Alien Behaviour Tweak mod

[Nathan]

Download Link, click this.
Moddb page for Unpredictable Alien AI mod.

Release version.

Also, please check out this guide for more details.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=423489181

I wished to try my hand at slightly tweaking the Alien AI to have wider range in stalking, patrolling, because it seemed like a good way to at least simulate more unpredictability, of when and where the alien will pop up. The devs already did a great job of making a dynamical AI to the Alien, I thought perhaps one could enhance that, and make hard and Iron/nightmare modes have the alien still surprise the player, and not be predictable in how constantly it is after the player.

There is a serious question that I do not know the answer to: Namely, by widening the values in not only novice, easy and medium mode, but also hard and nightmare, is hard and nightmare now easier? I hope not, I hope they are still challenges and that having the alien able to drop from a vent right next to you or from a longer than usual distance, it will merely feel more unpredictable and tense.
But if you do not wish to try out this mod or see some of the example XML files for comparison, then do not download.

Read the included Readme.txt file for further information on modding and installation.
Thanks goes to [TW]E NOMiNEE for the heavy lifting in getting modding started for Alien: Isolation!

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[SubTonic]

Eh, I don't even see the point in playing the game any higher than Normal/Medium. It seems that you can be spotted even in very dark areas in higher modes, making the stealth much too line-of-sight based than I'd like in a game like this, and being caught by the alien is just death regardless of the mode. You also still die extremely fast in combat even on Easy. Plus, if it is true that the alien becomes more predictable on harder settings, playing on Easy or Normal is even more preferable than I already thought. So for those reasons, I won't be trying the tweak.

[Nathan]

Originally posted by SubTonic:

Eh, I don't even see the point in playing the game any higher than Normal/Medium. It seems that you can be spotted even in very dark areas in higher modes, making the stealth much too line-of-sight based than I'd like in a game like this, and being caught by the alien is just death regardless of the mode. Plus, if it is true that it becomes predictable on harder settings, playing on Easy or Normal is even more preferable than I already thought. So for those reasons, I won't be trying the tweak.

You misunderstood.
I tried to increase unpredictability by increasing the difference between some minimum and maximum vent crawling, leash ranges etc.
I did not want to increase predictability, I wanted to give the alien more freedom accross all difficulty settings.
So if I understood you correctly, you might actually like this mod :)

[[TW]Sergeant Beanbag]

Originally posted by Nathan:

{LINK REMOVED}Download Link, click this.

I wished to try my hand at slightly tweaking the Alien AI to have wider range in stalking, patrolling, because it seemed like a good way to at least simulate more unpredictability, of when and where the alien will pop up. The devs already did a great job of making a dynamical AI to the Alien, I thought perhaps one could enhance that, and make hard and Iron/nightmare modes have the alien still surprise the player, and not be predictable in how constantly it is after the player.

There is a serious question that I do not know the answer to: Namely, by widening the values in not only novice, easy and medium mode, but also hard and nightmare, is hard and nightmare now easier? I hope not, I hope they are still challenges and that having the alien able to drop from a vent right next to you or from a longer than usual distance, it will merely feel more unpredictable and tense.
But if you do not wish to try out this mod or see some of the example XML files for comparison, then do not download.

Read the included Readme.txt file for further information on modding and installation.
Thanks goes to [TW]E NOMiNEE for the heavy lifting in getting modding started for Alien: Isolation!

Nice job,and yes alien in vent is even more scary than walking around.

[SubTonic]

No, I get what the tweak is trying to do. It aims to make the alien even less predictable. But I think it's already unpredictable enough on the easier settings. I'm playing on Easy and sometimes it jumps from a vent so far from my position that the music notifies me before my motion tracker does, lol.

[Nathan]

Originally posted by SubTonic:

No, I get what the tweak is trying to do. It aims to make the alien even less predictable. But I think it's already unpredictable enough on the easier settings. I'm playing on Easy and sometimes it jumps from a vent so far from my position that the music notifies me before my motion tracker does, lol.

Different strokes for different folks, thanks for the dismissing tone though.

Originally posted by TWE NOMiNEE:

Nice job,and yes alien in vent is even more scary than walking around.

Whenever I hear the Alien in the vents and see the radar blips darting right close to me can be very paranoia-inducing.

[dnc]

It's when the Alien isn't there, though you know it's somewhere: that's the worse.

Having it patrolling about and being there, that's what would have killed the feeling of the original film and the way CA designed Alien Isolation to be.
You could go any direction with it, but not outside the original Alien. Otherwise, what is the point.

Ridley Scott, by pure accident, wanted to keep the "man in a suit" as hidden and as cloaked in darkness as much as possible to hide the "man in the suit", and did not realise that it was by doing that that disguised the inherent fear and horror that is within us all when confronted with the dark and no way to escape it. You also could not reason with it.

James Cameron knew that as well, and took advantage of disguising much more simplified "man in a suit" versions from the original.

Once you see it whole, light show and everything, the decay of your imagination, disappears completely.

You should read some of the reactions of the first viewers of Aliens in 1979- people were suffering from shock and unable to control their fear.
Seems weird today, but too many films after it ruined the Alien by using it as a specific image- almost like a glamour shot -than any hidden threat you could never fully see before it disappeared into a vent.
James Cameron set a vice to give reason to what the Alien was. How they worked. Why they did what they did and explaining a substantial amount of biological limits to it and compared it to basic organism like Ants on earth.
Stupidest thing you could ever do.

You can't turn back time. It's all about making as much money as possible out of it, even when it already was doing that all by itself, without exaggerating anything or, explaining it.

[Nathan]

Originally posted by dnc:

It's when the Alien isn't there, though you know it's somewhere: that's the worse.

Agreed.
Playtesting my mod now and I might have made a bit too large freedoms for the alien to roam, because encounters so far have been minimal, but I have had a few genuine scares; was setting traps in systech spire, checked motion tracker, all clear, proceeded to open a door with a lever to the main lobby, and there it was, in the distance, but looking around, had a bit of a scare and ran for cover.

My main reason for posting this mod was to encourage others to see what they can do, that they can actually tweak stuff like this, maybe someone else gets inspired, finetunes some good AI values, which have just the right amount of unpredictability but also an oppressing presence of the alien, and posts them for all of us to see, and I´ll download that and end up liking their modifications even more :)

[Quack Legion]

A good idea for a mod, I'm still on my first playthrough, but I will be trying this. Not that I don't like CA's "leashing" etc, but it would be cool to experiment with ranges. Like dnc said, its when you know its somewhere sort of nearby thats the scariest.

[Smyrffio]

Nice, thanks for taking the time and effort! I can't wait to try it :)

[Fry]

I have DLed this and gone over your documentation. I am just wondering if you have confirmed/tested what does what yet?

[Nathan]

Originally posted by Nixon's Richard:

I have DLed this and gone over your documentation. I am just wondering if you have confirmed/tested what does what yet?

I have to some degree, and I believe what I wrote in my readme file holds, that
lines like these:

<near_target_exclusion_radius_first_stalk_min_modifier> <near_target_exclusion_radius_first_stalk_max_modifier><near_target_exclusion_radius_subsequent_stalk_min_modifier>
<near_target_exclusion_radius_subsequent_stalk_max_modifier
<near_objective_exclusion_radius_first_stalk_min_modifier>
<near_objective_exclusion_radius_first_stalk_max_modifier>
<near_objective_exclusion_radius_subsequent_stalk_min_modifier>
<near_objective_exclusion_radius_subsequent_stalk_max_modifier>

Really look like they are about the leash range, I´m 90% sure of it now after testing a bit, when the Alien is actively stalking the player, how close can it be whenever it starts to look for you (a low minimum should allow the Alien more easily to drop from vents right next to you and sometimes stay very close, and max is how far it can wander to stalk around and do sweeps of rooms and how far it can go from you otherwise as for example while travelling in vents).
I´ve had the Alien stalk rooms far from me and killing humans I wasn´t concerned about as I was quite a few rooms separated from them already.

The "_modifier" -suffix is because I copied those from the difficulty settings files, and they act as modifiers for the templates used in different scenarios in the game, which are located in the alienconfigs folder.

The

<Vent_Attract_Time_Min>
<Vent_Attract_Time_Max>

Lines are not 100% solid, I mean I think it depends a bit on the intensity of the alien actively stalking you, and that can shorten or lengthen how keen the Alien is to crawling around unseen but present, but they do seem to heavily influence the minimum and maximum time the Alien crawls physically above you in vents, between the times it jumps out to sweep around, or goes for a break, or jumps back in to crawl for a bit until it drops out again from some vent. etc etc.

The

<BackstageAreaSweep>
    <role_timeout_min>45</role_timeout_min>
    <role_timeout_max>60</role_timeout_max>
    <min_distance>10</min_distance>
    <max_distance>40</max_distance>
    <min_idle_time>5</min_idle_time>
    <max_idle_time>10</max_idle_time>
  </BackstageAreaSweep>

Lines seem, after some testing, to be about not when the alien is actively stalking the player, or crawling in the vents, but breaks, pauses, it can take, it travels to some distance (min max determined there), and takes a timeout, while it´s on this break, you will not find the alien, it will disappear from your radar, and it will be idle, and might cycle through some decisions, like should it continue its break, or return to hunting.
Obviously you could speed things along by making noise to draw it out, but otherwise the alien will travel within those limits.
The distance seems important, not just time, because the alien is still actually crawling, moving around, and that takes time, and if it decides to continue hunting with a relaxed leash to the player, it can scour the station in areas you are not aware of it being in.

The files in the ALIENCONFIGS folder seem like templates for different situations in the game, some regulate intensity, as the devs want some places and times to be either more relaxed or intense, and others control some kind of different templates for different distances for the alien acting backstage, the breaks it takes etc.
Then on top of those templates, the DIFFICULTYSETTINGS put further modifiers, so that the default template for intense situations are on harder difficulties even more intense etc.

I´m almost 90% convinced this is how those lines work, but testing the Alien AI by myself takes time, I´m playing and enjoying it at the moment, trying to get a sense of my edits, but to get a sense of how wide a freedom I gave the Alien needs more data than simply a few encounters with it.
In the end, the Alien should be able to pick any value between the min and max times and distances, so it should and at least does feel for me rather random at much of the time.
If I engage the alien by throwing a pipebomb or molotov or flaming it, then it picks up the pace and drops from vents more frequently closer to my location, as seems reasonable for it to do.

There are obviously more parameters of interest, but I do not know them really at all.

<decrease_sweep_duration>
<increase_sweep_duration>

Probably self-explanatory, they somehow control the time the alien takes to make its sweeps while hunting, but I´m not sure how exactly they control the time, as the difficulty settings modify them in strange ways IMO.

The

<sweep_box_half_width>
<sweep_box_min_half_length>

Lines also probably have to do with the size of the area the Alien sweeps and stalks, but don´t quote me on that.

The various "menace" lines look like some kind of threat assessment, like how suspicious the Alien is, or aware of present dangers, or maybe they relate to a heightened state of aggressiveness the alien can achieve, like I said, I don´t really know what these rest interesting looking lines do. (One line says "meance", looks like a typo, but it is reproduced consistently in all the damn files, so I´m afraid to correct it, if the devs actually coded the typo in, another apparent typo is the mofisier bit in the hard difficulty setting bml.)

I´m more confident about some of the lines than others, but I believe I´m approximately right on at least those I´ve edited, not these last ones about sweep durations and widths or definitely about the menace lines.

I encourage further experimentation and testing!

I´ll add that I´m fully aware the mod I released is rough and was not tested a lot when I posted the link, my main motivation for releasing it was to stimulate some experimentation, or at least interest in the potential for modding Alien: Isolation.
I might consider updating it in the future, but I need to test these values more for that, in the mean time everyone is naturally free to try out their own values and hopefully report on their experiences with the rest of us.

[Fry]

Originally posted by Nathan:

The distance seems important, not just time, because the alien is still actually crawling, moving around, and that takes time, and if it decides to continue hunting with a relaxed leash to the player, it can scour the station in areas you are not aware of it being in.

If I am understanding you correctly, and what you are saying is true, then that means hopefuly it will be possible to do what I hope I can do.

[DarkBaterang]

It kills me in everywhere i hided.At last in an air-tube.It shall be fun not make my nerves naked..:-) I tried your mod now.I think i have more time to think about,what i do next.I like your mod.And i am a noob in programming and so on,so i am fascninated what peole like you are doing! Many thanks from me...p.s.: old people like me are not so fast as the younger...we need the time...:-)

[dnc]

It's the sound foley that makes the Alien's presence work the way it does, not it visually appearing.
You already know what the Alien looks like, and you know what it does, and where it came from; out of somebody's chest, killing them in a shower of blood and gore.

That's how this works. All that thumping and thudding overheard in the airshafts and vents doesn't help. Or "Baldie" being shredded as the Alien pulls him into a confined space way too small for his entire body to fit inside of.

When you venture near some dark opening in the ceiling or wall. You hesitate, as the intricate web of ventilation metal distorts as this Alien is moving about inside of them.

Then it drops to the floor.

You can't create or adjust AI routines where your own brain is creating all the messaging routines all by itself; simply because we're Human. They get really scared when you think you're about to be caught and eviscerated by this horrific monster.

The only way you could make Alien Isolation better is if a Human player was playing the Alien. And they'd have to be careful too. You might hold a Flamethrower and you've set a trap that "Just Might Work" and eject you into space; or maybe they've set an electrical conduit overload on the floor you're about to drop onto.
Maybe, they're holding a Pulse Rifle and they have just enough ammo to blow you apart and maybe they avoid all that acid spraying about; maybe they don't.

The Human player would still be constrained by the limits of what the Alien could do as you control it; whatever those might be. Which seems to be very little.
That's scary.

Some Alien players might be more direct, others might think like the Alien as it's portrayed.
That in essence, is AI, by an Acting Intelligence.

[Nathan]

dnc, are you being serious and sincere right now? Or are you pulling my leg?