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Aliens vs Predator Linux http://icculus.org/avp/

This is an unofficial Linux port of the Fox Interactive / Rebellion Developments game, Aliens Versus Predator.

(Please see note below regarding installation/running.)

Obviously this README is totally incomplete, and will probably remain so for quite a while, so I'll just try to list a few important notes.

The original copyright statement for the source code: "The source code to Aliens Vs Predator is copyright (c) 1999-2000 Rebellion and is provided as is with no warranty for its suitability for use. You may not use this source code in full or in part for commercial purposes. Any use must include a clearly visible credit to Rebellion as the creators and owners, and reiteration of this license." Take that as you will. You can find the original source code and other related tools at: http://www.avpnews.com/mods/tools/

Yes, the code does something. No, it's not ready for a release. No, it is not vaporware. I hope to at least complete the single player part of the game before making an official release. Check out the TODO to see what's needed to be done.

If you are really itching to try this out, either install the Gold Ed. in windows/vmware (read below to find out why), or download the AvP Alien demo. If you are wanting to run the Alien demo (the installer is an .exe but you can just use unzip to extract the files from the .exe), add -DALIEN_DEMO to the CFLAGS line (the one that's uncommented) in the Makefile. Rename all game files lowercase. Be sure to install SDL 1.2 (http://www.libsdl.org) with OpenGL support, nasm 0.98, and the latest OpenAL CVS (http://www.openal.org). AvP requires a 3D card with OpenGL support.

IMPORTANT: AvP now uses $HOME/.avp/ to load/store configs, logs, etc. NOTE: Windows profiles probably do not work in Linux and vice versa.

AvP will no longer use the current working directory to look for files. You must either copy or symlink the AvP binary to the game data directory and run that, or set AVP_DATA to the data directory.

Currently: If you want to install the mappacks from http://www.avpnews.com/files/avpfiles.html, install them with the rest of the game data, not in ~/.avp/. Make sure everything is lowercase (although, the maps in avp_rifs/Custom do not have to be totally lowercase, just the .rif extension). Maybe in the future users will be able to install the files in ~/.avp/ also.

Hopefully all the necessary file loading changes were made. Please let me know if something goes wrong.

The next line can be ignored for now: If you have the regular edition, add -DREGULAR_EDITION to CFLAGS.

If the version you want to use is not the Gold Edition, download http://www.icculus.org/avp/english.txt.gz, extract it, and rename it language.txt (Regular Ed.) or aenglish.txt (Alien Demo).

If you get "Aborted" after starting a new game the second time or so, try recompiling with gcc-3.0.2. This problem should be fixed now; if not, let me know.

The OpenGL library is loaded dynamically. This means that if there is a problem initializing OpenGL, it will not occur until you start a new game.

relnev:~/avp/AvP Demo 3 - Alien$ ls aenglish.txt alienavp_huds/ alienfastfile/ avp_rifs/ relnev:~/avp/Gold Edition$ ls avp_huds/ avp_rifs/ cd tracks.txt fastfile/ language.txt

Support for the demo is not quite complete (some sounds are missing).

Linux Port-specific commands:

• ALT-ENTER for fullscreen
• CTRL-G for mouse grab
• PRTSCN for screenshot

The source code that was released only works with Aliens vs Predator Gold. This port currently supports Gold Edition, Regular, and the Alien demo. (The Marine and Predator demos are a bit older and might not work.)

At least with the Gold edition, a number of files are encoded on the CD. So you would need to install the game in Windows (VMware works also) in order to get this to work. WINE will not work because the CD Check fails.

Currently, all AvP files and directories need to be lowercase, and the program ran from the directory with all the game data (language.txt, avp_huds, avp_rifs, fastfile). zakk recommends http://blemished.net/chcase.html for renaming the files.

Apparantly AvP Gold is no longer available at most places. I had ordered my copy May 2001 from http://www.dragon.ca, but they no longer list it. Try searching http://www.amazon.com, http://www.ebgames.com, http://www.ebay.com, or the bargin bin at your local computer store.

It is unknown if the Mac Gold Edition will work with this (I'd be interested in knowing if it does or not).

The full motion sequences cannot be played because they are encoded with proprietary codecs (Bink and Smacker - http://www.radgametools.com). But I do not think they will be greatly missed.

More information about the game and the series can be found at http://www.avpnews.com.

Last, but definitely not least: Thanks go out to Chuck Mason for testing and the OpenAL code, Dan Olson for trying the code out with the Regular version, Zachary 'zakk' Slater for providing tons of feedback, Tim Beckmann for sending patches, and Ryan C. Gordon for hosting this project.

Steven Fuller [email protected]