Trespasser

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Trespasser: Jurassic Park
Studio	Dreamworks Interactive
Publisher	Electronic Arts
Senior Developer	Seamus Blackley
Erstveröffent- lichung	October 28, 1998
platform	Windows
genre	Ego shooter
Game mode	Single player
control	Keyboard , mouse
system advantages preconditions	Win95 , Pentium  166 MHz , 32  MB RAM , 120 MB free hard disk space, DirectX 6.0, 4x CD-ROM drive, 1 MB graphics card , sound card .
medium	1 CD-ROM
language	German
Age rating	USK PEGI

Jurassic Park: Trespasser (also known as Trespasser ) is a computer game based on the Jurassic Park series of films by Steven Spielberg and released for Windows computers by Dreamworks Interactive in 1998 .

action

Trespasser is a follow-up story to Spielberg's film The Lost World and was originally due to be released in 1997, shortly after its theatrical release. However, technical problems delayed the release for over a year. At the end of the second part, John Hammond - founder of InGen - went public and informed them about the work and results of his research. In the course of this he published his entire memoir, in which he announced all the details of "Site B". This is where Trespasser's story begins .

The player takes on the role of a young woman named Anne, who is currently on an adventure vacation in Costa Rica and takes part in a flight over the islands off the coast. This leads to turbulence, the plane crashes and Anne wakes up as the only survivor on the beach of Isla Sorna - Ingen's "Site B". The object of the game is to escape the island with Anne alive.

After Anne comes to on a sandy beach, the player first strolls through the surrounding area to find a point of orientation. Using various ruin-like remains of InGen's former island complex, the protagonists quickly realize where they are. After the first peaceful prospect of two herbivorous brachiosaurs , the first velociraptor soon appears . Anne flees further into the interior of the island and comes across increasingly extensive valleys, hills, gorges and building complexes. Over the course of the eight levels, Anne works her way past various dinosaur species via laboratory facilities, dams and an abandoned harbor to the top of the highest mountain on Isla Sorna.

Level

• Beach ( Beach )

Starting on a sandy beach, Anne finds remains of the foundation a little further up the hill and finally a large construction board showing InGen's planned facilities. Anne remembers Hammond's memoirs and quickly realizes where and in what position she is. Looking for some form of communication, Anne follows a road past brachiosaurs and comes across the first velociraptor. On the run, she finally comes across the remains of a terminal stop of a monorail.

• Jungle Road ( Jungle Road )

Anne follows the apparently unfinished track, meets the hunters' camp from The Lost World and also the beach where Cathy Bowman von Compsognathen was attacked at the beginning of the second part. In addition to numerous velociraptors, it also encounters stegosaurs, triceratopsids and parasaurulophus. A telephone system at one point on the monorail seems to be the way out. At the other end a Spanish speaking voice answers and Anne cannot make herself understood at all.

• Industry Jungle ( Industrial Jungle )

The monorail ends in a dry stream. Anne follows the course of the former body of water and penetrates deeper and deeper into the jungle, past numerous velociraptors. At the end of a ditch, a tyrannosaurus appears for the first time. Anne manages to escape and she climbs over rocks into a dinosaur cemetery in a deep trench. She finds a crashed helicopter that says Biosyn . (She doesn't realize that this was a competitor to InGen's company, which includes Lewis Dodgson - the man who hired Dennis Nedry in Jurassic Park to steal the embryos.) At the end of the ditch, Anne reaches a hilltop with a large, wide one behind it Valley extends. She jumps over a waterfall and comes across an albertosaur for the first time .

• City ( Town )

At the end of the valley is the city complex, which was also shown in The Lost World. In addition to several workers' accommodations, there is also a church, a gas station, Henry Wu's and John Hammond's private residence, as well as the central security building. After Anne has found key cards, she gains access to the security building, where she restores electricity to the city. A functioning radio system is nowhere to be found. But a computer works in Hammond's villa and Anne uses it to find out that there is a communication station on the highest mountain on Isla Sorna. She leaves the city to the north, past two tyrannosaurs and reaches a dam.

• Laboratory ( Lab )

Behind the dam is the port of Isla Sorna. Velociraptors roam between the department stores and containers and on the pier, making life difficult for Anne until she finally finds a key card in a container that opens a gate for her on the edge of the port area. Over a hill, she then reaches the actual laboratory facilities and a dinosaur enclosure. Anne finds a computer system, starts up the system and thus switches on the communication device at the distant summit. She also opens the dinosaur enclosure.

• Ascent 1 ( Ascent 1 )

Through the enclosure, Anne reaches a plateau. The velociraptors are becoming more and more numerous. All that remains is to flee. Running rather than walking, she tries to get past a cliff in the direction of the mountain. She climbs over a lost temple complex, in which some traps still work, to the foot of the mountain and along its flank. Passing a pyramid and a tyrannosaur, the only thing left to do is jump over a ditch to save them.

• Ascent 2 ( Ascent 2 )

Without weapons, Anne storms past a Velociraptor, first down the valley and finally uphill over broken bridges. The path becomes steeper and more rocky. The "leisurely" stroll around the island ends at an almost vertical rock face. Anne climbs a narrow path that leads steeply uphill over scree. The path winds its way higher and higher in serpentines and finally joins a mountain road. Anne follows the course of the road and after a few balancing acts over boards, containers and dangerous cars hanging on the precipice, she reaches an open-air elevator.

• Summit ( Summit )

The elevator finally takes Anne to the communication facility. In front of her is a wind power plant which is roamed by a number of velociraptors. She climbs a catwalk into a small building and finds herself in a radio station. Your call is initially unsuccessful. Mentioning dinosaurs leads to the 911 being mistaken for a joke; Anne's position is only recognized by a local bearing and they promise to send a helicopter.

She leaves the radio station and climbs up a system of stairs from the wind power plant complex, over scaffolding and finally reaches the mountain top. The last boxes are stacked to form a flight of stairs, then an electric fence leads to the adjacent helipad. The helicopter to rescue them soon appears and, after a long, arduous journey, Anne manages to leave Isla Sorna alive.

dinosaur

• Brachiosaurus : Large herbivorous dinosaur. Moves very slowly and only gets a little nervous if you venture too close.
• Parasaurolophus : Medium-sized herbivore. Runs away when panic.
• Stegosaurus : Medium-sized, slow herbivore. Can defend itself with its spikes.
• Triceratops : Dangerous herbivorous dinosaur. Can attack with its horns out of fear and rarely jump very high.
• Albertosaurus : Fast, large carnivore. Next to the velociraptor the most dangerous dinosaur.
• Tyrannosaurus : Large, slow, carnivorous dinosaur. Can kill with a bite or two, but is easy to run away from.
• Velociraptor : main antagonist. Little carnivore. Very dangerous when in a pack.

Gameplay

The player experiences all events from the perspective of Anne (spoken in the original by Minnie Driver ). Except for the intro and the final sequence, there are no cut scenes. During the adventure, Anne often speaks to herself, comments on situations or remembers Hammond's memoirs (originally spoken by Richard Attenborough ), which then sound off-screen. There is no crosshair user interface or ammo and health indicators. The only evidence of Anne's physical condition is her tattoo on her left breast, which changes depending on the degree of injury. Anne always comments on the ammunition level acoustically. ("Looks like half.", "10 balls left.")

Even if you mainly move through outdoor areas, the levels are still linear and can be described as walking through a broader strip of landscape. Hills, steep slopes, water and invisible walls prevent you from deviating from the given route.

Most of the time you are trying to fight dangerous dinosaurs with firearms, in between there are always puzzles, such as B. Find key cards or stack boxes to reach different points in the game. To do this, you use your right arm, which can be stretched out into the 3D environment using the mouse and with which various objects can be manipulated thanks to the integrated physics engine.

technology

The development team drew attention in advance with the promise of advanced technical functions. Above all, the technical difficulties then led to postponements and, in combination with the high costs for the license, the project was threatened with end. It was only after drastic cuts in the scope of functions that it was finally completed with a delay of one and a half years.

landscape

Hardly any other game used similarly extensive outdoor areas and tried to depict them as realistically as possible. The original plan was that the player should explore the entire island without dividing it into different levels. For this purpose, a hand-made 3D model of the island was scanned by laser and converted into a computer landscape. According to the developers, the aim was to guarantee a topography that appeared as real as possible. Performance problems ultimately forced programmers to abandon the whole island concept and instead break it down into sections as usual.

graphic

The most advanced feature of the engine was that it could display more distant objects as 2D sprites and only replace them with 3D objects when the player was close enough. This resource-saving feature, called image caching , was also used by the CryEngine for the first-person shooter Far Cry , albeit in a more sophisticated form. In Trespasser , this process often resulted in the objects jumping from 2D to 3D with an unpleasant effect in front of the player.

Trespasser was also one of the first games to use bump mapping and specular lighting . This now widespread method of simulating a three-dimensional surface was only applied to a few objects and dinosaurs.

physics

The implementation of a physics engine in the game world was also unique. All objects had different parameters for more or less correct physical interaction. Stones, pieces of wood, boxes, pistols, and numerous other elements could be knocked over or thrown, rolled down slopes or could be stacked on top of one another. However, the engine used a so-called "box system" which circumscribes an invisible cube for each object, which repelled itself from the surrounding cube of another object until there was no longer any contact. This technique meant that boxes often did not come to rest because they were constantly repelling each other and it could also happen that objects get caught in one another and could no longer be separated.

Sound

The real-time Foley audio system mixes sounds in real time, depending on how sounds are generated. For example, if the player holds a metal stick in their hands and hits concrete with it, the corresponding sound is generated from the parameters for metal and concrete. It sounds completely different when you hit wood or the floor with a stick. Even if you push boxes over the floor, the scratching noise is calculated from the physical pushing over the floor.

Artificial intelligence

Originally, Trespasser was supposed to have sophisticated artificial intelligence in order to experience the dinosaurs' behavior as believably and realistically as possible. Different urges or needs were worked out, which evoked a corresponding emotion. There were parameters for hunger, thirst, fear, curiosity, aggression etc. and the combination of the individual points evoked a reaction.

In practice, this turned out to be problematic, because in the test phase the dinosaurs tended to have great mood swings, from hunger to fatigue to aggression and ultimately in most cases it led to an absolute standstill.

Ultimately, all parameters were set to zero and only aggression was left at the maximum value. This solved the emotional problem, but there is no longer any real talk of artificial intelligence.

Animations

Most PC games use animations, i.e. prefabricated movement sequences that are displayed at the appropriate moment in order to enable the game characters to move in the game world. A common effect that can be observed here is that the individual animation loops do not flow into one another.

Trespasser did not use any preset movement sequences, but so-called inverse kinematics . The dinosaurs have a skeleton and the physics engine and artificial intelligence result in a movement that is calculated in real time. It could happen that dinosaurs stumbled over boxes or got their feet caught in corners.

reception

The criticism was largely negative. The controls turned out to be extremely complicated and tedious, the physics engine contributed little to an interesting gameplay, the artificial intelligence did not meet expectations and the graphics already looked outdated, but still requires powerful hardware.

The sales figures were only 50,000 copies, the game is considered by critics as well as commercially a failure. After the game failed, producer Seamus Blackley moved to Microsoft, where he developed the Xbox game console .

Despite the negative reviews from the press and the moderate sales figures, an active community developed around Trespasser . Community members developed both a level editor for Trespasser , with which existing levels can be modified as desired, as well as some unofficial patches that try to fix remaining bugs and technical inadequacies. The community also managed to get the original source code from Trespassers. In 2014, a retrospective source code analysis was carried out with the available source code.

Web links

• Trespasser at MobyGames (English)
• Trespasser community
• Review overview

• Return to Jurassic Park Crysis Mod
• Jurassic Life - Half-Life 2 Mod

Individual evidence

1. ^ The roots of Microsoft's Xbox
2. ↑ Patches on trescom.org (English)
3. ↑ Kat Bailey: Jurassic Park: Trespasser remake aims to make good on long-lost promises ( English ) joystiq.com. May 15, 2014. Archived from the original on August 14, 2014. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 13, 2014: “ The community has even managed to get hold of the original source code, which they've set to work modifying. " 
4. ↑ Fabian Sanglard: Jurassic Park: Trespasser CG Source Code Review ( English ) fabiensanglard.net. June 10, 2014. Retrieved August 13, 2014.