Alien Breed, Team 17's series - A difficult game?

hamster

Alien Breed, Team 17's series - A difficult game?

I used to play Alien Breed (the first version) and liked the atmosphere, sounds and graphics. I found the game difficult though with the ammo constraints and limited keys. And of the course the unlimited Aliens...

Do you find this game difficult? Or what did you do to make life easier in the game. I tend to like to explore and revisit areas and in Alien Breed - The same aliens are regenerated time and time again in the same spot. No sense of cleaning or completing an area. How did you conserve ammo? Did you just learn the areas to visit and make a priority list of areas to visit and exit the level?

Hmmm.. so many versions. What was your favourite and why?

Alien Breed (1991)
Alien Breed - Special Edition 92 - Is there a difference?
Alien Breed - Tower Assault (1994) - I had move to PC by then and played a quick demo
Alien Breed II - The Horror Continues (1993) - I have tried this before.. more like the original?
Alien Breed 3D (1995) - The 3D Amiga version - What did you think of this?
Alien Breed 3D 2 - The Killing Grounds (1996) - Hmm version 1 must have been good then.

I'm going to look them up but I am curious what fans think about the best and worst of the series.

RopeDrink

The key to Alien Breed was simple trial and error.
Because of the amount of Aliens in the game (Infinate) you had to learn levels, take each level relativeley slowly, conserve as much health as possible (Rather than ammo - You can get away with not having too much ammo by doing some nifty dodging) and get to the end as soon as damn possible. There were plenty of secret areas in the game, too, containing extra lives, ammo and money. It was up to you to decide wether it was worth hunting them down. Many times, after finding them and collecting all the bonuses (Which often included an extra life) I would have lost two or three in the process, making the endevour rather fruitless.

If the game had no password function (Where you could revisit failed levels) it would have frustrated everyone to the point of never playing it again, because failing any level in Alien Breed was absolutely no suprise.

I prefered Alien Breed II, because you could could choose between four characters to play, each with a one or two different features to the other, like tonnes of ammo or keys, different starting money, starting weapon etc.

Im currently making a turn based strategy game along the lines of Space Hulk v Alien Breed at the moment, so Im trying to find and create sprites very similar to the Alien Breed top down style, so if you happen to come across any on your travels give me a shout.

Never played either of the 3D versions of Alien Breed because you required the latest Amiga (at the time) to play it, but it was relatively popular. Managed to complete Alien Breed 1 & 2, though. Absolutely great games in their day. You can still download versions of the Alien Breed series to your computer if you know where to find them.

RopeDrink

Oh, and as for tactics, rather than waste money on expensive weaponry, try your hand at the double machinegun which is real cheap and quite effective. If you DO have money to spare, fork it out on lives / keys and a flamethrower.

Everything else can be found on the battle field.

Bluehair

Classic game, indeed as was everything from Team 17, they and the Bitmap Brothers were my favorite developers from those days.

RopeDrink

They were certainly two of the biggest developers on the Amiga (And probably the best). As far as I know, Team17 are still actively making new projects at the moment, but I've no idea what it's the pipeline.

Other non Team17 games that deserve mention...

Magic Pockets, Chaos Engine, Zool, Space Hulk, Alien Breed, Worms, Cannon Fodder, Myth...

Ahhh, all the memories are coming back, and there are so many other games that I simply can't remember. I still have my Amiga, with rakes of disks, all in perfect working order, in my attic.

Sarky

Alien Breed was a slice of brilliance. Beutiful set of shoot'emups. Quite hard, too, I was always short on ammo and health, but it made completeing a level so very satisfying.

I bought AB3D 2, The Killing Grounds, in a deal with one of the A1200's 68030 accelerator cards. I cannot say in words what a murderously hard game it was. And it looked as good as Quake, with cooler explosions. It got fairly repetitive later on, but it was a decent enough game, and proved that the Team17 lads knew their way around the Amiga's hardware very well, to have squeezed the performance they did out of it(a slightly prettier game than Doom, with lighting effects, running at an acceptable pace on what, a 14Mhz (I think it was 25-30 with my accelerator) computer? Impressive, to be sure).

Must fire up the old doll and have a go one of the days...

Lord Oz

Don't think I've played it, is it anything like alien swarm mod for UT2004?

Sarky

Heh, kids...

AB was a 2D top-down game. Except the 3d games, which were Doom-esque. The 2d games "paid homage" in a very big way to the Alien films.

Some of the best games of the 90's, ever.

RopeDrink

One of the sprites I'm working on.
Anyone who has played Alien Breed will know the similarities.


Made from scratch.

spooky donkey

I loved the game. It was the first game i had ever seen to have another game ( pong ) with in its self. Ive seen that since. The sound was what made it and the creapy Alister Brimble music really created the athmosphere. It owed a lot to the alien moivies with out being a copy right infringer, just about. it was dam hard and I think I only ever got to the 4th or 5th level in it. Great clasic all the same.

tHE vAGGABOND

team 17 make the worms series of games now, its all 3D now..

one was release a couple of weeks ago

amp

Back in the day it was Team 17 versus Bitmap Brothers. The winners were us mere mortals.

monkeyfudge

tHE vAGGABOND wrote:

team 17 make the worms series of games now, its all 3D now..

one was release a couple of weeks ago

Milking the Worms franchise seems to be all they've been doing for the past 10 years.

I played the Worms Forts one there recently and it was pretty terrible. The new one is supposed to be a big improvement though.

Alien Breed was a great game though. It was tough, but no where near as tough as Project X, which was their attempt at doing a side scrolling shoot em'up like R-Type. The graphics were so lovely... but it was rock hard.. I think I once saw the level 3 boss though.

What other Team 17 games were there... There was Super Frog, which was a pretty enjoyably platform game. Assassin was a good one too.

hamster

Well... I think I settled on Alien Breed 92 SE. The level codes should help to make it possible - level by level.

Thanks RopeDrink and good luck in your game development. Are you using Blitzbasic or some other tool to help? I am sort of getting into the mood of make a real basic platform game... but with a map layout like "Monty on the Run" (old c64... and yep there's a remake for this one already).

RopeDrink

I'm using The Games Factory.

If you want a copy of my first game (Which was pasted earlier in this forum with much glee) then check out the link at the bottom of my signiature.
Also, that site it leads to is a decent enough resource for Game Editing material, custom made games and people who can help you get started in the realm of game making.

Also, if anyone would like to contribute to my hunt for Alien Breed'esque sprites either by creating them or leading me to copyright free downloads, let me know.
I could really use the help in order to prevent my ****e sprite work being included in the game.

Thanks!

silenoz

I thought it was a great game, but yeah I did find it got a bit hard after a while...

po0k

Cannon Fodder ftw

RopeDrink

Thought I'd re-bump this thread rather than make a new one.

Any fans of Alien Breed who fancy helping out with my remake, give us a shout and visit here for the initial animation ideas.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=3290848#post3290848

I'll be looking for other elements later on once the sprites are out of the way, so if anyone would like to aid me in making yet another furiously hard, addictive, alien crushing game, let me know.

Cheers all.