The Thing PC video game : a project... And help needed

The Thing PC video game : a project... And help needed
First version of the mod : http://clanlna3.free.fr/Thingmod/OP31Mod0.1light.rar OP31Mod v 0.1 : First I'm going to release my mod as "OP31Mod v 0.1". This mod will be the one with only the registry changes and the ones made in the level files by using a hexadecimal editor. This mod is buggy as hell but I still think you'll like playing it while waiting for what's next. It's far from being perfect so please, be kind with a poor Thing-fan who tried his best to improve what he could with what he had. A quick reminder for some new stuff in this mod : - FPS view. - No scripted burst-outs (which can cause the player to be stuck in some levels, will be indicated in the readme). - No "mission failed" because your engineer is dead (which can cause the player to be stuck in some levels, will be indicated in the readme). - Scuttlers have more health and thus are scarier for your men. - Burstouts have more health and thus are much more scarier for your men. - You start some of the levels with no weapon at all. Don't worry, you can still end the level as I've tried it myself. - NPCs will lose trust in you if you leave them alone for too long. - Less trust is gained by NPCs when you give them weapons and ammos. Now the best way to gain their trust is by healing them or by killing Things in front of them (and, of course, by performing the blood -*test*-('") on yourself). - Visibility in the whole game is reduced and you will need flashlight or flares to see something in the zones where the power is off. - The blizzard outside is now more dangerous. - There are additional NPCs on some levels. - All the NPCs can now be infected. Negative things about this mod : - A lot of bugs, with some of them not allowing you to end the level. - No NPCs going from one level to another. 2 : OP31Mod v 0.5 This mod will have all the good stuff from the previous mod but will also have some new stuff if everything goes according to the plan, mainly NPCs going from one level to another as well as a lot of other changes. I will not venture too far away from the original game with this one, I'm only going to make sure that the bugs from the previous mod are gone and that you can always end a level. 3 : OP31Mod v 0.8 With this one, I'll basically start to redesign the whole game, I'll probably keep the original levels but what happens in them will be completely different. For example, in level 1 (the destroyed outpost 31), the level won't be a tutorial anymore, ad you will be able to start worrying for your men right from that point.

Some leads if you guys are interested : Computer Artworks shuts down : http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:nxt2E4_mxIAJ:www.bdgamer.net/%3Fitemid%3D5855+%22computer+artworks%22+ftp&hl=fr&gl=fr&ct=clnk&cd=11 Computer Artworks site by Willam Latham. I think he is THE guy to contact as he referred to Outpost 31 in almost every interview he gave about the Thing game : http://www.nemeton.com/static/artworks/ On another matter, Pete Wanat is now the executive producer for a Scarface game. He was the executive producer for the Thing. I'll try to contact him too. And if I can't retrieve the Thing editor level, maybe I'll try to do a Thing mod for Oblivion as a friend told me that its editor was really easy to use... But as I'm no computer engineer, I highly doubt I'll be able to create the characters and landscape... Well, we'll see. :wink:

Extremely interesting project. Unfortunately I cannot help you. Maybe somebody else here knows more about programming of games. I wish you good luck!

I'm a skinner but not a coder and I usually skin for games such as Colin McRae, ToCA and rFactor. I haven't even a clue what tools to use to open some of the files in game however, I abruptly un-installed the game due to overwhelming disappointment. Why the game was coded in third person view is beyond me because you can just see too much of the landscape from third person (swing arm), whatever you want to call it. I've looked around online but have no idea how to change to First Person so I just uninstalled it. If you can help me figure out how to get away from this view, I can re-install the game and give it another go. Also, the wave of critters in this game is completely ridiculous. It is also silly that you can be taking hits from a thing and not turn into one yourself. Remember, all it takes is one tiny particle to take over an organism so this major game flaw needs to be addressed. Also, if I'm not mistaken, the game takes advantage of an \"auto-aim\" system, which gives it the same feeling as old Tomb Raider Games to me. Please keep in mind that all the above is based off memories of the game that I uninstalled roughly 2 weeks after purchase. If I've flubbed up on some of my info. then please forgive me. Ken

Well, unfortunately I'm not a programmer myself, only a fan of the novel/movie who is trying to \"improve\" the game. There are a lot of disappointing elements in the game but the worst is that the good game dynamics are here, they're just not as used as they should be. For example, the fact that your team loses trust in you if they don't see you for a while is there but turned off, or your guys can be infected by the Things' attack but the programers added pesky scripted burst-outs where a normal guy turns into a thing even if you just -*test*-('")ed it one second before. I'm just trying to take the bad stuff out and keep the good stuff, even if it'll still be the same game. About a fps view, I can't help you as I don't think you can modify the game that much. On the other hand, have you installed the 1.2 patch ? With this patch, your camera is free-look, so there's no more autotargeting. I like it better this way. About the waves of critters and the fact that you don't turn into a Thing yourself, let's just say that the game had to take some liberties with the movie to appeal to a larger audience. It can still be very enjoyable that way. For example, on some levels where the scripted burst-outs have been deleted, you can have up to 4 or 5 NPCs with you, and some of them can be infected during fights with the Things. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't, so it can be fun to play a level two times as things can go differently. Btw, today I found a way to change the amount of trust lost/given by weapons and ammos. I'm thinking about giving 0 or very low trust for ammos and a little more for guns, but not that much. This way, the player won't be able to solve everything with the NPCs by always giving them ammos. You may have to coerce them into doing something, heal them or fight Things in front of them to gain their trust, which should be more interesting. I always found kind of stupid that the NPCs were almost invulnerable to fear. I never had a NPC committing suicide unless I did all I could for this to happen. Today I've been able to modify the way the NPCs are affected by horrible bodies and they freak out much faster. This should be interesting if I can keep it balanced so this doesn't get frustrating for the player.

What tools are you using to open up/modify the games files?

.lvl files can be opened directly, otherwise OllyDBG for DLL, an hexadecimal editor for the bin and .exe files, and entering some values in the registry work too.

I'm now able to modify the trust level of the NPCs before the start of the level. I think I'll deplete it a lot so that they won't be so trusting and cooperative, as a lot of NPCs begin with 100% trust in the last levels. 50 or 60% will be better. :twisted: On the other hand, I'm gonna try to extend the \\\"coerced\\\" time so that if you use this option, the NPC will obey you for more than 5 seconds, which can allow you to kill Things in front of him to gain his trust. I'm also decreasing the level of trust gained by weapons and ammo... It'll be harder to \\\"buy\\\" a NPC this way, even if it'll still be possible. But the best way now to gain the NPCs' trust will be to heal them or to kill Things in front of them. About the panic state, I still have to tweak it a little bit so that they don't freak out that much... But on the other hand, the levels are much funnier with the NPCs panicking. :wink: The NPCs also lose a very small amount of trust even when you're with them now, so a NPC which is almost in the orange state will get there eventually, even if you stay with him. I also discovered that there is a way to make a NPC hostile to another NPC (like the two engineers threatening each other in one of the last levels) very simply, by entering the name of one NPC somewhere in the AI of the other NPC... But as the .bin files are compiled, I can't change this option without the level crashing... Too bad, it could have been fun to have a NPC try to kill another one as soon as they meet. Now this would have made the taser useful. As an example of the changes I've made in the game, I played in the level where you have to give to a medic with a MP5 (Falchek) ammos to gain his trust. With my new settings, he gained very little trust and stopped trusting me seconds after I gave him the ammo. I then had to give him another ammo and took away his gun to coerce him with it. Unfortunately, he freaked out and died before he could heal the wounded engineer, so I had to run near a walker to find medipacks somewhere else. I crossed the path of Carter (normally a scripted burst-out) but didn't have anything to give to him so he refused to follow me. I managed to get back to the engineer and he opened the security room. We both killed several Things and we finally managed to find Carter again... Except that his trust was in red and I didn't notice it, so he jumped me, took my gun and killed me in the process. He was then shot to death by Dixon, the engineer I had saved as his trust was 100% (in this case, the NPC will fight other NPCs if they attack you). Now that was fun ! :wink: I'd like to be able to delete other things now, like the irritating \\\"mission failed\\\" when some of the NPCs die, or to change some uninfectable NPCs so they can get infected. I'm almost 100% positive that taking NPCs from one level to another is impossible as each level has its files which cannot be modified much, and a NPC represent a lot of data. If I had the level editor they used for the game, I'll be able to change all that. But for the moment, I wasn't able to contact anybody from the development team. It seems after the shutdown of Computer Artworks, some of these guys just vanished... If you guys have any ideas, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Just found by mistake the way to give an NPC medic, engineer or soldier AI... However, an Engineer NPC with medic AI won't say anything when he gives health pack... But he'll give them anyways ! :o

Hm, seems that it's more complicated than that... I can change engineers into medic but not the other way around for the moment. I also tried to contact people from Computer Artworks but it's hard to find them as the company dissapeared and all the mails \"@artworks.co.uk\" don't work anymore...

You know, this is pretty interesting to me. I still have the PC version after all these years. And I'm interested in trying out some of these changes you've mentioned. I think I'll reinstall it and have a look-see.

I'm trying to continue looking into the game, but all my efforts to contact the developers failed... Computer Artworks shut down and all the developers apparently stopped working in the game industry or joined other development teams but it seems impossible to find a recent e-mail of one of them. If somebody could try and help me on this, it would be great... I'm starting to run out of ideas to try and contact one of those guys. And without a level editor, I can only change some minor things which are still interesting but I'd like to modify more things... :cry: If any of you has any ideas on how to contact them, here is the list of people who worked on the game : http://www.mobygames.com/game/ps2/thing/credits If I can get a level editor for the Thing, the possibilities would be huge... I probably won't modify the levels but could change enemies, taking NPCs from level to level, improve the fear and trust system... Anyway, even if I don't get the level editor, I'll try and offer to the people interested my modified version of the game. I'm glad you're interested by it, spc. :)

Oh by the way I managed to find what makes a NPC a medic, soldier or engineer (it was a 01, 02 or 03 somewhere). Basically, I can change the appearance of a NPC and his function but not his voice. Too bad, otherwise I could have put North, Weldon or Burrows later in the game. I always wanted to see them take on Things. :wink:

Ok, as long as I can't get my hand on a member of the development team, I'll reduce my ambitions about the game and work on the infection function of the NPCs, trying to understand : - why some NPCs can't get infected. - why some NPCs seem to be infected more easily than others - if it is possible to make a NPC a Thing from the start of the level, like two of them in the game. It means trying to decipher the bin files, use a trial and error technique on hundreds of data to find the answers... I think it'll take me a bit of time. ^^ On another note, I'd like to find a way to control the player's inventory so that you can have a lot more blood -*test*-('") kits and adrenaline. The game is funnier this way, because on the levels where you have a lot of NPCs and they can get infected, it's nice to be able to -*test*-('") each and every one of them. You then hear the -*test*-('")ed guy say things like \\"I'm not infected and this will prove it\\", hear the other guys around him say things like \\"Looks like you're clean\\" or \"Are you sure that thing works ok ?\" if the -*test*-('") is negative or move away screaming \\"He's one of them ! \\" and starting to shoot if the -*test*-('") is positive. :lol:

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