Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

Mildewmedia — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:44:08 GMT

I bought this game only to support the makers of Castle Crashers.

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

BioSnark — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:44:08 GMT

Not too bothered about the PDA levels, but deffinately getting the picture packs.

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

Roger Helgeson — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 19:28:01 GMT

ScuzzyBunny FTN, not a problem. I'll explain:

1) I have all the Crystal Quest achievements - or most of them anyway. It's not impossble to get them. But I wasn't talking about the achievements in Crystal Quest, I was talking about the DLC add-ons to the game. The DLC add-ons do not work.

2) You can get all the achievements in TMNT, but they are buggy. For instance, if you manage to do the Krang's Robot achievement by yourself, it doesn't seem to actually trigger the achievement. You have to have a party for some reason. Either the achievement was programmed poorly or the description on how to get it is insufficient. The latter happens all the time too. Another game (one I didn't buy but read about) is Small Arms. Yet another example is the "Dig" achievement in Dig Dug, which works, but is glitchy. It's really tough, too, and very disheartening to do all the work and then not get the achievement. I did it three times in a row, perfectly, but didn't get the achievement. Finally, I rebooted, did it a fourth time, and got the achievement. SmashTV is another one that's glitched, but SmashTV has its own problems - like that one of the achievements is to beat the whole game without continuing. You show me the person that can do that and I will worship him as a supreme being.

3) And no, the whole deal with Mad Hatter is not that people don't know how to get them. People know how to get them. It's that you simply cannot get some of the hats. They are ungettable. That's the problem. The Mad Hatter achievement is ungettable until they fix it, which apparently they are. That's good, but why the hell are we getting DLC first? Fix the bugs then release more product. That's my complaint here.

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

ScuzzyBunny FTN — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 22:26:36 GMT

Seeing the pictures of gamer pics or themes in the blade is not new, but is not 100% supported with XBL content. Sometimes it only shows a "sample" and other times it shows everything.

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

Chairman7 — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 01:08:47 GMT

I like the way you can see the pictures before purchase. Is this a new feature? I only noticed last night?

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

XanderSan — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 21:59:15 GMT

Understood! Honestly I'm actually glad to be corrected, it's just hard not to be cynical about these things nowadays.

Also, I find it highly unlikely they were on the disc in the first place since there was no disc to begin with, but point take regardless, thanks for the clarification!

Off-Topic; What's the textual way to describe an Acheievement Unlocked sound? ka-plink? ka-plonk? Oojoejfgwgertg? Curious...

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

Brian Cable — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 21:18:12 GMT

I make games, and I had to post to point out that 100 tile based levels in 188KB is easy. Each tile is probably only represented by, at the most, a 2 digit number, so it's basically just:

11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11

11,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,11

11,55,00,00,21,00,25,00,99,11

11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11,11

For a really tiny, simple example, where 11 = Walls, 00 = Empty space, 55 = Start position, 21 & 25 = enemies, and 99 = Level exit.

The game logic then takes those numbers and associates the art and game logic for each tile, which is already on the disc for the original PDA levels, and builds the level that way.

Most numbers are represented with a single byte of data. So they can have a level with 1,024 different tiles with a single kilobyte, which is a pretty decent size for those PDA levels. Plus, if they built a simple compression routine, that number could possibly even be cut in half (like instead of listing every wall and space tile, the first number signifies the tile and the second number signifies how many times to repeat it).

So it's really easy to add new tile-based content in that small of a space, and knowing the developers in question, it's highly unlikely those levels were on the disc in the first place hidden behind an unlock key.

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

ScuzzyBunny FTN — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 20:20:23 GMT

What was wrong with Crystal Quest's achievements? I got the full 200 sometime last year, and know people who have the full 200 in TMNT, so I don't understand what the "glitch" is.

I thought the whole deal with the mad hatter achieve was figuring out what to do and where to trigger the hat (i.e. blow up this building on hard)...a360p seems to have a guide out (and for CQ and TMNT), so I don't understand the problems people are having.

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

Justin X — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:55:15 GMT

Okay, so i bought the levels, but now I lost half the party, and the party was small to begin with. And where are all the bug fixes I reported? I'm going to have to talk to Emil again...

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

Samphis — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 11:58:05 GMT

I can confirm that the PDA levels are not an unlock key. The data is simply the level layout, which is really quite small.

Unlock keys are 108 KB, taking up 56 KB on the drive afterwards. This is 188 KB.

It is also a quite difficult level pack. I cannot finish the first level after 3 tries.

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

John Q Taxpayer — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 06:50:43 GMT

Love Alien Hominid, but the PDA levels suck. A little too ghetto even for this old-school gamer. I'd like to see the Mad Hatter achievement fixed though... a couple hats are glitched!

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

Roger Helgeson — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 02:24:58 GMT

jenova said: "You need to email the publishers to get a patch made, not berate the Live team... though the cert proccess is a joke, for reals. They can't catch the stuff people run into in the first day of playing? That's sad."

Excuse me, but it isn't my job to beta test buggy product certified and released on Xbox Live Marketplace by the Xbox Live team. While I may be annoyed with the publisher, I am berating the Xbox Live team because this is ultimately their fault and their responsibility to get it fixed. The Xbox Live team should email the publisher, not any of us.

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

dotKenneth — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 00:12:26 GMT

While it is annoying when Achievements don't work properly, at least The Behemoth has taken the responsibility to say they are working on an update, so cut them some slack.

I may buy one of these picture packs, seeing as I have 700 pts. that aren't reserved for anything right now. The PDA games don't really interest me that much, so I doubt I'll buy the extra levels.

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

Whet Wurm — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:51:59 GMT

Someone please explain how 100 Levels of 720p art fit into 188Kb? Major Nelson? Anyone? No one? This is getting absurd. BAN UNLOCKER DOWNLOADS!!!

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not buying anything else on the Marketplace until this BullScheiBe gets fixed. I bought Luxor 2 today... no more. I'm officially done with DLC until some reason is brought to bear.

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

One Rabid Panda — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:45:22 GMT

The pics arent that bad.

ORP

re: Alien Hominid HD - Pictures and In Game Content

MacbethX6 — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:44:51 GMT

im guessing there is no extra gamerscore?

There is for Oblivion