AvP 2.0 - JDREDALERT's Edition WIP Is Out For Testing !!

[jdredalert]

Technically it could sneak. But stealth based gameplay mods are very difficult to pull out. It's just not the right game to the job. I know some may link Sid Doyle's Sneaky Doom mod here, but still, i don't think it would be easy task for now.

[-Ghost-]

True. It doesn't really feel like it brings much to the table right now, but you're probably right that the Alien just needs more powers and abilities to flesh him out. Maybe some sort of summoning system where it can call in facehuggers or drones or something? That'd be a fun way to swarm if you just want the Aliens route instead of Alien.

[Valherran]

Oh, and did you tested the seismic charges? You didn't said a word about those... they share the spawn rate with the pulse grenades, that's why the pulse nades seems a li'l bit rare.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention those. They were useful for throwing them into areas I would normally not be able to, and probably the safest explosive to use in any situation.
Though if the Grenade Launcher makes a come back, it will outclass them completely.

Now, about the saving cheese problem, i would normally do map01 to 10 runs with the rule of not saving in order to test the weapons. While i did succeeded numerous times, i have to consider that i made those weapons and tweaked the bad guys, so i know how everything works in a very intimate level and things should be easier to me. I'm not drawing the "get gud" card here, it's just that i know it's possible to progress without saving, but I'll surely take your feedback in consideration.

After Dead Simple it started getting hard where I had to save a lot cus of the amount of enemies and CQC encounters present on the maps.

Another thing you could do for the Marine is decrease the time it takes to switch weapons, and greatly speed up the time it takes the minigun to rev on alt-fire, that should be nearly instant.

[jdredalert]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention those. They were useful for throwing them into areas I would normally not be able to, and probably the safest explosive to use in any situation.
Though if the Grenade Launcher makes a come back, it will outclass them completely.

Nah, i don't think it will, really. I really like the seismic charges the way they are, so no more grenade launchers (doesn't help with the fact that the Pulse Rifle already have a built in grenade launcher. I thought that would be too redundant to have two of them).

After Dead Simple it started getting hard where I had to save a lot cus of the amount of enemies and CQC encounters present on the maps.

Some tips i can give you is to use the Marine gadgetry to the fullest. That includes abusing the turrets when needed. They are very useful to distract and contain hordes of enemies.

Now, may i ask you a favor? Since you're the most inclined to do long reviews, could you send detailed feedback on Marine's arsenal? That would be a lot helpful. Others are invited too. Balance can't be done with only a single person speaking.

[Endless123]

As i recall there is already a sneak move that can be used for all classes since 1.3 version of this mod - it's triggered by pressing a custom key

As a little update, after applying the new damage formula for the Predator weapons and testing them i think i found a good balance in the weapon upgrades. Of course i still have some stuff to balance on the enemies to prevent the strong foes like the predaliens and enemy predators to be killed too quickly. Ho and now the damage of the speargun is scaled with the prestige now like the plasma caster and the plasma blaster. I don't think i have to mention i reduced the basic damage as well.

As jdredalert said, we need as much feedbacks as possible to better balance the mod. The more feedbacks we have from many players the more balanced and enjoyable the final release will be

[Doctrine Gamer]

7. Not sure where you got that menu screen pic from, but something seems off and very unsettling about that Predator's face . A different pic would be better IMHO.

He took that picture out of a wallpaper (searching on Google you see) but now that you've commented, a face of the Predator is more bizarre than normal.

[Valherran]

Now, may i ask you a favor? Since you're the most inclined to do long reviews, could you send detailed feedback on Marine's arsenal? That would be a lot helpful. Others are invited too. Balance can't be done with only a single person speaking.

Sure thing, here you are:

PISTOL - Well, if you get down to this weapon, you suck at aiming and/or you played a very unfair map. Damage is weak, but it has infinite ammo so it's actually decent. If the dual wield option from AvP Gold makes a comeback, then it would be a solid weapon for fresh starts. There might be a glitch with this pistol though, sometimes when I am firing fast manually I am getting a double tap effect.

MAGNUM - The damage on this is really good. Performance is 100% too, nothing much to say here.

PULSE RIFLE - As said before, the bullet weapons should get toned down a little bit in damage, other than that this weapon is fine.

SHOTGUN - This thing is kind of underpowered, especially with the dominate presence of bullet weapons. Once I get the Super Shotgun, I never look back. Rarely will this gun ever 1 shot kill at close range to non-synths, sometimes it can take 3, even for Warriors. I'd bring up the minimum damage up enough to where it should kill a human in 1 hit without fail, spread could be tightened a tiny bit too. If this weapon could be M90 Mossberg with the gauge slug alt-fire, that would make long range combat less problematic in early game.

SUPER SHOTGUN - No complaints here in terms of performance, it does exactly what it should do. My only real gripe is that it sure is quiet for a boomstick.

SMARTGUN - Similar to what was said with the Pulse Rifle, damage could get toned down a little bit. I noticed that this gun can stun-lock enemies, namely the Pred Alien, I'd tone the pain chance way down as it is kinda broken.

FLAMETHROWER - This weapon does exactly what it should do, but it should not cause any pain chance. Like the Smartgun, this weapon can stun-lock and it needs to be removed.

ROCKET LAUNCHER - The primary issue has already been addressed and dealt with. The seeker missile alt-fire is kinda off though, this should require a lock-on before seeking and not making 90 degree turns around corners into a nearby enemy. If that existed in the AvP games, that would have been nerfed real quick . If you want this current function of weapon to still be in the game, I would implement the Skeeter Launcher, that's a more fair way of corner busting than just using a grenade launcher.

SEISMIC CHARGES - The primary issue has already been solved, though the amount of bouncing the alt-fire does bothers me a bit. It's not so much because of the bounce (well, a little bit) but rather how the charge is thrown. You're using the Duke Nukem style Pipebomb throwing which doesn't match the physics of the object's movement. If you changed it to where you were throwing these overhand instead of underhand, then the amount of bounce would make more sense. Although the amount of bounce these are doing is a little over the top and could be toned down a bit.

MINIGUN - The only complaint with this weapon is the time it takes to get the barrels spinning, this should be nearly instant. Tone down the damage slightly, and we have a proper bullet hose.

SNIPER RIFLE - Nothing wrong with this weapon, it does exactly what it should do.

[Endless123]

Let me the honor to reply to you Valherran.

For ...

The pistol - you are right about the "double-tap" effect. I noticed it too but haven't find a way to solve this yet. Maybe it's related to the rate of fire that is still too high for fast manual shooting.

Magnum - Nothing to say here

Pulse Rifle - The basic damage is 3 per shot, it's using a "tracer" that is also used by the other bullets weapons. We could decrease the damage to 2 but we can't reduce to 1 because it will make this weapon a bit useless and your complain about the shotgun would also apply to the pulse rifle if we do that. However as i said it shouldn't be a big problem to reduce the damage to 2. I'll do some test with this value and see if the pr is still overpowered.

Shotgun - i also think it's a bit underpowered and not really satisfying to use

SSG - If yo want a real boomstick this can be arranged but don't complain about the sound being too loud

Smartgun - Damage-wise i think it's ok because it's supposed to be the go-to gun to kill strong enemies that's why weak enemies are killed quickly with it. However i'll see how far i can lower the damage while retaining the "strong enemies killer" role of this weapon - you don't want to use a whole 300 rounds clip to kill a predator or a predalien are you?

Flamethrower - About the "pain chance" ... if you were hit by the flames of this weapon would you have some pain? I bet you will We could remove the pain chance or lower it but will it be realistic to burn enemies with this weapon if some enemies don't react to the pain of the flames?

Rocket Launcher - Good point there. We could just reduce the angle of the turn it can do while seeking and reduce the distance of target acquisition, that way it would be more realistic i think.

Seismic Charges - As oddly as it sounds i must admit that the bouncing is a bit off the scale with the alt-fire. Nothing that can't be solved quickly so consider it solved.

Sniper Rifle - Nothing to say here.

Minigun - It's the powerhouse of the Marine arsenal - it's supposed to be OP because it's a "boss killer" like the BFG. As for the slow barrel rotation there is a simple fix, click the alt-fire button to have the automatic barrel rotation and a quicker firing. This weapon has been designed this way. Slow firing start but powerful. Making this weapon fire instantly would make it way too OP and would make the alt-fire useless. The damage value is already low for this weapon - you don't want to have the impression you are firing with a water pistol don't you However i'll see what i can do for this one to find some sort of "middle ground" damage-wise.

Thanks for your insights Valherran, it will greatly help jd an I to improve this mod

I invite as many players as possible to give jd an I their insights, opinions and comments about this mod like Valherran did. Like jd said, the more players who give us their impressions about this mod the more balanced this mod will be for everyone.

[Nocturned85]

First want to say, fun mod you guys put together.

Pistol - I would say it's decent for what it is. A last resort side arm with unlimited ammo.

Suggestion: Would it be possible to stick other handguns in? Like the Vp70 can act like the starting pistol but with more bullets, the 45. can have less and be more powerful.

Magnum - No complaints.

Shotgun - I honestly do not like using this thing as much as I did in previous versions. Pretty under-powered and doesn't seem to give that "OOF"... or satisfaction.

Suggestion - If you don't want to increase the power on this thing then maybe turn it into an automatic and increase the capacity a smidge, like 10 shells. Another suggestion is to put in another shotgun like Hick's had in the movie (Ithaca 37), give it a 4-5 shell capacity and increase the power, but a slow fire rate. Kind of an in-between the regular shotgun and SSG.

SSG - no complaints

Flamethrower - I find myself loving this and relying on it more.

R.Launcher - Gets the job done.

Charges - Again it get's the job done when I have enemies below me and I don't want to jump down.

Sniper Rifle - no complaints

Minigun - no complaints

That's pretty much what I got to say about the weapons. As for enemies, I would like to see them fight among themselves because it's just weird that the aliens and mercenaries are in the same room just chilling until I come in.

[Endless123]

Small update.

First balance patch here : Balance Patch 1

List of changes :

Marine's weapons rebalanced with lower damage for the Pulse Rifle and the Smartgun but higher damage for the normal shotgun. The Seismic Charges bounce problem Valherran mentioned for the secondary attack has been fixed. All the damage of the explosives(rocket, pulse grenade and seismic charges) has been reduced a bit and the radius also has been reduced.

Predator's weapons also rebalanced. Overall they are doing less damage due to the new damage formula. Don't worry tho, the Predator class is still really strong.

A new difficulty settings has been added. Try it out if you dare

That all for this little patch. To make it works just load it after the main file.

@Nocturned85

I love your suggestions . I don't know if the players would use another handgun but i'm not against the idea to add one more. I'll ask jd and if he is for it then it could be added. I also like the idea of a HIck's shotgun but i see one little problem, like the handgun, are the players will use it? However that's definitively something that can be added.

As for the enemies infighting that's already in our plans, it's just not fully implemented yet but it will be in the final build.

Thanks for your comment and insights

[Vostyok]

Reference the pistol: I've noticed the same effect with my Ashes Revolver. It's set up to use refire states, so that the spread effect is triggered with rapid shooting. But I've noticed that if you rapidly tap the trigger, you achieve a fire rate considerably faster than the code suggests. I'm still testing to determine why this is happening, but it's rather groovy, so I might just leave it how it is.

Also, from the movie depiction: the shotgun was intended as a backup weapon. I'd imagine that it would have trouble penetrating the xenomorph hide, much as Gorman's pistol seemed to bounce off at ranges any shorter than point blank. I wouldn't make it super powerful.

[Endless123]

Reference the pistol: I've noticed the same effect with my Ashes Revolver. It's set up to use refire states, so that the spread effect is triggered with rapid shooting. But I've noticed that if you rapidly tap the trigger, you achieve a fire rate considerably faster than the code suggests. I'm still testing to determine why this is happening, but it's rather groovy, so I might just leave it how it is.

Also, from the movie depiction: the shotgun was intended as a backup weapon. I'd imagine that it would have trouble penetrating the xenomorph hide, much as Gorman's pistol seemed to bounce off at ranges any shorter than point blank. I wouldn't make it super powerful.

Thanks for your comment we greatly appreciate it

BTW if you find a workaround for the firing bug please tell me or jd. Needless to say i'll do the same if i find it first.

[Nocturned85]

Will other people use it? *Shrugs shoulders*

Comes down to preference or the situation. Usually when I start a new game with this mod, I really like playing as the marine. I start out with the pistol and the pulse rifle simple enough only to come into some dire situations. Like running out of pulse rifle ammo and going crazy with the pistol in a panic frenzy. Then when the shotgun comes around I would be relieved only to find out that the thing isn't really a god send. I guess for survival horror that's alright, but I want some power to that thing.

Like I explained before with the shotgun suggestion. Have three shotguns.

-Mod the normal shotgun you have now into an automatic, up the capacity and don't have a wide spread. Keep it weak if you want.
-Stick the Ithaca 37 in there to act as the slower but more powerful regular shotgun. The middle man shotgun.
-Keep the SSG as it is.

Pistols

-Put a new handgun in the starting pistol's place at the start. Give it an average fire rate, power and capacity.
-Take the original handgun, lower the ammo capacity and increase the power.
-Add another pistol that is weak but has a lot of bullets.

I guess you can say "middle man" is the theme here.

Not sure where you guys get your weapon ideas but here's a whole page devoted to weapons of the ALIEN franchise if you haven't seen it already.

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Aliens



oh yeah... one more idea for a weapon. Can you duct tape the pulse rifle and flamethrower together?

[Someone64]

I think the ricochet sounds for bullets should really be turned down as they tend to overpower the gun sounds.

[Endless123]

Will other people use it? *Shrugs shoulders*

Comes down to preference or the situation. Usually when I start a new game with this mod, I really like playing as the marine. I start out with the pistol and the pulse rifle simple enough only to come into some dire situations. Like running out of pulse rifle ammo and going crazy with the pistol in a panic frenzy. Then when the shotgun comes around I would be relieved only to find out that the thing isn't really a god send. I guess for survival horror that's alright, but I want some power to that thing.

Like I explained before with the shotgun suggestion. Have three shotguns.

-Mod the normal shotgun you have now into an automatic, up the capacity and don't have a wide spread. Keep it weak if you want.
-Stick the Ithaca 37 in there to act as the slower but more powerful regular shotgun. The middle man shotgun.
-Keep the SSG as it is.

Pistols

-Put a new handgun in the starting pistol's place at the start. Give it an average fire rate, power and capacity.
-Take the original handgun, lower the ammo capacity and increase the power.
-Add another pistol that is weak but has a lot of bullets.

I guess you can say "middle man" is the theme here.

Not sure where you guys get your weapon ideas but here's a whole page devoted to weapons of the ALIEN franchise if you haven't seen it already.

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Aliens



oh yeah... one more idea for a weapon. Can you duct tape the pulse rifle and flamethrower together?

Yeah agree it's all about preferences.

I'll have to ask jd what he thinks about this. Same for the shotgun idea. Since this build is almost entirely made by jdredalert(he did ALL the new sprites and animations and added music tracks and more - i only reworked the HUD, added a few things to the predator gameplay like the honor and prestige system for weapon upgrade and the trophy system - everything else is jd's work)

As for the extra handgun there shouldn't be a problem because both jd and i have plenty of sprites for handguns from older builds.

In short all depends on jd and if he wants to add to his to-do list. There is also the question that either the players want this mod quickly or they are willing to wait longer delays to have more stuff than it was previously planned. I think there is a middle ground that could be achieved.

I might sound a bit dismissive but i can assure you that your suggestions are taken seriously and really matter. Thanks again for your comment