Metroid Prime: Development Tools/Plugins

You mean like this?

This is coming from the e3 Metroid Prime 3 demo

 

Interesting...

 

Hoho, that's beastly.

Also, something odd I discovered on the Metroid Database forums a while back.

http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t85/Psychomaxx/metroid/font_info.png

"This is the scan visor text. This texture is not used in the game, but tells the cooker how to set up the pane parameters so the text is scaled properly. This was written in 13pt Face font."

EDIT: Going through the .EVNT files, I'm.. honestly thinking that they're a version of UnrealScript, with references to Sound, Skeletal Meshes, etc. in the game. It's all compiled though, and I don't have access to the Opcode Reference, a decent decompiler, or even a compiled format reference.

If anybody would be so kind as to give me these specs, I'd really appreciate it. Notice, it has to be Legacy, as this runs on Unreal Engine 2.

EDIT 2: AFSM Files seem to be base "classes", if you will, for enemies, as they contain plaintext definitions for functions, variables, etc. I've found things like "Start", "Patrol", "Lurk", "PathFind", "TargetPlayer", "Attack", "Crouch", "Dead", "Run", etc. From what I can guess, they're Actor Finite State Machines, which would actually be relevant.

 

Metroid Prime on Unreal Engine?

What a dirty little secret this game has.

 

Love those pictures :love2:

also this: http://www.amantohan.com/Projects/MayaPlugin/mel.html
Its unrelated, but the plugin is in.... Whait what...
I dont have lot of experiance with Maya or its plugin system, but it apears to be possible. And in the field, programmers are used to use parts of already existing code, as long as its legal, free or cheap. For Devtools, and gameengines. Anyway, I don't know anything about the app shown, but this is my though.

Keep that research comming, I like it. :thumbsup:

 

Well, the menu bar doesn't look much like Maya, but all that can be changed in a plugin. And it is very easy to add new icons to the shelf (=toolbar), just drag and drop a bit of script on it and Maya creates a button. And you can change the icon just by selecting a different image. Or, the other way around, all of Maya's icons are just images in a directory, so if you make a new (internal) application you could easily reuse them. There are arguments for and against using Maya as a level editor or using a stand-alone program, so both are possible.
I think a lot of Retro's initial staff came from the Quake and Unreal programming scene, so it is possible that they either licensed Unreal or wrote a new engine that is very close to the tools they were already familiar with. Doesn't one of the early Splinter Cell on GameCube use Unreal 2?

 

During the Metroid Headquarters 101 hour marathon, one of the developers of Metroid Prime came into the chat room. I asked them what softwhere they used for modelling, and this is what they said
"Mostly Maya but some 3DSMax on MP1"

I have chat logs of it by the way.

 

Well, glad that's taken care of now..

 

I want to see the example of the UnrealScript files. But....I need to debunk few myths about the Unreal Engine for those who say it isn't possible because of the subtractive method. But...unknown to many people, the unreal engine started off as fully additive, in exact same way that metroid prime works, and the functionality was retained, but it remained unused and subtractive was forced unless done with some hacking/custom editor. So most people never knew the additive method worked in Unreal engine 1 even.

Here is a proof to my claims, you can run this map in Unreal or UT, or maybe even other uengine 1 games will load it, is devoid of any textures, but it is raw import of the tech demo 95 t3d of the john.unr map, but switched to additive geometry mode completely(there is no backdrop "sphere" either, in this case so all you see is hom, but it is very easy to implement one too):

johnertest.rar

Just try going out of those windows and then go and fall infinitely (same happens in MP apparently from what i have seen), also use command RMODE 6 so you get flood lighting as the whole map is in total darkness due to no lights present, this was just a test remember that.

But that isn't a proof this ran Unreal engine, but the similarities are striking, also that one of the sound guys also worked on Unreal 2 at same time (which, unlike planned like expansive world, ended up to be a terribly linear and cut dumbed down game, mostly on decisions by Atari).
Remember that Quake's additive world is nothing like it was in Unreal, in Unreal it is the first true additive world in every sense of the world, but they did not decide to use that, but the feature was still there. And UE3 later put that to heavy use again. But that kind of true additive design leads to one thing, sceneries and places you cannot reach, because it basically requires a mapper where there's open area to fill the void space with some breath taking scenery and meshes, and back in uengine 1 times that wasn't really plausible to do so and would break Romero's design law rules at the time which said that you should acess any place you see on the map in fps game, whether be it later revisited in game, or as a secret area. So that is why it remained "disabled" until UE3. But the ability was there.

 

Wow, Holy Christ, I never thought that the thread would spawn ARTICLES.

To all of you waiting to prove or disprove my theories, I must ask you to wait even longer. I'll admit, it was a little far-fetched to call it UE2, but it was reasonable at the time among my talks with several programmer friends.

Yes, I have read the debunking threads, and yes, you're probably right, but unfortunately, I don't have access to the MPRIME disc right now, as I'm away from home.

I doubt this thread will be revived as well as my interest in Metroid Prime, but you are free to employ some investigation yourself. My word isn't god.

Anyway, for now, I hope those of you will look deeper. Whip out your Hex Editors and logical reasoning and go to town! (I suggest looking at the EVNT files.

Cheers,
Waker

 

Has anyone tried to examine these files yet? I can't do it although I did play Metroid Prime for real meanwhile. I did find many striking similarities to Unreal engine behavior during gameplay too.Also I do believe it is very possible that Retro had a license on UEngine and modified it before they got acquired and asked to do the Metroid game and technically Nintendo wasn't anymore in place to admit it was based on that engine.After all what I've seen so far I am more inclined to believe that it is a heavily modified Unreal Warfare engine or perhaps even the beta engines of Unreal, with the recent recoveries it is clear that 0.83 of Unreal (October 1996) was still using the additive geometry model and it does have striking similarities in its behavior. Plus combine that with Unreal Wafrare antiportal method and you getpretty much the same thing that you can see in the "secret worlds" except for the collision map loading, but that could have been done using the features that were mostly reserved for consoles or they could have done it themselves, besides even with normal antiportals there is a bit of optical trick in that it appears to have no collision, you don't see the projectiles impact etc even though in reality they do.

 

I don't have the tools necesary to do a proper research on this, but I even grew more convinced that this has Unreal engine roots meanwhile.I'd like to again debunk some stuff posted at neogaf about this being completely false. Someone said this:" So they licensed UE2 in 2000, and found time to heavily modify the engine instead of just making their own, and released the game in 2002? Yeah, right. Lol."Actually, companies had licenses to the engines early on and sometimes in a secret. This is very visible at the case of Unreal. There were already several "secret" licenses being handed out in 1996, this was uncovered by the recovery of x-com alliance mainly. For example cyberlore worked on their almost unheard of emissary game on unreal engine since 1996 while receiving the up to date versions of the engine too. And this was way before Unreal got released. Situation from 2000 to 2002 then doesn't seem any far fetched at all. I also debunked before the additive geometry myth.More so, it seems that Metroid Prime is using the term "Mover" in the same way Unreal does. One of the games have unused mesh called movertest to name an example. Quake engines for example never used this term. When I first saw Metroid Prime I thought it looked like Unreal warfare engine, but everyone shrugged it off, but after all these revelations here and what is yet to be found(in the EVNT files perhaps), it's not that far fetched idea anymore.

 

Sorry to gravedig,but this is rather important as this thread is rife with misinformation: Waker is dead wrong about MP using the Unreal Engine, there are no Unreal Script sources on disk, and I can confirm, without a shadow of a doubt, that Retro did indeed roll their own engine, and I have proof that 100% disproves that Retro used any Epic Games IP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine#Unreal_Engine_2 MP was WELL into development at this point.

 

Id also like to correct some misinformation in this thread; every Prime game is subtractive. The caveat to this is that the Morph Ball will fall infinitely through the solid mass outside of the boundary of each room. If you jump out of a room you'll land on a "floor", and you can walk horizontally forever through the infinite solid mass outside of a room, and while inside the mass, you slowly rise up, though you can't jump. When on the floor of the room's boundary, you constantly get pushed up into the room's space, then fall back into the mass, and due to the polling rate on checking for state changes being fairly slow, the game doesn't update your state from standing to falling instantly, allowing you to start a jump for 1 frame each time it happens. You can also get a jump when walking out of the walls of the boundary and into the room's space. The out of bounds in the Prime series is much more complex than just this, but that's not particularly relevant here.