Re: Some Plains (PL) Research
Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2019 12:38 am
Hey, so I haven't been active on this forum for about ten years, but more recently I've checked back in. I've been pleased to find out about the recent discoveries the community has made, with things like the E3 demo and other assets that you've managed to get a hold of in the last few years. This has gotten me very interested in the developers' plans for how the game would have looked had they gotten everything to work the way they wanted it to.
I wanted to put my two cents into the Plains discussion and see if anyone else has similar thoughts. I was interested to see how the retail IT level matches up with the positions of the Plains scene we have. It looks like others have done something similar. I think it was mentioned that the southern-most stream bed in PL seems to hook up with the stream at the end of IJ3 and goes through part of the town itself - possibly intended to go through the culvert on the north wall. I have a comment about that I'll make later.
What seems confusing to me is how the stream bed "meshes" with the positions in the earlier versions of IT from June 1998. It's been noted that the terrain of the early versions compared to the retail version of IT seems to be shifted 256m northwards, which means the position of the town has changed relative to the PL objects. This seems counterintuitive and I wonder if much thought has been put into why that might have been. The retail IT was shifted 256m south from its position in the June 1998 versions - apparently to accommodate the additional level space for the dam that had originally been intended for PL. So why is it that the PL locations link up so well with the retail IT, which was made AFTER PL was cut, and yet the earlier IT locations DO NOT match when that version was clearly intended to mesh with the Plains as a separate level?
Or could it have been that the version of IJ that would have gone with the early IT versions was ALSO shifted 256m north compared to the retail positions? Could the version of PL we have have been from after the decision to shift the positions 256m south was made, for whatever reason? This implies there may have been an earlier version of PL with the positions shifted 256m north, and we just happen to have a later version. Or perhaps the earlier versions of IT were found to not mesh with IJ or PL, and so the positions had to be shifted to fix it. Maybe it was a continuity problem from different teams of designers working on the early versions of IT and it had to be fixed once it was integrated with the rest of the island? Any thoughts on this?
Let's suppose that the positions that we have in PL were meant to complement the early versions of IT. That means the NW end of the south-most stream bed in PL is positioned about at the town square with the statue in the earlier IT versions (near the NE corner of the square, to be precise). I can't think of any particular reason that it might be there. It also raises the question of why the terrain decals for the stream, regardless of where it was positioned, were not present in any version of IT that we have (unless I'm mistaken about that - correct me if I'm wrong), since if the stream exists in PL at coordinates that also coincide with the town, it would stand to reason that the stream must be in IT also.
Now, about the culvert. I'm sure I can't be the only person to have tried this, but it's worth noting that in retail, the culvert in IT is at X = -229. In PL, going to the stream that seems to cross the wall in IT at that X coordinate is between about Y = -62 and -83 (at the closest to the culvert - the east edge of the stream's terrain decal), yet the culvert's Y coordinate is -110. Is this an error they hadn't smoothed out yet, or was the stream never intended to go through the wall at the culvert? Along the wall in the retail IT, Y coordinates between -62 and -83 put it right about over Wu's pool or thereabouts. Has there been any theorizing for this discrepancy? Or perhaps the culvert was repositioned in retail? It seems to be at the same location relative to the rest of the town in the early IT versions, however.
I also wanted to comment about the shorter central stream in PL. You'll notice that it sits right next to the two washouts along the road going up to the dam in the retail IT. Someone else has probably noted something similar, but I wonder if that stream bed didn't have something to do with the washouts - to represent a mudslide or something to explain why the road was washed out at those positions.
There's also another observation that might be worth mentioning, but I don't take it very seriously myself. So, knowing that the retail IT terrain was shifted southwards 256m, if you note the locations of the walls and then shift it back north 256m to match the positions of the earlier IT versions, you'll notice that when the stream bed from PL is overlaid, it now crosses the southern wall of the town. What I thought might be noteworthy about this is that the location the stream crosses the south wall seems to be more or less directly south of the position on the north wall where the culvert currently is. Could it have been that the culvert was originally intended to be located on the south wall instead? Or going even further, I seem to recall some earlier discussions about the town maybe having been rotated in earlier builds. Is it feasible that at one point the entire town was flip-flopped north-south in a mirror image to its position in the retail game for some reason? That would make the "east gate" that you exit the town from in the retail version now positioned at the same location of the SE gate in the earlier IT versions - which seems to have been how the player would have accessed the Plains level. I guess that doesn't really make any difference, since there's a gate at the NE and SE corners of the town regardless of whether or not it's been flip-flopped.
I wanted to put my two cents into the Plains discussion and see if anyone else has similar thoughts. I was interested to see how the retail IT level matches up with the positions of the Plains scene we have. It looks like others have done something similar. I think it was mentioned that the southern-most stream bed in PL seems to hook up with the stream at the end of IJ3 and goes through part of the town itself - possibly intended to go through the culvert on the north wall. I have a comment about that I'll make later.
What seems confusing to me is how the stream bed "meshes" with the positions in the earlier versions of IT from June 1998. It's been noted that the terrain of the early versions compared to the retail version of IT seems to be shifted 256m northwards, which means the position of the town has changed relative to the PL objects. This seems counterintuitive and I wonder if much thought has been put into why that might have been. The retail IT was shifted 256m south from its position in the June 1998 versions - apparently to accommodate the additional level space for the dam that had originally been intended for PL. So why is it that the PL locations link up so well with the retail IT, which was made AFTER PL was cut, and yet the earlier IT locations DO NOT match when that version was clearly intended to mesh with the Plains as a separate level?
Or could it have been that the version of IJ that would have gone with the early IT versions was ALSO shifted 256m north compared to the retail positions? Could the version of PL we have have been from after the decision to shift the positions 256m south was made, for whatever reason? This implies there may have been an earlier version of PL with the positions shifted 256m north, and we just happen to have a later version. Or perhaps the earlier versions of IT were found to not mesh with IJ or PL, and so the positions had to be shifted to fix it. Maybe it was a continuity problem from different teams of designers working on the early versions of IT and it had to be fixed once it was integrated with the rest of the island? Any thoughts on this?
Let's suppose that the positions that we have in PL were meant to complement the early versions of IT. That means the NW end of the south-most stream bed in PL is positioned about at the town square with the statue in the earlier IT versions (near the NE corner of the square, to be precise). I can't think of any particular reason that it might be there. It also raises the question of why the terrain decals for the stream, regardless of where it was positioned, were not present in any version of IT that we have (unless I'm mistaken about that - correct me if I'm wrong), since if the stream exists in PL at coordinates that also coincide with the town, it would stand to reason that the stream must be in IT also.
Now, about the culvert. I'm sure I can't be the only person to have tried this, but it's worth noting that in retail, the culvert in IT is at X = -229. In PL, going to the stream that seems to cross the wall in IT at that X coordinate is between about Y = -62 and -83 (at the closest to the culvert - the east edge of the stream's terrain decal), yet the culvert's Y coordinate is -110. Is this an error they hadn't smoothed out yet, or was the stream never intended to go through the wall at the culvert? Along the wall in the retail IT, Y coordinates between -62 and -83 put it right about over Wu's pool or thereabouts. Has there been any theorizing for this discrepancy? Or perhaps the culvert was repositioned in retail? It seems to be at the same location relative to the rest of the town in the early IT versions, however.
I also wanted to comment about the shorter central stream in PL. You'll notice that it sits right next to the two washouts along the road going up to the dam in the retail IT. Someone else has probably noted something similar, but I wonder if that stream bed didn't have something to do with the washouts - to represent a mudslide or something to explain why the road was washed out at those positions.
There's also another observation that might be worth mentioning, but I don't take it very seriously myself. So, knowing that the retail IT terrain was shifted southwards 256m, if you note the locations of the walls and then shift it back north 256m to match the positions of the earlier IT versions, you'll notice that when the stream bed from PL is overlaid, it now crosses the southern wall of the town. What I thought might be noteworthy about this is that the location the stream crosses the south wall seems to be more or less directly south of the position on the north wall where the culvert currently is. Could it have been that the culvert was originally intended to be located on the south wall instead? Or going even further, I seem to recall some earlier discussions about the town maybe having been rotated in earlier builds. Is it feasible that at one point the entire town was flip-flopped north-south in a mirror image to its position in the retail game for some reason? That would make the "east gate" that you exit the town from in the retail version now positioned at the same location of the SE gate in the earlier IT versions - which seems to have been how the player would have accessed the Plains level. I guess that doesn't really make any difference, since there's a gate at the NE and SE corners of the town regardless of whether or not it's been flip-flopped.