All AvP computer text

[PeterG]

Chris what's the point you are trying to proof? Feels like a strange kind of personal grudge. Don't you think people had enough time to make up their minds after all these years? From my personal view Rebellion released a flawed masterpiece, a shitty game and had another good one in the pipeline for the Jag that I enjoyed when Carl released it. Post Jaguar I never found any of their games any good aside from PC AvP. From what I see I don't hold them in very high regard as Devs but why care? There is so much good stuff out there. And although I don't care for their later work I can respect that they managed to launch a career out of developing games for our Jag. Cool story at the end of the day...

[JagChris]

He asked

[+CyranoJ]

Jagchris logic:

 

Jane: saying that "the films must have been watched 200 times during the making of AVP" and again talking of previous work with H.R.G on Dark Seed.

Jagchris: "Didn't need to watch any of the film's huh? Yep. Stand up work ethic there."

Didn't need to read the post above, huh? Stand up comprehension there."

[JagChris]

Speaking of comprehension he wasn't talk about Rebellion crew. He was talking about himself

[Lost Dragon]

JagChris:Your coming across as someone who seems knows next to absolutely *nothing* about the actual economic model of the games industry and how specific roles within it work and why people like Whittaker were employed for those roles and let go/moved onto other projects once a game was completed. ..

 

But worse still, unwilling to learn and take onboard the very information the likes of Jane Whittaker is now taking time to explain in even greater depth to the community. ..

 

Or something of a Cheerleader for your selected industry favourite individuals.

 

You cling to comments made by Lance Lewis, whom i have found provided some very useful insights into various Jaguar projects he was involved in and have indeed quoted him myself when the points he made were helpful.

 

I've no great love for Rebellion myself, but for my many sins, have at least taken the time to the issue of just WTF went wrong with so many of their titles on numerous platforms (Jaguar/PSP/Xbox and PS3)to them and they and now Jane have been kind enough to explain.

 

 

You talk about Rebellion Software and their Ethics. .

 

Ok then, so what would you of done if you were in charge of a new and inexperienced team, working on flagship titles for a new and complex piece of hardware which suffered from bugged chipsets and poor development tools.

 

 

Your 1st titles your tasked with are:

 

1.Delivering a Virtua Racing clone that has to exceed what Sega itself has achieved on a lowly 16 bit system and a DSP chip on cartridge.

 

You've already taken on 1 coder who proclaimed himself a real whizz kid on 3D Maths coding and it turns out he lied...you've had to let him go, your left with Rob Dibley..really nice guy, but this is the 1st commercial title he's coded and Atari are demanding your title by it's milestone dates...

 

 

2.Your other title is based on a flagship comics range which themselves are born from classic films.

Previous games have been purely 2D, but your planning something far more ambitious, you want to turn the I.P into an atmospheric, horror-esq based game in a First-Person viewpoint and you're set yourself a mammoth task as is in terms of digitising props, hand built panels etc as it is.

 

 

Are you seriously telling me you would not actively seek out someone like Whittaker with their previous hands on experience of working with H.R.G who created the Alien, who was a huge fan of the films, to be a valuable asset as don't forget, your work in the case of AVP has to be approved by Fox as well as Atari.

 

By proclaiming Rebellion lazy and questioning their ethics regarding AVP, your putting the hard work of a lot of people to shame.

Edited March 28, 2019 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

Chris what's the point you are trying to proof? Feels like a strange kind of personal grudge. Don't you think people had enough time to make up their minds after all these years? From my personal view Rebellion released a flawed masterpiece, a shitty game and had another good one in the pipeline for the Jag that I enjoyed when Carl released it. Post Jaguar I never found any of their games any good aside from PC AvP. From what I see I don't hold them in very high regard as Devs but why care? There is so much good stuff out there. And although I don't care for their later work I can respect that they managed to launch a career out of developing games for our Jag. Cool story at the end of the day...

Even the shitty title managed to pull in some sound scores from UK Press at times:

 

72% C+VG

70% ST Action

 

Atari commissioned Rebellion to develop a strictly single player, flat shaded polygon racing title and that is what Rebellion gave them.

 

I'm sure Atari UK were grateful for the solid review scores game did receive.

 

 

At the time, Jason Kingsley was perhaps unwise to put a blanket ban on staff explaining why the game had taken so long to appear and explain it's shortcomings. ..Instead we say statements like:

 

 

"It's worth noting that this was work-for-hire for Atari, and due to the

terms of that type of contract, which we signed, the games testers at Atari have rather more control over the final product than you might expect. " Rebellion

 

Which did little to ease the dissapointed for those who'd paid full price for it.

 

And just to underline an earlier point. ..The hotshot physics coder who turned out to be nothing of the sort, after Rebellion hired him for Checkered Flag, just again emphasises the fact that rather than being lazy and making do..Rebellion actively sought out people who were or at least claimed to be..experts in their field, to work on theirJaguar titles.

 

They employed people with the Skill Sets needed they lacked, Jagchris, it's that simple a point to get across.

 

Sometimes they got burned..sometimes it worked out fantastically well and game really benifited.

 

They did not take a who cares type approach as you imply.

 

Listen to what the likes of Jane Whittaker tell the community if you don't want to believe Rebellion themselves.

Edited March 28, 2019 by Lost Dragon

[+CyranoJ]

You guys are wasting your time. It's either rose-tinted or shit-smeared glasses with some people.

[Lost Dragon]

You guys are wasting your time. It's either rose-tinted or shit-smeared glasses with some people.

Yep..when someone like Jane, who refuses to discuss anything Rebellion related , is kind enough to point out their role and years of experience and why they were taken on for AVP and talk openly about Rebellion getting burnt by a Physics coder they employed in good faith..

 

Let alone detail the issues with Jaguar hardware itself, their own health issues during AVP development etc etc..

 

And they are met with the same flippant response putting blame squarely on Rebellions shoulders. ..

 

Time is a wasting.

 

 

Maybe Jagchris would of prefered AVP go to a different developer and stay true to Atari's original plan for a 2D side scrolling affair, rather than have Rebellion inject some ambition into the opportunity?

[JagChris]

Its not in dispute that Rebellion watched the movies.

 

After Atari made them.

 

AvP on the PC the Aliens just bum rush you. Also details like the shoulder Cannon is just a dot that shoots out. Like they couldn't have done something more than that.

 

It's been years since I've played AvP PC. I just found out there's a patch for it so it will run on newer systems. I will have to check that out.

Edited March 28, 2019 by JagChris

[Lost Dragon]

Which AVP on PC?

 

The Rebellion original? (Windows' 95, which has superb Xenomorph A.I, the Aliens make full use of the environment).Rebellion took flak for making game too difficult by a lot of the games playing public at the time, though it was so refreshing and the Xeno fish eye lens viewpoint was another innovative step.

 

AVP II ?(done by Monolith and indeed in that they have indeed been reduced to your standard FPS fodder and sadly just run straight at you).

 

Or the AVP put out by Sega, which Rebellion coded on PC, PS3 and 360?

 

The Aliens in Alien Trilogy (Probe) on PS1, PC and Saturn are also terrible, just mill around like sheep, but this is a title originally planned for the Sega CD, then moved to 32X, finally appearing on formats listed.

 

Aliens:C.M (Gearbox, farmed out to 3rd party developers) on PC, 360 and PS3 also suffered terrible A.I.

 

Only the original AVP by Rebellion on PC and Alien Res. on Playstation (which underwent numerous rewrites, changing from a 3rd person to a 1st person affair) have really captured the essence of what kind of real threat the Xenomorphs posed.

 

 

 

Your pitching a strawman argument here as you cannot avoid the fact that Konami 's Coin Op Aliens takes the wildest of liberties with the film it's based on (unless you know of a version that has zombies, flying Aliens etc)..

 

Ditto Sega with Alien 3:The Gun

 

Probe with MD, MS, AMIGA and C64 Alien 3 and SNES Alien 3...seperate games but both run n gun affairs. .film of course having no weapons.

 

 

IF your talking the last AVP game Rebellion coded, i did ask Jason Kingsley what on earth they had done with the Xeno A.I routines, his explanation:

 

Jason:Nothing went wrong, but I think the market had changed and there were more mass market pressures on us to make the game easier and more non-core gamer friendly if that makes any sense. We also lost about 5 months at the end of the project because of publisher business pressures and release schedules, so really we didn’t get the time we had planned to put the final polish on the game. Bizarrely looking back now, we were told we were going up against ACM’s release, which ironically took another three years to hit the market (They took seven years in total, we took just over two…).

 

 

Jason was also kind enough to confirm PSP AVP was done in a matter of weeks:

 

Jason:Yup 5 weeks from start to finish with an existing engine in place and lots of retained knowledge. They even managed to make us change the end game boss to avoid film spoilers, then release the film trailer complete with spoilers in it anyway.

 

 

I couldn't care if Atari forced Rebellion to watch any of the movies..i am eternally grateful Rebellion had a damn sight more vision of how to do a game based on AVP on the Jaguar than Atari did..If AVP had been a SNES style 2D side scroller, i would never of touched the Jaguar.

 

 

If your going to try and fault Rebellion for not watching the movies until as you feel they were forced into doing..

 

I cannot wait to hear your thoughts on how likes of Sega, Capcom, Konami Probe etc treated the Aliens franchise.

 

And please do not forget AVP on SNES (Jorudan Co the developer) as it had bosses based on concept of a Gorilla, a Shark, a bat and a Snake being impregnated by a face hugger...cannot for the life of me remember that happening in any of the films...

Edited March 28, 2019 by Lost Dragon

[JagChris]

The original 1999 PC release. I have AvP Gold Edition.

I cannot remember the Aliens being very intelligent at all.

 

I will have to give it a go again soon. Perhaps I am remembering wrong.

[Gummy Bear]

[Lost Dragon]

Personally i hated the changes Rebellion made to the Gold Edition, but again Jason was kind enough to explain why they were made:

 

 

Jason:we initially used our own in house actors which was great, but the publisher asked us to use stuff they had shot and that I felt was much more wooden, but they were paying the bills so they got to have the final decisions

 

You've dug yourself into something of a hole of your own making here Chris, i am a huge Aliens fan and have played as many Aliens and Predator games as i could over the years..

 

Honurable mentions to Alien 3 on GB

Aliens (Electric Dreams on C64)

For capturing the films essence...

 

Hated the US Mini Game approach to C64 Aliens..lots of presentation but weaker game (known as Aliens U.S over here, published by Activision).

 

Never a fan of C64 Predator..looked great, played like a dog...

 

Hated Predator:Concrete Jungle on PS2 and Xbox...camera system alone was shite.

 

Loved the AVP RTS on PS2 and Xbox.

 

Not a fan of Alien Isolation due to scripted A.I but did finish it on PS3 and had my copy signed by voice actor who played Gorman in Aliens.

 

Could not expect much from Aliens games on NES, MSX or 2600...hardware too primitive.

 

Didn't go that much on Aliens C.M on the Nintendo DS either.

 

 

Very few developers have got it right with the Alien franchise, but Rebellion can sit alongside Argonaut and Electric Dreams with pride, when they did get it right.

 

 

I just have never understood your feelings towards them and Jaguar AVP as it seems so based around a soundbite Lance J.Lewis made during an interview.

 

 

Lance was not a member of Rebellion staff..but Atari but he made clear it was James 'Purple' Hampton's decision to have the engineers as he put it, CODE AVP, but incorporate the majority of the ideas he wanted featured in the game.

 

So Rebellion were simply under the guidance of others from the very start.

 

It's this aspect that i honestly think you struggle to grasp.

 

Rebellion were contracted to produce an AVP game for Atari.

 

Atari had it's own people heavily involved. .(as did 20th Century Fox) and they were calling an awful lot of the shots.

 

Purple told Rebellion what he wanted the game to include.

 

Whittaker had worked with H.R Gieger and seen the films countless times.

 

Rebellion had the comic book source material..

 

Fox were supplying film props etc..

 

You present a scenario where Rebellion lacked personal experience of the source material, yet this was never the case.

 

AVP was never strictly a Rebellion Only project.

[Lost Dragon]

I don't think you mean any malice with your comments Chris, but you do tend to get yourself in something of a pickle at times.

 

Your Tempest 2000 comments on YT are another example.

 

You talk of Playstation not being able to replicate the pixel shatter effects from the Jaguar version, yet HVS didn't try and do a straight port of T2K on Playstation, that was the Saturn version.

 

Playstation had Tempest X3..A rewrite for the Sony hardware, cue fluid textures, translucent lighting effects, moving, oily looking webs, more levels and a better frame rate.

 

Sadly High Voltage Software f##ked up the A.I Droid routines, but that's what you get when you decline Jeff Minter's offer of help coding the game.

 

Jeff himself had made very clear people should easily be able to improve a pin his Jaguar code on Playstation, as the Sony hardware had a Geometry Engine, hardware support for Texture Mapping and very capable hardware assist for 3D..

 

So it seemed an odd statement.

 

I could turn it around and ask you if anyone could replicate the visuals of Tony Crowther's N20 on Playstation on the Jaguar hardware? Blitter and all...

 

But unlike Jeff who gave a detailed account of how he used the Jaguar architecture for both Tempest 2000 and Defender 2000, i have yet to see Tony explain how he used the Sony hardware.

[JagChris]

I don't remember the AI being memorable But I will recheck soon.

 

We'll see if I'm remembering right.

[JagChris]

Having trouble with the AvPx exe.

 

@LD. The only hole being dug is by you with your walls of the texts and conversation tricks. I have not said I was wrong and you were right.

 

I merely said I am willing to take another look. To honestly look at your thoughts and point of view. And see if I have overlooked anything.

 

And you got Gummy Bear over there trolling.

Edited March 28, 2019 by JagChris

[Lost Dragon]

I'm quite happy sat in my comfy hole thanks Chris.

 

It's given me quite the viewpoint of you holding onto your spade for dear life as you pass judgement on commercial Jaguar developer after developer.

 

Few have escaped your wisdom..

 

Probe,Rebellion and ATD had poor work ethics..

 

Mike Diskett should never of attempted to convert Magic Carpet and Theme Park and Syndicate should never of had slowdown.

 

 

You knew more about bringing Tempest 2000 to PlayStation than Minter and High Voltage Software.

 

You knew more about working on Jaguar Doom than Dave Taylor of I.D.

 

 

For an individual with some many complaints about what others did with the Jaguar hardware, it amazes me you never took these complaints up with them yourself.

 

 

 

Too busy seeing Sony conspiracies lurking in the shadows perhaps?

 

Or just torch bearing for your coders of choice?.

Edited March 28, 2019 by Lost Dragon

[JagChris]

I remember not to bring able to get AvP PC sound/video to work right. Tried all the different settings on everything from a 200mhz win95 to a 733mhz win98 and a few in between. Every time a video would play it would stutter and pop and be all herky jerky. It's like Rebellion didn't sync the sound and video up correctly.

 

I remember thinking 'Jesus Christ Rebellion they give you all the power you could want and you still can't get it straight'

Edited March 28, 2019 by JagChris

[Lost Dragon]

All you have done in this thread Chris is: 1. Claim Rebellion were poor coders-yet Skyhammer is still regarded as a showcase Jaguar title and now your putting boot in, on their PC coding skills..

 

2.Bang the same tired old drum about Rebellion being apparently forced to watch AVP films and even after it's been explained Atari and Fox had their own people in place (Hampton and Whittaker) and Rebellion by their own admission, were simply contractual developers working on behalf of Atari to code AVP for them, you still can't grasp how the game itself was developed.

 

Whittaker was approached by:Giger, Atari and Fox, no connection to Rebellion before or after AVP.

 

 

 

You made some very unfortunate and poorly researched comments..

 

Own them.

 

If,after so many posts in this thread your answer to the issue of Jaguar AVP, is to return to PC AVP because it's been patched..then there is your answer indeed.

 

You simply do not understand how contractual game development works.

 

Be it Rebellion with AVP..ATD with Battlemorph or Probe with Primal Rage.

 

 

 

They produced the finest AVP gameS of their generations and yet all you can do is find fault..

 

Show us on the Xenomorph doll exactly where they touched you, as you have a massive grudge about them, that much is evident.

Edited March 28, 2019 by Lost Dragon

[JagChris]

We've been through those points multiple times. Then, as now, you then come back to them as if they've not been addressed. It's circular, and one of your favorite conversation tricks.

Edited March 28, 2019 by JagChris

[Lost Dragon]

A record is also circular Chris and I would honestly suggest changing yours.

 

The community has been very fortunate that various people from ATD,Probe,Rebellion,Llamasoft,I.D and Bullfrog have given of their valuable time to explain commercial Jaguar development to us.

 

It's evidently wasted on the likes of yourself, you at best have massive blinkers on, not rose tinted Spectacles.

 

 

Sadly,you went so deep into the woods, i doubt you even remember what daylight looks like.

 

 

You've conducted interviews of your own in the past Chris,which have brought a lot of fantastic insights into the community and i am grateful to you for doing them.

 

However, it then becomes rather telling that you have not invested anything like the time you did then, to voice your concerns about either AVP title to Rebellion themselves (Jason Kingsley is not one to shy away from critiscm of his companies work) or those from Atari involved with AVP on Jaguar.

 

Jane Whittaker is happily answering questions on YT comments sections at these very time.

 

Are you afraid the answers you receive will put a spotlight on your inability to grasp the realities of commercial games development and you might be forced into apologising to individuals for questioning their work ethics on public forums?

 

 

Or simply that good lord forbid, in time you actually come to appreciate what the games actually achieved and in the case of Jaguar AVP, the strong foundations it created that allowed Rebellion to build apon,for the later PC release that was met by critical acclaim then and is held in such high regard to this day?

 

If you feel so strongly about Rebellion and it's commercial output..have the stones at least to put your critiscm directly to them and allow them to give you their side of the account.

Edited March 29, 2019 by Lost Dragon

[JagChris]

?

[Lost Dragon]

So..as i thought.

 

It's cowardice on your part.

Content to fault Rebellion on here, not got the stomach to address them yourself.

 

Cyrano Jones nailed it a good few posts back.

 

Your simply not worth the time engaging.

[JagChris]

Oh thank God

[jaybird3rd]

I'm still not quite sure what everyone is arguing about or why, but I wish it would stop so I don't have to start kicking people out of the thread.