#102

Excuse me sir a what?

Hello y'all. Back in the realm if the living. Got that discord thing but not sure how to link it up to the site. 

#103

Try the pinned thread or the messages I sent to you.

(removed link).

Last edited 3 Sep 2018 at 13:34.

#104

Getting back onto topic here, (and answering your question, G-Man), the ini tweak does infact make quite a difference to the AI. The Aliens are far sneakier. I played the Hadleys Hope level and they were constantly running on ceilings to flank me and killing me.

So, this, coupled with the already significant improvements that the mod made to the AI means it's even better than ever. Co-op, this would mean much more team play and better squad positioning would be required to survive.

Last edited 3 Sep 2018 at 13:36.

#105

I just can't imagine, all that hype, I remember seeing the huge bill boards advertising this game waiting for the tube one day thinking, wow, quite the release.

Then it gets slated for being a pile of poop for awful AI (i think was pretty much the only reason?) dies a death, and now, years on, someone checks the ini for typos?!

Surely, in the programming dept. you'd have something like a spell check which would have all your parameters/function names etc. stored, and would flag the issue on review?

Surely the developers would have noticed, gee, hmm, these NPCs seem to be acting like a braindead walrus, hey, the xenos can't even make it over a desk, or shoebox without getting stuck. oh well, 'APPROVED'

WTF.

Anyway, as V5 was released before finding this, maybe we should run it completely vanilla, with just the .ini fixed, to see it exaclt as it was supposed to be released - I wonder if all the templarGFX fixes will be overkill now that the issue he was trying to fix, will be natively fixed?

#106

There was much more wrong with it than just AI - it could have been so much more than a standard run-and-gun game, basically. They had tools like the sentry gun, motion tracker and welder which were completely mis-used (or barely used at all). Think of a game like Alien Swarm - that you can weld doors shut behind you to slow the swarm and provide you valuable seconds to escape. Or the sentry gun, for that matter, which when placed in strategic points is the difference between life and death. A:CM had none of that. You could weld and de-weld doors that IT WANTED YOU TO, but only for the sake of it, there was no tactical use for it what-so-ever. Same goes for the sentry gun. One or two levels you can place them - exactly where the plot and game says you can and that's it.

The spawning system is all pre-ordained as well - think what it would have been like with an "AI Director", like L4D or Alien Swarm - making every playthough different and not knowing where things are going to come from. The motion tracker is also next to useless in the game, since enemies just appear when the game wants them to. You don't see them on the tracker until they are right in front of you. 

Wasted potential, basically. Add on top of that the sub-par graphics (at the time, even after a massive post-release patch), the terrible AI, short story and really lacking multiplayer options and you have a game that simply could have been so much more.

It had no urgency, no terror factor - no "oh shit" moments. It's just Call of Duty in space.

They were some of my other big issues with it.

I'm not really interested in running it without his mod, to be honest. Although from a "testing it" perspective, if you want to, go for it.

Last edited 30 Apr 2018 at 11:09.

#107

oh yeah, I forgot all about that for some reason (never played the campaign other than with you guys) I think for the reasons mentioned, it'll always be pap.

the other one was awesome though, the AVP, even if it was just PvE...

#108

AvP was pretty good. Shame that one wasn't campaign co-op, really. In my eyes Alien Swarm was (is) the closest we have come to a decent Aliens game so far - it's a real shame that they never expanded on that game or made a sequel as I think the audience is there for it. There was talk of a first-person mod for it at one point, but I don't think anything become of it which is a shame.