Rebellion making new AvP game

[Tolya]

Excuse me, but it's established in Alien film canon that 1 Host = 1 Alien. Having LOL CLOWNCLOSETS shits over that.

I don't give a flying fuck about canon. Im playing games to have fun. If someone can use clowncar enemies (which usually sucks donkey balls - Im mentioning this again because you seem to have trouble noticing) to the game's advantage, then I will play it and have fun.

[Sarevok]

How is clown car enemies fun ? They feel unrealistic, contrived and unfair ontop of being "fake difficulty".

[Tolya]

How is clown car enemies fun ? They feel unrealistic, contrived and unfair ontop of being "fake difficulty".

It depends on how you implement them. When you clear a room of enemies and they magically respawn when you exit - yes, that is bad.

However in the case of games like AvP, where apart from the part accessible by marines you have vents, small corridors and stuff like that dropping a xeno or two occasionally doesn't hurt but it keeps you on your toes and constantly looking for danger.

Of course as seen in the movies when xenos move they do it in large numbers, but lets be honest: dropping 70 xenos on the player's lone head would kill the fun even faster than it would kill the player.

To viably implement movie-like xeno rushes you would have to have excellent friendly AI. Something that does not exist in AvP, which is quite a primitive game after all.

[Commander 598]

To viably implement movie-like xeno rushes you would have to have excellent friendly AI. Something that does not exist in AvP, which is quite a primitive game after all.

Or well placed sentry guns. Also, while the AI wasn't exactly impressive, it generally did more interesting things than AvP2's AI. In AvP2 the human AI would perform a very poorly animated and honestly BORING cowering in fear while standing in place bit, sometimes even when armed. In AvP1 the humans would usually try to run away while shouting very loudly, and sometimes they would stop at a corner and spray fire your way. I think it did actually kill me once or twice.

[Sarevok]

How is clown car enemies fun ? They feel unrealistic, contrived and unfair ontop of being "fake difficulty".

It depends on how you implement them. When you clear a room of enemies and they magically respawn when you exit - yes, that is bad.

However in the case of games like AvP, where apart from the part accessible by marines you have vents, small corridors and stuff like that dropping a xeno or two occasionally doesn't hurt but it keeps you on your toes and constantly looking for danger.

Of course as seen in the movies when xenos move they do it in large numbers, but lets be honest: dropping 70 xenos on the player's lone head would kill the fun even faster than it would kill the player.

To viably implement movie-like xeno rushes you would have to have excellent friendly AI. Something that does not exist in AvP, which is quite a primitive game after all.

It would be more fair to just spawn a huge number of dozens of aliens in a level. Every kill would count towards survival instead of manageable trickle of endless boredom fodder. At very least it would be real danger and excitement instead of irritation at enemies magically reappearing after you have killed them.

[Tolya]

It would be more fair to just spawn a huge number of dozens of aliens in a level. Every kill would count towards survival instead of manageable trickle of endless boredom fodder. At very least it would be real danger and excitement instead of irritation at enemies magically reappearing after you have killed them.

Considering the way AvP AI xeno behave, once activated, they would just swarm at you en masse. And activating them one by one by a script doesn't make a difference from respawning them once in a while.

[weemadando]

And lets not forget that this was 1999 and this game was PRETTY back then, so having 70 Xenos on screen at once or perhaps even in the level at once would not really have been an option.

[Tolya]

Besides, someone introduced the concept of "clowncar enemies" here. I don't recall AvP having a ridiculous amount of enemies cramped into a very small space. Timed respawn is not a clowncar thingy.

[weemadando]

Besides, someone introduced the concept of "clowncar enemies" here. I don't recall AvP having a ridiculous amount of enemies cramped into a very small space. Timed respawn is not a clowncar thingy.

I'm the original Clown-car enemies hater. And I've even gone into detail on the matter on a number of occassions.

On the recurring issues of clown car terrorists and the effects of teleportation on counter-revolutionary warfare operations.

Someone gave Bingo and AK-47

The thing is, in AvP the spawning wasn't pointless, jarring, inconsistent or otherwise inconsistent with the game. It wasn't spawning massive waves of enemies and they weren't appearing right infront of you. Instead you'd hear another Xeno or two coming from ducts in the room that you are in and decide: "gee, yeah, maybe it is time to move on."

[Stark]

It would be more fair to just spawn a huge number of dozens of aliens in a level. Every kill would count towards survival instead of manageable trickle of endless boredom fodder. At very least it would be real danger and excitement instead of irritation at enemies magically reappearing after you have killed them.

Pie-in-the-sky shit like this annoys me at the best of times, but this was 1999. Nobody can make open levels with emergent NPC AI that results in anything even remotely interesting NOW, that's WHY all levels in all FPSs are at least slightly scripted or pre-set.

Yes, it would be amazing if you could put 20 fully realised NPCs into an environment and have them run around in an interesting way to develop tactical situations - it's also be non-repeatable, often frustrating or boring, and probably broken. I love anyone who honestly thinks ideas like this are new or interesting when developers have been trying to achieve it for more than a decade.

[Tolya]

I've read your posts and I mostly agree with them. But you can't really say that AvP has clowncar xenos. When you go through a huge research base you can expect to have an infantry battalion of xenos after you because the base had big crew.

I noticed one thing in my years of gaming. The best games have no timed respawn nor clowncar enemies. Things like Half Life or No One Lives Forever (the latter being even better than the former). This does not however mean that clowncar enemies are what makes a game bad. It simply means that in the case of HL or NOLF someone had put much effort into the subject of story and gameplay and decided in the process that careful pacing, interesting story and some scripted events will be much more appealing to the player.

And on a side note, No One Lives Forever for me is one of the best PC games made. Ever.

[Stark]

Spawning is just necessary in some situations; Halflife gets away without it because of a) stunningly linear and simple level design and b) heavy scripting. It's just a tradeoff like anything else, and as Ando/Vympel says spawning is only bad when it's obvious, clumsy or fucking retarded like in Call of Duty. We'd all like no spawning, but we'd also like no scripting and a magical game where everything responds to the player's actions and yet remains exciting all the time... it's just not practical.

Look at fucking FEAR - spawning AND massively scripted enemies; most people never noticed and some actually think FEAR has 'excellent AI' when it has almost ZERO AI.

And yes, NOLF is the shit.

[Tolya]

Spawning is just necessary in some situations; Halflife gets away without it because of a) stunningly linear and simple level design and b) heavy scripting. It's just a tradeoff like anything else, and as Ando/Vympel says spawning is only bad when it's obvious, clumsy or fucking retarded like in Call of Duty. We'd all like no spawning, but we'd also like no scripting and a magical game where everything responds to the player's actions and yet remains exciting all the time... it's just not practical.

Besides the balance of the world is also important. Think about any of the GTA games. You could kill an entire division of police officers, blow up a mechanized battalion worth of squad cars and a dozen squadrons of choppers and they will be still coming at you. But having it the realistic way would ultimately kill the game, since after a while you would have a city without any policemen and hence nothing to shoot at or to fear of.

You cannot make a game realistic. You can only make it look realistic by deception.

Look at fucking FEAR - spawning AND massively scripted enemies; most people never noticed and some actually think FEAR has 'excellent AI' when it has almost ZERO AI.

Thank you! I thought I was the only one who thought that this "excellent combat AI" in FEAR is complete and utter bullshit. Honestly, marines from Half Life were much much smarter.

[Steel]

Could all the people complaining about 'clowncar' enemies in AvP1 please justify their assertion that there were an infinite number of enemies. Who actually killed more than 200 aliens while in the colony?

Unrealistic would be that there were only about 20 aliens in each level, and then another 20, (who for some reason didn't bother to come and get you before) in the next level. You feel you're pressured to move on by the continuous attacks? Could that be the entire point? You're a lone marine trapped in an alien infested facility, you aren't supposed to go sightseeing.

I'm not a fan of infinite spawning enemies in most situations (CoD4, where the hell did that regiment hide in those toilets?) but in AvP1 I don't think that the spawning ever exceeded the practical limits to available enemies, nor did enemies pop out of thin air or random rooms repeatedly.

[Stark]

The marines in Halflife were much more aggressive too; as Hav and I found yesterday in Gears, simply making the badguys more mobile and aggressive makes the game much harder by increasing pressure. No super-complex tactical mastery needed.

[Tolya]

Could all the people complaining about 'clowncar' enemies in AvP1 please justify their assertion that there were an infinite number of enemies. Who actually killed more than 200 aliens while in the colony?

Thats why Im saying AvP has no clowncar enemies. Only timed respawn. Which can be annoying for a number of reasons (like you know they will come and you can use your stopwatch to predict when).

[Stark]

Yeah Ando explained it; there are some spots where aliens will spawn to 'surprise' you or spawn to encourage you to move on. I remember one level in particular where I got lost and ran around for ages, with aliens showing up relatively frequently until I found the exit and moved on. I don't find this sort of thing very objectionable.

[Tolya]

The marines in Halflife were much more aggressive too; as Hav and I found yesterday in Gears, simply making the badguys more mobile and aggressive makes the game much harder by increasing pressure. No super-complex tactical mastery needed.

Not only that. HL marines actually used flanking manouvers. Seriously, how difficult is to set alternate routes through a level and script them into the AI so the player can actually think that the marines have some basic knowledge of tactics?

And there aren't that many FPS games in which the enemies ran away. On many occasions I had a marine squad retreat to a higher ground when I inflicted some casualties. They could even reconnect with other groups and set up very primitive ambushes.

Also, remember the warehouse shootout with those catwoman assasins? Those were only stupid bots for fucks sake. But because they were programmed to approach you on your blindside, fire of a few shots and dash away made for an excellent hide and seek game, where you were constantly looking around.

For fucks sake, HL was released in 1998. And I ask you why haven't I seen anything better in terms of enemy AI? It was primitive, but someone put some effort to at least make it look smart.

I hate FEAR for just that: bragging about how excellent the enemy AI is when it is utterly shit. And I don't remember HL being particularly praised for AI.

[weemadando]

GTA IV cops take the current cake for most aggressive, relentless and dangerous AI I've encountered. There's just somethign about an enemy that's not content to maintain the status quo, but instead comes after you. HARD. With shotguns.