The Trespasser Frontier (A Tres Blog)

[Draconisaurus]

It's not silly at all. One could say my blog is silly for covering old Tres research topics. Various new members haven't seen all these things, some old members may have forgotten, and well new theories are still being made. The blog is meant to cover the full range of Tres topics, feel free to post things regardless of how repetitious it might seem.

[tatu]

And I am unsure how much you know from the pre-96 builds we have but those doesn't have the mountain. It was added later, probably to "force" the player towards the GeoPlant

I've been on this forum for 18 years ago and I still struggle with seeing and reading all the data that passes through. I am always frustrated with how much info I miss, and I wonder how much of this information isn't even recorded on the forums or is instead saved in private messages or chats somewhere.

I wish that there was an organized page with all information about each level. I know I miss things that are spread between all the subforums! It seems silly to make a post asking to start from square one on a topic!

It's fine. I'd say the majority of things are talked in PM or chats now. I know when I find something I do it in PMs or similar, mainly due to past experience that it sadly generates very little discussion otherwise. But maybe we should have a "Look what I found" topic for stuff like that.
I still one day want to make a wiki for Trespasser with depth information about everything I know etc.
And I am all for making a new topic, even for old stuff. It often generates in new discussion as well as new information

[TheIdiot]

Just read the newest post, Drac. The climbing rocks are a weird one as it seems they were deliberately added specifically for the mountain puzzle late in development. I think it would be quite interesting to find an earlier build of the final three levels in order to see what this level was like before their addition as I suspect it was quite different - in fact, I think in particular AS2 might have been much, much larger originally, but the paths were later closed-in and filled with these sort of puzzles.

[Draconisaurus]

Tatu agrees if I recall, AS2 was larger. I certainly think it's possible; the cut-out JR area looks just as undetailed in the retail terrain. I wonder what the devs had in mind for it before they realized how much of their planned gameplay types weren't going to work.

[tatu]

I agree with AS2 very likely was bigger, terrain wise. However, I do not believe they ever developed it with that size, like they did with JR. JR's size got smaller, but AS2 got cut off. We do not know when they started working on the Ascient levels either. In build 55, both BE and SUM is at their really early stage so it is possible Ascient wasn't really started either.

[TheIdiot]

I agree with AS2 very likely was bigger, terrain wise. However, I do not believe they ever developed it with that size, like they did with JR. JR's size got smaller, but AS2 got cut off. We do not know when they started working on the Ascient levels either. In build 55, both BE and SUM is at their really early stage so it is possible Ascient wasn't really started either.

Yeah, I definitely agree with this.
From looking at the terrain, it seems AS1 is fairly close to its original terrain iteration with minimal editing - it does appear clear to me that the area near the shore to the left of the starting valley in retail was originally much more open, as you can see some poorly edited terrain near the end of that ridge, and of course the valley beneath the Mayan Village was definitely open at one point as well. Whether they actually put any effort into these areas before cutting them aside from some trees, I have no idea.
AS2 on the other hand seems to have originally been intended to be much more open, but was cut down in size before much work was done on it at all. You can tell because there are far less off-the-map objects in this level, and the terrain editing isn't half as janky as it is in most other levels where the terrain was obviously edited late in production (compare the AS2 cliffs to the added ones in JR, or even the ridge next to the Geo Plant in B96 PV - it looks a lot cleaner polycount-wise and has actual TrnObjs). It seems that AS2 was already small by the time they'd started much work on it.
That being said, opening up what I believe may have been the intended size of the AS levels in the early days of Trespasser is definitely a goal of the Isla Sorna project...for instance, the cliffs to your left in the valleys of AS2 would be gone so that the valleys reach all the way down to the ocean. There probably wouldn't be much of interest down there, maybe an alternative way around the level, but I think visually it will look quite nice, and of course most of our other levels are expanded massively anyway compared to the B96 versions. Doesn't help that we don't have a lot of information regarding the final levels of the game in the walkthrough!

[Draconisaurus]

In build 55, both BE and SUM is at their really early stage so it is possible Ascient wasn't really started either.

I still believe those super old levels for BE and SUM were not the current dev's versions of the levels, but rather something in the line of 'the most recent version which can be allowed for outside demonstration'. But I could be wrong.

[tatu]

In build 55, both BE and SUM is at their really early stage so it is possible Ascient wasn't really started either.

I still believe those super old levels for BE and SUM were not the current dev's versions of the levels, but rather something in the line of 'the most recent version which can be allowed for outside demonstration'. But I could be wrong.

Very possible. I could see them testing levels that wasn't part of specific builds. We do know JR in Build 55 points to PH, as well as LAB points to ASC. So it is more likely they had temp levels so you could progress through the game easily as a tester.

[Draconisaurus]

New blog post. The InGen Hunting Vehicles
https://thetrespasserfrontier.tumblr.co ... g-vehicles

[TheIdiot]

Huh. You know I never noticed that the vehicles were green in the early days. I wonder if the Unimog had a green paint scheme as well at one point? Pretty sure the Unimogs in the movie are green as well - all of the hunter vehicles have that forest-green scheme. Another odd change along the lines of the removal of film-accurate dinosaur skins.

[Draconisaurus]

Hmmm. Well, Jurassic Vault has only this image of the Unimog design as far as I can see:
https://jurassicvault.com/displayimage. ... play_media

But here are the open-Jeep concept images:
https://jurassicvault.com/displayimage. ... play_media
https://jurassicvault.com/displayimage. ... play_media
https://jurassicvault.com/displayimage. ... play_media

...Either dark green, or the image is in greyscale. However I find it significant that TLW media representations sometimes followed concept art as opposed to the final result, since they had to begin before the film was finished.

https://jurassicvault.com/displayimage. ... play_media
https://www.flickr.com/photos/baptistec ... 7893355742

So, our open-Jeep might be white due to concept art.

[codemuk3y]

I always thought the tan/red colour was supposed to be a rust colour

[Hilwo]

I always thought the tan/red colour was supposed to be a rust colour

I was thinking the same Green was new/good condition, and tan was worn/rusted?

[Draconisaurus]

Rest assured both have plenty of rust on them. They've all been sitting outdoors for a year or more.

[codemuk3y]

I agree that any vehicle that had been sitting out for the year between JP LW and Tres would have rust, but I thought that the developers may have meant the greens to be 'less damaged' and the tan/rust ones 'more damaged'