This mod contains skins, textures, sprites, overlays, models and sounds for Aliens vs. Predator 2. All designs are inspired by the films and by the graphic novels. You will need to be a keen observer to notice all the extensive changes made in AvP2: Total War – not all of them are obvious until you play through the game in singleplayer.
Files included in avptw.7z:
-rez Custom/AvPTW.REZ
AvP2: Total War is compatible with Aliens vs. Predator 2 v1.0.9.6 and should be compatible with all AvP2 mods, e.g., AXP Realism, AvPSE, etc.
AvP2: Total War will not cause incompatible game resources errors in MP Internet and LAN games.
Important Note: When using other mods with AvP2: Total War, the AvPTW.REZ command-line entry MUST be typed after the entry for any other mods to ensure compatibility.
AvP2: Total War has NOT been tested with the official expansion pack. All efforts have otherwise been made to ensure compatibility, but this is no guarantee. (There could conceivably be a graphical glitch with the Dunya/merc2 character, for example.)
The design of the Marines is based closely on the designs from the film, Aliens, from the Terry English camouflage on the personal body armour to the Vietnam-era frog-and-leaf camouflage BDUs. Even the late pattern US Army jungle boots are based on those in the film. There are new character models for Johnson/obrian, Jones/minigunner, Duke/pulserifleguy, and Decker/sadargunr, as well as the grenadier. The new Decker/sadargunr character is actually wearing the same flak jacket as the character Drake from Aliens. Note: The Ichiro/railgunnerMP character no longer has thermal insulation and appears as normal in Predator HeatVision.
Skins for the weapons have also been changed to make them more realistic (and in some cases more film accurate), as have the sounds and overlays.
However, these designs are not intended to be film reproductions, therefore there are no skins of Ripley or Hicks, Hudson, or Vasquez, or any of the characters from Aliens or Predator. These are still the AvP2 characters.
If you would like film reproductions, please refer to PROJAM's Aliens Marines or 101st_Sgt_Stew's Dutch's Squad.
PROJAM's Aliens Marines is highly recommended. Top quality skins with a lot of attention to detail. mr-grizzly and J@mes of PROJAM have made outstanding contributions to the AvP2 modding community, including most recently a skinning tutorial.
The detachment of US Colonial Marines in AvP2: Total War are from the 9th Regiment, 2nd Battalion, based onboard the USS Verloc. This is the same US Colonial Marines unit as in Aliens, but with a differrent capital ship (since the USS Sulacco was destroyed in Alien 3).
The Corporates are mostly unchanged from the previous versions of AvP2: Total War. The reason for this is to maintain some semblance of order in Multiplayer Internet and LAN. A player must able to distinguish a Corporate from a Marine across the map, therefore the Corporates have retained the black personal body armour but also have olive drab BDUs. Head skins have been changed on Rykov, Ivan/merc1, and Dmitri/merc4.
The guard and officer characters have been changed, along with the apesuit and combatsynth characters they have the olive drab BDUs and black personal body armour. The pocguard and pocofficer characters also have black personal body armour but with the word 'SECURITY' written in yellow on the chest. They have black BDUs.
The concept of the Corporates is that Lv-1201 is a Weyland-Yutani research facility and apart from the Corporate security guards, it has a body of DFOR troops. DFOR is the Corporate Defence Force, a private army maintained by Weyland-Yutani and includes special forces units such as combat synthetics with radar tracking and troops in all-purpose environmental body armour (APE Suits).
Because of evidence of Predator activity on Lv-1201, Dr. Eisenberg has contracted a Russian mercenary unit with previous experience with alien lifeforms - the Iron Bears, led by General Rykov - to command the body of DFOR troops.
The Aliens all have the same colour scheme, including the Runner and Predalien. The colour scheme uses cyan as a base colour, with other colours (brown and green) for the patterning on top. Cyan reacts well with the red atmospheric lighting used in many of the maps and achieves much the same effect as James Cameron's lighting in Aliens.
Cameron uses blue lighting in many of his films (achieved by shooting tungsten balanced film under uncorrected HMI lights), and in Aliens the Alien Warrior costumes used yellow as a base colour on the detailing. Under blue lighting, yellow appears desaturated which is why the Aliens are often perceived as being black. The same applies to cyan under red lighting, so the colour scheme and subsequently the skins have a high level of film accuracy. The Predalien and Praetorian skins have also been redesigned so that they seem to have the same material properties as the other Aliens. (The Predalien is version 2.0 of nemarsde's Alienpred skin mod.)
Texture indexing bugs on the Predalien and Praetorian models have been fixed, and the Empress model is included with full animations. (Ported by nemarsde using Lithtech ModelEdit for Talon.) Finally there is a new, improved overlay for NavVision and some new sounds.
Included for the Predators are version 1.5 of nemarsde's Predator Revised and Savage Heavy Predator skin mods (with the texture indexing bug on the heavypred model fixed), as well as nemarsde's Dark Shadow Hunter Assault Predator and Stalker Light Predator skin mods. Predator weapons have more film accurate skins and new, improved PredTech status bars.
Important Note: This bonus add-on is for use in Multiplayer Internet and LAN only, and will cause graphical glitches in Singleplayer.
-rez Custom/AvPTW.rez -rez Custom/AvPTW_Ex.REZ
Important Note: The AvPTW_Ex.REZ entry MUST immediately follow the AvPTW.REZ entry.
The DEP and LYT Project files are included, as are the DirType files for browsing AvP2: Total War in Lithtech DEdit for Talon.
Skins and models for Alien and Predator classes were not included in the Exterminators add-on, but if players of these classes would like to try something new and different they can try out nemarsde's Red Bloodline Alien and Acid Armour Predator skin/model packs. These skin packs weer made independently of AvPTW but should be available from the same source.
I began working on an AvP2 mod back in December 2001. The first release was a Marines skin pack, titled "Force Recon". At that point in time I was not aiming for any kind of film accuracy, but the feedback I received from players persuaded me to move in this direction. The original concept of AvP2: Total War was to have a media pack for the client-side mods, and a game resources pack for the server-side mods.
The Media Pack was released in April 2002, but the completion of the Game Resources Pack always depended on the publishers releasing the source code for AvP2. Although the source code was released in October 2002, it was retracted within 24 hours of its release by the publishers. To date, the source code has not officially been released and no announcements have been made by the publishers relating to this subject.
Therefore, there will be no game resources pack for AvP2: Total War and this is the final version of the mod. Furthermore, I myself will not be releasing any more mods for AvP2. For your information, I am awaiting the release of Sierra's squad-based tactical combat sim, SWAT: Urban Justice, due for release in Autumn 2002, and have plans for some very interesting mods for it; maybe even an Aliens vs. Predator mod (if Twentieth Century Fox don't notice).
I hope you've enjoyed my releases for AvP2, and though the game has been a disappointment in retrospect, we can take comfort from the simple fact that where the industry fails us, we will succeed.
The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief;
He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.—William Shakespeare
Regards,
nemarsde
Copyright © 2009 nemarsde
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is included in the file "GNU Free Documentation License.rtf".
Content of AvPTW version 2.0 is subject to disclaimers.
Where applicable trademarks and copyrights are owned by Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved.