TresCom Forums

One year ago today I began the MinePass project with the aim of creating an accurate map of Trespasser based on the retail game but also adding in details, areas, and yes even functiong puzzles from prior builds and concepts that were mentioned.

Now this is looking really nice!

I never knew Trespasser would look that good in Minecraft.

_________________
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."

Thanks, this entire world is pure vanilla Minecraft.

Looks like you spent a lot of hard work on that. Congrats.

_________________
->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

Ok so I'm hoping to get some opinions on this because i made a bad error. Back when I started work on the plains I was unable to find a lot of info on the "object placement map" which led me to believe either the developers changed the plains concept or this was just a snippet of the actual map. I then decided to make-up the level based off the few details we had at the time. And the result was a 200 block gap between PV and Pl.

However after doing a little research into whats missing from PV, this might work out.

So to start off with is the map table and retail map wall. Here's the map scene in the retail notice how the north road as it goes through the plains area. Now compare that to the map table from the town reloaded. Another thing to note is the position of the dam marker, on the map table the marker is slightly higher than I thought is on the retail map.

Now after reading an email from here about how pine valley was originally much larger than what we've seen, I compared the level with what little detail he said along with the walkthrough and I believe the table map also reflects on a time when the level was whole. The area following where the PV gate would be is noticebly longer than it is on the wall map.

So with that I think I'll end my insanity induced comnspiricys theory's for now, thoughts?

Interesting. The road doesn't go through the left side of that valley exiting the Town, but instead comes from the right side and maybe goes over the dam and into Pine Valley... we shoukd take that into aacount for any attempt at reconstructing the Plains level.

You know what? I need to overlap these textures on my multilayer map of the island...


EDIT: here are the texture maps and bumpmaps from those two versions of the maps

OLD ISLAND MAP


NEW ISLAND MAP


I enlarged them first from 256*256 to 1024*1024 pixels, then to 3600*3600 pixels so that they match with the size of Zandor's map. I also inverted the bumpmap for the newer version. Then I added them as 4 new layers to my multilayer images of the island. I'll upload the new versions in a while.

_________________
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

How has nobody thought to do this before? Not only do the heightmaps and textures seem to indicated the original layout of the rest of the island, including areas we have no prior knowledge of, they also appear to provide a rough but accurate map of Plains. Seems PL isn't as big as it seems, and the Dam valley was present at the time still. That section of clearly raised terrain outside of IT appears to have been the opening from the Plains proper into the Dam valley.

_________________
Current Project: Cloning Facility | My Release Thread

It does seem to look pretty accurate, at least some parts of the game. There also seems to be an opening between IJ3 and PV.

A few issues I am seeing tho. PH seems to be pretty open that you would be able to see most of the town, as it doesn't appear to be any major hill or mountain towards IT. I can't really see anything of the Ascent levels. On these maps it appears they are mostly just mountain areas, and not really what we know from ingame. Of course we actually don't know much about these 2 levels from early development as we actually don't have any images from development before Build 96.

IJ seems to follow the early IJ a lot more. As there is no clear path between IJ2 and IJ3. BE and JR looks pretty accurate. And that Dam area makes much better sense. I wonder if it still looked like that in the early PV 3ds Max shoot we have where you can see the Dam present.

I feel like this representation of the map also shows either PL was changed at some point, or the 3ds max version we have is not accurate, and might have been used for some rending stuff.

I like it.

_________________
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."

It might be because in the PC gamer/E3 IJ3 the area over there was just a slight rise and looking at Zandor's map theres only a 100 meter gap between the two levels.
The mountain that splits the PH level in half shouldn't be there. However according to the walkthrough the view to the town should be blocked by a rise but it also says that the player could probably make out the plains.

Quite interesting Cocos heightmap I did not know we had... Seems to me, though, to be entirely pre-level-development. I would say it should be used only for clues to Tres's layout, or to fill "gaps in the code" a la frog DNA.

_________________
->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

Well, the texture of the map in the retail version HAS been used as a reference before to follow the path of the roads (and find out how the path to the Town from PH was blocked), but nobody had yet compared it to the earlier version of the map as MinePass just did. And when I extracted the textures last night, I found out they had bumpmaps too...



Although it seems by this point the terrain had already been modified to closely resemble the one in the retail and the original Plains had probably already been scrapped...

_________________
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

So I've been staring at this road for a while and my only explanation is that it is the path to the enlclosed dam area. That or the the road goes up the opposite side and curves around the reservoir.

Also to note is the road going up the mountain should start on the other side. The road would then make a sharp U-turn (the 50 cal. Location in Acs. 2) and continue on. Oddly this path is also on the retail map. Is it possible that this shows how that section of the game was supposed to be. I just checked the walkthrough and nothing matches to the retail level, nothing at all. This would make sense since a lot of the things in that level are just odd and don't make a whole lot of sense.

I included that path in the Pens level... or at least, part of it.
My assumption is that it went past the dam and around Mount Watson, but was broken by a slide the same way other portions of the path coming fron the town were... thus needing you to go through the gate into Pine Valley and basically take the long road to the Summit.
Remember how in Ascent 2 there's a place where you meet the road that comes up the mountain from the other side? But if you go down that way, it's interrupted? Well, that's the one.

_________________
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

I can't believe I missed this, I thought that road was a mistake because it overlapped the switch back area but that area is on the opposite side of the road. So there's actually two roads that go up the mountain a long, obviously unfiished one and a steep drivable section. Both sections meet at the same place.

Since there's no real explanation (cut game content) for this here's a quick idea that I might use later on. The long section would be the tram path and the drivable section was for maintenance/construction purposes. The switch backs might have been for transporting rock material down the mountain, or maybe they wanted a safer/faster way of getting to the Mayan ruins (idk) But seriously why is it there's nothing from the walkthrough in these levels.

Edit-Just thought of it but maybe the switch backs were made around the beginning of Ingen's settlement. Hammond said that at some point in the beginning they went by helicopter to hook up a satellite link. The switch backs were set up as a temporary way of getting to the summit.

Sooo.. machf describes it well. The road next to the dam was meant to continue towards and up Mt. Watson, meeting up with the section of road seen in AS2. I am pretty sure the tram from the walkthrough follows this route.
The switchback which the player uses to get up Mt. Watson is, IMO, not an InGen one. Not quite sure why there are occasional InGen-left boards and materials left around. I would say some of them may even have just fallen from the mountain above. At the end of the day the main explanation is probably that the devs needed to put in material for the player to interact with on the way up.

Want to say... is it just me or is the Hammond map's road toward Mt. Watson impossible? Without checking machf's overlay, the road seems to pass through PV rather than going around in the other direction as one would think it should. Perhaps from early dev. concepts; as well the monorail path from the beach which is shown does not seem to link with where the monorail section in PH has been found. The Hammond map seems a bit unreliable, TBH, except for general concepts.

_________________
->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