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

[jdredalert]

We're using the same voice clips for all of them for now, and some voice variation would benefit them a lot. I'll see what i can do in the sound department. As for now, there are five different human mercenaries and two synthetics. We can re-arrange the spawners to make some of them appear more (the three basic mercs are very common enemies, while the other two, not so much). And maybe adding more soldiers to the rooster, if there is free time.

[Valherran]

There are a couple ways you can go about enemy vs player rules.

1. Similar to what is currently used in Kontra's MOD, is the wake effect when the player comes within visible range of the enemy. Everything will spawn next to each other without attacking til the player gets there. However based on the difficulty of the MOD, this may make the game too easy due to lots of in-fighting from random spawning. To curb this, you would have to create a special spawning script to only spawn clusters of the same faction of enemy that cannot spawn too close to other enemy factions. You will still see some in-fights, but not on a constant basis.

2. The alternative method would be to implement enemies or change the player so that the enemy can logically coexist, this was brought up before when the Praetorian was getting an overhaul a while back. And the easiest method to go about this would be to have certain enemies spawn when using a certain class. This will require some sprite work to be done, but it would work much better.

If you choose Marines you will get black Aliens, Mercs, Predators.
If you choose Predator you will get black Aliens, Marines, Super Preds (or Mad Preds).
If you choose Praetorian you will get K-Series or Red Aliens, Marines, Predators.

You could switch it up with the player class as well to look like this:

Marine - Mercenary
Predator - Super Pred (or Mad Pred)
Praetorian - Red Aliens or K-Series Alien

Everything will have a valid excuse to attack you, and it will make sense canon and lore wise.

About the Mad Pred thing; the director of the movie Predators got the concept of Super Predators from the 1994 Arcade version of AvP. In that game there was a boss fight against 2 Mad Predators who look and act similar to the ones seen in the film.

[jdredalert]

We're kinda taking that route, with some minor differences. The Xenomorph you play is a lab-made breed with a different color than the original black xenos (the K-Series, that is), that would attack not only Preds and other xenomorph castes, but also have a special grudge against human enemies because of all the tests and experiments that it most likely endured while on captivity. The human player is in still a Marine, but human enemies aren't: they are Wey Yu Mercenaries - kinda like the Iron Bears from AvP 2, a group of Company paid grunts that have no love for the USMC and that might be there to capture or exterminate Aliens and Preds, depending on the contract. So far, they all have a reason to kill each other. The only thing that remains now are the Predators. We haven't made anything to separate those from the one you play yet. Predator sprites are scarce and although i've got permission to use these nice sprites by Blade3327 (and was even PM'ed with the full set), they lack some rotations and death framesand i'm not having free time to finish them because of my real life problems. If i can get some free time to work on them, the Predator faction will surely get an overhaul in personality.

[Endless123]

The Predator class the player plays is an Elite and from the predator's lore some of the Elite predators were hunting other predators that were banished from their clan and became renegades not having any honor. The enemies predator could be those banished predators and therefore it would make sense to for the Predator class to hunt those as well as the other preys.

As for the Praetorian class it's already a K-Series xeno as jd said.

As for the KK's enemy spawning method which one are you referring to? There is one that the enemies spawn in packs and the one that is a more classic way to spawn enemies. If it's the "spawn in pack" one i'm not a big fan of this method because it tends to spawn too many strong enemies in a small area and when they wake they ignore each others most of the time and go after the player instead of in-fighting.

The KK's more classic way is by adding a "dunmy" projectile unique to each factions and that is only activated once the player is in sight. - for me this should be the one that is the most appropriate for this mod.

Thanks for your comments guys - jd and I are really appreciating your suggestions and feedbacks

[Vostyok]

Working on some sprites for jdredalert.

Noticed your gloomy marine sprites are missing firing frames. I'll be adding more details and color scheme to match movie marines, as well as those death sprites.

This is just a teaser (blown up for easy viewing):

[Endless123]

Working on some sprites for jdredalert.

Noticed your gloomy marine sprites are missing firing frames. I'll be adding more details and color scheme to match movie marines, as well as those death sprites.

This is just a teaser (blown up for easy viewing):

Thanks for your help man, it's really appreciated by both jd and i

[jdredalert]

Gorgeous looking work as always, Vostyok!

[Endless123]

Ho boy ladies and gents so many stuff to report

Ok first the mod is near completion - we are in the final phase you could call the polishing phase. You know, adjusting enemy's AI, the drop rates and all to balance everything.

In short the final deadline for the release is June 11th 2017, roughly 3 weeks from now. JD is working his ass off remaking not only the sprites of all the weapons but also revamping the enemy rooster and adding new enemies even more deadly than before. He is also redoing almost all animations and is currently working on the sprites of the trophy enemies like the predators are dropping when they are killed. Also, except for bosses(Queen, the Goliath and the predator warlord), all strong enemies( the praetorian and predalien) would drop a trophy ONLY if killed with bladed weapons(claws, spear or smart disc). This is to make things a bit more challenging.

Also, as requested by some of you, the enemies will be active ONLY once they see the player - they will infight of course but the player won't have all the work done for him. Some weapons on the Marine class has been granted extra mods(using the special functions - the key needs to be assigned by the player for those to be used obviously)

Finally there is something i'd like to ask you ladies and gents - how was the demo? jd and i would like to have your impressions about it.

Both jd and i apologize for our lack of updates and for taking so long to release this mod. There is one thing i can promise you tho, there will be some videos made before and on release date to display the incredible work of jdredalert. You will see how talented he is and i'm sure he will have lots of collab demands when you'll see his additions to this humble mod.

So to recap the final deadline is June 11th 2017(it's a Sunday) and we are in the final phase of dev - testing and adjusting things are what's left to be done among some minor details.

Thanks again for your support and as always comments, feedback, opinions are welcomed

[jdredalert]

Did somebody said trophies?



Yes, heads are flying. And since i had some free time today, i added the same mechanic to the enemy preds as well.

[SoundOfDarkness]

Because the mod is unfortunately not working with Zandro 3 I couldn't play it. But I was kinda hoping that your playable Predator class could be added to Kontra Kommando's Alien Trilogy, since it already contains the Predator as an enemie and because it runs with Zandro 3.

[Endless123]

Did somebody said trophies?



Yes, heads are flying. And since i had some free time today, i added the same mechanic to the enemy preds as well.

Once again great work jd

BTW in case ppl don't know yet GZDoom now have some great new features like the HUD resizing in the HUD options - not the thing to switch HUDs but the real option in the HUD options that let you play with the HUD size - meaning the player no longer has to increase or decrease the screen resolution for the HUD to fit and be completely visible

@SoundOfDarkness

If Zandro 3 don't support OpenGL effects like GZDoom this could be why this mod isn't compatible. I never played anything with Zandro so i don't know what could be wrong. I'll do some tests and see if i could adapt this mod to Zandro. I don't promise anything tho, this mod has been created and is still developed with the most recent GZDoom build and it's using many features of GZDoom. BUT, i will try to make it work - that is the only promise i can make.

[jdredalert]

The Predator class is like Endless123 love child, so don't take my words now as a final statement, but i don't think there would be a problem to make a Predator Add-on to Kontra Kommando's project after AvP 2.0 is released - in fact, our projects have a long history of cooperation and shared resources.

So far we have no plans for a Zandronum version, but you can play AvP 2.0 even in older versions of GZDoom like 2.4.0 which are still compatible.


EDIT - Here's some teasing of Marine's latest addition: Seismic Charges! Good damage, can either explode on contact or bounce (fire and alt fire functions)

[Endless123]

The Predator class is like Endless123 love child, so don't take my words now as a final statement, but i don't think there would be a problem to make a Predator Add-on to Kontra Kommando's project after AvP 2.0 is released - in fact, our projects have a long history of cooperation and shared resources.

So far we have no plans for a Zandronum version, but you can play AvP 2.0 even in older versions of GZDoom like 2.4.0 which are still compatible.

Not to contradict you my friend but the predator class is the one using the most the GZDoom features like the night vision(which is used as based for the 3 vision modes of the predator) - a feature that is not in ZDoom(ZDoom still use the normal light amplifier googles and don't offer the option to use the night vision one that's why the predator vision modes don't work well in ZDoom). I just tried to play even older version of this mod and no version of AvP works with Zandronum apparently. There is only one version that works a bit and it's when the predator was the only class of the mod and the vision modes wasn't added yet. In short it's one of the early beta version more than 3 years old. Some functions in the ACS and some attributes that are heavily used like the "inventory.restrictedto" don't work in Zandronum - apparently the Zandronum's dev forgot to add those and it's screwing the mod execution.

Now about making a predator add-on for Kontra Kommando's mod i don't mind making one if he wants to - one problem tho. The predator would be a bit of a shadow of itself because some important features would have to be removed in order to make the add-on compatible with not only KK's mod but also with non-GZDoom programs. Features like the vision modes, the trophy and honor systems(because it would require KK to modify his xenos to add those 2 features), the HPD(Hazards Protection Device) and possibly have to make the predator either starts with all his weapons or replace the original weapons by the predator one. This would made things odd to see an alien or a synth drops a plasmacaster or something like that but it's better than nothing lol

[SoundOfDarkness]

Since KK's Alien Trilogy is more fast paced action I think the vision modes, trophy and honor could probably be dropped. But I got your AvP 1.3 Rev.1 to work with Zandronum 3 alpha r170416-0710, which should be the latest devbuild, by deleting all decorate lines with "A_DamageSelf". So the vision modes, cloak and everything else works. I don't know how much you changed since 1.3, but this version of the Predator works. If I knew how I would try to make a Predator add-on from this myself. About the weapons: they could either be dropped by Predator enemies or like you said he could start with all weapons. If I remember correct that was the case in the original AvP and in AvP 2010.

[jdredalert]

Believe me, a lot changed. It won't be innacurate to say that it's another mod now. Our new Predator is completely different from this one. I would recommend you to create your own code to the weapons instead of trying to adapt the old one. It is too tangled with mod functions, it would be a lot easier if you just create it from scratch.