ALIEN (Mindgames) Bugfix and Improvement.

Ersh

ALIEN (Mindgames) [ZX SPECTRUM] BUGFIX & IMPROVEMENT by Ersh 2016-10-29

The following bugs are fixed:

[BUG] INVENTORY BUG WHEN SWITCHING CHARACTERS DURING AN 'ATTACK'.
 If the player choose to 'Attack' with one character and switch to another
character before the command is executed, when the attack is done and if the
second character is holding only 1 item there's an inventory bug. He or she will
be able to use the 'Leave Item' command, and the item that will be dropped is
the first character's item. If the first character only holds 1 item then that
will be dropped, if he/she holds 2 items the second item will be dropped.

[BUG] INVENTORY BUG WHEN SWITCHING CHARACTERS DURING AN 'ATTACK' WHEN USING THE
NET OR BREAKING A TRACKER.
 If attacking with the Net or a Tracker and switching characters before the
attack executes and waiting until it does, then there's another inventory bug.
The second character's first item will disappear. Also if you're not in a
character's menu, the game will still try to remove the menu text for the item,
erasing anything that's in the same location in any other menu.

[BUG] 'LEAVE ITEM' COMMAND IS NOT DISABLED AFTER USING THE NET OR BREAKING A
TRACKER.
 If a character has only got 1 item when the Net is used (or when breaking a
Tracker), the game removes the item from the player's inventory but does not
remove the 'Leave Item' command, so the player can use it and pick up the Net
again (or a Tracker which is then no longer broken).

[BUG] PLAYER CAN USE THE NET OR TRACKER TO ATTACK WITH OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
 If the player uses the Net or a Tracker to attack, the item will be removed
from the inventory. However if selecting 'Attack' again the character will still
attack with the Net or Tracker, this can be repeated over and over. Though if
the player changes character, it will no longer work.

[BUG] THE GAME SOMETIMES READS DATA BEYOND INTENDED MEMORY.
 The 'Carry out an Action' routine doesn't PUSH/POP THE IX register holding the
pointer to the current character variables when calling an action to perform.
Some action routines destroy the register pair, so IX will hold the wrong
pointer when returning from the routine.

[BUG] 100% COMPETENCE RATING.
 Getting a competence rating of '100%' will display as '1:0%'. Also the
hundredth digit is never cleared so getting a '85%' competence rating on your
second go will be displayed as '185%'

[BUG] THE MESSAGE VARIABLE IS NOT RESET ON RESTART.
 Begin a new game and then immediately restart, if the the Alien hatch from the
same character as in the first game no message will be displayed indicating so.
Since the message variable is not reset on restart and the game doesn't allow
the same message to be displayed twice in a row.

[BUG] IF YOU HOVER ON 'REMOVE GRILL' WHEN IT TURNS TO 'ATTACK' THE GAME WON'T
LET YOU ATTACK.
 If you have the menu marker on 'Remove Grill' and then the Alien or Android
enters, the command will change to 'Attack' but if you do not move the menu
marker but instead directly select 'Attack', the character will remove the grill
instead of attacking.

[BUG] CORRUPTED GRAPHICS IN THE ALIEN ANIMATION.
 There's two corrupted bytes in the Alien animation, one in the first frame and
one in the second.


The following improvements are also implemented:

[IMPROVEMENT] ATTACK IS NOW ONLY AVAILABLE IF NOT ALREADY IN PROGRESS OF
ATTACKING.
 Normally, when selecting 'Attack' the option to attack disappears until you
have executed your attack. However if anyone goes through a door, opens a grill
or if you select another character and switch back 'Attack' will be available
again even though you haven't attacked yet. This gets really confusing if you're
trying to attack with more than one character. I've modified the game so that
'Attack' is never available when in progress of attacking.

[IMPROVEMENT] NEIGHBOURING ROOM/VENT GRILL REMOVAL.
 If anyone removes the grill in your room but from the airduct location (and
vice versa), the game wouldn't update the menu indicating that the grill was
removed. I've modified the game to refresh the menu whenever that happens.

[IMPROVEMENT] KILLING THE ANDROID WITH ANOTHER CHARACTER.
 If two characters are attacking the Android and the one that is not your
current character kills the Android, the 'Attack' command doesn't disappear from
your current character even though there's no one to attack. I've modified the
game to remove 'Attack', check if the grill is removed and if not, give the
option to 'Remove Grill'

[IMPROVEMENT] WHEN SELECTING ATTACK, THE GAME NOW SHOW 'REMOVE GRILL' IF NOT
ALREADY REMOVED.
 Normally when you select the 'Attack' command, it will be replaced by nothing.
I've modified the game to check if the grill is removed and if not, give the
option to 'Remove Grill'.

This is a bugfixed and improved version of Mindgame's ALIEN. Quite a few bugs sorted, I also made a few small improvements in line with the game's design. (In other words, nothing really new, just what the game already alludes to.) Feel free to report any bugs, there really shouldn't be any but you never know. Enjoy!

Download here.

ewgf

Brilliant, thanks for this, mate!

Ersh

I totally forgot to mention this when I released the bugfix. There's another interesting quirk with the game and it was the reason I started disassembling the code in the first place.

While playing I often encountered a behaviour in the Alien that made it go in and out of the grill in the room that it was located in and doing nothing but that for a while. If you instruct a character to attack it when it's in that 'mode' it will always flee (when actually attacked, if not; it will attack you). If you give chase and keep attacking, it will eventually end up fleeing back and forth between two locations making it pretty easy to kill.

It turns out that the above mention behaviour is possible if the Alien AI keeps drawing a random number of 0.

At the beginning of the game a 16 bit pointer is initialised with the FRAMES variable and the RNG steps through the ROM using this to get a random number. At the end of the main loop the game draws two random numbers, if they both are zero the game will reinitialise the pointer with whatever FRAMES has become.

This is how the game initialises the 16 bit 'seed':

   ld hl,($5C78)
   ld a,h
   and $1F
   ld ($7A21),hl

As you see, it masks the MSB to stay within ROM $0000-$1FFF. However it never stores that masked byte, meaning that the RNG will continue on through ROM and out into RAM. As it's a pretty small game, there's lots of zeroes in RAM and that explains the Alien's behaviour.

Now, I've played the game A LOT and when I modified the game to stay in ROM it seemed the Alien was just too aggressive. I still managed to complete the game but it just didn't feel 'right'. (Although I admit it can be a bit anti-climactic to have the Alien enter that 'mode' after a long and eventful game.)

I was wondering if John Heap just 'commented out' the saving of that masked byte allowing the game to wander through RAM to let the player get some breathing room or if it's just a bug. Does the game update the pointer if it gets two zeroes just to 'shuffle' the RNG or was it placed to 'speed through' those fields of zeroes in RAM? I didn't want to make any changes that aren't explicitly in line with the author's vision so I chose not to fix this in the release I made.

Any thoughts?

Ersh

ALIEN by Mindgames for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum - BUGFIX & IMPROVEMENT
Version 1.1 by Ersh 2018-04-12

The following bugs are fixed:

[BUGFIX] THE RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR USED DATA BEYOND INTENDED MEMORY.
 The Random Number Generator stepped through the entire memory instead of being
localised to ROM $0000-$1FFF as intended. This had many side effects.

[BUGFIX] A MISSING PIXEL ON THE MAP OF THE MIDDLE DECK OF THE NOSTROMO.
 There was a missing pixel in the northeast corner of the map of the middle
deck. :)

[BUGFIX] INVENTORY BUG WHEN SWITCHING CHARACTERS DURING AN 'ATTACK'.
 If the player chose to attack and then switched to another crew member, when
the attack was executed the second crew member could use the 'Leave Item'
command to drop the first character's item. If the first crew member only held 1
item then that would be dropped, if he/she held 2 items then the second item
would be dropped.

[BUGFIX] INVENTORY BUG WHEN SWITCHING CHARACTERS DURING AN 'ATTACK' WHEN USING
THE NET OR BREAKING A TRACKER.
 If the player attacked with the Net or a Tracker and then switched to another
crew member, when the attack was executed the second character's first item
would disappear. The game would also remove the menu text for the item, even
when not in a character's menu, erasing anything that was in the same location
in any other menu.

[BUGFIX] 'LEAVE ITEM' COMMAND WAS NOT DISABLED AFTER USING THE NET OR BREAKING A
TRACKER.
 If a crew member only had 1 item when the Net was used or when breaking a
Tracker, the game removed the item from the character's inventory but did not
remove the 'Leave Item' command from the menu. Hence it was possible to use that
command to drop the item and pick it up again.

[BUGFIX] PLAYER COULD USE THE NET OR TRACKER TO ATTACK WITH OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
 If the player used the Net or a Tracker to attack, the item would be removed
from the inventory, however it was still possible to use the 'Attack' command
and the the crew member would then be able to attack with the Net/Tracker again.
This could be repeated over and over, though if the player changed character, it
would no longer work.

[BUGFIX] THE GAME SOMETIMES READ DATA BEYOND INTENDED MEMORY.
 The 'Carry out an Action' routine didn't PUSH/POP the IX registers holding the
pointer to the current character's variables when calling an Action to be
performed. Some Action routines destroyed the register pair, thus IX would hold
the wrong pointer when returning from those routines.

[BUGFIX] 100% COMPETENCE RATING.
 Getting a Competence Rating of '100%' would be displayed as '1:0%. Also the
hundredth digit was never cleared so getting a '85%' Competence Rating on your
second go would be displayed as '185%'.

[BUGFIX] THE MESSAGE VARIABLE WAS NOT RESET ON RESTART.
 If the player began a new game, then immediately restarted and the Alien
hatched from the same crew member as in the first game, no "The Alien has
hatched from..." message would be displayed. The message variable was not reset
and the game doesn't allow the exact same message to be displayed twice in a
row.

[BUGFIX] IF YOU HOVERED ON 'REMOVE GRILL' WHEN IT TURNED TO 'ATTACK' THE GAME
WOULD NOT LET YOU ATTACK.
 If you had the menu marker on 'Remove Grill' and then the Alien (or Android)
entered your location, the command would change to 'Attack', but if you didn't
move the menu marker and instead directly selected 'Attack', the crew member
would remove the grill instead of attacking.

[BUGFIX] CORRUPTED GRAPHICS IN THE ALIEN ANIMATION.
 There were two corrupted bytes in the Alien animation, one in the first frame
and one in the second.


The following improvements are also implemented:

[IMPROVEMENT] ATTACK IS NOW ONLY AVAILABLE IF NOT ALREADY IN PROGRESS OF
ATTACKING.
 Normally, when selecting 'Attack' the option to do so again would disappear
until you had executed the attack. However if anyone went through a door, opened
a grill or if you selected another crew member and then switched back, the
'Attack' command would be available again even though the attack had not yet
been executed. This would get really confusing when you were trying to attack
with more than one character at a time. I've modified the game so that the
'Attack' command is never available when already in progress of attacking.

[IMPROVEMENT] NEIGHBOURING ROOM/VENT GRILL REMOVAL.
 If anyone removed the grill in your room but from the airduct location (and
vice versa), the game wouldn't update the menu indicating that the grill was
removed. I've modified the game to refresh the menu whenever that happens.

[IMPROVEMENT] KILLING THE ANDROID WITH ANOTHER CHARACTER.
 If two crew members were attacking the Android and the one that was not your
current character killed it, the 'Attack' command for the second character
didn't disappear even though there was no one left to attack. I've modified 
the game to remove 'Attack', check if the grill is removed and if not, give the
option to 'Remove Grill'.

[IMPROVEMENT] WHEN SELECTING ATTACK, THE GAME NOW SHOW 'REMOVE GRILL' IF NOT
ALREADY REMOVED.
 Normally when you selected the 'Attack' command, it would be replaced with
nothing. I've modified the game to check if the grill is removed and if not,
give the option to 'Remove Grill'.


Changelog:

Version 1.1 (2018-04-12)
[BUGFIX] THE RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR USED DATA BEYOND INTENDED MEMORY.
[BUGFIX] A MISSING PIXEL ON THE MAP OF THE MIDDLE DECK OF THE NOSTROMO.
Added 'Bugfix' text and version number to the loading screen.
Rewrote the Readme.

Version 1.0 (2016-10-29)
Initial release.

ALIEN (Mindgames) Bugfix and Improvement. Version 1.1

I've released a new version of my bugfix and improvement for the game Alien by Mindgames. I've tested it pretty thoroughly (completing the game 17 times in at least 5 hours of playing) and hopefully that's all the bugs sorted.

Grab a copy here.

Enjoy! :)

NRA

As a youngster I did try several times to accomplish that survival horror, but it was a failure...

Later I felt intrigued, but couldn't find other similar 'indirect-control' games, are there for Speccy?

Ersh

It's a hard but very fair game, if you've got a good strategy it's possible to kill the Alien with weapons without losing any crew members. Highly recommend giving it another go. :)

You could also check out ShadowFire by the same author, though it's a bit more complicated and the replay value isn't as high. Good game though.

NRA

Thank you, Ersh.

I just watched the SHADOWFiRE, but why there seem no ALIEN replay on RZXArchive yet?
It must be very Speccy mem/cpu what makes a decent AI go deadly sluggish, rendering the whole game type rather obscured, alas..

Ersh

I could record a session for the RZXArchive. However, quickly switching back and forth between crew members, giving orders and keeping track of all characters, it might be one of those games that are a bit hard to follow when not actually playing yourself.

Daren

A RZX file of this would be most welcome Ersh!

Ersh

No problem, I'll try to record one later today. :)

Ersh

And here's the RZX. :) It was a quite short and straight forward game this time, around 11 minutes or so.

Recorded with Spectaculator (v.8.0.0.3092). Long game. Kempston. Alien killed with weapons. Ripley delivered the final blow. All crew members survived. Snapshots/rollback were not used.

Download available here.

Ersh

ALIEN (Mindgames) Bugfix and Improvement. Version 1.2



Bugfixing the game further, 7 new fixes in total, mainly focused on the Morale (Mental Condition) this time. I haven't had time for fieldtesting, but I setup and tried over 50 test-scenarios (everything I could think of) and it all seems to check out fine.

Here's what's new:

[BUGFIX] WHEN USING THE NET OR BREAKING A TRACKER THE PLAYER COULD LOSE MORALE.
 If the player had an item that gives a morale bonus in item slot 2 and used the
Net or broke a Tracker when attacking the Alien, the player permanently lost
Morale. This is because the game did not recalculate the character's Morale in
those cases, so when dropping (or putting the morale bonus weapon in slot 2)
the game would deduct the bonus that was never given. I've further modified it
so it updates the mental condition text as well when using the Net or breaking
a Tracker, as the game did not do this.

[BUGFIX] IF THE ALIEN ESCAPED, A MORALE INCREASE WAS NOT PROPERLY GIVEN AND
THE MENTAL CONDITION WAS NOT UPDATED.
 If the player managed to make the Alien escape from an attack, 'base morale'
was increased by one, but 'current morale' was not. This is now fixed and the
mental condition text is updated when that happens as well.

[BUGFIX] CATCHING JONES DID NOT GIVE AN INCREASE IN MORALE.
 When catching Jones in the Catbox or Net the player did not get a morale
bonus. In fact the crew member that caught the cat would get a permanent
deduction of morale as leaving Jones or even having him in slot 2 decreases
morale by 1. 

[IMPROVEMENT] THE GAME NOW UPDATES THE MENTAL CONDITION WHEN COMPANY ARRIVES.
 The game did not update the mental condition text for the current character
when another crew member came into the same room.

[IMPROVEMENT] THE GAME NOW CALCULATES MORALE BONUSES WHEN STARTING A NEW GAME.
 The game never properly calculated the morale bonus each character gets from
having others in the same room when a new game began. This is now done.

[IMPROVEMENT] IF A CHARACTER DIES IN THE SAME ROOM AS YOU, YOU'LL GET NOTIFIED.
 The game now updates the 'ALSO HERE' text when a character dies in the same
room as you. (ex. Also here Body of Dallas)

[IMPROVEMENT] IF THE ALIEN DEVOURS A COLLAPSED CHARACTER, YOU'LL GET NOTIFIED.
 There is a small chance that the Alien could completely devour a collapsed
character. If that happens, the game now updates the 'ALSO HERE' text if the
current character is in the same room. (i.e. removing the devoured character
from the text)

Grab a copy here.

Enjoy! :)

Art

Thank you, good work!

Ersh

Thanks mate! :)

Ersh

ALIEN (Mindgames) Bugfix and Improvement. Version 1.3



Another update, fixed an additional 2 bugs which brings us up to 24 fixes in all.

Here's what's new:

[BUGFIX] WHEN A BODY WAS FOUND, CURRENT MP WAS NOT DECREASED.
 When a crewmember found a body the game decreased base MP for all characters
but not their current MP, this is now fixed. I also made the game update the
character condition text when this happens.

[IMPROVEMENT] IF SOMEONE DIES IN COMPANY OF OTHERS THE BODY IS NOW FOUND
 If a crewmember died while there were others in the same room, the body was
not found. You had to leave the room and reenter to 'find' the body and get
a deduction of MP. I've made the game automatically find a body if a crewmember
perishes in company of others, decrease base/current MP for all characters with
an additional deduction of 1 from the current MP for those that are in the same
room. The character condition text is also updated.

Grab a copy here.

Enjoy! :)

Ersh

ALIEN (Mindgames) Bugfix and Improvement. Version 1.4



Here's what's new:

[BUGFIX] THE TRACKERS AND JONES SIXTH SENSE DID NOT WORK IN THE AIRDUCTS
 Due to a bug the 2 trackers and Jones sixth sense (when in the CATBOX or NET)
didn't work inside the airducts. This is now fixed.

[BUGFIX] JONES SIXTH SENSE GAVE FALSE 'READINGS'
 Getting a 'Jones is uneasy' message while carrying him in the CATBOX or NET
means that a connecting location contains either someone from the crew or the
ALIEN. Every time the player moved from a location with neighbouring occupants
to a location with none; Jones would still give the player the message. This is
now fixed.

[IMPROVEMENT] IF SOMEONE ENTERS HYPERSLEEP IN COMPANY THE 'ALSO HERE' TEXT IS NOW UPDATED.
 If a crewmember enters hypersleep while another character is active in the
CRYO VAULT the game now removes the sleeper's name from the ALSO HERE text
without having to switch menus.

Another update. Three new fixes, with one being a major one when it comes to gameplay. For some reason I never questioned why the Trackers didn't work in the airducts. They would ping constantly even though they shouldn't and sometimes they were dead silent when they should give you a reading. I decided to examine how it all worked and it turned out it's simply a bug. The game correctly used the Airduct Connecting Locations Table but failed to mask the Current Location to stay within said table, which meant the game read data waaay out of intended memory.

Anyway this year is the 40th anniversary of Ridley Scott's excellent Alien movie and the 35th anniversary of this awesome game. So now would be an excellent time to load this puppy up and have a go! :)

Grab a copy here.

Enjoy! :)

Art

It seems the game was full of bugs!

NRA

Considering Shadowfire, Enigma Force (Shadowfire 2), The Force, Foxx Fights Back, The Great Escape, Where Time Stood Still, and possibly other unreleased items like Wreckers, I really don't think the coders of Alien were not competent enough to code it properly.

Perhaps, it had to do with strict time limits, multi-projects, Amstrad/Commodore conversions, publisher's preferences, and so on.

Ersh

NRA wrote: »

Perhaps, it had to do with strict time limits, multi-projects, Amstrad/Commodore conversions, publisher's preferences, and so on.

I'm guessing it's along those lines, tight deadline or something. John Heap's code and design are both very neat and clever. Also there's a lot going on in the game under the surface, much more than it initially seems.

Ersh

ALIEN (Mindgames) Bugfix and Improvement. Version 1.5

Here's what's new:

[BUGFIX] IF THE ALIEN SURVIVED THE AIRLOCK; THE TRACKERS WOULD NO LONGER WORK
 When the player opens an Airlock while the ALIEN is inside, it either dies
or re-enters the ship via the Shuttlebay, the player gets a message from
MOTHER if the latter is the case. However due to a bug, if the ALIEN survived
the Airlock the Trackers and Jones' sixth sense would no longer pick up any
readings from it for the duration of that game. This is now fixed.

[BUGFIX] CREWMEMBERS WEREN'T LISTED AS 'DEAD' IF BLOWN OUT OF AN AIRLOCK
 If the player for some reason decided to blow any crewmember out of an
Airlock, they weren't listed as 'Dead' on the Competence Rating screen at the
end of the game. This is now fixed.

[BUGFIX] THE 'CONDITION' AND 'ALSO HERE' TEXT COULD ERRONEOUSLY ERASE TEXT
 If the Condition text was exactly 32 characters long it would erase the
'Also here:' text on the next line when updated. Likewise if the 'Also here:'
text was exactly 32 characters long it would erase any message from MOTHER on
the next line when updated. There are only certain conditions when these texts
are exactly 32 characters long, so it was rare, but it's now fixed
nonetheless.

Yet another update bringing us up to a total of 30 fixes, hopefully this is the last of them.

Grab a copy here.

Enjoy! :)

Luny

Shame if there aren't anymore, I'm quite enjoying the irregular updates.

Ersh

Each fix takes a lot of time; replication, investigation, coding and thorough testing, so unless something major crop up, I'm heartily hoping this is it. ;) I'll keep playing though!

Ersh

ALIEN (Mindgames) Bugfix and Improvement. Version 1.6

Here's what's new:

[BUGFIX] THE ALIEN COULD TELEPORT FROM THE NARCISSUS TO DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE
NOSTROMO
 The Narcissus lifeboat has a grill that's opened from the start (which is a
table-bug in itself). Although the player can't access the duct themselves, the
Alien can. When the Alien entered this air-duct and tried to move to a new
location within the ducts, it was teleported to seemingly arbitrary air-duct
locations around the ship. This was because the table used didn't account for
the Narcissus being a 35th room and so read data from the table that followed,
which happened to be the table of character names. "ALIEN, $FF, Dallas, $Kane,
$FF...". The ASCII values of the word "ALIEN" are by luck all acceptable
air-duct locations. I've made it so that, if the Alien goes up that grill, it'll
set its Action to go down again. Since the Narcissus now, basically, is a dead
end for the Alien, I've also reduced the risk of it damaging the lifeboat by
20%, just to be a bit more fair to the player.

[BUGFIX] WHEN JONES ENTERED A ROOM WITH MORE THAN TWO PEOPLE, THE ACTIVE
CREW-MEMBER WAS NOT ALWAYS GIVEN THE OPTION TO CATCH IT
 If Jones entered a room where your active crew-member was, the option to catch
it wasn't made available if there was a lower numbered crew-member in the same
room. For an example if the active character was Ripley (3) and you had Dallas
(1) in the same room when Jones entered, Mother would report "Dallas sees Jones
the Cat" but the active Ripley wouldn't get the option to catch Jones in the
menu. That's now fixed, Dallas will see the cat, but Ripley will get the option
to catch it.

[BUGFIX] WHEN JONES ENTERED A ROOM WITH ALIVE CREW AND A DEAD BODY, THE MESSAGE
AND OPTION TO CATCH IT WERE NOT ALWAYS GIVEN 
 If Jones entered a room where your active character was, the option to catch it
wasn't made available if there was a lower numbered DEAD crew-member in the same
room. No "...sees Jones the Cat" message would appear at all neither.

[BUGFIX] IF THE ALIEN SCARED JONES, THE CAT WOULD TELEPORT TO THE UPPER DECK
 If Jones entered the room where the Alien was, he was supposed to pick another
random connected room to flee to. However, the game had a small bug that made
Jones always pick a room from the neighbouring-locations-table of room 0
(Airlock 1). Hence, if the Alien scared Jones he would always teleport to
Airlock 1 or Corridor 6 on the Upper Deck.

A new update and four more bugs fixed!

That "teleporting" Alien is something I've come across quite a few times while playing but had no idea what caused it, or if it indeed was bug at all, glad to have it sorted.

The first two Jones issues may sound similar, but did require different fixes. I ended up doing a rewrite of pretty much half of the Jones routine, but it all works like it should now.

Grab a copy here.

Enjoy! :)

Mousey

I've followed this thread with interest Ersh and it's taken until version 1.6 for me to finally download a copy of all your hard work!

I had this game back in the day, the big box version, and did play it a few times but the younger me wasn't well suited to strategy type games. Now, however, this is very appealing - especially with all the many bug fixes and improvements! I hope to have a proper go this weekend. No doubt the Alien will slaughter everyone on my first go!

Ersh

Cheers, Mousey! :) Hope you'll enjoy it, it really is a fantastic game.

Luny

I'm enjoying the time, effort and detail you are giving this game. This is true craftsmanship where the detail is in the eye (and the brain).
Nice work Ersh

Ersh

Thanks Luny! :)

NRA

While I understand that modern players are mostly sucker for s/fx and simple one-two-three button games, why there're so few imaginative thinkers? Besides liches and 4-player chess, it would be nice to play something like Alien in a browser for a change between coffee breaks... Mother rulez)

By the way, are there any Speccy [128K+/disked] games, which would imitate AI by countering most frequent or abused players' tricks?

Luny

Alien in a browser? Interesting thing to port that would be.

NRA

Actually, it's like Alien: Blackout

Ersh, does the alien routine have different strategies as 'aggressive/chase', 'stalk/ambush', 'timeattack', 'guard sensitive points', and so on, based on the progress, or it's mostly random?

Ersh

The Alien's behaviour is different each time you play, it's random but uses several weighted conditions. Sometimes you can anticipate its movement, other times it's very much unpredictable and will certainly catch you off guard. It's brilliant. Few games feature this amount of replayability, especially for 1984.

As for playing in a browser, there are always emulators like QAOP.