MOD RELEASED: Alien Breed III Shadowgrounds *UPDATE*

dex909 · Postby **dex909** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 5:40 pm

It´s here! Scroll down for screenshots,downloads and color addons!

NOTE: I am NOT responsible for any damage this causes to your game! (shouldn´t really, but I just wanted to let you know.) This is for the German version of the game but should work for any other version too! If you only like some parts of this mod (HUD maybe) and dislike others (textures maybe) then you can just extract the data2.fbz with WinZip/WinRAR, delete the files you do not want in and zip the archive again - note that the archive must be called data2.fbz to work with the game!

You can choose between two versions (each a separate download!): "Standard" and "Special Edition". The "Special Edition" contains completely new "Alien" style textures for the last two levels of Shadowgrounds. The Amiga levels were clearly influenced by "Alien" while retaining their very own style for Aliens/monsters etc.
You can also choose between several different GUI color addons. The colors orange, green or yellow/orange can now be downloaded as separate addons. Simply extract the chosen addon into your Shadowgrounds folder. All gfx of terminals as well as textures of screens etc. will be changed to fit in color. THIS WILL ONLY LOOK NICE WITH THE STANDARD OR SPECIAL EDITION MOD INSTALLED!

Here is the full feature-list:

Alien Breed III Shadowgrounds (Standard)
#######################-
(A mod by Dex for Frozenbyte's Shadowgrounds)

- NOTE: the "Special Edition" also contains Alien/Alien Breed style textures for alien environments
- fixed Mousecursor (removed slight visible black line glitch near arrow)
- changed the eye-textures for every character to give them a more realistic look
- added a new titlescreen and logo to look like a fake Alien Breed III
- added a complete new ingame-GUI for ammo, health, weapon-icons and all other indicators to look more like a fake Alien Breed III
- changed all ingame terminal-graphics as well as upgradescreen, logscreen and mapscreen etc. to look more like a fake Alien Breed III
- recolored some of the cursors
- recolored the blue fonts to white
- changed the bloodcolor of aliens to an acid like tone - human blood and blood on walls etc. will stay red
- added a new title music (Alien Breed Amiga remix by "DeAdLy cOoKiE")
- added new music for the music hall in New Atlantis ("AmigaKrieger3000" by me)
- changed the rain effect script to use a new "lines2.tga", rain is now more realistic
- reworked 90% of all textures the game uses (this includes the textures that can be found in the "Models" folder, all skins, weapon textures and so on)
to make the game art look more used and dark and to add a fake bumpmapping effect (they may appear to be less sharp in some occassions which is actually not the case)

Dex, 2005

Shadowgrounds copyright © 2005 Frozenbyte, Inc.

Alien Breed 1991 Team 17 All rights reserved

INSTALLATION:

Simply put the contents of "Alien Breed III Shadowgrounds_Standard.zip" into your Shadowgroundsfolder and you´re done.

The mod will NOT overwrite any files.

Compatibility to other MODS in the future:
#####################
If you have another mod installed that goes by the name "data2.fbz", simply rename the file "data2.fbz" of my Alien Breed III mod to "data3.fbz" or the next higher number depending on the last mod/patch you installed (so if it´s "data7.fbz" rename the modfile to "data8.fbz")

As I am writing this there are NO other mods, so this might not interest you at all right now

Fb_Kristian · Postby **Fb_Kristian** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 8:26 am

Sounds nice, i'm going to have to test this someday

Grisu · Postby **Grisu** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 12:59 pm

Nice, will test this too.

BTW: for the gui pic:
Can't you make that menu orange / grey colors or even greenish as the original. Might look better imho.

dex909 · Postby **dex909** » Sun Dec 18, 2005 2:15 pm

UPDATE: I did three recolored versions ("yellorange" like Team 17 wanted for their Alien Breed 2k4 - just the perfect color if you´re unsure), green like in Alien Breed 1 AMIGA) and a darker orange. Each in a separate file called data3.fbz so simply copy it to your Shadowgrounds folder without overwriting anything and the hud will be in the color you downloaded (orange or green) so for fans of the blue version, just ignore those addons

Matti · Postby **Matti** » Sun Jan 01, 2006 1:39 pm

Let me guess: no new levels

dex909 · Postby **dex909** » Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:20 pm

I would like to do some levels but the editor is *still* not released, as you can see I am frequently checking these boards for the release but for now we can only wait.

Another issue: could anyone PLEASE make this topic STICKY so that people will know about my mod when they enter the boards? Thanks in advance!

Postby **FB_Lauri** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 5:23 am

Thanks for the great mod

The problems with releasing the editor currently are:

1) The editor is rather hard to use
For this fact, we can do nothing in a short perioid of time. Anyway, this problem is solved when the most devouted fans sacrifice their life trying to learn the tricks of the editor. Be strong.

2) Our level creation method includes a lot of 3rd party tools
We use Lightwave 3D to create all actual game models and buildings. If you want to create your own buildings you must have a license of Lightwave 3D and premier skills to use it. Of course, you can recycle buildings we have made and do great outdoor maps or just modify the existing ones to create a truely new mod.

3) Shadowgrounds is a linear game and there is no mode for playing single missions
Well, this basicly means you have just to modify our maps better, or create a totally new 11-level scenario. With some scripting, it could be of course shorter too.

As a conclusion:
We'll do the decision about releasing the tools withing a few weeks.

Matti · Postby **Matti** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 11:44 pm

FB_Lauri wrote:If you want to create your own buildings you must have a license of Lightwave 3D

So there is no free (demo) version of Lightwave available? Or any other (free) software which understands Lightwave file formats?

Lauri wrote:3) Shadowgrounds is a linear game and there is no mode for playing single missions

How about console commands? Something like

Code: Select all

load map x

dex909 · Postby **dex909** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 1:07 am

@frozenbyte:

that´s even more than I hoped, please do NOT wait weeks and weeks - just release it, AFTER that you can still think about releasing a better version later. If it´s the stuff you made the game with - perfect. I personally prefer changing textures, levels and story - not render my own models (that´s a whole different thing which you simple don´t need to care about.) give it to us - we will be able to utilize it. I made mods purely through hex-editing, so don´t tell me about an 11 level-campaign restriction and a tight game structure that can not be changed only modified - I´VE BEEN THERE

Please release it so that we can create levels, thanks.

PS: I do NOT know a REALLY user friendly editor, even Warcraft III´s editor has more DEPTH and issues than first meets the eye, release it.

Matti · Postby **Matti** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 7:23 pm

dex909 wrote:I made mods purely through hex-editing

What games and are said mods somewhere in WWW?

dex909 · Postby **dex909** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 8:19 pm

look at my website, the link is in my SIGNATURE. The ingame text/story was completely redone through hex-editing.

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'.'

Matti · Postby **Matti** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 1:14 pm

dex909 wrote:look at my website, the link is in my SIGNATURE.

I get error The page cannot be displayed. But in header it reads T4 Funeral Homepage. Figures...

dex909 · Postby **dex909** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 1:30 pm

mmh, the site might be down at the moment. Look here for the game: http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=4921

Postby **fb_joel** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 6:28 pm

Just tested this for the first time... Wow! Really impressive. Nice to see that our Data zipping would suit mods quite nicely, too...

Some FYI stuff:

- Data4.fbz is the last supported, although I suppose we could quite easily change this to whatever number is required in the end.)

- I also noticed that your upgrade menu seems to have a few ? icons there (from the demo). You should probably use the final game icons...

- You should remove Data\Version\ from the mod zips. I don't think it conflicts because the game already has Data\Version\ in the original directory structure (which always overrides zip files) but it's simply useless in the zips.

Anyway, regarding the editor release, we have certainly not forgotten about it. We will make a decision soon, and it just might be positive. However, you all should remember that the editor is not the Holy Grail - as Lauri explained in one of the other threads, all the Shadowgrounds buildings etc were made in Lightwave, so it will be very difficult to create buildings for mods etc.

If there are no surprise problems with the patch, I think I can promise that we'll have more information regarding the editor and its possible release on Tuesday, 28th of February.

dex909 · Postby **dex909** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 10:15 pm

thanks for the comments fb_joel

Well, just to clear this up

What the Fans want:

we want an editor to mainly edit EXISTING buildings etc. to create our own worlds easily. Hardcore modders used to Lightwave WILL find a way to create their own models for the game and won´t have any problems with the tools beeing "complicated". What most users want (including me) is just an editor to change EXISTING stuff and build new maps with Models that are already THERE. You have ENOUGH stuff in the game to REcreate the whole Alien Breed Saga AND we can even change textures which also makes a huge difference - so for me that´s just ENOUGH, do it, release it, now. Don´t break your heads about it any longer

Postby **fb_joel** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 1:23 am

Well it's not 100% our decision actually (technically it is, perhaps, but in reality we need to take a couple of factors in consideration).

Anyway, just so you totally understand - for example the whole part 1 New Atlantis mission is one big building. So at the current state there's really no way to create extra corridors or so... You can do lots of outdoor stuff with just the editor, though.

Anyway, as I said, we'll soon make a decision on this and then see what happens.

dex909 · Postby **dex909** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 2:25 am

ok, it´s nice to see devs care about users like YOU do (kinda OUTSTANDING i must say!)

Still, the community will be thankful for ANYTHING, trust me

I certainly will! hehe

Matti · Postby **Matti** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 2:37 pm

fb_joel wrote:all the Shadowgrounds buildings etc were made in Lightwave, so it will be very difficult to create buildings for mods

If there are no share/freeware versions of programs which understand Lightwave file formats, how about patch for game which adds support for other file formats (.3ds, .obj)? In the meantime mod community is dependent on people who own or have other access to Lightwave (on work/school/else)... anyone in here?

dex909 · Postby **dex909** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 11:15 pm

Yes, good idea but PLEASE make it a "FOR LATER" issue, "FOR NOW" please just release SOME tools, i can´t stand that waiting much longer it´s just terrible..

Postby **fb_joel** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 8:38 pm

I'll get back to this tomorrow. The full release of the editor/tools probably takes a few weeks or even months but I think we can arrange something "unofficial" earlier, just to get you something to play with.

dex909 · Postby **dex909** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 2:06 am

Finally you´re talking =) OK, we´ll hold our breath

Postby **fb_joel** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 6:21 pm

Alright, we talked about it in more detail, and the end result is that we WILL release the editor. The release date is not known yet (there's surprisingly much work to make it "releasable") but an educated guess would be 2-6 weeks from now.

However, I should again mention that the editor will not be a super easy wizard to create totally new levels. It's mostly usable for outdoor editing, although small buildings can also be created...

I will investigate this a little further and try to organize a very limited beta test for a couple of people (dex, spraehbuer) starting this week. There will be no documentation or examples in the beta phase but I guess the idea was to get something to play with now, and full release later...

Grisu · Postby **Grisu** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 5:50 pm

Great news that is!

Hedgehog · Postby **Hedgehog** » Fri May 12, 2006 12:26 am

I find this mod quite fun

For something this early I have to say well done

Hedgehog · Postby **Hedgehog** » Fri May 12, 2006 6:54 pm

FB_Lauri wrote:2) Our level creation method includes a lot of 3rd party tools
We use Lightwave 3D to create all actual game models and buildings. If you want to create your own buildings you must have a license of Lightwave 3D and premier skills to use it. Of course, you can recycle buildings we have made and do great outdoor maps or just modify the existing ones to create a truely new mod.

I just started with the editor and was modifying the template map. So I didn't start with buildings and stuff yet (did a bit of terrain, objects and scripting first). But isn't it possible to make your own buildings with the excisting walls and doors? Some kind of tiling? I did found some doors I could place, but I've been at work all day today, so didn't really test those yet.

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MOD RELEASED: Alien Breed III Shadowgrounds UPDATE

MOD RELEASED: Alien Breed III Shadowgrounds UPDATE

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