AvP's 25th Anniversary

[Olde]

https://youtu.be/nb3GKYzTvZM

Happy Alien Day, fellow marines, aliens, and predators!

It may be hard to believe, but we are coming up on the 25th anniversary of the first release of Rebellion’s Aliens versus Predator for the PC (1999). As marines we’ve slain thousands of xenomorphs and ugly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, as aliens we’ve bitten the heads off of commanding officers and yautja elders, and as predators we’ve scored trophies for the only species in the universe that could offer a challenge. Through the multiplayer servers hosted on Mplayer and Gamespy Arcade, and then later with the subsequent release of Aliens versus Predator Classic 2000 for Steam and GOG, we’ve had countless hours of action and adventure in this game. And now is the time we’re giving back.

The Mapping Update

We, the AvP Classic Modding Team, are doing something very special for the 25th anniversary. We will be releasing bug fixes for all of the original Rebellion maps, single-player and multiplayer, including the later released custom map packs. Please note that these are quality of life improvements only, not balancing changes. This includes fixing the infamous crash to desktop on Tyrargo, as well as fixes for visibility, sequence breaking, becoming stuck on geometry, overlapping textures, objects missing fragments, being unable to spawn all spawnable bot types in every map, and much more. In addition, we will include model fixes to remove detail degradation for the alien, marine, and predator, and fixes for dropped pickups.

Universal Packs v2.0

We will also be releasing a version 2.0 for the Universal Map Pack and version 2.0 for the Universal Skins Pack. Many of the best user-made maps are getting a pass through for light quality of life touch-ups. The skins pack will receive an update of more than 150 newly recovered skins, thanks to the assistance of several old school players. All skins will also receive a completely new set of highly detailed and accurate preview screenshots.

New Multiplayer Maps

In addition, we are guaranteeing at least three new maps at the time of release.
We are collaborating and will try to give you even more if we have the ability, but we’re running on limited manpower. That being said, we are very excited and can’t wait to see you all try out the new maps.

The Tools Update

On top of that, we will be providing an update to some of the editing tools for modders.
We have updated some of the stock models that we will provide to modders, and through what we’ve learned over the years, we are working on a version 2.0 update to the AvP Bible, a guide for learning intricacies with the official tools. In addition to this, we will provide the never before publicly released AvP_debug .exe that allows for special
debug and testing commands as well as adding decals (blood and bullet holes) to maps.

Tournament

Not enough for you? Well look forward to late summer, where we will also be hosting a tournament on the stock classic maps. More details to come. All are encouraged to sign up!

Conclusion

This anniversary update has been a huge undertaking and has been years in the making (work began in 2021). We are still in the process of testing and polishing everything up to meet our high standard of quality. We are currently aiming at a final date of release for all of these materials on June 25, 2024. This is the date the AvP released worldwide in 1999.
 
Thank you very much for reading. We will be posting teaser updates periodically in the coming weeks to showcase our work. We hope you enjoy the updates as much as we’ve enjoyed giving back to this game.
 

- The AvP Classic Modding Team: Olde, Cracco, Newt

[Nutlink]

Wow, hard to believe it's been 25 years. I remember the original game came with a coupon for a free pair of Big Dogs underwear. I spent countless hours playing the demos (after spending hours downloading those 20-30MB files on my 56k modem), followed by modding them with custom videos on the screens, adding wear and tear to marine weapon textures, and swapping map files around so you could play any of the species with the others maps. It's the game that finally got me to switch to PC gaming.

Looking forward to seeing what you guys cooked up.

[4sng_Respawnz]

My Thanks, and gratitude, to : The AvP Classic Modding Team: Olde, Cracco, Newt

[🦇Pachira🦇]

Super excited for your releases! Thanks for all the hard work!

[LUCASG0LD]

Looks amazing, can't wait! Thank you for your dedication and hard work!

[LegendaryThunder]

https://youtu.be/YjJ2P63GAMI?si=y93GVH4XL7yoNW2A

[🦇Pachira🦇]

I really like that movie camo marine skin in the trailer. Loooove the movie camo for the marines.

[Sgт.SтавSтавS]

Hope there is some content where you fight the predator AI, i think there is one whole section in the entire where you fight a predator

[Olde]

Originally posted by Sgт.SтавSтавS:

Hope there is some content where you fight the predator AI, i think there is one whole section in the entire where you fight a predator

Hey there, thanks for the input! We're not rebalancing the campaign missions by putting in new/different enemies or placements. However, we are adding in a feature that will allow players to spawn any of the typical NPCs that populate most maps in debug mode for chaotic mayhem. In the maps as they currently stand, you can only spawn the type of bots that are in the present map. So as you can see in the screenshot below, a text error is displayed when attempting to spawn a predator because the map doesn't feature any predator bots.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3248872426

However in our updated version of the maps, that error is bypassed and you can spawn in any of the normal bots in any level you want (alien, marine, civilian, predator, praetorian, predalien, and xenoborg). You can imagine the type of chaos you can cause by spawning in all these types of NPCs to fight each other. As you can see in the below screenshot, I have spawned a predator bot in Waterfall without any errors.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3248872445

We would have liked to also add the ability to spawn facehuggers, turrets, and the alien queen, however the game was never programmed with commands to spawn those bots so sadly we can't do that.

[🦇Pachira🦇]

Originally posted by Olde:

Originally posted by Sgт.SтавSтавS:

Hope there is some content where you fight the predator AI, i think there is one whole section in the entire where you fight a predator

Hey there, thanks for the input! We're not rebalancing the campaign missions by putting in new/different enemies or placements. However, we are adding in a feature that will allow players to spawn any of the typical NPCs that populate most maps in debug mode for chaotic mayhem. In the maps as they currently stand, you can only spawn the type of bots that are in the present map. So as you can see in the screenshot below, a text error is displayed when attempting to spawn a predator because the map doesn't feature any predator bots.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3248872426

However in our updated version of the maps, that error is bypassed and you can spawn in any of the normal bots in any level you want (alien, marine, civilian, predator, praetorian, predalien, and xenoborg). You can imagine the type of chaos you can cause by spawning in all these types of NPCs to fight each other. As you can see in the below screenshot, I have spawned a predator bot in Waterfall without any errors.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3248872445

We would have liked to also add the ability to spawn facehuggers, turrets, and the alien queen, however the game was never programmed with commands to spawn those bots so sadly we can't do that.

Would this allow for coop of the 3 campaigns? Except without the facehuggers, turrets and Queen I guess?

[Olde]

Originally posted by 🦇Pachira🦇:

Would this allow for coop of the 3 campaigns? Except without the facehuggers, turrets and Queen I guess?

Sadly no, the game is hard-coded to only spawn aliens, predaliens, and praetorians in coop mode. You can still run through the maps cooperatively but in maps that only features marines and civilians (all the alien levels and the first two predator levels) won't have any enemies to fight.

[🦇Pachira🦇]

Originally posted by Olde:

Originally posted by 🦇Pachira🦇:

Would this allow for coop of the 3 campaigns? Except without the facehuggers, turrets and Queen I guess?

Sadly no, the game is hard-coded to only spawn aliens, predaliens, and praetorians in coop mode.

I see, are the sp maps easy to edit? Like say one would want to add bigger battles to the campaign and stuff. Or take MP maps and make them into simple little missions.

It's a bit hard to add npcs while playing since they'll immediately start fighting and you'll be setting off triggers and stuff. Would be great if there was an AI disabled mode and you could just run through the map adding new encounters like Gmod.

[Olde]

Originally posted by 🦇Pachira🦇:

I see, are the sp maps easy to edit? Like say one would want to add bigger battles to the campaign and stuff. Or take MP maps and make them into simple little missions.

You can, but you have to install some tools. It's not as basic as flying through a map in-game and dropping a bunch of bots. It's more like using a level editor like Hammer or UnrealEd where you're literally opening up the map file and adding spawn entities. It's quite easy when you get the hang of it. I recently made a guide on how to install the tools and I have a past guide that should easily explain how to add enemies using the game's level editor Inteng.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3244093644

[4sng_Respawnz]

Feeling like 'Christmas-Eve' at my house. hehehe

[Olde]

Hey everyone, today is the day we were shooting for to get everything we had out the door. While we have a lot that's in great shape, we're not totally ready to release everything that we've got. We want to make sure that what we put out there is the highest quality we can possibly make it. So what we've done is we've decided to stagger our update releases into installments. The first installment has been released today.

They are the Universal Skins Pack v2 update and our promised three custom multiplayer maps: Block Fort (deathmatch and coop), Ice Station Zeto (deathmatch only), and Alien Trilogy's L111-Entrance (deathmatch and coop). When you see the amount of work that went into the skins pack update, you'll see how much time and energy we're putting in to making these the best that we can.

So what's the plan for the subsequent installment of the update? We're aiming for July 29th, 2024, so about one month away, for the release of our second installment. If we have everything ready, we can release the rest of it all at once, however keep in mind that this is referring to the Universal Map Pack 2.0 update, and then our bug fixes and optimizations to all of the default single-player, multiplayer, and Rebellion custom maps, as well as the editing tools update which will include more modding tool resources such as the Bible 2.0 and fixed/additional stock models. Plus we have other community members who are hard at work on maps that we are either currently helping out or ready to assist. If the rest of our work is not entirely ready by July 29, we will make sure at least one of these update packages is ready and release it then just as we are doing today.

Thanks for your patience and we hope you enjoy the new maps today!

[lizard81288]

tagging for updates