t2k_0.06c does poorly with AvP, won't run the marine campaign at all, marines won't fire on you as an alien, and the marine sprites are screwed, BUT it does allow for a save-state ram dump. Using that dump and JagView I managed to get some textures and sprites, but the colors are all wrong no matter what mode I set. Don't know if it is a JagView bug or a palate thing. VJ doesn't seem to allow ram dumping and when using HxD to dump the ram of the whole program I wasn't able to get any decent results.

 

The document you copied here seems to state the graphics get loaded in and out of RAM a lot as well, so that could be a problem.

 

However, it also gives me a number of textures: 65 (plus a few extra for signs) which means VJ + screenshots + Photoshop = getting all the textures. This would suck, of course...

 

 

 

I agree with most of that and will keep it in mind.

Shotgun design, maybe, as the beta has no animations for me to use.

Acid puzzles, certainly, as I think that's poor game design in a game with such limited health. Needs to disappear sooner or later, somehow. Or you need to get boots, or have the ability to jump.

Mapping system would be ZDoom standard, i.e. better than Doom, and Doom was better than AvP as it was.

Cacooning, maybe a bit faster.

Game speed, AvP * 1.5 - in other words, way slower than Doom, but faster than AvP, as AvP was slow only due to frame rate. To see what I mean, load AvP in VJ and turn on faster blitter. Plays so smooth, and a bit faster, but still slow and methodical.

Do you know where I can still get t2k_0.06c.zip?

[JagChris]

On 11/26/2015 at 6:23 AM, Mutantant said:

Hey all.

 

So, the main games that keep me holding on to Ye Olde Jaguar, even as some games have aged very poorly, are the classics like AvsP and Tempest 2k. One day, I thought to myself something many of us have thought in the past: We need a port/remake of AvsP. Frankly, as flawed as the game is (think, super-low frame rate) it honestly is an amazing, complex, hard, it-doesn't-hold-your-hand classic game.

 

Well, as an avid Doom modder, I realized by using one of the modern Doom ports like ZDoom and GZDoom, which include very advanced scripting capabilities, one could possibly make something like a remake of AvsP. Not exact, for sure, as they are not the same engine, but something like it. For those in doubt, google Brutal Doom and watch a video or two, as every aspect of Doom has been changed, enhanced, scripted, and GORYfied to the extent the game is like new: Faster paced, harder, and certainly more violent and tactical.

 

This leads me to the question of graphics. Now, there are decent enough Aliens mods for Doom out there I can crib graphics from. But the best thing would be to use the original graphics. You see where this is going?

 

Now, my understanding is the Jag:

1. Used no "sprites" in the way other systems did, as in having special sprites that one could easily pull from a cart.
2. Compressed all its graphics with BPEG.

 

So the actual wall and floor textures are not available and you are manually screenshotting them?

[Lost Dragon]

On 11/27/2015 at 4:36 AM, PlaysWithWolves said:

 

Yep, he's right! 16-bit JagPEG, according to an interview in GamePro #59, pp.20-21 (full mag. can be downloaded here in CBR format):

 

 

Jer Horwitz let himself get well and truly manipulated by Whittaker on this one. 

 

8 Number one 1 Amiga games for Graftgold? 

 

Uridium was merely a pitch made on behalf of an associate of his and Steve Turner never saw anything of it.. 

 

 

Source:Steve Turner

 

Flying Shark:Whittaker had a very limited role on the Amstrad CPC version. 

 

Morpheus:was only ever a C64 exclusive. 

 

Rainbow Islands:was the work of Andrew Braybrook and the team. 

 

 

 

http://uridiumauthor.blogspot.com/2018/03/rainbow-islands.html

 

 

He's also tried taking credit for C64 Magnetron (Steve Turner and Andrew Braybrook) 

 

 

ST Ranarama:

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-st-rana-rama_25285.html

 

 

The Midwinter 3 claim refers to him being credited with Data Entry on Ashes Of The Empire (Mike Singleton). 

 

 

But he's since twisted that into being a close friend of Mike Singleton and spending hours on level design with Mike for the original Midwinter and concocted some utter nonsense about an incident in a Chinese Restaurant :

 

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/retro-gamer/20180222/281685435312402

 

 

This has been shot down:

 

 

https://www.icemark.com/blog/archives/2018/04/16/midwinter-sid-meier-and-the-chinese-restaurant/

 

 

Patrick Ketchum and others from Cyberdreams have confirmed Whittaker never worked for them on any version of Dark Seed (Amiga or PC) , did not accompany them to visit H. R GIGER during the making of Dark Seed... 

 

 

Mike Dawson was digitised for the games lead role, not Whittaker. 

 

 

Whittaker never worked on Redline Racing/CFII and later changed the story to him offering coding advice on it.. 

 

 

Nor was he involved on Legions Of The Undead, openly admitted that on Newsgroups at the time. 

 

 

Whittaker has constantly name dropped Giger, Ridley Scott, Stan Winston and John Hurt being consultants whilst he worked on Dark Seed and AVP. 

 

GIGER made clear in FX magazine he merely sold Cyberdreams the art and put conditions it be rendered in high resolution mode and didn't think that much of the game itself. 

 

John Hurt, H. R GIGER and Stan Winston are all sadly no longer with us, ditto Mike Singleton ?

 

 

Which makes name dropping them convent for Whittaker.. 

 

 

Poor old Mike Pooley did additional coding on Jaguar AVP, but Whittaker never credits him, only himself (whom he often refers to as lead coder)  and Mike Beaton. 

 

 

Whittaker has claimed in various interviews he was in Puru coding AVP for a time, that John Carmack was coding Jaguar Doom/Wolfenstein (game changes depending on interview) on a cubicle to one side of him at Sunnyvale, Jeff Minter on the otherside coding Tempest 2000.

 

 

32X and Jaguar Doom were shown being worked on at i.d and Jeff Minter via Making Of Tempest 2000 articles for Edge and Retrogamer Magazines, plus photos on his Twitter page, along with Purple Hampton putting up photo of Ted and Carrie  Tahquechi Stonehenge during the making of Tempest 2000, prove it was coded entirely at his home in Wales, England... 

 

 

Whittaker also went onto claim Jaguar AVP A. I routines found their way into N64 Goldeneye.. Dr David Doak wrote his own.. 

 

 

That he was involved with PC AVP before doing a full 360 on the Newsgroups and admitting he wasn't, it was the work of Kingsley and his crowd. 

 

 

The entire GamePro, Gamestm and Retrogamer Magazine interviews with Whittaker are disgraceful and show the willingness of magazine editors to print anything as long as it fills a few pages. 

[JagChris]

I talked to a coder who says they did the 32X Doom at Sega. Then I hear it was done by Id directly. Anyone know for sure it was it a joint effort?

 

 

[Lost Dragon]

17 hours ago, JagChris said:

I talked to a coder who says they did the 32X Doom at Sega. Then I hear it was done by Id directly. Anyone know for sure it was it a joint effort?

 

 

It'd be helpful if you named the actual coder, so we can have some field of reference. 

 

 

On furher investigation claims made by likes of Mark Cale, Jim Gregory, Martin Hooley, Jez, San Steve Wilcox, Andrew/Jane Whittaker, Chuck Somerville, R. J Mical and many others, have been found to be completely false and often made in an attempt to rewrite history in their favour. 

 

 

 

There's enough stated and photographic evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt Minter wrote Tempest 2000 in Wales. 

 

 

As for where Carmack was writing 32X Doom

I spent weeks working with Id Software’s John Carmack, who literally camped out at the Sega of America building in Redwood City trying to get Doom ported. That guy worked his ass off and he still had to cut a third of the levels to get it done in time.

What amazes me now is that with all that going on, nobody at Sega was willing to say "Wait a minute, what are we doing? Why don’t we just stop?" Sega should have killed the 32X in the spring of 1994, but we didn’t. We stormed the hill, and when we got to the top we realized it was the wrong damn hill.

- Scot Bayless, Senior Producer at Sega of America

When it comes to Whittaker though, the individual is an utter disgrace. 

 

 

Fabricates claims about Mike Singleton inventing solid 3D and texture mapping, gives a completely incorrect account of Jack Tramiel early years.. even made up claims about working with some US Airforce Colonel in charge of the F-16 Squadron scrambled to intercept Flight 93 on 9/11.

 

 

Only 2 F-16's scrambled and none of the pilots were who he talks of. 

[Lost Dragon]

17 hours ago, JagChris said:

I talked to a coder who says they did the 32X Doom at Sega. Then I hear it was done by Id directly. Anyone know for sure it was it a joint effort?

 

Sega of America Development Team

• Programming: Jonathan E. Flamm, Banjo Bob Hardy, Toshiyasu Monita, Marty Franz, Rex Sabio, Unni Pillai
• Music: Brian Coburn
• Art: Jenny Martin
• Producer: Jesse K. Taylor
• Software Testing: Mike Baldwin, Joel Breton, Chris Lucich, Matt Underwood, Fernando Valderrama, Kim Rogers, Ben Cureton, Lloyd Kinoshita, Alfred Dutton, Sam Sallba, Stan Weaver, Mike Mansourian, Carey Camacho, Aaron Hommes, Jeff Loney

 

That's a lot of potential coders from SOA you spoke with, which of the 6 was it? 

 

 

Digital Foundry say John Carmack assisted with the 32X port. 

 

 

So it looks to be a joint effort. 

Edited November 17, 2020 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

On 11/27/2015 at 4:36 AM, PlaysWithWolves said:

 

Yep, he's right! 16-bit JagPEG, according to an interview in GamePro #59, pp.20-21 (full mag. can be downloaded here in CBR format):

 

 

In the interests of full transparency, regarding claims made by Whittaker in this interview and :

 

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/retro-gamer/20180222/281685435312402

 

Regarding Midwinter Midwinter III:

 

 

 "I thought this egregious little person had gone away but the claims and stories have surfaced again, i'm trying very hard not to get overly angry with Andy / Jane whittaker because there is some seriously wrong psychologically with this person. I have to say that first i heard of him was when him and another guy were seconded to Maelstrom from the publisher of Ashes of Empire to handle the imputing of data for the game, as you can imagine most tasks back then were performed manually, and if i remember correctly it was Chris Rowley that ended up doing the majority of that work along with game design.

 

As for being there at the design stage of Midwinter well that is sheer fantasy land on his part, Midwinter actually started out as a ZX Spectrum concept called blitz, and this design was came from ideas at the office but evolved onto the ST and Amiga when it because obvious that the Spectrum was nowhere near capable of doing what we wanted."

 

Ex-Maelstrom source and friend of the late Mike Singleton 

 

 

Dark Seed:

 

Andrew/Jane Whittaker had nothing to do with Dark Seed…  The design, creation and programming (PC and MAC) of Dark Seed was internal in Cyberdreams… Dark Seed PC and MAC were programmed inside Cyberdreams… in Los Angeles… nothing was externally handled.  The only person who was in Zurich working with Giger was Paul Drzewiecki. Everyone knows, as we stated many times in the marketing materials, the main character, Mike Dawson, was based on the producer, also names Mike Dawson.  We actually digitized him for the game so it is his likeness. You can quote me to anyone or on any article on this issue.  It’s just bizarre.

 

Further… Giger made absolutely no decisions on which platforms we delivered Dark Seed for… that was solely my decision.  Giger’s input was on the use of his images… which he had total control.

 

 

Anything else, just ask.

 

Thanks

 

Patrick Ketchum, Cyberdreams 

 

 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.gigerdb.com/articles/files/ImagineFX_Jul2008.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwibhv_wrJDsAhVTqHEKHUjmCiwQFjASegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw3zJG8b0-uC5eLrrKb2dOCE&cshid=1601451379357

 

 

Interview with Giger where he talks of having very little involvement in Dark Seed. 

 

And:

 

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/101991/Playing_Catch_Up_Darkseeds_Mike_Dawson.php

 

 

Interview with Mike Dawson where he talks of being digitized for main character, Whittaker claims it's him... 

 

Edited November 17, 2020 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

20 hours ago, JagChris said:

I talked to a coder who says they did the 32X Doom at Sega. Then I hear it was done by Id directly. Anyone know for sure it was it a joint effort?

 

 

Looking at the collected press.. 

 

It appears to be a case of the following :

 

 

Sega of America sign Doom for the 32X.

 

id are stretched, handling Jaguar Doom, PC DOOM II  and Quake. 

 

 

Sega assign their own team to convert the Doom code given to them by Id. 

 

Johnathan E. Flamm is lead 32X Doom coder, he works on the conversion with rest of the Sega team, but the entire process is done under the consultation and supervision of John Carmack and id consulted for all the major decisions regarding the 32X version. 

 

 

Press use visit to id HQ to promote the 32X version, as well as detailing work being done on Jaguar Doom and PC Doom II being done by Carmack and the team. 

[vananasun]

Any progress on extracting the rest of the sprites? Or any clues? The animations of the alien,  marine, predator and items such as healthpacks, table sprites etc are still a mystery!

[vananasun]

marine.. any ideas on how this is encoded?

[vananasun]

On 3/31/2023 at 1:06 PM, vananasun said:

marine.. any ideas on how this is encoded?

it's almost good but not quite.

 

 

The header has a table of bytes for each column in the image, and some sprites have multiple columns sometimes.

No idea what this is about.

 

I also found this comment in the code:

    # ; As sprites can only start on a whole phrase, we have to offset this pixel start forwards by an extra number of

    # ; pixels from 0-3, equal to the number of pixels which are being ignored in the base address

 

Is this perhaps a common bitmap format on the Atari Jaguar?

*any* ideas?