I am taking a slightly different aproach to this port. I am seriously thinking about ditching the user interface. It's not really much to it, and it would be far quicker for me to wrap the game with a custom user interface (like ZsnexBox). i.e the user could configure the corntrols, select episode, etc...

This is just an idea. It depends on what's quickest. I wasn't a fan of ZSNES interface. I will likely continue my port, since I am primarilly doing it to get some more programming experience. I would like to get it running on the Xbox. Some things I've thought about adding are rumble (that can be turned off), hd resolutions, ms soundtrack support, and dual analog halo type control. Xmv for the movies and wma for the music is the likely choice for me. Of course, none of this (or even the port) is a for certain.

Having multiple projects for the same product is not a bad idea (unless they produce the same thing). They each may have strengths the other doesn't. Plus, I tend to work better alone on these types of projects. Waiting on other contributers is a restriction I would rather do without. It does sound like the other port is coming along nicely though.

However, a word of advice: The windows work you've done is a major milestone, but don't underestimate what's involved in getting it on the Xbox. All the input, some sound, and all the win32 specific code will have to be replaced, worked around (which can introduce all new problems), etc.. as well as dealing with general Xbox programming. Best of luck to you and feel free to ask any questions over stumbling blocks you may encounter. Chances are I may have allready figured it out.

I am working in stages. My current goal is to get a level to load (no sound or input) and render on the Xbox. I have the wondows version nearly ready to start the Xbox port for this purpose. I will post the status when there is some.

Well, you've got a reputation around here and I don't, so I don't think anyone is going to be interested in mine anymore

Oh well, it's good programming experience as you said

There's no reason why that shouldn't work, of course, and it could add to the gaming experience; the standard AvP interface is so basic (and doesn't highlight the selected item as it should, at least not on my XP PC). Plus given your record of listening to the users' suggestions, we can be sure that any worthwhile suggestions will be considered.







You're joking (as your smilie shows), but in case there's any doubt at all in your mind, both versions will be (very) eagerly awaited, so please don't even think of abandoning your hard work (or we'll set VampX on you ). We are hungry for a working AvP port, regardless of author, and now we've two versions to look forward to

And the author of the best port will win the coverted (and just made up) Best Game Porter of 2008 award! Fame, riches, women!*















* Legal note: you might not get fame, riches or women via the port, but at least you'll have the warm feeling of having ported a game that the creme de la creme of XBox owners (i.e. those of us who still have an XBox original) play!

Yeah, I won't give up. I started it out of boredom to be honest

But its been fun and I enjoy it, so *something* will come of it.

And yeah, the menus are pretty horrible. The ingame ones at least. I might use the same sorta design for those as the main menus in mine

Yeah Dude, don't give up on it.... I mean there are 2 versions of Quake 2 floating around, both having different strengths. Both you Guys are AWESOME!

Can't wait to play this....

yes very nice, hard work on porting the AVP guys
so good news
I've hella waiting to play with it , and made a trainer for..

Both of you, please keep posting regular updates in this thread on how your work is coming along. It'll make our waiting that little bit easier...

Sure.

I just started a new job after 6+ months of being a lazy post graduate, so avp progress is slowing temporarily while I adjust to the early mornings again. I do my best coding work in the night at 3am..

I've a few issues still with the ingame rendering. As you can see in the screenshot..the player weapon sinks into walls/objects. Argh! That and stuff either randomly loses its transparency, or stuff that shouldn't be transparent goes transparent



The red boxes on the HUD figures are a pretty trivial fix. Just haven't got around to it yet

I've been following this topic pretty much since it was first posted and it's exciting to see this progress from both offerings. Thanks a lot and best of luck to both of you.

Just fixed some irritating bugs I had

The menu timer was broken, meaning the whole intro sequence would happen in the blink of an eye
random level geometry used to jump..like a chair sorta bouncing up and down
Marines used to skate rather than walk

Was caused by a high framerate breaking the game timer, from what I can tell. The fps is now capped to monitor refresh, which I don't think is a problem. I can always look into fixing it further if the need arises

Now I need to fix the decal z-fighting issues, and the odd colours. The spill from the bottle in the picture i posted is meant to be black rather than white. Red blood is blue too

Interesting post! Please keep on posting the updates.

From the sounds of it, you're tracking down the minor bugs now, does that mean that the Windows build is approaching completion?

Not sure really.. probably not that close but getting there. The rest of the stuff could either be very easy or very hard. I won't know till ive really dug in.

This is exciting news! Both you guys, please keep us updated.

Fixed a whole bunch of rendering bugs.. I've still got some for the predator vision mode and cloaking, but I haven't really looked into it yet.

The game looks pretty good at the moment (apart from the menus..work in progress! might ditch the 3d rendering idea and just do them with pixel writes as before)

God knows how it'll run on the xbox though..

Thanks for the update, we're waiting eagerly


Nes6502, how's your version coming along?

Yay! Bump!

nearly 2 weeks and nothing appears to be happening here...do either of you guys have an update?

I am astonished this game is still being worked on and supported by the community! sirlemonhead and Nes6502 , You are gods among men. I really like how this is developing and taking shape! I'm just wondering how its going to be distributed when completed... Keep up the good work!

Yep, looking forward to this port!

Can't wait to shoot the pulse rifle on my tv

This is definitely worth keeping an eye on...

My first post. This topic has drawn me to become a vocal member of the community.

Wanted to voice my support for the hardwork being undertaken to port this classic atmospheric game.

In my opinion, this is the only Alien game that truly captures the atmosphere of James Cameron's film..

Keenly awaiting updates on porting progress.

In the middle of getting the code to compile in viz 2003 with the XDK.

I hate visual studio 2003 though, and i've never done xbox programming at all before, so this is the make or break stage for me

Thanks for the update. Excuse my ignorance, but once the code is complied in Visual Studio, what are your next objectives?

Also, way to early for this request, but if my memory serves me correctly, the music for this game played directly from the 2nd CD you need to keep in the drive. Would it too difficult to rip the music and patch the final port so it was included? I think the music added a huge part to the atmosphere!

Keep up the good work! Thanks again.

I started adding ogg support to the code during the week, but I can't get direct sound to cooperate with me properly..but it'll get done.

But yeah, running the music from audio files on the hard disk would be no bother at all

Thanks for the updates - good luck and please keep us updated on your progress (also you, nes6502, if you can).

I think that this is the only XBox program I'm still waiting for, apart from the updates to XBMC of course.

Please port this game I feel its the best alien game ever even over halo series, I wish you both the best of luck and take your time and give us updates when your ready to, I'd hate it for you guys to delay your work over telling us little bits of what you have done

Hey guys, how's the port progress coming? Any news, hurdels, achievements worth mentioning?

I wouldn't hold out any hope of me getting this done anytime soon. I keep encountering stupid little issues that are taking me ages to fix due to my lack of experience with all of this.

It *is* getting done though, and i'm not planning on giving up.

It's not running on the xbox at all yet.

Darn I was hoping there would be some good news well please ask if you need help thats what we are hear for I'm sure someone would gladly help like I said I would love to play this game good luck

Well at least you are giving it a try. Don't give up lemonhead! Please do keep us updated with your progress.

Whatever happens, I won't just disappear. In the unlikely event that I do give up, i'll at least upload my latest source code.

Thanks for all the work and dedication. Its nice to know you won't just leave us hanging if you decide to cancel the project.

Cheers

Please say that you're regularly backing up your code? Far too many projects over the years have been abandoned when the source code was lost in a hard drive crash.

Yeah, it's going onto an external hard drive pretty regularly. I should really just set up a source forge project at this stage..

nes6502, i hope you will read it;
have you give up porting this project? perheaps the port is too much chalenging to do after all,
and if that is the case,are you going to put your energy into a new ver'sion of zsnexbox(best emu ever?)

please give us some good news, hope is flying away, and sirlemonhead are encountering great difficultys (i pray for him to succeed too)
nes6502, you are the last hope (great neo geo game) to port this fantastic game

I see no indication at all that SirLemonHead is failing at this project, it sounds very positive so far. True, work is progressing slowly, but no doubt he has work and family to take up his time (as have we all), and AvP is progressing for him. So Nes6502 is hardly the last hope, although I do hpe that he continues work, as two projects are more likely to produce a final result than one alone might.

Nes, how is your port coming along?

As it stands, the only major playability issue I have is that the Predators invisibility isn't working, and his arms don't show up in the green vision mode.

Texture filtering isn't working correctly either, so the game looks a little rough, but it's completely playable otherwise.

This is still all on the pc by the way.

i am at 200% with sirlemonhead (even 300%)
in fact i am just disapointed that nes6502 aren t send news, good or bad to his fans

sirlemonhead, if you could run this game on a xbox, will you release some beta (even if it s not really playable at 100%). Or you will wait for a 100% great conversion to release the game?

Probably wait until it's fully playable on the xbox. No idea how well it'll actually run yet..I'll need to try my code on an older machine.

I havn't had any time to work on this port. I am not sure if I will have time, but I have not ruled it out. I have been working on the ZsnexBox 3.4 two year anniversary edition. Until it is released, any free time will be spent on that.

Thanks for the update nes6502.
Anyway, good things take time.....

Yay! Even better, me wants

Wow. I was just strolling around looknig at interesting threads in forums I rarely if ever visit and I catch this. That's great news nes6502. All the great emulators have their pros and cons when put up against each other, but I have to say that your emu is probably my favorite of all of them. I was under the impression that you were pretty much done with it. Looking forward to the 2nd years anniversary edition.


Oh... sirlemonhead. I've never played AVP Gold Edition, but it sounds great and good luck on your project.

Cheers

Didn't do much coding over the weekend, but decided to run the code on my old Pentium 2 300mhz with an Nvidia TNT

game ran about 15-25 fps at 640x480x32

actually pretty comparable to the original game .exe (at 16 bit colour) so that's something

Got 16bit colour mode working now so I might see how the old machine fares with that

I wish i knew how to program, i'd use the AVP source to make my own "House of the Dead" like lightgun game.

*hugs his 2 Beretta lightguns* yeah daddy loves you

Bump! I need something to take the bad taste of AvP-R away...

This is taking forever. I really should have picked an easier project

still, having lots of fun with it. Just got my in game ogg playback code working. I shall motor on, but probably best not to expect it to be running on an xbox any time soon

It doesn't matter how long it takes - that is, we'd prefer it as soon as possible, but we all understand that it's a *huge* project, and we are grateful that you've undertaken it, and we are prepared to wait for as long as it takes, it will be worth it in the end.

Please keep on posting updates every few days though, so we know that you've not lost interest.

How is it on the PC now? Is it working fine? What's left to do before you begin to port it to the XBox?

And please, make the controls redefinable, as bad joypad controls on a FPS can ruin the game.

Erm the ingame water is horribly broken. Not all of it renders and it shows through walls :\

The predators arms now seem to show up when he's cloaked. Before, they'd disappear completely but now they're transparent. Just went to try fix it there and it was working... side effect of fixing something else I guess

blueshogun96 has an issue with it on his nvidia 6600 card, and this issue also occurs on my 6800GT on the spare machine. Works fine on my ati and my ancient Nvidia TNT, and also on Bassquake's Matrox 550 card. I didn't know it existed until blueshogun tried the code. Basically, it's cutting off the back of the player weapons, and there are some weird text glitch issues (the bane of my life it seems..)

I'll make the controls definable alright. I was playing around with the input code at the weekend, so I've a pretty good idea about how i'll go mapping the xbox gamepad to avp's keyboard buttons and mouse. should be easy enough when the time comes.

Spent the evening wresling with visual studio 2003. Can't compile my latest code using it (works fine in 2005 which I normally use)
we'll need to get it working on 2003 as the xbox sdk only works with this version.

I'll keep at it