Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
homphgomph
Nov 23, 2007

So that's what that feels like


Hello friends and welcome! Me (homphgomph/Joe), my sister Katie (ginko) and my good buddy Jesse (zelgadisA027123) will be noodling through the 1998 classic First Person Shooter/Adventure for the Windows PC, Jurassic Park: Trespasser.

What is this Trespasser?
Per wikipedia, Trespasser was initially billed as a “digital sequel” to the 1997 movie, Lost World: Jurassic Park. The game is, at its core, a First Person Shooter that was really trying to do some incredible things for the time and was actually ahead of the curve in a lot of ways. A game with real time physics, huge explorable landscapes, no HUD, voice work by Minnie Driver and Sir Richard Attenborough, set in the Jurassic Park universe all sounds pretty rad on paper. However, due to rushed development, some lofty goals, and youthful ego, the game fell a weeeeee bit short on delivering. The final product is riddled with bugs, maps with very little to do or see, bad AI, and some very silly walk animations.

There’s something incredibly appealing to me about this beautiful mess however, when everything is working as intended this game can be legitimately cool, scary, and endearing. It’s my intention to share a glimpse of that magic with you.

What will this LP consist of?
I’ll be trying to show off everything I can in this game but ultimately, this will be a pretty chill playthrough of a very unintentionally silly game, ginko has seen this game before, zelgadis has not. I’ll be using the Trespasser CE mod to help it run nicely on modern computers, only down side is the dinos don't jump but don't worry, I'll be showing off some jumping dinos at some point. I’ll also be dipping into the ATX mod to show off some of the crazier behind the scenes kind of stuff with this game.

Updates will typically be up on Friday with maybe some other Jurassic Park games sprinkled in before each Friday update if we have the chance to record some.

If you somehow have access to this game and want to follow along, there's a weirdly active web site with patches/mods/custom levels for this 21 year old game, it’s pretty cool.

Before we get rolling, I can’t recommend enough the LP by ResearchIndicates that introduced me to this game.


Youtube Playlist

Updates

Part 1 - The Beach

Part 2 - The Jungle Road

Part 3 - The Industrial Jungle

Part 4 - The Town

Part 5 - The Lab

Part 6 - The Ascent - Part 1

Part 7 - The Ascent (Part 2)

Part 8 - The Summit

Bonus Stuff
Batter Up
A Deeper Look
Burly Brawl/Level Editor

Other Jurassic Park Games

Lego Jurassic World - Jurassic Park

Chaos Island

Warpath: Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park: The Ride - Online Adventure

homphgomph fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Oct 10, 2019

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

homphgomph
Nov 23, 2007

So that's what that feels like
Katies Art










From Jobbo_Fett

homphgomph fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Oct 10, 2019

achtungnight
Oct 5, 2014
I get my fun here. Enjoy!
doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo. doo-doo-doo-DOO-doo. Doo doo…

That's supposed to be the Jurassic Park theme from John Williams. Loved the movies, love this game.

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

I wonder if the ridiculous boobs are, partially, to hide the lack of stomach or legs.

This game. The dinosaur physics are unbelievable. Are you going to show off just how much you can aim a gun around?

Poil fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Aug 16, 2019

Byers2142
May 5, 2011

Imagine I said something deep here...
It's amazing how much this game looks like a 2014 VR concept demo. In all the good and bad ways.

Aces High
Mar 26, 2010

Nah! A little chocolate will do




other Jurassic Park games? Does that mean we may see some footage of Chaos Island at some point (I played that game so loving much when it came out)

ginko
Mar 28, 2010

Poil posted:

Are you going to show off just how much you can aim a gun around?

Oh yes. We will definitely be seeing more of Ann's amazing wrist contortions.

Aces High posted:

other Jurassic Park games? Does that mean we may see some footage of Chaos Island at some point (I played that game so loving much when it came out)

With how much Joe brings up Chaos Island in these nostalgic Jurassic Park game discussions we have, I am sure this one will be sprinkled in somewhere.

Drakenel
Dec 2, 2008

The glow is a guide, my friend. Though it falls to you to avert catastrophe, you will never fight alone.
Oh hey, this is being LPd again. It's definitely worth the show.

This sure was.... a thing that happened. So much ambition, so little planning.

UED Special Ops
Oct 21, 2008
Grimey Drawer
Was just thinking of rewatching the old LP of this game, so good timing. Had forgotten how... unique the dinosaur movement could be in this, alongside the worthless option to melee.

Shei-kun
Dec 2, 2011

Screw you, physics!
I love how the melee appears to be gently massaging the dinosaur with the bat, and about as effective as it looks.

ginko
Mar 28, 2010

Some bat vs raptor doodles I had to do.

Teledahn
May 14, 2009

What is that bear doing there?


ginko posted:

Some bat vs raptor doodles I had to do.



These are adorable.

homphgomph
Nov 23, 2007

So that's what that feels like

Aces High posted:

other Jurassic Park games? Does that mean we may see some footage of Chaos Island at some point (I played that game so loving much when it came out)
Just get ready for a lot of "Hello there!" "Ooooookey dokey" "Interesting idea..." "Interesting idea..." "Interesting idea..." "Didn't I die? In the movie I Died..." Excited to play some of that.

UED Special Ops posted:

Was just thinking of rewatching the old LP of this game, so good timing. Had forgotten how... unique the dinosaur movement could be in this, alongside the worthless option to melee.
The dinosaurs movement is especially good when there's multiple interacting with each other. Appendages getting stuck under one another, flinging larger dinosaurs into a bouncing frenzy...

But then there's times where they're relentless and won't let you gently pet their snouts with a bat.

ginko posted:

Some bat vs raptor doodles I had to do.



:3:

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

Antistar01
Oct 20, 2013
Hey, it's me. It's that guy. The guy that likes this game.

That was the joke amongst my friends back in the day, anyway; that I was one of like five people in the world who liked Trespasser. When this game was new though, so was the Internet, really. It wasn't exactly where you went to find much of anything back then. Now it's grown up a bit though and people put stuff on it, it's more obvious that Trespasser does have a cult following. I'm not alone!

That article in the OP explaining a bit how Trespasser came to be the interesting mess that it is was cool to see. I hadn't come across that before. Something I don't think was covered there or in the LP/thread so far though is that when Trespasser came out, computers couldn't really run it. It was too demanding. Big open environments, procedural animation, bump-mapping, physics, simple but dynamic shadows, etc - all in 1998 - it's not surprising.

My computer (which was pretty new at the time) certainly couldn't run it, at least; it was the chuggiest thing I'd seen at that point. Two or three years later maybe when I got a shiny new computer, I thought "Yes! Trespasser will be amazing on this!"

Unfortunately not. It was a long time before computers came out that could run the game properly.


Anyway, yeah; as seen in the first episode, melee weapons are useless in this game! The one time I can remember killing a raptor with a melee weapon was by throwing the weapon - and it was a ridiculous fluke; I was never able to reproduce it. It was a piece of rebar and I threw it from above. Somehow it lodged right in the raptor's head; it started staggering around, blood spraying out everywhere, further driving the rebar into its own head as it careened into things - before finally collapsing. Kind of horrible to describe, actually - but it's a cool example of what can (but probably won't) happen with the procedural animation and whatnot in this game.

Also; it seemed like you were struggling with the controls? The game does have some unusual extra keys what with the noodle-arm controls, but besides that it's fairly typical mouse-and-keyboard FPS controls, from memory. You should be able to rebind things to whatever you want.

homphgomph
Nov 23, 2007

So that's what that feels like

I'm super tempted to use this as my avatar...


Antistar01 posted:

Hey, it's me. It's that guy. The guy that likes this game.

I also love this game but definitely wasn't there on the ground floor when it came out, pretty sure our PC at the time struggled to run Lego Island.

I think I mentioned in the video there is one good melee weapon but that's not for a couple levels and you don't really get to show it off really. Though I will say that I do show off a Bat vs Raptor fight later and it sounds like you and I had a very similar experience.

The control thing...it's my big meaty fingers holding down right click and I don't really realize it till a bit later. Definitely added to the panic of picking up that bat though.

Speaking of Lego by the way....

Hey me and Katie played through Jurassic Park in Lego Jurassic World, it's a cute thing.

homphgomph
Nov 23, 2007

So that's what that feels like
Today we make our way deeper into the island via the monorail track, try our best to rescue a friend from some pushy Raptors, and lock our joints. (shout out to Jobbo_Fett for the avi)


Part 2 - The Jungle Road

achtungnight
Oct 5, 2014
I get my fun here. Enjoy!
I enjoyed LEGO Jurassic World too. :)

Antistar01
Oct 20, 2013
I wonder if anyone's experimented with playing Trespasser in VR somehow. It seems like it'd be a natural fit, what with the noodle-arm.


I remember that it took me a while to realise this, but if you get your gun pointed in a weird way, dropping it and picking it up again resets it to the default angle.

Also I forgot how weird the default keybinds were. Spacebar to fire? I probably don't remember that because I typically always have to rebind my keys for first-person games anyway. (I started playing mouse-and-keyboard first-person games before the WASD standard was the standard, so I came up with my own crazy keybind setup instead and it stuck ever since. :corsair:)

UED Special Ops
Oct 21, 2008
Grimey Drawer
Man, the amount they let you turn the noodle arm is almost disturbing honestly. Just nearly a 360 degree turn of the wrist. Yikes. Also liking how when shot the raptors just completely break and wander around drunk half of the time, legs and neck clipping into their body at random.

Shei-kun
Dec 2, 2011

Screw you, physics!
I have to agree. The slapping sound upon smacking petting a raptor is quality sound design.

Enjoying the hellishly flexible noodle arm physics, too.

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

Pfft, only turning the gun 90 degrees sideways. What if the raptor is behind you? What then?

homphgomph
Nov 23, 2007

So that's what that feels like

Antistar01 posted:

I wonder if anyone's experimented with playing Trespasser in VR somehow. It seems like it'd be a natural fit, what with the noodle-arm.


I remember that it took me a while to realise this, but if you get your gun pointed in a weird way, dropping it and picking it up again resets it to the default angle.

Also I forgot how weird the default keybinds were. Spacebar to fire? I probably don't remember that because I typically always have to rebind my keys for first-person games anyway. (I started playing mouse-and-keyboard first-person games before the WASD standard was the standard, so I came up with my own crazy keybind setup instead and it stuck ever since. :corsair:)

Yeah I think there's a Unity VR demo that a fan was working on...was going to possibly try and check it out but I only have PSVR so i'd have to do some real finagling...

Shei-kun posted:

I have to agree. The slapping sound upon smacking petting a raptor is quality sound design.

Enjoying the hellishly flexible noodle arm physics, too.

It's so unnecessary, like 0 people would have questioned no slap sound back in 1998, and it's only with Raptors.

Also, hey! You've heard of Chaos Theory, what about...


Chaos Island!

homphgomph fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Aug 26, 2019

Gothsheep
Apr 22, 2010
I randomly noticed at one point she's wearing a wedding ring, and I'm kind of hung up on that now. She's married? Was that her wife on the phone call in the beginning? Did she just toddle off to Costa Rica without telling her spouse? Or did they die in the plane crash? My understanding was that she was headed down to study in South America for a while. Is she just one of those academics who will say to her family "Hey I'm going off to study ruins in South America for 18 months try not to completely forget about me while I'm gone!"

Aces High
Mar 26, 2010

Nah! A little chocolate will do




goddamn I don't know how many times I played the commercial for Chaos Island on the Windows 98 demo disk I had :allears:

I mean, I also played the demo a shitload too, and then the full game. But here's an off-the-wall question, did anyone play the other Dreamworks Interactive movie tie-in RTS game? Small Soldiers Squadron Commander?

homphgomph
Nov 23, 2007

So that's what that feels like

Gothsheep posted:

I randomly noticed at one point she's wearing a wedding ring, and I'm kind of hung up on that now. She's married? Was that her wife on the phone call in the beginning? Did she just toddle off to Costa Rica without telling her spouse? Or did they die in the plane crash? My understanding was that she was headed down to study in South America for a while. Is she just one of those academics who will say to her family "Hey I'm going off to study ruins in South America for 18 months try not to completely forget about me while I'm gone!"

I think since it's her right hand she's engaged? I assume she's living alone since she got that phone call asking where she was... On this episode of Game Theory I'll be discussing Anne's dark relationship past

Aces High posted:

goddamn I don't know how many times I played the commercial for Chaos Island on the Windows 98 demo disk I had :allears:

I mean, I also played the demo a shitload too, and then the full game. But here's an off-the-wall question, did anyone play the other Dreamworks Interactive movie tie-in RTS game? Small Soldiers Squadron Commander?

Ha! I had no idea that had its own RTS game, we ended up getting our parents to buy it because it had dinosaurs on the cover and it ended up being a pretty good game. You just don't see tie-in games like this anymore.

Time for Anne to go trophy hunting!


Part 3 - The Industrial Jungle

ElBrak
Aug 24, 2004

"Muerte, buen compinche. Muerte."
I gotta say for all the jank this is one of the games that I feel is the most atmospheric, especially when you get the John Hammond narration going as you go from jungle to ruins. Then a dinosaur sort of pogos into view.

Kibayasu
Mar 28, 2010

Oh my god I forgot all about the neck thing and Anne's magic hand fixing it.

UED Special Ops
Oct 21, 2008
Grimey Drawer

ElBrak posted:

I gotta say for all the jank this is one of the games that I feel is the most atmospheric, especially when you get the John Hammond narration going as you go from jungle to ruins. Then a dinosaur sort of pogos into view.

Agreed. The Hammond narration is shocking solid and usually pretty well timed to help break up more empty parts or set the mood of an area. A modern remake/reimagining, if done right, would definitely be something.

Mikl
Nov 8, 2009

Vote shit sandwich or the shit sandwich gets it!
Because I'm a nerd, I've looked up the registration number for the plane.

N786G is currently registered to a glider in California, but was previously registered (1967-1968) to a Gulfstream I, which is superficially similar to the plane in the game but with significant differences (the Gulfstream has a door near the front of the fuselage, the drug - I'm assuming - plane has the door in the back).



I'm really liking this LP :)

Antistar01
Oct 20, 2013
I can't believe you actually hit something with that mounted gun. That thing is impossible.


ElBrak posted:

I gotta say for all the jank this is one of the games that I feel is the most atmospheric, especially when you get the John Hammond narration going as you go from jungle to ruins. Then a dinosaur sort of pogos into view.

This is a huge part of why I instantly fell in love with this game despite its nearly overwhelming jank; huge open environments to explore that felt convincing (for the time). In 1998, computer games just didn't really do real-world settings. Half-Life takes a lot of credit for introducing/popularising that sort of thing - probably because it is a much better game than Trespasser... but Trespasser did come out shortly before Half-Life.

homphgomph
Nov 23, 2007

So that's what that feels like

ElBrak posted:

I gotta say for all the jank this is one of the games that I feel is the most atmospheric, especially when you get the John Hammond narration going as you go from jungle to ruins. Then a dinosaur sort of pogos into view.

UED Special Ops posted:

Agreed. The Hammond narration is shocking solid and usually pretty well timed to help break up more empty parts or set the mood of an area. A modern remake/reimagining, if done right, would definitely be something.

Attenborough does a fantastic job, even some of the musical cues in this game really, for lack of a better term, hit the right notes.

Mikl posted:

Because I'm a nerd, I've looked up the registration number for the plane.

N786G is currently registered to a glider in California, but was previously registered (1967-1968) to a Gulfstream I, which is superficially similar to the plane in the game but with significant differences (the Gulfstream has a door near the front of the fuselage, the drug - I'm assuming - plane has the door in the back).

I'm really liking this LP :)

Holy moly that's super cool, gotta wonder if they just some liberties on the plane design for some reason or another. Glad you're enjoying it! I think Jesse is surprised with how much he's enjoying it too.

Antistar01 posted:

I can't believe you actually hit something with that mounted gun. That thing is impossible.

I was surprised as you are! I've gotten lucky when a dino comes right up to it but that's about it.

Now me and Katie play a terrible game with the added stakes of buying other a coffee

Let's Bet a Coffee On - Warpath: Jurassic Park

Aces High
Mar 26, 2010

Nah! A little chocolate will do




certainly never heard of that game before and...not much to say that wasn't covered in the video

homphgomph
Nov 23, 2007

So that's what that feels like

Aces High posted:

certainly never heard of that game before and...not much to say that wasn't covered in the video

It's...something. Not sure who thought a Jurassic Park fighting game was a good idea, but hey, there it is.

Also, ginko can confirm, I bought her a Bicerin (I think) at the Starbucks Roastery. She may now carry on as the superior Warpath: Jurassic Park player, a title she well-deserves.
Here is a Jeff Goldbum/Ian Malcolm doodle she drew


Ok! Content Content Content! We have a big update today, one of the first of a couple huge levels.


Part 4 - The Town


Also! A bonus!

Batter Up

Bruceski
Aug 21, 2007

The tools of a hero mean nothing without a solid core.

Tresspasser is absolutely fascinating from a technical perspective. You know those games where people say "they were designing to the absolute limits of the game cartridge and it's amazing what they managed to pull off"? Tresspasser is the opposite side of the line, where they were aiming for the limits of computing but were a few years short of what was possible. It's easy to look at the game and think they were trying to copy other folks' success on the cheap but no; these were ideas ahead of their time but not so far ahead that they were obviously doomed to fail. A physics engine 6 years before Half-Life 2 marketed a whole game on the idea. VR-style manipulation when that was getting tech demos at science museums on huge rigs (I played one at the Seattle Science Center around this time). An ecosystem and dinosaur AI so complex they had to throttle it down to a couple of dinos per level because it was too late to alter that. Every part of this game was ambitious and unfortunately they tried to do it all at once.

E: did anyone try the no-UI thing again until Peter Jackson's King Kong game in 2005?

Bruceski fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Sep 6, 2019

homphgomph
Nov 23, 2007

So that's what that feels like

Bruceski posted:

E: did anyone try the no-UI thing again until Peter Jackson's King Kong game in 2005?

According to the Giant Bomb wiki the only other first person game I can see between Trespasser and King Kong is Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, which sounds right.

UED Special Ops
Oct 21, 2008
Grimey Drawer
Between the echoing sounds in the middle of the streets, floating objects galore, and Anne's increasingly disturbing noodle arm, that whole town just felt possessed. And yeah, it is interesting what the level designers were able to do with really setting a somber and at times tense mood in this level. Real shame that the dino's can't go indoors though, would have made from some nice moments. Also a shame that exploring really only rewards different flavors of guns and a voice line or two every now and then, although at least Hammon's Pistol certainly was a worthy find.

Antistar01
Oct 20, 2013
I can only dream of getting one-shot-through-the-hoop throws like that in these games. (E.g. Deus Ex.) I'm nearly as bad at it in immersive sims as I am in the real world.

When I first played this I didn't work out that you could unlock Wu's gate (the card reader for it looked broken so I thought the gate was too), so I instead gathered a few crates from around the level and stacked them up so I could climb over the fence. That does work as a way to progress, to the game's credit. You could also see that they left some crates next the fence on the inside, near the pool - so you can get back out if you do that. Actually I wonder if you could just stack crates to get over the gate out of town and not have to do anything else in that whole area... Can't remember if I ever tried that.

I'm surprised you didn't shoot the statues in Hammond's front yard. From memory if you hit them right, the pieces explode out everywhere.

Also I always forget that the dam is in the same level as the town. This really is a huge level. I would have expected them to chop it up at the gate where you get out of the town; that would have been the perfect transition point.

And yeah, the next level is my favourite too, I think. Or maybe this and the next? Again, I can't remember exactly where the level transitions are.


(Nice job on "batter up". It's unfortunate that the melee weapons in Trespasser almost universally only "work" via glitches.)

Crazy Achmed
Mar 13, 2001

Ah, I remember when this game was being talked up by websites and computer magazines (yes, it's that old). I downloaded the demo and experienced the jank first-hand with the awful creepy arm and what I think was a broken setpiece with a floating T-rex in the background that failed to do anything much, I think?

The optimist in me wants to think they could have worked with their limitations - a few dinos per level could have been offset by making them hard to kill and having them do some poo poo like run away at scripted points and then stalk/ambush you later. But I guess the survival horror genre was still in its infancy then and this might have been too much of a thematic shift / clashed with their attempts to make an ecosystem. It's telling that Dino Crisis was a thing, I feel.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Angry Salami
Jul 27, 2013

Don't trust the skull.
IIRC, one of the many baffling decisions surrounding this game is that the demo isn't one of the levels from the full game - it's a level that was cut from the final game because... well, it didn't work properly. So the demo basically gave you a particularly janky example of a game that had more than its fair share of problems even at the best of times.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply