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Draco broke machf's internet confirmed.

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Active project: Trespasser: Isla Sorna - Working on PH2-IT (and experimental BE-IT).

"...there used to be more benches, but InGen's workers removed them during the evacuation in the name of framerate."

Nah, it's just the browser window displaying this topic...

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Tres WIP: updated T-Script Reference and File Formats documents
Sound name listings for the Demo (build 117), Retail (build 116), Beta 103, Beta 99, Beta 97, Beta 96, Build 55, PC Gamer Alpha (build 32) and E3 1998 Alpha (build 22) TPA files

Yeah machf, I'd say it's a decent chance the Raptor Nest textures came from one of those. That, or the same artist went back and did a final "masterpiece" to be (so they thought) included in the final game. Really wish they'd done up more of Tres like this. At the least, that beachfront in BE survived to b116.

Hmmm... Yeah that's the PS1 Deinonychus. IIII don't believe the classic Tres orange raptor is the same model, if you look at the back. Tatu, that article page you posted doesn't mention Trespasser.



machf, so far it has worked. We're nearly done with this overview, and a new page is starting; hopefully we can get through to the end in one piece. Otherwise, worst case, I can start a part 2 thread down the road.

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Oooooookay here we got! Had a bit of a break. Went to a hotel room with some friends, sleep schedule got slightly off, TheIdiot released his Masterwork and I had to check it out, but now finally we're back. Forward with PV96/97!

...Soooo, we took a step back, last post, to cross-examine the PV TrnPlacement-00 cubes with each other. Pretty interesting stuff. In the process I decided it was the right time to investigate the secret PV terrain hidden inside the Trespasser Source, looking at its differences to the versions found in the builds. Tatu and I did a nice scout of it, the other day. Now I'll post some thoughts/analysis here.

First off, here is the old PV Max Scene, from a set of images we acquired years ago from Next Generation magazine.

Spoiler: show

Attachment:

pvoverview.jpg [ 434.17 KiB | Viewed 4304 times ]

As you can see, unlike all PV versions we have and the demo, this version of the level has terrain that extends into PL (or later IT) and even has the dam itself present. Now compare that to the image below - you can see that the terrain dip for the water behind held back by the dam, veers off to the right in both cases. Tatu noticed that this area corresponds to streambed trnobjs found in the PL Max Scene, which is pretty interesting. They run a descent length along the Northern boarder of the scene.


The opening valley, then, looks a little different. Nowhere near as opened up, it basically looks like a deep ravine worn in by water erosion, and/or a gap in the ancient lava flow. No ridge for the PV road to descend.


It reminds me a bit of the gorge-events planned for PV in the walkthrough:


Huh I had forgotten they planned for avalanches. That's quite practicable in the engine, I wonder why they didn't try. Anyway it seems clear that one of the earliest steps in developing the level/story-progression of Trespasser was sculpting the terrain and plotting a course around the island. As such, this super-early PV terrain has a likelihood to be more similar to what they were looking at, while writing up the walkthrough.

Next is the area which was off to the North of the main road. Allowance for the location of the Mayan PreColonialVillage was slim, they had to dig it in later. Up North is an odd mini-valley of terrain which would have led off into AS, which is interesting to look at, and clearly something they wouldn't have made accessible. As well branching off to the West, is a valley that would have gone nowhere, at least in the final version. This one is more possible to have been considered when designing the routes. Then, beyond this, you can see the two familiar spots where the terrain/paths dip back into the main road area, with the location of the Raptor Nest being implied.


Afterward, we have the area leading out to the ocean. Compared to the PV versions we have, this region is hugely open and wide. The ocean shoreline is different, too, fitting in with the angled Geo PLant from the above Max Scene image. The overall shape of this area changed quite a bit.


That new hilly terrain interests me especially. I have a desire to see it inside a working level someday, but that might not happen. It looks a lot more interesting than the equivalent area in the PV versions we have.


Finally, the great big island from the earlier builds of PV is here. It is pretty big...The cliff terrain in this area is a bit scattered, it's unclear if actual beaches were considered for PV at some point.


So! Back to PV96. Over at the TerrainPlacement cube... it's worth noting that they are two texture-sphere models. One for the fan boxes of the transformers, and one for the green/red light indicators at the transformers. Funny place for these to be. 0,0,-10, I guess it's not completely random. Going into the basement... For the first time, a full complement of crates is present. Hmm... Looks like this level has the same unusual vocal set as IT96. Final name scheme for the sky object, "Sky_PV-00", along with the "*128.bmp" texture format. Ahhh those one basement rock models finally have attached $ubmodel physics instead of stand-alone F ones. The HorizPine model still has extra physics from when it was higher poly.

Next let's have a look at these terrain hexagons... "Trnobj_cycgrass01-00" on the right and "Trnobj_cycgrass02-00" on the left. Both were introduced for the first time into Tres builds here at b96, and are also present in demo. The one on the right, is used extensively in both. The one on the left, however... is never used. Early Tres seems to have kept hexagons as a common terrain texture application method. By this build they are mostly disappearing, possibly because of how large they are. However b96 adds them for the first time to PV, and then they don't even use one of them. It's a little strange. This unused one on the left looks pretty neat, IMO. It would have returned a bit of that classic-PV feel with the dark greens on dark dirt colors. I used this texture as one of the base textures for JPDS to nice effect. Oh, and Tatu suggests that this dark green one may have been used in one or two builds between PV55 and PV96.




Ahhh I was just looking at the dinosaurs in the basement and discovered something I missed ingame... LOL.


It's like that Trike which is above the path to the right in JR. Just chillin' by itself, lol. Anyway, the basement has several CAnimals but, there is a Para here without any ingame instances. I wonder where it would have gone. Doesn't seem to fit the level as much, to me. Theeee bloodsplats are here, as well as the 3 CParticles boxes. There's a new, unused plystrip here... The bones have been added of course... That crate under the gun area is here again. Of course the Humvee is still gone but now the regular crashed-Jeep is here. Hmm now all the numbered power pylons are gone, being replaced with instances of a single non-numbered one. Why they did this, I'm not sure. Interesting to note that, unlike the IJ pylons, even the numbered PV pylons appear never to have had their bottom concrete piles sculpted to fit the terrain beneath them. Maybe this dev saw that the terrain was going to be changing shape as development proceeded. Hmmm found the little spot with all the manmade assets. Very strange... The toilet used in PV is the one with multiple parts (water lid, seat lid, main), but in all builds of PV the physics are simple and non-moveable. Uhh Here is the Supply Locker that won't open... I see that the door handles, "$FSplyLckrDrA-00", have a rotation of 90, while the rest of the door is at 0. This may be why the magnet malfunctions. I uhh... Oh jeez the baton here has magnets. I thought it didn't! I probably sourced the one in MV from an earlier PV. Oh and the ribars here all have magnets, hmm. Funny, far off can still be found the old proto-vocal diamond AI Commands for Raptors. Hmmm, the hunter bones are floating way up high, next to lonely motorcycle physics with no bike. It's rather odd... they appear to go to the crushed bike, but the crushed bike is elsewhere in the basement, with its own physics. AND it's named "Phuntercy-00"... In IJ116, the crushed bike is called "Phuntercyhbars2-00".. and the regular bike is called "Phuntercybody-00". Heh. Some levels also have the bike split up into parts. Seems like the crushed one was just combined around a different original part, and since the names didn't conflict, they didn't rename it.

Huh here's a funny thing. "mesh01" (left) and "VdedtreB00-00_submesh01" (right). Ontop of each other originally.


It seems to refer to "VdedtreeB00-00", that classic dead tree you see everywhere in Tres. Checking now, it seems this mesh shape doesn't fit any of the limbs on the model. IIII don't feel like checking all the levels' versions of this model, so, possibly it fits a different version. Tatu says he's pretty sure he saw a version of this tree with separate visible models, so, probably it would go with that. PV seems to have a running gag about dead tree limb separation...


Aaaaand that's it for PV96!

On to LAB96. Yayyy... ...sorta. I just got back from my ingame play of the level, and uh... It was extremely boring. Basically everything here is a mix of stuff left over from LAB55 and stuff I was already familiar with from LAB116. Extremely uneventful. About the only thing not found in one or the other was that the green keycard pole was a little closer to the gate, making it not-even-a-puzzle-anymore. *sigh* Oh and a raptor hit the trailer, making that puzzle not work. To top it all off... I noticed from the contrast in lighting that the fog color was not being rendered. It was just white. White fog doesn't look good in LAB. Uhhhh. I talked to Tatu and I couldn't fix it. Suddenly all my levels are in white fog, as if there was no CE fix. Derp.

Anyway. First up, the crane... Unlike my experience in the previous build, this crane does rotate ingame. It just uh... it's got an odd angle. Not sure what caused this. Probably a submodel physics that is not at 0,0,0.


Inside the Harbor office building, I noticed that one of the Wayland picture frames was over-sized. Not sure why this is.


And finally... Anne's body has a shadow in LAB55. That's interesting. Wonder if they were ever considering a shadow-mesh as with the dinosaurs. Eh at this stage, I doubt it.


Other things that happened in this playthrough... Not much. I noticed for the first time that the Admin Building has bathrooms on both floors... just like the JPDS~HRS Admin Building, which people laughed at for having bathrooms on both floors, lol. Odd detail, that building has no keycard readers from the inside, so, if you get in through the window puzzle, you have to climb back out again. In b55 they have removed that wonky door from the BioChem Building, but essential assets like the electron microscopes and centrifuges are not present. Much less the nests and heatlamps. The CRAY door was odd.. I didn't even touch it and it opened up. Then after hitting the lever, I went to push the Red sequence-button... aaand the game crashed. I think that's happened to me before. Anyway, I decided not to load the level back up, not worth it. I'll investigate LAB96 in TresEd tomorrow.

...That's all for May 11. Tune in next time, when Anne will discover an entire box of Star Wars action figures left behind by Nedry in the Comp Building basement.

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To Be Continued
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_________________
->Tres2020 Starter Kit

"Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said. ... "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."
"I see it." [said Sarah]
...
"The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"
"No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."
~Michael Crichton

I tried to reproduce that PV image in MAX stitching together the pieces of various terrains from Build 96:



I guess it does look somewhat similar... apparently they had a huge detailed mesh and the exporter selected the corresponding area for export and cropped it from the rest.

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Visit The Carnivores Saga - a forum devoted to modding Action Forms' Carnivores, Carnivores 2 and Carnivores: Ice Age games
Tres WIP: updated T-Script Reference and File Formats documents
Sound name listings for the Demo (build 117), Retail (build 116), Beta 103, Beta 99, Beta 97, Beta 96, Build 55, PC Gamer Alpha (build 32) and E3 1998 Alpha (build 22) TPA files

Huh machf that is a fun image, though, why use b96 terrains? The PV Max Scene is older than any surviving PV version. But uh, your theory on a script which cuts and exports the local area of terrain... I don't buy that, based on what all I've seen. Possibly the oldest level development used something like that, such as back when terrain was just an even field of squares. But later on, things get mixed up a lot, versions ontop of each other, some really old things survive late, etc. Like the area of IJ inside PH.. very inconsistent. I believe the layered grayscale heightmap of the island had some sort of master-file, and THIS may have had some special tool to cut out the right area for implementation in Max.

Okay all! We are back to LAB96/97, hopefully to be more interesting than the ingame exploration yesterday. Let's get going.

One thing I only half-noticed ingame... The butchered "Sgasrepaircurb1-00" and "Sgasrepaircanpy-00" have been brought in from IT as a way-station in front of the exit gate. It's a nice touch but the model is pretty hacky, with open faces and such. LAB116 patches the holes on the bottom but even the final version has this weird "IT_stopsign00-00" pole object with missing faces on it. This, the broken keypad, and the bent green keycard reader... InGen must not have thought very highly of its laboratory lol. Hmmm... Oh there it is. I couldn't find the white keycard ingame. Apparently it was sub-terrain. Huh.. 41 builds later and still these ribar pieces and spas shotgun are just lying on the ground, unrotated, lol. Of some note, the trailer you knock over to get on the Loading Shack, still has a visible interior.

Sooo this is a little odd. Firstly, the Raptor here is named "RaptorB01-00", and was named "RaptorZ-01" in LAB55. This Raptor had no anchor in b55, but this one does... aaaand that anchor is named "Anchor_RaptorZ1Zone". So, possibly it was hidden AND unmentioned in the Raptor's script in LAB55... But most likely, added post-b55 (and likely was no longer a clone of the basement instance), THEN the "Z" was taken out of the name. Fun.


Anyway, elsewhere in this little area, you can see there is a cube trigger right beside the Raptor:

........Aaaand then I noticed, that there is a raptor teleport-destination inside this trigger. I had been confused why it mattered that the Raptor would pass through this spot. lol well, apparently if you leave the opening Harbor area into the warehouse zone, this Raptor gets teleported back to this spot and healed. For the later part of the gate puzzle of course. Good to know. By the Harbor Master's house there is another one of those anchors, "Anchor_RaptorZ2Zone". Hmmm... VA181 is in front of a warehouse. According to the Anne Script it's supposed to be with the laboratory complex.


What broken-down building would this have been, inside the laboratory? Weird. Anyway I guess the meaning is that, it evokes an impression of a human-less world where nature has reclaimed the land. Oh, you know "Teleport_Water" over off in the wilderness just beyond the warehouses, with that lone CWaterEntity that's not in b116? Well just considering now, LAB was a main showcase for the game at one point (being the New Game SCN target etc.), quite possibly this little water object was important as the one of the primary demonstrations of the engine's water technology. I suppose sometimes even, the receivers of build 55 would have been told what the game's cheats were, in part to make it more playable. Looking at the puzzle in Warehouse A, to get the second green keycard... It appears there is a possible route involving no crate-stacking, if you find the right point of ascent. Quite possibly this was meant to accomodate the fact that the trailer-push physics puzzle could be unreliable. Huh.. Leaving the Harbor, up into the hill. There are two massive cube triggers which are floating, apparently not triggerable ingame.. They each teleport a Raptor back around its starting location, and heal it, after you leave the area. It seems quite unlikely anyone would go back towards the Harbor after going up towards the laboratory complex but that's what this was for.

Uhhh Lol, the top set of stair physics is misplaced, here. I wonder why that is. And, the texture at the top of the staircase has been updated.


Predictably, the extra detail of the chemical shower has been taken out. And that faulty door is gone. Moving on... The top of the Admin Building has roof physics now. So, you can descend into the conference room from the top... except, you can't get onto the roof, as they're no object to prop up. And besides, the door is not blocked, so you can just walk right in. Glad they fixed this.

Oh, I noticed the executive carpet texture has more detail, here. By LAB116 it doesn't have much left. Here's a partial progression:

(Mystery Model)


(LAB55)


(LAB96)


(LAB116)


It went through a few unusualnesses but ultimately lost a bit more detail each time. I'm unsure if the devs ever make the *mistake* of re-paletting already-paletted BMP images. As for why the texture looks so different color-wise build-to-build, that is certainly an artifact of the way their scripts detect like-textures and group them into common palettes, with different groups being collected in different builds... There is certainly some visible variation through the builds in this, whether that's more random or somehow related to them updating how paletting works, I'm not sure.

Oh uh, so that half-cylinder lump that sticks out of the BioChem Building. Does anyone know what that thing is? I've seen similar structures on buildings before. Is there some sort of common purpose it serves? Ventilation perhaps? It certainly looks nice but I wish to know more about it... Hmm. VA171. It plays in the cubical area of the Admin Building. It was originally meant for the Harbor:

What exactly is it supposed to mean? Why do either of these places remind her of a Lost World? It says "ruined lobby", and the cubicals are pretty dirty-looking. Maybe the point was the level of evident damage. Moving on... THIS is funny They put a physics box in front of the keypad, to put Anne at the right distance from the buttons. That's hilarious!

Huh the urinal physics in the Comp Building are still messed up... Oh and the BioChem building still has a kid's urinal. ...which, apparently it still has in retail? That's odd. Aaaaand... Not going to investigate the CRAY scripting. Saving that for the final build.

And thaaaat is all we have time for, today. Be back next time, when machf's version of the post-LAB area will spontaneously appear in b96 instead of what we all got years ago, and an endless maze of blue dino paddocks causes Drac to lose his mind.

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To Be Continued
---

_________________
->Tres2020 Starter Kit

"Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said. ... "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."
"I see it." [said Sarah]
...
"The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"
"No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."
~Michael Crichton

Because from your comments, it appeared you were comapring that one to PV96, which your previous post was about...


I mean at the time of that MAX image. You can see the terrain has additional detail that was later dropped for that level but is present on the neighboring levels' terrains.

Maybe, given the way terrains were generated inside MAX by the Trespasser developers... a plane, which can have a maximum of 512*512 subdivisions, then a Turbosmooth modifier to get it to 1024*1024, then a UVW texture coordinates modifier, then the Displacement modifier to apply the heightmap, then another Displacement modifier for further "carvings into the terrain... or something like that, more or less.

_________________
Visit The Carnivores Saga - a forum devoted to modding Action Forms' Carnivores, Carnivores 2 and Carnivores: Ice Age games
Tres WIP: updated T-Script Reference and File Formats documents
Sound name listings for the Demo (build 117), Retail (build 116), Beta 103, Beta 99, Beta 97, Beta 96, Build 55, PC Gamer Alpha (build 32) and E3 1998 Alpha (build 22) TPA files

Huh... Interesting. Somewhere in all this I ought to research the MaxScripts, along with the design documents I never got around to.

...Okay! Time for this stuff again. We are still in LAB96/97, but now heading intooo the basement. First thing: "Sky_LA-00". The new naming format... and, somehow, the old version of the level's name... Or, one of the old versions. The texture is called "Sky_LB128.bmp", so... Oh weird. Sooo this level has a ton of different names. IL, LA, LB, LAB. That's fun. Definitely fun to know.

I uh... Whoa. "RaptorCBoss" is in the basement of this level I remember discovering this in the past... But, I completely forgot. He is using the standard RaptorC textures, but is evidently the scale of the one in SUM... Let's see, 4.4602, compared to... 4.4602, yep. So I note, there are no RaptorC's, in this level... However, LAB55 had some, in the forest between the Harbor and laboratory. IIIII dunno? Maybe it would have appeared briefly here? Maybe it would have shown up around the paddocks at the end and then disappeared? How long was this raptor following Anne? ...Haha. Possibly, RaptorCBoss was upset that Anne reactivated the power/computer for the beacon on Mt Watson, a violation of his status quo that Isla Sorna be an isolated, lost dinosaur haven of no-escape, and so he follows her all the way up the Ascent, intending to thwart her plans and feast on her carcass. XD


Ah let's see... The burned hunter crates are missing, but the physics of the openable ones are here. Huh, the HorizPine seems to be the final lower-poly version with the final, matching physics models. Hmmm oddly, this level has Brachiosaurus vocals. Why on Sorna would that be? Not much space for them here. Hmm. Possibly this level was at a slightly later stage of development. Even though.. it has the CHitSpangs. Yeah, they're here, where we first discovered them years ago. They are however evidently the same 9 ones as we found in the previous version of LAB. Hmmm And, the 3 standard CParticles boxes are here. Oddly enough they seem to have been introduced to the level files at the same time as the CHitSpangs. That doesn't make a lot of sense. Theeeee field of voiceover triggers is still here from LAB55, but I'm not going to do a difference comparison. Random note, VH72 is back here, which as I recall is definitely placed ingame by LAB116.

That's all for the South Basement. The North Basement has the rest of the manmade assets. So, the desk clock and picture frames are in about the same spot, tho slightly rotated.. In LAB55 their combined instances numbered 12. No in LAB96 they number... Oh, still 12. Thought they made more of them. Ah well, apparently the ingame supply was already healthy. The picture frames now have magnets, presumably so you look at the picture when picking them up, unlike their b55 counterparts. Why picture frames were chosen to be put in LAB and not other levels, I'm not sure. Could just be the dev who was working on them. Hmmm... NONE of the ribar pieces have magnets, this time. There are several kinds of wood pieces here, and a physics-less hockey stick. LAB might be the only level which gets the broken mop. I THINK I put that in JPDS? Can't remember where I ended placing it if I did.. The Quake symbol is still here but without an ingame instance. ..Oh, this is odd. The -01 instance of the blue keycard, is sitting here with the parent models of all the cards and readers. Just checked and each other card color has at least one ingame instance. Not blue... This will later go to the CRAY door, but in b96, the cardreader there is gray. Did they already know the blue keycard would go here? Did they realize that only 1 color was left, when they put the reader on the vault door? Did the vault door come only after keycards had been assigned elsewhere? Process of elimination, did they figure out it would get a blue card but didn't apply it yet? The fact that this -01 instance is in the basement could be part of the mystery of decision/realization sequence, or could simply be from a scheme where all cards started out with a -01 basement instance, each being then slowly moved to its ingame destination. Oh aaand final note, there are two music triggers in the laboratory complex sunken mostly-under the terrain, so that they still fire but have a relatively small enterable area.

Okay! That's it for LAB96. On tooo AS96, the earliest version we have.

First of course, ingame. Foremost, I must say that AS96 is noticeably lacking in ambient sound triggers. Funnily enough the Walkthrough stated that PV was to be absent of sound, at least compared to the jungle Anne was more familiar with. Also I am now playing in software mode, because I like it. Anyway, the first area... It is very pretty. All the more so, since the retail game doesn't have this area. I note additionally that the crates and such off to the side indicate a previous terrain configuration which we can't see.. Wonder what that was like. That giant felled tree, over there, would be fun to cross but it's without physics in this level. As well they made it so it's not necessary to do so. Ah well.


Oh yeah, if you go backwards you'll see right out of the level, just like old IJ1... Odd artifact from early planning issue. Like explorable non-gameplay issues, they seem to have neglected this side of design until late in development. At any rate, it is possibly part of why they removed the beginning of AS in b116. You can't really patch that kind of view up. It's one thing to have the start of a level look different from the end of the previous, but another to have giant empty space...


At various points in the level you'll find these gray cubes floating in space. I'll investigate those later but I assume for the moment that they are visible, untextured anchors. They're sort of interesting to gaze at.


The Raptors along the first area... Shall we call it AS1? Err no duh. Because AS2 is an entire level. Derp... AS1a? Nah. The.. first area of AS96 is made mostly of raptors who like to run off on their own, often times for many meters.. up to what, no one knows. It was sort of nice to not be hunting them. Anyway, at about the point where the paddocks supposedly are in AS116, a Stego bursts out of the ground and shoots up into the air. Probably some of you remember this from back in the day. I wasn't anticipating it while playing.. Possibly an evolutionary adaptation against jumping Raptors. Anyway, fun times.


The following area of the level goes downwards, towards the [ocean], and is divided up by these sudden downward ridges. They are there in AS116 as well though I think not identical in form. That Albertosaurus was here but the entire area of the ridges was devoid of Raptors.. AND of hunter remains. Seems they didn't get to populating this part until later.


Ah, I can smell the... wait. Heh, were gray cubes not enough, no the ocean too is entirely gray. Or anyway, wet sand instead of liquid. It's sort of interesting to look at. Part of the sparse feel of this.. spruce? level, heh.


Was finally killed by a Raptor, just before the isolated Mayan ruin before the Stairs. Oye. Had to fly my way in. Noticed that there is a lot of area in AS that is foliaged, but not intended for Player access. Incluuuuding the area off to the right of the Stairs. Oddly enough there is a switchback ridge path up the side of the hills which makes access pretty easy, and actually possible in this build. The switchback appears only to bypass the first "step" of the Stairs. Huh. Anyway, I explored for a bit, and made it almost back to the starting route.


Anyway, up the stairs we go... (no spider-tunnel on the other side). This puzzle area is essentially (or exactly?) the same as in b116, just without the sound. I am curious if the little turret things were meant to shoot darts at some point, as they evidently planned for the PreColonialVillage in PV. Huh... PCV... PVC... PVC Pipes... lol.


The Mayan Ruins were.. interesting. Since it'd been forever since I played the retail version of this level, and since I wasn't sure it would be the same anyway, I had fun exploring the ruins in this area. Noticed a non-split stone pillar that I don't think is in AS116. Tried shooting a wall onto a Raptor but it happened to be non-moveable. I did die several times in this area, eh. Oh, one thing, the only guns in this level were the hunting rile, the desert eagle, and the banana-clip AK47. I *think* these are all early Tres weapons.. can't remember 100% on the eagle. Or inotherwords, good chance gun design was still way behind here. Anyway I made my way to the pyramid.. the Alpha Trex here has a very short wake/sleep distance so I had to coax him into the stair area, aaaand of course, I failed to hit him with the head. But at the top I did find a Lindstradt tranq rifle...


Turns out it DID manage to tranq the Trex with only the 5 shots it had. Weird. Anyway the path up to AS2 was pretty short, this time without the falling stone bridge puzzle... aaaand that was it.


Onward to TresEd!

The starting area... As a note, the CWaterEntity is called "TWater0-00". It does not appear to be part of a naming sequence. Huh... The big brown tree laying across the way, is a -00 instance called "VBigDeadTree100-00". In PV this model is called "VGiant Felled Tree00-00" (yes with spaces in the name, causing GeomAdd errors) and about 1/3rd the size. Interesting that two different pine levels have a unique ingame non-self-tangible tree at the start of the level. Huh this is funny... Right outside the start area, OTP, are base trnobj instances - "TrnObj_Ingentown03-00" and "TrnObj_Ingentown05-00". Both are simple squares; the former has "TrnObj_MuddPatch06t2.bmp", the latter "Trnobj_towndirt200t2.bmp", but they are identical standard dirt textures. One or both of these textures was likely different in the past, and I do wonder what they looked like.

Huh so this is fun. The first spot with gray cubes ingame, has 2. Below is the TresEd version. On the left is... a class Teleport object with Visible set to true. Despite this it registers as invisible in TresEd. That's funny. On the right... The visible cube is this:

This invisible one is this:

Why the clearly-older (from the name going from generic to sequential) cube is set to be Visible is beyond me. Possibly the devs wanted to visually test how well the Raptors responded to their StayNearTargets. Why use AS to do this, an almost empty level, I have no idea. Oh and RaptorB001-00, next to these, stays near "RaptorBAnchor-00".

Moving on. Heh, Teleport-00 was cloned into -01, -02, and -03, the only time I've seen cloned Teleports. Huh... "RaptorB002-00" stays near a clone of the earlier "RaptorBAnchor-00".. right next to that anchor is, predictably, a sequential substitute, BUT a different Raptor - "RaptorB151-00" - is assigned to this one. ...LOL Item 151 on today's glitch list. Up ahead is "RaptorBAnchor-02", next to "Teleport-02" but not a newer sequentially-named-anchor. Next to these is "RaptorB003-00" who uses the old anchor of course, and you'll note has a name following up on B002 rather than B151. Huh, interesting. B151 has:

...standard for retail AI scripting. The other 3 have:

as well as -

...instead. Couple things - firstly I have noticed that retail CAnimals don't come up having a Fear emotion value, but instead use Bravery. This may not always be the case but I believe for some reason the devs decided to make an AI calculation setting for a dino going-out-to-attack-stuff to replace the setting for run-away-intensity. "Bravery" sounds like an emotion value but if you check the t-script, it's not. It doesn't have the associated Human and Damage variants. It's unclear to me exactly how it works. Anyway it's additional support that the B001-B003 Raptors here, so far, are older. As well, they are all docile unless provoked; the new Raptor is ready to fight right off the bat.

Moving on. That Stego... apparently starts out WAY under the ground, along with a class Teleport obj for the Player. Evidently this spot was going to be a lot lower. Why so much change? Increasing the height of climb, that's neat. Hmm. Oh and "StegAnchor-00"? Yeah, it's way down at a height of 30.077... The Stego is at 128.411. It's really funny-looking.. almost like the anchor is a canon which launches the dinosaur into the air


Up ahead... Or DOWN ahead... the Albertosaur is also buried beneath the terrain, but did no massive jump maneuver. Its StayNearTarget is "AnchorAlbertSteppes", a looong distance away, and not buried. ? My first guess is that the anchor was moved to a new planned location for the dinosaur, but not the dinosaur itself. Similar to the sloppy upkeep with anchors earlier in the level. Apparently also this entire area is called the "Albert Steppes", that's fun. Oh and, despite being buried, it has the code that the later Raptor had; possibly this was just what it was given, early on, or perhaps it was updated:


Hmmm... Ahead, a gray "RaptorBAnchor-03" is floating above the ground. Buried DIRECTLY beneath it a few meters, a larger, invisible instance named "AnchorRaptorSteppes00" is sitting. Some timeline specifics are getting a little fuzzy; the newer anchor is buried while the old one is not. I guess I should remember that older heights might not always have been lower. Of course this instance also indicates that the terrain was RAISED at some point after the NEW Raptors and anchors were introduced. Hmm... the old Raptors/anchors were not height-displaced. Possibly the terrain height alteration was a late incident. Over here, "RaptorB004-00" (old name) uses "RaptorBAnchor-03", predictably. Again, sloppy anchor creation. New ones made without being applied to the AI... Oh and it seems this area is the "Raptor Steppes". Or these are actually in the format "Raptor; which Raptor? the one on the Steppes; what to name it? Raptor-Steppes". But I like interpretting it as place names. As well, up head is the buried "AnchorRaptorSteppes01", which likewise has "RaptorBAnchor-04" directly above it over the terrain. I guess at this point it's important to clarify that it seems the oldest AS elements appear to be the RaptorB00# sequence and their anchors, then sometime later a height change. Anyway "RaptorB005-00" is around here, who uses the old anchor. This and the previous Raptor are placed a ways ahead of their StayNearTarget (closer to the Player), so that the Raptor will continue pursuing for a bit before ending the chase. Then at the shore we have "RaptorBAnchor-05", used by "RaptorB006-00"... again with script where he won't attack unless provoked.. Oh this one's funny. The newer, unused anchor, "AnchorRaptorSteppes02", is 60 meters up ahead. So, the old one is right next to the Raptor, while the new one is further ahead in the level, so that the Raptor pursues longer. Oh and where we are now, that new anchor is where AS116 has the Stego VS the two Raptors, even though they won't attack it. AI type of the submodels as I recall.

Heh it's kinda funny what there is to talk about, in this level. Still it's interesting, and an excuse to actually look at this part of what the devs did in Tres generally. Next up is a more familiar, standard Teleport object for the Player:

Non-visible, yay. The spot ahead has neither the jeep, nor the first RaptorC of the game that are present here in b116. Checking now, this level doesn't have RaptorC. Huh.. I just noticed that the foliage in this area has a big gap. Looking above, it appears that once the terrain may have followed a different path, if you assume the distribution here is not from mysteriously deleted trees. I am thinking perhaps this area was once extremely narrow, possibly even a puzzle to not fall off the cliff into the ocean. The Teleport object is named "_Shore", possibly there was even a beach at one point, but that seems doubtful.


Here, I went to check the ingame trnobjs, and you can see that AS96 uses hexagons again. Hmm. These ones have haphazard rotations (not even just different 6ths of a full circle), unlike the PV ones which are all at regular angles... (Ehhh funny. Looking at PV now, the 2 hexagons leading down the hill from the Ratpor Nest are at a unique angle to match the terrain shape, that is amusing). The AS ones are called "Trnobj_cycgrass01-00" and use "TrnobjAscOverlay00t2.bmp"; in PV it is "Trnobj_cycgrass01-00" as well but with "TrnPVCYCGRASS05t2.bmp" as the texture. Also here is another.. possible alternate level name - "ASC". I seem to remember it elsewhere, I'll keep my eyes open.

(PV)


(AS)


Huh this is fun. The opening of AS has special cliff trnobjs. They very nearly match, in full mesh form, the shape of the terrain where they are placed (same height as well), AND/BUT they stick out into the white abyss beyond the level barrier. Uh- Hmm. Possibly the 2048 extreme coordinates were different? Possibly, and seemingly more likely to me, the terrain the devs work with, at least sometimes, extends beyond what the later-built level will contain. That is, heightmap from the broader Isla Sorna might be present as they do things like make trnobjs. It's interesting.


Next is an unusual set of triggers, which appear to me to be early work at AI manipulation. The first one is this:

"Beamin' Raptor" lol. With such a fun title it seems possible the dev who named it found the teleporting of a Raptor to be a new and novel event, during the point in development when it was made. I suspect it's an early test. Anyway, for no particular apparent reason, the Raptor at this spot does not start ingame, but is teleported in from way OTP. Oh and it's "RaptorB000-00", the precursor we never knew about to the "RaptorB001-00" and those guys earlier. This single area has both the unusual cliff foliage, the B000 Raptor location, and the first actual triggers of the whole level. And it has a nearby Teleport for easy access. Potentially this was seen as an important area during some part(s) of development. Anyway, the trigger teleports the Raptor, without HeightRelative or the other values normally used to keep them from being way too high or too low. The teleport destination object is another one of those textured ones... I wonder who decided to not do these as textured by the time of b116? Possibly some particular dev actually went through some or all of the Max scenes and was like "Hey, okay, we need to take the textures off of these, it might be taxing the engine." I'm unclear how often devs saw the Max scenes of other devs. Anyway, next to this is "RaptorBFlatarea01", an anchor object that is NOT used by B000. In fact, B000 has no StayNearTarget. Possibly this anchor was added along with the previous new ones, and again not assigned, and the original B000 didn't have an anchor to begin with and so doesn't use one. The next large trigger, at the same scale of 25.0, looks like this:

The AT is listed after its values, a different Raptor is named, and all 3 specification values for the arrival mode are used. I think this trigger was created later, though perhaps soon after. Also this trigger capitalizes the "I", and so now it's "Beam In Raptor". Possibly the dev considered the original trigger in both possible readings. Anyway you might remember, "RaptorB002-00" was already used in this level... And, he may have been killed already by the Player. So, that's funny. There is a gap between these two triggers; quite possibly B001 had its own Beamin' trigger here. It's worth noting that B002 stays near "RaptorBAnchor-01", way off by the start. Accordingly computer security was paramount, the tightest on the island. "RaptorBFlatarea05" is next to where B002 teleports to but is not referred to by anything. "Flat Area"... I guess you could call this flat. Anyway it gets strange:

This code alters the StayNearTarget of B003. B003 is also way at the start.. but, unlike B002, has no trigger to teleport it here. Clearly from an earlier version of the level, where all those early Raptor numbers were associated with this area instead. Taking this a little further... I am beginning to suspect one of two things was the case: 1) At an early stage of development, dinosaurs were not meant to be omni-present and the earlier parts of this level were Raptor-free. 2) The retail version of AS2 uses a terrain file called "AS4.wtd". There are multiple possible explanations for this but one is that there were 4 distinct AS levels at one point; possibly the trnobjs which extend into space yet have terrain detail, are from a version of "AS1" which reached further to the West and thus did not cut abruptly off. Thus, this area with the triggers might have been the start of an older AS2, with the named Raptors not conflicting with the early Raptors in AS1. Then possibly, an early "AS3" would have started where "AS2" currently does, and perhaps "AS4" would have started at the base of the mountain. Neat......... Moving forward. To wrap up this little area, I'll just describe that there are 2 additional "Stalking" triggers, also referring to B003... these two are identical to each other in script but differ from Stalking0 in that StayNearMax is set to 15.0 instead of 30.0. As well, the "RaptorBFlatarea##" triggers number from 01 to 06 but only 02 is used by anything.

Moving on! The next area is given a name for us by the resident Player Teleport-object: "Teleport_Village". Further ahead, after the stairs, is "Teleport_City", distinguishing the areas. Whatever was once planned for this first spot, it became only a single tiny ruin structure. The instances of the models are -02, including the AK inside, except for two pieces which are -04. Peaking ahead, even the -00 instances are located ingame. The numbering seems a bit random, except that this structure may have been placed soon after beginning the city-ruins. Ahaaa, there's another Beamin' Raptor trigger here:

This one has the same script as the first one, and... aha, here is the one for B001. Possibly it was moved from where the gap is between the Beam triggers for B000 and B002. Low estimated possibility that the lot of the triggers were originally closer to this location. A note, "TeleportRaptDestB001-00" is fairly high off the ground. Possibly this area was once more raised. Small side theory, possibly the Raptor teleportation was seen as a solution before the WakeUp and Sleep values were implemented.

Huh this thing is fun. "Trnobj_mountileA03-00". It's a modification of the 2-by-4 texture mountain tile trnobjs, with a specific shape to suit the terrain. Makes enough sense but... there is no A00, A01, or A02. No 04/5/6, either. So, at least 2 are unaccounted for and may have looked interesting. Though, I suspect with the same texture they have now. Can't to know for sure.


Oh, the Albert/Raptor-Steppes earlier on, their trnobjs were named:

That last one, lol. There were a ton more of these Its location is actually right around the START of the level. Anyway, over just after the Mayan Stairs is "Trnobj_ascrocka01-00". Its textures LOOK the same, but instead of 4 repeating textures that link together, it has a single one - "Trnobj_Mntledge01t2.bmp" instead of "Trnobj_MntledgeA##t2.bmp (where ## = 01 through 04)". This one with the single texture has no similarly-named objects. Primary suspicion: it was part of a broader set of (older) rock trnobjs, having either this texture which was variated into 4 versions for the later ledge objects, or very possibly an older rock texture which is now absent.

On to the Mayan Stairs themselves... There are some independent stair step models I didn't realize AS had. I could have been using them in my Mayan mods, lol. Anyway here is an example of the triggers which set off the falling walls:

I've never seen a trigger activated by Anne's foot before, that's fun. Still need to know what PointTrigger does. Then:

This is fascinating... These are legions of instances of a single trigger, "TrigWall00-00", that the independent wall-monitor triggers listen to. I always avoid using clones of trigger classes in Trespasser but apparently the devs did it just fine for this puzzle. Anyway in the FireExpression mechanics, 5 of the clone instances are listened to, separated by "|" meaning "OR", so that if any one of them fires, this CBooleanTrigger will then fire. And it only fires once. Then there's the head-push triggers:

They monitor 2 or 3 step triggers, then UNFREEZE the Mayan head they target, and push it with the nearby stand-alone $ubmodel. I *think* this is the first I've seen the Frozen value used by the devs? It's refreshing after all the mysterious CMagnet nonsense.

Up to the Mayan City itself! Here's a fun thing: "Anchor_Village-00" is a dinosaur anchor used by 2 of the locals, which is floating waaayyy above the opening area. Looks cool. Hmm. "SNewStatue00-00" is the one I noticed ingame that was a solid, moveable piece... Checking now, it's not in b116. Interesting. There's another interesting thing... Amidst all the nicely detailed small structure ruins, there are two box-shaped, moveable walls. The long one is called "SMT_R&L_Wall-00", and the short one is called "SMT_W&E_Wallmov-00". Uh? Right&Left, West&East? And why would the wall's length go with directional alignment. Maybe some remnant of the plan to align the buildings with stars as in the Hammond voiceover. Anyway, in the second covered building are the 3 blocks that fall on your head, evidently achieved via magnets -enabling-. Eh. Anyway, on to the pyramid. There are two different anchors for the Alpha Trex... "Anchor_TRexPyramid-00" and "Anchor_TRexPyramid-04". So, -01 through -03 is missing. One is off to the side, further down the road, while the -04 instance is just in front of the pyramid stairs. This one is not used by anything; the -00 instance is the default StayNearTarget of the Alpha Trex. Then there is this giant box trigger which evenly surrounds the pyramid:

Somehow this was supposed to make the Trex "corner" the Player. Not sure how such simple script was intended to do that. However, it is possible this trigger once had different script which referred to various anchors and got the Trex to move around the pyramid and keep Anne from getting off. Am guessing, to turn this into a boss battle. What was the Player to do, if they didn't hit the Trex correctly with the falling head? I mean, there is a tranq gun but what's the point of the Trex surrounding the pyramid if there's an easy sure-win solution at top. Am guessing the trigger was not meant to coexist with the tranq availability. Anyway. That falling head... OYE! The trigger that monitors the step, -disables- the magnet holding a stone slab beneath it, causing it to angle downward. It would appear that... no... I'm still lost. -Enable- I could swear was to make something moveable. No wait.. -enable- was used to STOP doors that were swinging open. Okay, I we got this now, 95% sure. bool Enable = true to freeze a magnet, bool Enable = false to free it. Only problem is the CMagnet evidently being referred to has no @Free axis. Maybe it spontaneously makes one and it happened to be the right direction when they tested it. Ahhhh remember that mountaintile I said was all by itself and implied missing ones? Well, the missing ones I named are not present... the naming scheme used, A03, has no counterparts in the A0# format. But, there's a separate one named "A3", which DOES have counterparts, and then some:

Soooo, at least 4 are missing. And we're still not clear on the alt-named ones with A03.

Aaaand here's a nice spot. A single tree, 2 rocks, at the end location... evidently hand-placed. Nice to see have a place we can know pretty well was not made with auto-generated foliage, in the original levels. And, the level load trigger is off to the side, assuming a rather specific Player course.. Ahhh it's named "TrigLevelChange-00"! Significant. Normally these triggers are named for the level they are inside, sometimes the one they lead to. But this one doesn't name a level. I find that at least some of the triggers in this level are quite old. As well, the terrain textures here... The darker ones on the right are named to be a "mountain cliff". They are only featured here (within this level), the spot which in future contains the stone bridge puzzle. I feel like that puzzle was meant to look/be more sophisticated but they ran out of time/patience... anyway despite the absence of the bridge, clearly this area was meant to have something particular about it. Maybe not a bridge, maybe just sheerness...


Like AS116 it has a pit at the bottom, but it is so low-terrain-detail that it's difficult to say how intentional it is. Looking at it now in TresEd, it appears that it was manually made ontop of the Photoshop heightmap displacement. An afterthought, but possibly in a design document beforehand, not implemented in the heightmap. Sad that it's so low detail. I'd prefer it to be deeper for the term but you could call this a cenote, as is found in Mezoamerica. lol, possibly there was a thought at some point to allow the Player to lure the Alpha Trex to its doom, there. I mean, I think you could do it in this build but you'd have to go down yourself, and the terrain is unclimbable... Errrr no. The Trex's StayNearMax is too distant.


So, two images above, the road leading out of the level.. There are multiple naming schemes both for the trnobjs and the textures. One goes with "Trnobj_mountroad01-00" and "Trnobj_mountroad20-00", the first with "Trnobj_mountroad01t2.bmp" and the second with "Trnobj_ascroad01t2.bmp". Then there is "Trnobj_mayanpath01-00", which uses the latter texture. All look the same and are directly connected. One suspects there were at least 2 textures at one point. I uhhh... Oh. I double checked. The two textures ARE different, but only in what exterior terrain they blend with. I am unsure what their old versions looked like; keep in mind this level almost definitely had the classic PV dark pine dirt texture, earlier on.

(ASC Road)


(Mount Road)


Aaaaand that's a perfect transition. That's where our re-exploration ends today! Return tomorrow when the possibly-almost-empty contents of the basement will reveal themselves and AS2 will demonstrate how similiar it is or isn't in its emptiness...

---
To Be Continued
---

_________________
->Tres2020 Starter Kit

"Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said. ... "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."
"I see it." [said Sarah]
...
"The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"
"No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."
~Michael Crichton

Call it AS0, since it comes before the version of AS(1) included in the Retail...

_________________
Visit The Carnivores Saga - a forum devoted to modding Action Forms' Carnivores, Carnivores 2 and Carnivores: Ice Age games
Tres WIP: updated T-Script Reference and File Formats documents
Sound name listings for the Demo (build 117), Retail (build 116), Beta 103, Beta 99, Beta 97, Beta 96, Build 55, PC Gamer Alpha (build 32) and E3 1998 Alpha (build 22) TPA files

AS0... We could do that, why not lol. I sorta prefer my AS1 through 4 theory but meh..

'Nyways! We now return to, the Golden Age of Ballooning. I mean--- The Golden.. the.. the explore Tres thing. Jurassic Part 2 or whatever.

On to the basement of AS96/97.

I uhhh... Wow. Starting with the pine foliage section, there's a real surpriser here - those one rocks have invisible F physics here, instead of integrated $ubmodel physics. Uh! All the way in b96. That is pretty funny. lol the HorizPine here is low-poly but still has the old high-poly physics. This light brown "VBrokenPine01-00" is definitely the old model, for that matter. The basement hunter skeleton is interesting... It's missing the rib cage and femur, the -00 instances of each being located ingame instead. Oddly enough the rib cage's hold CMagnets are located in the basement, still, which might have caused one of the early slow-downs I experienced. Several of the bone clones are right in the cozy start area, the rib cage and femur are a little ways inward, and then a single hand is buried just under the terrain next to an already-fallen Mayan stone overhang-block-trap. Interesting that some were placed, yet overall so sparsely. lol, Para_A in the basement, is the orange single-texture Para from early builds. No ingame instances. Huh, that tranq rifle has super-short script, I'm surprised it works at all...

The Alpha Rex has only 500 HitPoints, here. That's instead of 3000 in AS116. Explains how the tranq got him. Oh uh, the hk91 here is the drum clip instead... and the S&W686 is absent. I think the rest are here. Hmmm everyone remembers the climbing-rocks I assume; the ones with fairly contrast-y colors that you must jump across in early AS2116. Well normally the pine levels haven't had them but the whole set is present, here. "TRockA1-01" is used 2/3rds of the way through.. 'AS0', but doesn't appear to be useful for climbing. I am suspecting it was put there with some sort of jump puzzle in mind but they didn't get far with it. These climbing rocks have a tiny white-and-light-brown rock way below them, "TRocL_18InchDia-00". There are 2 ingame instances, -01 and -02, both of them right next to each other at the start with skeleton pieces and yellow crates. Evidently it looked nice and was chosen to help the look-nice area achieve its potential. Oh I uh, lied? The NewStatue model I found ingame IS in AS116. The retail version has a "Cement Slab" SoundMaterial but all 8 instances are in the basement; AS96 has two ingame instances near the entrance to the City. Hmm.

Anyway here is this area of objects. Lower-right is the combination of moveable "NewStatues" and "PyramidStatues". The latter are 7 clones of the -00 from the pyramid itself, and then an 8th of a different base-instance - "SpyramidStatue00a-00" lol. The set of 5 pillars to the left - the front pillar is made up of "SBrokenStatue0(0/1/2)-00", which have no clones. Then the rest are all instances of "SBrokenStatue0(3/4/5)-00". Why it's set up this way, I'm not sure. The first three have a Density of 0.121000 while the rest are at 0.111000. Tres devs seem to have gotten mysteriously precise with the Mass/Density settings... possibly they had some sort of physics-simulation app which they wanted to reproduce values from exactly. And then the two walls... if you recall, R&L and E&W. They ARE facing different directions here. Still not quite clear. Anyway this little area is fairly well-organized, possibly in relation to an early plan to make the layout of the City represent stars and such.



"Sky_AS-00", new naming scheme, and "Sky_Acnt128.bmp", the texture is also the new format. Duhhh, "ACNT". So, in theory... the versions are AS, ASC, ACNT. Hmmm the tinker toys are back... but uh, well in IJ32 there are just 3, called "Ptinkertoy0(1/2/3)-00". They use "Ptinkerwood1t2.bmp", "Ptinkerwood2t2.bmp", and "Ptinkeringst2.bmp". In AS96, there are 8 of them, including new skinny ones, and they are called "VLogSmall(0 through 7)-00". They each still have the "Ptinkeringst2.bmp" texture but then the other is now "VRdwdTrnk00t2.bmp". Seems as though the tinker toys were very slowly erased/converted out of existence. Possibly a copyright issue? Even though no one would see the object names? Similarly the Humvee had a single surviving texture still on some of the Jeeps in b116 (the hubcap on the tireless versions). Also I have not checked but the models could be slightly different.


Basement has the three CParticles boxes... aaand the non-Brachio vocal set. Far out to sea I could glimpse the US terrain objects. JR and PV tableaus. No ingame instances were ever found.

That's it for AS96. Now, on to AS296 ingame...

...Whew that was interesting. Some of those Raptor encounters are difficult in such narrow spaces. Amazing that they usually did not fall off over the side. They actually managed late game-level difficulty pretty well I'd say. Of course several of the puzzles were unfinished and I had to fly a lot. Anyway.

First thing of note... There are TWO Mayan areas in the start section. One lower and one upper. AS2116 only has the upper one. This lower one is neat as well. In AS296 there are various moveable objects that I'm quite unused to being moveable, including support pillars and the short, ruined ornate statues.


The upper Mayan area is still cool... Btw, I will lay out my analysis here, that both this upper and lower location appear to have had the full-on covered building model seen in AS at some point in the past; that was removed and all the vestigial pieces remain, including the side-walls, pillars, and trap-fall stones. It's pretty fascinating. I'm not sure why the building-part was taken out but it's much less impressive without that.


There are as well TWO Albertos in this level, not just one... I am rather confused about the exact timeline of this dinosaur here. In AS296, there are 2. In AS2116, there are none. I don't have access to b117 and won't be analyzing it; is there an Alberto in AS2 there?.. Why one would be ADDED for the patch, I have no idea. Someone once posted that they remembered encountering an Albertosaurus here. There IS one (I think only one?) mentioned in the second spot, in the official Strategy Guide. Possibly his memory was mixed between those sources, or possibly his memory of an Albertosaurus here in an alternate timeline was strong enough that it leaked into our timeline. Either way, there are 2 Albertosauri here, and they don't have many HitPoints.



The area that comes after... the retail version has this cliff-path area delineated by AI boxes named "AIBoxCongoBongo00-00" and the like. Tatu and I researched this a few years back, and it's an old arcade game about a dude who follows an ape around a jungly area trying to exact revenge on being burned by him while inside his tent. Goes through several stages, the first of which resembles this ingame area.


Looking at the video, I am fairly sure this game could be recreated in Trespasser. Sadly I never played it in-person, and so I'd feel a little weird going about such a thing. Unlikely but possibly someone will do it one day.


This puzzle, I think, is pretty neat. It's not necessary in the retail game, IIRC. In b96 you must shoot one of the statues from behind, to knock them over and create a ramp. I mean, it may be hard to think to do this, but finding it looks super-satisfying. I'm a little confused because I think I had to do this when I first played, but I am very ... yes, I just checked. In AS2116, there is a new, shallower ledge that you can just walk right up.


This saw horse is interesting. Seen here I've already broken it apart by picking up the benellis... But uh, in AS2116 this is replaced with the entirely-different, single-model saw horse. The in-pieces saw horse can be found in the basement of JR116, but it's not used ingame there... Anyway, they went to the trouble to replace it at some point. Ah well. I recall I put the single-piece version in JPDS because it had better textures... Not cool, younger-me.


So I noticed this interesting shadow error while I was playing. I forget if I've seen it earlier, or where, but it was up here on the rocks... and basically, as the regular shadow is moving along the ground, a dark-blue-tainted streak thing appears where the shadow went by, remaining on the ground. You can "erase" it by walking over it to produce a fresh shadow. Uh? Hmm.


I bet you can see all the way to Costa Rica, or Panama, or the Basement...


So sad, this road is entirely missing the intense combat set-up it gets later.


Apparently this trailer needs 2 doors? lol. It, as well, has an interior while being moveable, as it retains in AS2116. Though, even in AS296, this one has no individual physics models. Rats.

Aaaand the lift. All I had to do was pull a crate out of place and it just worked. Pretty simple, slightly disappointing, tho impressive that they'd finally gotten such a sensitive physics puzzle to work.


That's it for the ingame pass! Now on to AS296 in TresEd.

So I... AAAAAAAHHH! Okay. I've gone back to AS96 to do a comparison of the terrain, and I just found this:


Soooo. What exactly the smuggler's plane is doing in AS96, I'm not sure. Well after taking a moment to recover, it's fairly straight-forward... 99% likely, AS was considered for the destination to move the plane to, after PL was cut from the game. Possibly it was "finalized" and then changed, or they had multiple possible places they were considering. Anyway, this seems to be one of them. Notably, Tatu discovered that the entire set of objects is rotated at 22.988 on the Z-axis. Other than that, the models appear unpositioned, sitting here just beneath the terrain. Notably, the crate it comes with is missing the text BOGOTA. Apparently this is the capital of Columbia. Not sure why it was considered potentially sensitive. Maybe the devs were just slowly giving up on things as their engine couldn't be made to work. At any rate, the plane has all its accessories, including the infamous drug bundles. Didn't realize these got into a build of Trespasser. Anyway, what would a smuggler's plane have been like in AS? As you can see below, it is out in the boonies, an area which seems to have been open at some point but then closed off by the time of AS296. Seems that, if the plane had not been moved to IJ3, AS2 could have had an interesting additional area to explore. It's quite tempting to experiment with this.


Anyway, I wanted to show that this whole area had the usual development, minus the Mayan statue plateau just before the base of Mt Watson, but was not blocked off from the rest of the terrain. It goes all the way out to the ocean. I'm unclear at what point they were certain this outside area would not be explorable, especially considering the presence of this plane within it.


Anyway, back to the AS296 level files. This level evidently also contains an especially small number of actual triggers. Still unclear why AS had so much of the Stairs scripted and was absent of voiceovers and ambiance. Oh, the start spot is fun - this mini plateau that you just came up to, before going down after, is not in retail. You end AS at the right side and begin AS2 on the left side, immediately in Raptor-danger mode with tense music. That last part worked out well but then AS should have ended at the same spot heh. As it is we have another (tiny) missing AS level transition. ...Oh it's funny, and in retail also, as the elevator ascends at the end of AS2, the last bit gets cut off, and you start SUM with the elevator already up all the way, making an even tinier skip......


I'd do a comparison right now with the new terrain of the lower AS2 area, but, it's really nothing to look at. Little manual ridges and things. Made a little steeper in AS2116. Moving on... The Mayan ruins. Note that the pillars here are low-Density - 0.015000, allowing them to be moved around by the Player. In AS296 they are apparently still moveable, but with a Mass of 150.0. I'm not entirely sure how the values compare but I'm betting this makes them much heavier. Fun note, in this version, there is a R&L wall but no W&E wall; instead there is a N&S (evidently North & South) one - "SMT_N&S_WallA-00". Heh, so the cardinal directions are definitely part of the naming scheme. This N&S one is a little odd, in that it has no top or bottom faces. I am guessing that when they got the W&E wall working, they just left this one out instead of repairing the mesh.

So. The RaptorC's in the starting area. Instances -01, -02, and -03 of "RaptorC000-00", same naming scheme as AS except Tribe C. Relatively simple AI script, no emotion value settings. Further down is "AlbertasaurReed100-01", which you meet before the -00 instance. "Reed"? I asked and apparently this is the name of a developer. Tatu was unable to find any records whatsoever of "Assistant Designer" Reed beyond the sole fact that his flight to the rendezvous originated in Port-au-Prince, Hiati. I also remember finding a rusted oil barrel in JR116 (or was it BE?) with "Reed" addended to the name, which I speciically decided not to include in JPDS because it was so similar. Ah why not, here it is:


So, he named 2 Albertosaurs and one sick tricera--- I mean, one oil barrel after himself. Uh hmm. "PrdOilBarrelReed00-00" has the same textures as "PrdOilBarrel00-00" but is at an odd rotation on all axes and their scripts are slightly different:


And no, this Reed barrel has no ingame instances. Anyway, it appears to have been designed to be ignored by the AI, and with no modification to default Density and Friction. Possibly it was meant for a RaptorA to not see it and therefore ram into it? That's all I can think of. Other possibilities include cases where a script set-up can only apply to a -00 instance, perhaps CMagnet or ---

Oh hey. Tatu just did a manual check of the rusted barrels in old builds of JR.. heh.. and found that this one here, "PrdOilBarrel00-03", matches the X and Y orientation of the Reed barrel. Huh........ the TV barrel. Getting vibes of the TV sitting amidst the trees of test~zone.


Moving on. The Congo Bongo area has a modified version of the NewStatue, called "SNewStatue00Stat-00", which is not moveable and has a Friction of 8.0. Hmm. Wish there was more to say about this area, I like it. Up the hill, the knock-over-able statues are of course moveable, yet like the broken ones earlier in this level, their bottoms have no faces. Oops. On the mini plateau, the breakable saw horse has no CMagnets. However, looking, the basement version has 4 of them, each with a MasterObject and SlaveObject. Somehow they didn't realize that these basement CMagnet systems didn't translate to ingame. CMagnets which DO move forward in instance successions need bool Instance = true but the scripting of the Master/SlaveObject won't auto-renumerate to accomodate the cloned instance numbers, sooo there it is.

Ahhh I skipped something. Between the two Albertosaurs is a textureless Raptor teleport destination, "TeleportRaptorCDest". Up on the climbing rocks is the trigger which uses it:

It is a diamond trigger, yet sets the Bounding Volume to 1 (box). Odd. Trespasser would crash if this trigger did not have the correct GeometryType for BoundVol 1. Nearby is another diamond BoundVol 1 trigger, except on the ground level:

"RaptorC100-00" is still with simple script, just also with a StayNearTarget which is inside the above trigger: "AnchorRaptorRocksBox01". Once the Raptor is teleported, it approaches the anchor and trips the trigger, which ends the ActStayNear behavior, and the Raptor is free to pursue the Player as they fall off the rock and try the puzzle again. Sadly I don't recall seeing this Raptor while playing Some distance further on, the -01 clone of C100 is waiting, though with nothing to modify it's StayNearTarget behavior... This Raptor has a StayNearMax of 45.0, which should keep it from pursuing the Player even after the initial transition from the mini-cliff to the second Alberto zone, meaning the Player can easily outrun it. Possibly the script is intended, with the -01 instance, to make C100-01 run towards the Player immediately, which could help avoid unwanted wandering. Although, with a StayNearMax of 45, it's unlikely C100-00 will ever enter the trigger which turns off its ActStayNear. Huh. They were definitely still experimenting with how their AI worked, using it and changing how it worked at the same time.

Eh and that's all the time we have for today. That was fun! Am getting in more time per day for these things, that's helping. Anyways reserve your front-row seats early for tomorrow's screening, where Tatu will show us his latest work on PLASUM, the PL-AS-SUM combined level where the newly connected roads actually work and are paved with the missing terrain textures!

---
To Be Continued
---

_________________
->Tres2020 Starter Kit

"Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said. ... "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."
"I see it." [said Sarah]
...
"The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"
"No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."
~Michael Crichton

Hey, Drac, you could Play Congo Bongo either on an Atari 8-bit or Commodore 64 emulator, SEGA made ports for those home computers in the 80s too...

_________________
Visit The Carnivores Saga - a forum devoted to modding Action Forms' Carnivores, Carnivores 2 and Carnivores: Ice Age games
Tres WIP: updated T-Script Reference and File Formats documents
Sound name listings for the Demo (build 117), Retail (build 116), Beta 103, Beta 99, Beta 97, Beta 96, Build 55, PC Gamer Alpha (build 32) and E3 1998 Alpha (build 22) TPA files

Sounds entertaining but I'm afraid my time is currently spoken for...

_________________
->Tres2020 Starter Kit

"Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said. ... "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."
"I see it." [said Sarah]
...
"The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"
"No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."
~Michael Crichton

Okay then, we're back in action. Returning now to AS2-96/97 TresEd.

So! Back in the Congo Bongo area, the wood bridge you use to get over the crevasse is called "SWreckedBridge01-00". It is missing the railings of its original form, "SWreckedBridge00-00", found later on up Mt Watson. Interesting that its physics models have different names from the main one... things like "Fwalkablemesh01-00" and "FSbottomrail02-00".

Huh that's odd. Door security systems are shutting down. And this Teleport class object is a rectangle... "Teleport0-00". Why would that be? Reminds me of the CWaterEntity teleport destinations in PV. Also note the highly simple object name, I am betting made by the same dev as worked on AS.



Ascending up the mountain, there is a tall thin wood scaffolding beam sticking straight up, with a crosswise additional beam ontop, biased in length on one side. The bottom one is called "PthinbeamStatic-02", the crossing one "Pthinbeam-02". There is a CMagnet at their intersection, "MBridgeLever2-00", which enslaves the latter object and gives it ZFree. Just a physics example I guess? This swing arm isn't low enough to hit anything, it has to be shot with a gun to move. Teleport3-00 is also a flat rectangle... Up ahead is that puzzle with the way-up-high crates that you shoot down to stack next to the ledge below. I still remember this part in my first playthrough, it's entertaining.. took me a second to figure out what to do. Up ahead is a standard "Stingenbridge00-02", no side piles, and moveable, with a CMagnet ("MSeeSaw-00") in the middle... No visual explanation why it would move this way IRL, but anyway, I didn't notice any movement from this device while ingame. Possibly the Density of 0.5 was too much for it to move. And then! It's been a while but there's finally another voiceover, the first in any AS level from b96:

There are a few others as we go along. Up ahead is a CMagnet-ed plank you must get to bend down in your favor. Another unusual spot on the model which makes no sense for an operable fulcrum, and in b96 here the available beam is much less wide than what you have to work with in AS2-116. It was particularly difficult to throw up a stone which would land on this, and the next beam. Coming up to the paved road from PL, Anne describes how far she can see. No "View of the Island" music. "Teleport1-00" is located up here, still a rectangle. Hammond continues describing official details about the political fate of his work... Up ahead is the spinning plank, which I'm quite satisfied being thin as it is in this build. Makes it slightly more difficult and still doable. IIRC I got the one in Mountain Valley from here. Then there's the cool audio version of the courtroom voiceover and--- ah, I've been forgetting to analyze the Raptors as we've gone up the mountain. At this spot is "RaptorC00-(09/10)". They have basic Raptor script, no emotion settings, 100 HitPoints. These are the last two of the level and, looking back, bingo... Dah-noh DNA. All the Tribe C's on the mountain itself were clones of C00. Checking "RaptorC" now, it appears that after the AS-like naming of RaptorC000 and its clones, and a brief case of C002, they jumped to C100, C101, and C102, and then at the mountain switched to C00 and its clones. A little theory here... I mentioned earlier the division of AS into 4 parts. Recall that the theory olds the trasition from the statue plateau to Mt Watson itself would be that between a possible AS3 and AS4. Notice, now, that the Raptors you begin encountering there are C00. Like C000 at the start of what would be AS3. In the basement, checking now, "RaptorC000-00" and "RaptorC00-00" can be found right next to the base mesh, "RaptorC". Other rides will come online six or twelve months after that. And then there are 4 other Raptors hovering some distance above, all from the 'AS3' region. At any rate, the C000 and C00 base instances here may have each been in different level files, thrown back into the mix when AS was combined into 2 levels from 4. More particularly, instead of the errors of what goes where we found with Raptors in AS96, the dev working here may have had C000 in both versions at first and then just renamed the C000 models from AS4 to C00, so that they wouldn't conflict with the names of the ones coming in from AS3. It's interesting. Checking some different RaptorC details, these floating basement Raptors... "RaptorC100-00" is the one which teleports in, that I mentioned yesterday. But "RaptorC101-00", "RaptorC102-00", and "RaptorC002-00" appear only to be basement "stay at home Raptors", which have clones that are already present ingame but themselves are never brought into the play area. Huh. Going back to the mountain... What, oh. The trailer, does not have a terrain gap underneath it, as it does in AS2-116. I just noticed. As such it doesn't really make a puzzle yet. There is a box trigger after the trailer called "TrigTrailerDrop-00" which freezes the trailer when Anne enters the trigger.. but, I don't see what that accomplishes. Or no it unfreezes it. Oh.. there are things buried in the ground here, where a terrain gap would go. A trigger which freezes the trailer if it drops far enough into the non-existent pit. So, after getting across successfully, the trailer is allowed to move again, possibly falling to the valley below, like a good action movie. Evidently they took the gap out of here temporarily in order to make the level playable. But it's a bit strange because there are several previous spots that are not playable regardless. Possibly this one was in consideration of, 'make it work from the final Teleport up to the lift puzzle'. I could see that.


...Ahhh no. Or, I'm not so sure now. "Teleport2-00" is already right at the lift puzzle, so you could go straight there. This location has a desert eagle being grasped by a skeleton hand.. checking, it is the only ingame instance of the hand. Looking at the script for the elevator itself... It is amazingly simple. I'll have to see if it's still this simple in AS2-116. The to levers have very simple script, which simply pushes the platform up or down. Triggers have a FireCount of -1 (infinite repeat) by default, so they didn't need to specify it. And then... no repeat period, nothing.

I would never have thought it so simple. The elevator model has "MMagtest" just beneath the ground... Interesting name; "test" could refer to how untested an elevator CMagnet was, or a holdover from ancient versions of the level when CMagnet was first being developed. It has ZFree set, of course. Huh, the devs either lucked out or sometimes knew how CMagnet worked; the platform model, both physics submodels, and the CMagnet are all oriented at 0,0,0, thus (per my observations) the axis of transition doesn't get confused by the engine. ...Ah, oh. Found a trigger I missed.

I don't fully understand this part. This trigger seems meant to freeze the platform during the time when neither the up-lever nor the down-lever are being pressed. But looking at the FireExpression, I would think this only detects when both triggers have never been fired at all yet, and only then... which uh, doesn't make sense either because this is a CBooleanTrigger which must have its case met at some point during gameplay (or else there's a funny case where CBooleanTriggers can fire immediately on level-load). I uh.. I don't get this one. Anyone else? machf? TI? Rebel? A can with a string? At any rate, small trigger at the top is meant to stop the elevator if it gets high enough. I am assuming it works. Not sure why a speed setting of 0.0 was used instead of freezing the lift. I... Oh uh. I just considered. The trigger shown above, Freezes the platform. There is no scripting to unfreeze the platform. I am assuming now that this CBooleanTrigger does not actually work, or else the elevator would never unfreeze.

That's it for the ingame areas. Pretty interesting. On to the basement.

Ah, I forgot to check the "TrnPlacement-00" of AS96. Here are both.

(AS96)


(AS2-116)


This is pretty interesting. Remember "Trnobj_ascrocka01-00" from AS96? It has only 1 of the yellow-ish rock textures instead of 4 like all the others.


It appears in the base texture, and not the others. Clearly an older trnobj. I am unclear what the two little dots above are... Possibly one of them is "Trnobj_mountledge045-00" but I doubt it, since that uses 4 textures and has geometry which supports that. And, there's no sign of the hexagon trnobjs. The differences in blue mountain tile trnobjs is notable, not sure what it means. The AS2 base texture appears to be closer to the reality of the levels around the 'AS2-AS3' transition (AS-AS2), I won't spend time analyzing the AS base texture differences there. Then in the AS2 texture, you can see all sorts of yellow and darker-blue rock texture details present, as well as the new pine terrain. Looking in TresEd, it appears have all the yellow rocks, and the Congo Bongo area. Then when it comes to the ascent up Mt Watson, the texture is missing detail in that area of the darker rock textures. So, this part has a different spread, possibly even a different texture from how not-dark it looks. Final note, neither base texture has the armies of tiny dirt squares scattered throughout. Can't quite remember what build they started this sort of trnobj dispersal in.

Elsewhere in the basement, "Trnobj_cycgrass01-00" is back, in its AS96 form... but, has no ingame instances. "Trnobj_mntcliff01-00", the object used for the cliffside at the end of AS96, is still here but also without instances. Hm.. The vocal cubes appear to be a completely different set. The Brachio cubes are included, and random Raptor cubes are not mixed up with the rest of them. Not sure when these were made. The sky object has the new naming scheme, "Sky_AS-00", with "Sky_Acnt128.bmp" as the texture again. For some reason, "Trig_ASGlobalClut-00" and "Trig_ASStart_Fog-00" appear to be the only CStartTriggers in this level. AS96 also had Ambient and Sky triggers. Oh fascinating: this level has "TRex_Alpha_A" in the basement. No referring instances of course. Notably, it has 2000 HitPoints. Recall that the AS96 one had 500 HitPoints, to be tranqable by the Lindstradt. Meanwhile the AS116 Alpha Trex has 3000. That uh, favorite doorstop of mine "Pwoodwedge-00" is in here, with its 3 precise physics boxes. "VLogSmall7-00", the post-Tinker-Toy, is in here by itself, with the same textures as AS96. Same script. Unusual. Possibly an older version of the level had them all here, then this was the only one with an ingame instance and so was left in, then by now has no ingame instances but was left in the basement...

Oh, I found that "PRaftPole00-00" Tatu has been telling me about. It looks interesting. Has Hand and Shoulder CMagnets. Moving on.. "PHjeepOpenBodyHack00-00". That's what it's called in AS2-116, as well. Erm. That's what it's called in IJ96, too. Ah, but, in IJ32 the same jeep, with all the same scripting and submodels, is named "PHjeepOpenBody00-00". Why did they add "Hack" to it? I always assumed it was called that, from the way the model was originally not designed to be moveable. Thinking aobut it now, I should specify that the design of the vehicle proved to have too many specific physics elements to be a moveable object. At any rate, it had the top elements shaved off and was made moveable, anyway, without being given the name addition "Hack". Nooo idea. Moving on, a relatively meager assembly of crates is available. Why are the burned hunter crates still here? Huh. At any rate it seems clear that the crates were much more streamlined in their level inclusion by the time of release, surely to save on texture space. You know, just thinking about it now, they could have made a master file with all game textures in it, and had those fetched during each level's loading session... I was just thinking that they didn't do that in order to speed up loading time, but possibly also it was a consideration for how much file data to dump on people's fragile old computers back then.

Huh slightly interesting thing here. The statue on the right has a CMagnet, with a BreakStrength of 100. So, you can't just walk up to them and push, if this CMagnet works. Apparently also the statues falling onto each other is enough to trigger the BreakStrength. That somewhat surprises me. Over on the left, the CMagnet you see there has similar script, but is connected to the second-block up, not the top block which it is next to. The 3 blocks all have the same density. Huh, this 3-block pillar doesn't have any ingame instances. Blocks 03, 04, and 05 do, but have no CMagnets, and a bit less density, as in AS96.


I uhh.. whoaa. I discovered the hunter arm model, by itself in the basement, then searched for other parts... There are apparently 8 Hand/Shoulder CMagnets for the hunter pieces, all by themselves veerryy far away from anything. Amusing. The rest of the hunter parts are a little ways away from the hand, none of which have any ingame instances. Recall that the hand does; this is more evidence that models may be treated differently in the Max scenes if they have ingame instances present. This separation of the hand from the rest of the bones suggests it is an automatic process rather than eyeballed, or something like a mass-selection technique is used.

Moving on to the foliage... For some reason, even here "vscotpine02-00" is floating. I don't know why. I'll have to see later but I feel like the b116 pine basements had various trees removed when they weren't used ingame. Hmm.. amusing, the rocks which old versions of PV gave invisible F instances instead of attached $ubmodels for physics.. here, the $ubmodel physics are present but the rocks are gone. So, these assets are building up in permutation representations. The HorizPine has its low-poly model, again with the high-poly physics. I keep forgetting to mention that one of the low-poly branches consistently does not have an associated physics box. Oh, and the two InGenTown dirt trnobjs that were behind the start of AS96, are still here, with their own slew of clones throughout the level. These, oddly enough, are actually next to the hunter CMagnets, I just noticed.

And that's it for AS2-96! Catch the elevator going up tomorrow, where the second-oldest version of SUM will depress Drac with its lack of Marker and aluminum walkway objects.

---
To Be Continued
---

_________________
->Tres2020 Starter Kit

"Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said. ... "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."
"I see it." [said Sarah]
...
"The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"
"No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."
~Michael Crichton

Welcome back. Today, the last (story-wise) level of Trespasser b97/97, the Summit.

Almost finished playing through the level, when I realized I'd forgotten to take screenshots. First thing I noticed was these unusual rock models near the start. I'll have a closer look in TresEd.


The Raptor combat in the area was still fairly difficult, if you are not jumping the entire time. Took me some tries.


The doors to the sheds wouldn't open. I jumped up on the dumpsters, and got into the radio room. With a single button press, 3 sounds played - a button click, a gear-operating sound, and a warning siren. No VRADIO though. Did the radio botton close a walkway gap after the stairs? I'll have to check.


After several attempts, I finally had to fly to the ending location and confront RaptorCBoss. Like LAB96, he felt he needed to keep a back door open. Something about still-yellow instead of red. And I'm afraid he was quite easy to slay.


The crate climb puzzle was easier than SUM116, here. Just jump up onto a sloping one. And, no voiceovers in this level.


Pretty brief, of course. Though I appreciated that even in b96, they had taken the time to make the climax somewhat difficult. In various areas of the game you might desire something other than constant Raptor bombardments but it makes a bit more sense here. At any rate, onward to TresEd.

First note, the area behind the Player. The same crates, levers, even physics models are still there, just as they are in AS2-96. Even the desert eagle and hunter hand. Just, a bit buried under terrain. A fairly dedicated attempt to maintain inter-level consistency, compared to other levels.


Both AS2-96 and SUM96 have a terrain ledge which is quite distant from the top of the elevator. Also here, the "Teleport_Start" is quite high off the groud; one of only two Teleports in the level. If you TNEXT in quick succession, a second landing from this one will kill you. To the right and left of the start area are rocks I have not seen elsewhere. "PVolcnBolder06-00" and the -05 instance. They sort of make a 'greeting' to the area. A small portion of the underside mesh has been deleted, mysteriously. Looking at the -00 instance, this portion IS underground, but in -05 it is slightly exposed. Oh well. There are a total of 5 of these scattered around the starting area; -03 is missing. SUM116 does not have this model.


The supply sheds are unenterable. They have moveable doors but these are all frozen, and none are referenced by triggers (except the door CMagnet). However, the middle on, -03, has a silenced mp5 w/silencer. The base terrain of this area, is a hybrid texture of the new pine terrain and the mountain tile, which I don't see in SUM116:


Then there is an interesting trigger.. which uses AT24. According to the t-script reference, this is the only trigger which uses it in Trespasser. Er, in fact SUM116 doesn't even have it. I suppose machf wrote this and was referring to the beta.

AT24 is called "CWakeAIAction". So, presumably this trigger is meant to wake all AI in a 40.0 meter radius. Interesting that a radius is specified, entirely separate from the trigger's Bounding Volume. Not even sure if this trigger works. Checking now, the Emergency Beacon does lift up the aluminum walkway at the top of the first staircase. The same trigger Freezes "PEmrgncyBoxBttn01-00"? I don't understand, it wasn't moveable to begin with. Part of some already-removed setup perhaps. Also, here is the trigger which makes the warning siren:

The sound only plays once ingame. Hmm, ProcessStyle 5 reads "Process actions now, in order, looping continuously." Possibly CBooleanTrigger could not be made to function this way. Or maybe definitely. Oh and I forgot, there are a few rare voiceovers in this level. Moving up... RaptorCBoss has only 250 HitPoints, ouch. Uh.. apparently it has only 300 HitPoints, in retail. That's odd. Interestingly, the walkway leading out onto the helipad is "S_AlumWw10x2-24". This is the only ingame instance of the object. I wonder where the others went and what it looked like. The end trigger is very sloppy...

It is evidently trying to play a voiceover before ending the game, but there is no ProcessStyle or any such thing to prevent both actions from firing as soon as the trigger fires. So, you don't hear anything. Buried deep beneath the terrain is an interesting set of triggers. It seems by b96, at least one of the devs had figured out that their EvaluateAll boolean for CAnimalTrigger did not work properly, and so made separate triggers for each animal's death among the boss-fight-raptors. Then this trigger is beside those:

I am assuming that, like the previous trigger, this won't successfully play VH145, but will end the game. I didn't get this one, as I had no need to kill one of the two smaller Raptors.

Moving on into the basement. Several CStartTriggers are present, and "Sky_SU-00" with "Sky_SU128.bmp". The names here are retained into SUM116. RaptorC00-00, as well as C03 and C101, can be found in the basement but are not referenced by any trigger. Assumedly hold-overs from a previous gameplay setup. The vocal cubes here, again, appear to be new, again including the Brachio. No anomalous Raptor cubes amongst other sets. Hmm. As in SUM55, there are two duplicate sets of aluminum walkways. However unlike that previous build, one of the two sets is fully scripted (the curved example one is gone), and SUM96 has a new one called "S_AlumWwy5x2BndMov-00" which is, yes, moveable. It is also in SUM116; in both cases there are no ingame instances. I wonder what the puzzle was like. The wooden desk is around here and has invisible F instance physics instead of $ubmodels, can't remember if this has been the case in other levels (it's certainly not the standard for retail). A full complement of hunter parts is found here, no numbers skipped in the instances. Coming up on the crates, this level has the smallest selection I think I've seen, yet. And yet still it has the Standard Dynamics hollow crate which... have we seen any build which used it? I don't think so. Anyway, second-to-last, those two InGenTown dirt objects are back again, though at a different location (same height), far away from anything else. Finally, the TrnPlacement-00 texture (SUM116 doesn't seem to have a map version, though I thought it did...)

(SUM96)


Evidently there is an unfamiliar terrain texture set-up being shown, here. It does not match the colors in this level. Looks interesting, too bad we can't see it.

On to TestScene96...

It does, at this stage, seem to be mostly complete, if not entirely. The sign advertising "MUSIC" made a little "bip" sound whenever touched.. then, so did the Raptor summon sign. Not sure what to make of that.


In TresEd, first thing I notice is the cattle prod and its trigger. That's new. Oh... it seems the "bip" sound I was hearing, was not the music... Not entirely sure what it was but according to the trigger name, it is meant to play the mac 10 song discovered some time ago. That's fun. Oh... the TrnPlacement-00 cube in here has the PV base texture, isn't that nice. Not going to upload it, it looks the same as demo's base texture. The Raptor teleport destination is still textured. Some triggers have been taken out. There are the two additional gun areas which are found in TestScene116, including the capacitors. I wonder if the capacitors were still found in LAB, during whatever build they were added to this level. Oh, in the previous TestScene, the big transparent pillar was pure-white in TresEd. Now it is a light-affected gray color, and remains as such in TestScene116. The boarders of this level are surrounded by AI boxes, this time. That random Raptor music trigger is still in the basement, though this time the vocal cubes have been updated to the latest version found in b96. Funny.. the object "SBlock-00" that the guns sit on in the basement now, is mapped with the JR gate texture instead of a crate. The muzzle flashes are out here now instead of behind the shooting range. The sky object here is still primitive, named "TheSky" and textured with "sky.bmp". Final note, "PDomino-00". I'm not sure where its "SConcreteSlab_t2.bmp" image came from, but I wanted to note that this object has been given a Mass of 20, and I noticed that it could be pushed over with just my hand ingame. With Density, even 1 as I recall is very heavy. I wonder how it works.

And that, being the end of Trespasser Build 96, is the end of our adventure today. I am a little Trespassered-out at this time and will now be done for the day; I'm not sure if I will do another tomorrow. Hope you've enjoyed the review.

_________________
->Tres2020 Starter Kit

"Well, as long as you're under there, you can check the breakers," Thorne said. ... "There's a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left."
"I see it." [said Sarah]
...
"The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?"
"No, Doc. I'm soaking wet, lying in the damn mud."
~Michael Crichton

Do you have any golden age of trespasser BBC merchandise I could buy?

Finally made it to the end, well done Drac, definitely an informative read. So I've been wanting to bring this but wanted to finish reading through all of this first. My theory for this goes back to the image of the helicopter in the tree, the helicopter is an anomaly, up till now there was no developer info about it as far as I know. The only developer content on it was the music track and Anne "what brought that down?". So my guess is that you would find the helicopter crashed in the tree, just like the image, but the challenge becomes how to get up there. So using that palm you were to create a claimable ramp and your reward....ugh.... a gun..... maybe a skull.... "Dodson, we've got Dodson hear!". Also looking at that area anyone else find VsmCanopy00-47 look weird with those branches sticking out, like a support for something to sit in .