PROJAM

LEGAL DISCLAIMER

All of the files within this mod were created by the Projam Team and are proprietary to Projam productions. This mod is not public domain and any file created by an outside source that has been used in or during its production has been acknowledged. We pride ourselves in creating our own professional quality proprietary mod content and as such will not allow any of our content to be redistributed in any form or fashion without our expressed consent. Projam is copyright of Projam Productions and Alien Vs Predator 2 is registered trade mark of Fox Film Corporation, Monolith Studios and Sierra Software.

 

PROLOGUE

If you have failed to read the read me and then proceed to post a comment about this mod on any forum, your post will be automatically deleted by one of our staff and no response will be given. If your posts continue to build on the Forums, at our discretions, your account will be banned. We cannot force you to take the time to read the documentation included in this mod, but we do reserve the right to refuse to listen to anyone who can't take the time to read the information we have provided.

 

INTRODUCTION

Dear User,

Thank you for downloading the Projam 4 modification for the Alien vs. Predator 2 video game.We have spent an extraordinary amount of time and effort on our projects and pride ourselves in the professional quality of our work.

Like every other community modding team, the Projam Team is a non-profit team of hardcore gamers exactly like you. We do not get paid to release these mods nor are we recognized by any of the companies who originally created the Aliens vs. Predator video game. It would be nice however if a professional company would eventually notice our work and perhaps take a professional interest in our ideas. As slim as that chance may be, it continues to be a hope that drives our team to produce material that nothing less then the very best of our abilities in the hopes to someday be recognized by a respective company in gaming industry.

First and fore most, there are some serious community issues that must be discussed before continuing onward with this read me. Please be courteous and remember not to take offense to anything stated here that does not apply to you. It is important to understand the principles behind our endeavors and why the continuation of these issues would severely cripple our drive to furnish the community with high quality mods.

We would like to first clarify a few things in context to the Alien and Predator universes and their adaptability of novel, comic book and production stories into video game form. We have strived to produce one of the most well balanced mods online today that factors some of the realism behind the individual characters of the silver screen but mostly factors the playability of those characters in a team based strategic environment.

When creating a mod or a major video game production there are bound to be discrepancies from whatever source or idea the game was constructed from. The world consists of percentages because the world is not based on perfection. As a consumer, you must understand and know now that that it is impossible to perfectly recreate every weapon, ability or technology the exact way that it is described in the novels or seen on the silver screen.

There are individuals in this community who would seek nothing more then to point out every discrepancy they possibly can to focus public attention onto themselves and to force a modding production to be the center of controversial scrutiny. These types of individuals are the ones who are quite literally obsessed with a certain universe and will never be satisfied with any mainstream recreation of a universe that in any way disputes or dictates their own mentally envisioned view on the universe in question.

These individuals are the single, number one reason that many potentially gifted modders who seek to start out in in this community end up leaving out of frustration. These same individuals are the community figures who complain the most about the lack of quality mods throughout the community. If this generalized group of people cannot comprehend that their own actions are the primary cause of the entire community's misfortune, then high quality modding in this community all together will cease to exist.

You must remember that there are limitations to what can and cannot be done. For the players out there obsessed with perfection or with the expectation of perfectly recreated movie and or novel based features in game, do not download or comment on this mod. We are hardcore fans of the candid universes and will not be subject to controversial scrutiny by members of the AVP community simply because you enjoy looking at your own posts and the ripples it creates in the water.

Please understand that we do not mean to disrespect anyone in the community. This entire argument was well founded and based on accurately on the community's own undisputable history of the above mentioned conduct. We have worked long and hard, unpaid and on our own free time to create a well balanced multiplayer environment based as closely to the candid published mediums as possible. We have over come many barriers, many hardships and levels of stress that you cannot even begin to imagine in order to bring this mod to the community.

If you cannot respect our efforts on behalf of this mod, then quite frankly, you lack the level of maturity and comprehension required to post on our forums or in any way offer feedback concerning our projects. That being said please read on and respect the trials that have been overcome to bring you this production. Thank you very much for your support and understanding in this matter. Our fans mean the world to us as this production would not have been possible without them.

 

STANDARD AVP MULTIPLAYER GAME EXPLAINED

To better understand the foundation of the Projam mod you must better understand the flaws that plagued the original Alien vs. Predator 2 multiplayer experience. The standard AVP2 Multiplayer game was poorly balanced and rushed during its production and as such suffered greatly in respects to its overall game play balance between species and or specific weapons. For years, players have knowingly and intentionally exploited these flaws and poorly balanced classes with excessive force in order to gain their own personal 'elite' reputation online.

These players primarily concentrate their use of classes such as the Runner, Sniper, Light Predator, Assault Predator and Specialist. On almost every public server that you can log into today you will note that at least 80% if not more then the top three players with the highest frag count is based on either the Runner, Sniper or Light Predator. This is an undisputable fact that has plagued every server from the time of the games release until present day online gaming.

These classes are more often then not used with a large combination of readily available online downloadable cheat packs allowing any player to be instantly elite without any prior playing skill whatsoever. This is not a true elite player. These are cowardly cheap tactics that take place every day in every public server online. Of course, everyone who uses these kinds of cheats will never admit to it. For the most part you can usually tell which players are cheating and which ones are not by the maturity of their attitudes in game. Assisted aiming programs or 'Aim Bots' and their entire genre of multiplayer hacks are not a myth, they are not a legend, they are very real and are very abused.

If there is a player who is super humanly wiping the floor with everyone in the map and his attitude is not of a mature nature, chances are you are playing with a cheater. Most of the time if you confront these types of players they will usually respond with any one or more of the following characteristic responses:

    A cheater will often respond with immature insults and or call you or another elite player a 'noob'.

    A cheater will often self-reinforce his own ego by repeatedly saying he is elite and otherwise unstoppable.

    A cheater will often follow through with that claim by repeatedly performing kills of impossible nature.

    A cheater will continue to kill you over and over with feats of super human accuracy regardless of range.

    A cheater will know the exact location of a cloaked predator and repeatedly land single shot kills.

    A cheater will repeat any number of these actions until a non-cheating elite player gets frustrated with the realization that the cheater cannot be dealt with by honest play and so eventually leaves the game.

These types of players are in fruitful abundance online and are a seemingly unstoppable brood of unskilled, immature, insignificant peons who have no other way to win an honest match.

 

THE PROJAM MOD EXPLAINED

Now, the Projam mod does not prevent cheating players from coming onto the servers. However, it does balance the game so that exploits are removed and all classes are thoroughly tested and specifically created to emphasize a balanced game play atmosphere. We cannot stop cheaters from entering out servers but we can east least gain some comfort that classes can no longer be abused or used to gain the fastest amount of frags in the least amount of time. Hopefully these promising features can be combined with some of the most reliable server side anti-cheat mods around to create a single well balanced server that severely limits any possibility of a cheater breaching the game and creating a problem for other honest players.

The Projam playing community is small and consists of mostly honest, old school elite players who have come to find a home and friends when playing on Frosty's Playhouse sponsored servers. So you see, coming onto a Projam community server to cheat using an aim bot won't gain you any recognition. This isn't a problem really because most of the our players recognize cheats in a heart beat and will flag down the system admin and in a matter of minutes that cheater will have his balls yanked from scrotum and hung from the administrators belt like a trophy.

The Projam Mod was not created for death match games, therefore does not emphasize individual player wins. The Projam mod is a team based mod that uses class weapon configurations and character classes in order to better facilitate a well balanced team play environment. Each and every class created for the Projam mod has been exceptionally engineered, designed and tested to ensure balanced game play between all classes and species. Each species has a wide assortment of natural abilities and or assistive technologies broken down by individual classes that, when combined, create a complete squad that can effectively hold their ground in any team based game. Classes are broken down this way they are to prevent a single player from owning the scoreboard.

The Team with the best understanding of squad based tactics will prosper far greater on the score board when compared to a team who does not. So, the more you understand how to work with your team mates, the more effective you and yours will be while playing a Projam multiplayer game.

 

VERSION INFORMATION / GENERAL INSTALLATION

If you have any intention of running Projam4 on multiplayer server you MUST have the
latest full version mod installed. We apologize if you're on a slow connection, Projam 4 is the largest mod online to date and quite possibly the most complex ever created. If you cannot download this mod because of the limitations of your connection, then you should look into an appropriate connection upgrade.

If you are running an older version of the Projam mod and wish to host a server, please append your game name with PROJAM V3. This will prevent confusion and frustration in players trying to connect to an outdated version of the mod.

    Step one
    Extract the PROJAM4.REZ file to your AVP installation directory. The default installation directory is: c:\program files\fox\alien vs. predator\ If you have installed AVP into another directory, then substitute this path to your chosen AVP installation directory.

    Step Two
    Start up AvP II and on the startup menu, click 'options'. Once in the options menu, click 'Always Specify'

    Step Three
    Type in the command line as follows: -rez PROJAM4.REZ Then click on the play button to begin a new game.

 

PROJAM PHYSICS/AUDIO/VISUAL EFFECTS

Brand new impact effects have been created for all of the weapons in the game.
Every projectile that hits an object will create its own unique impact FX that can consist of any number of smoking wall puffs, dirt, debris, splashes, sparks and other complex randomly generated effects to further improve the overall visual beauty of the game. A vast amount of sounds associated with these effects and weaponry have been created specifically for this mod and are of the same high quality as the visual effect themselves.

We have created a brand new slew of cinema quality sound FX with our own twist of studio quality special effects and timing based on the Alien and Predator Sagas. These sounds are not direct rips from the movies and should not be hastily mistaken as such. The base sounds used in the production of the finished Projam project were also carefully edited and modified from their original DVD sampled recordings to better time and position sounds to match animations used in the Projam mod. This includes sounds for characters, environmental effects, special equipment, weaponry, music, background ambience and much, much more.

There is also a brand new Predator interface system that feels much more like the silver screen counterpart. The Predators vision mode interface normally has a single vision mode change sound and a single loop sound for all vision modes. Now, that has been completely revamped to include multiple vision flash sounds and vision loop sounds which play randomly as the player switches between vision modes.

The Predator's new sound interface also integrates his targeting features and all of his weaponry tied to those features. The sounds created for this series of new effects were done in 44khz stereographic sound sampling which include 3D positional audio effects and environmental reverb which actually makes a player feel like he or she is behind the Predators mask. This combined with other numerous high quality Predator interface and weapon sounds creates a beautifully seamless audio / visual experience and improves the over all feeling of playing as one of the universes' greatest hunters.

We have also replaced many interface effects that are commonly overlooked when playing a mod. These interface effects include small subtle changes like message labels. All of the default message labels concerning pickup items in single player and multiplayer have been replaced. All munitions acquired by the player will be sent a message that they have picked up a certain type of ammunition.

These ammunition types have all been replaced with names that are accurate to the real ammunition type. For instance, if a player were to walk over an ammo box and pick up Pulse Rifle ammunition, a message would appear on the screen saying: ' M303 10x28MM HEAP Rounds '. This now takes the place of generic item pickups such as 'Pulse Rifle Bullets'. This basic message outline applies too all pickup types and will state the correct name instead of a using a generic one.

There is also many new multiplayer taunts, attacking taunts, screams and many other miscellaneous new audio additions to all species. We have also created a new taunt range format that is attributed the size of the creature creating the taunt to be heard in multiplayer games.

 

GRAPHICS AND SKINS

The PROJAM Team has created a completely proprietary skin theme to replace all of the original AVP characters in both Single player and Multiplayer. Resident team members Phil Olsen and Todd Slade have teamed up to create one of the largest, highest quality skin packages available on the internet to date.

Each of these amazing skins were carefully crafted with exceptional detail and finessed to near perfection. Every skin included in this pack is completely original and follows a strictly movie based or real world equivalent scheme. This package also includes detailed skins for hands, weapons, special equipment, land vehicles, aircraft, props, environmental landscapes, plants, trees, other miscellaneous flora, fauna and tons more.

 

CREDITS / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THE PROJAM TEAM

    Jonathan 'Syntaxx Seven' Velasquez
    Phil 'Mr. Grizzly' Olsen
    Todd 'Typhoon' Slade
    Sterling 'SHODAN' Doebler

ORIGINAL PRODUCTION CREDITS
Corporation / Pubishing / Technologies /

    Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
    Fox Interactive
    Brandywine Production, Inc
    Sierra On-Line, Inc.
    Monolith Productions, Inc.
    Lithtech Productions, Inc.
    RAD Game Tools, Inc

REFERENCE / RESOURCE CREDITS
Production / Comic Book / Novel / Internet Resources

    Predator
    Predator2
    Alien
    Aliens
    Aliens 3
    Alien: Resurrection
    Predator Movie TPB
    Predator: Captive
    Predator: Cold War TPB
    Predator: Big Game TPB
    Predator: Race War
    Predator: Homeworld
    Predator: Hell Come A Walkin'
    Aliens Vs Predator Annual 1
    Aliens vs. Predator: Prey TPB
    Aliens vs. Predator: Deadliest of the Species
    Aliens vs. Predator: Hunter's Planet TPB
    The Yautja Encyclopedia


SPECIAL CREDITS
Legends of the Saga

    Alan Sylvestri
    David Giller
    H.R. Giger
    James Cameron
    James Horner
    Ridley Scott
    Walter Hill

    Thanks to all of the filmmakers, musicians, technicians, actors and storytellers who created, and or contributed to, the legend. We would like to take a moment and personally thank our family, friends and fans for all of the feedback and support they have given and most importantly, we would like to thank Alyson Olsen, Jacob Olsen, Emily Olsen and Victoria Velasquez for their love and support throughout the development of this entire series of projects. Your moral encouragement and patience is unwavering and worthy of personal respect and recognition. Without all of you, this project simply would not have been
    Possible. Thank you and god bless~

    - The Projam Team

 

Final words from...

Phil 'Mr. Grizzly' Olsen

    Strange to think that almost 4 years ago a young English 'kid' looked me up online to create an 'Aliens' skin pack that became PROJAM. Years later I am working with another young guy who is one of the best skinners I have ever met and a guy who's dedication and commitment to high quality balance vs. realism is second to NONE!

    While this is the LAST PROJAM release, it is certainly not the end to PROJAM the team. Todd and I will be releasing some skin packs based on PJ4, I want to work on some machinima based on the Lithtech Jupiter engine, and I am sure Jon and I will be working together on another project, probably on another engine and another game.

    I am sure we will all be enjoying the upcoming AvP movie, and as soon as they announce AvP 3 the game we'll all be back here again on PlanetAvp drooling and getting ready for paying with the new game and mod tools.

    Special thanks to FROSTY or FROSTY'S PLAYHOUSE, his support has been very appreciated. Sam goes for the folks at PlanetAvP who have been supportive and dedicated to the community as well as our work.

    Last but not least, working with team mates this good pushes you until you are razor sharp. We had plenty of brain storming sessions that built on each other's ideas and and equal about of disagreements and arguments because we were all pushing for the VERY BEST and sometimes we had different opinions on how to get there. However, even in disagreements we all realized that it was our love of what we were doing that pushed us, and we all respected each other. I'm damn proud to to be a part of this team and to work with these guys!


Jonathan 'Syntaxx Seven' Velasquez

    I would like to say that it has been an honor to work with such a devoted group of very talented people during the production of this mod and that I am more then proud to have been apart of this team. Toegether, Phil Olsen, Todd Slade, Sterling Doebler and myself have come together to combine are many unique skills to create something spactacular for the modding community to enjoy. The Projam Team has quite litterly gone through hell and high water to bring this mod to the public and I hope through our creative ideas that the community can experience a long time of beautifully balanced multiplayer gaming because of it.

    As far as my envolvement goes with this team, I definately look forward to any future projects that may arise and hope to work with these exceptionally talented individuals once again. The Projam Team is more then a team, it's more then friends, we're a family of hardcore gamers that have sparked a revolutionary change in the way the Alien Vs Predator is played today. I would very much like to thank the community for thier continued support and encouragement throughout the development proccesses and specifically Frosty of Frosty's playhouse for his full time server support. Now, it's time for me to sit back and take a long deserved break from modding community to enjoy the fuits of our labor. So, rest assured you will see me among the patrons of the Projam Server and that I will be right there fragging beside you.


Todd 'Typhoon' Slade

    Working on PROJAM4 with Jon and Phil has been quite an experience. When they first approached me to work on PROJAM3 with them, I felt honored. Now I feel proud to have contributed to this fantastic production and to have worked with such dedicated people.

    Creating the alien and predator skins for this mod was actually pretty fun. I enjoyed working on these skins; the enthusiasm of the other guys is infectious. Some of the skins are the same from Projam3, in fact most of the predators are. I played with the aliens, and tried to get them to look as dark, wet, and I tried to make sure they all felt like members of the same species. Giving each class certain details, or making them just the right color was important to me, making sure that while they were similar, they were still unique. The Striker pred, aka the Mohawk pred, was touched up a bit, to make him fit in a bit more. Perhaps one of my favorite new skins, the Destroyer pred, was one of the more challenging to make. When I made that skin, the only real material I had to work off of was the McFarlane Alien vs Predator movie figures, namely the Celtic predator. Without those talented sculptors, the skin wouldn’t look the way it does.

    Working on this mod was fantastic, I learned a lot about how things work in the game. People probably have no idea how much work Jon put into this, and Sterling was a great help as well. Those guys are coding masters, they really know they’re stuff. Sometimes it felt like Phil and I were sitting back doodling on textures while those two were doing the work. The stuff they’ve created is amazing; I’ve never seen anything like it in an AvP2 modification. We had lots of discussions, lots of debates, even a few quarrels about new features and attributes, things have been added, been scrapped, and been redone again and a again. A lot went into creating PROJAM4, and I really hope people enjoy the mod, and have fun playing with it.