This Alien: Isolation mod tweaks the AI of the Alien to fix some issues and provide a similar but more organic experience. The focus is to make the Alien: slightly less unfair, able to surprise you in more diverse ways, and omnipresent (but still not all-knowing) while creating situations as tense as before.
Have fun!
== How to install ==
Simply merge the DATA folder provided with your DATA folder in your base game installation directory :)
The DATA folder is located in the Alien Isolation folder, where your game is installed. (Steam/Steamapps/Common/Alien Isolation/DATA)
If you want to revert back to the original settings, merge the content of the "Backup BMLs" folder into your DATA folder in your base game installation directory.
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If you are going to play the game with this mod, I recommend that you do not read the detailed changes it makes as it might ruin the magic of how the Alien works.
All the modifications were made to the AI Director of the Alien and NOT to the Alien creature itself (the behavior tree is not modified). The difficulty modifiers remain untouched too. A scripted sequence in the main campaign is also slightly modified. Please acknowledge that this mod doesn't add any new feature to the Alien, it only tweaks its behavior by changing values.
Here are the changes made by the mod:
- The Alien is more attracted by player-accessible vents
- The Alien naturally searches in a bigger radius around the player
- The Alien, when thinking a prey is there, will abandon its intuition much quicker if nothing confirms it
- The Alien will search the player actively (out of the vents) a bit more often
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Special thanks go to MattFiler for the OpenCAGE mod which allowed me to mod easily, to Nathan for the Unpredictable Alien mod which was an inspiration, to penumbra1979 for their multiple feedback and testing on this mod, and to everyone else for helping me make this mod better by giving awesome feedback!
Improved Alien v1.1
Created by Mr_Koroshiya
==============
CHANGELOG:
v1.1:
- Made it so the Alien is very (very) slightly less attracted to the player vents
This is a small update, it fixes a rare issue when playing in nightmare difficulty.
v1.0:
- Greatly increased the aggressivity of the Alien again (reduced the resting time)
- Made it so the Alien is very slightly more attracted to the player vents
- Made it so the Alien abandons its intuition a little bit slower
Finally, v1.0 is here! With the changes of v0.5, the Alien was more believable but less aggressive and scary. I decided to make the Alien slightly less logical to allow it to become an unpredictable and terrifying threat again.
This update is similar to v0.4 in terms of aggressivity and difficulty but comes with improvements of v0.5 (like the dangerous vents and lockers). As a consequence, the Alien should now feel like a genuinely terrifying but believable creature.
v0.5:
- Made it so the Alien is way more attracted to the player vents
- Made it so the Alien will check the lockers a bit more often
- Slightly lowered the aggressivity of the Alien
- Reverted all changes made to the Alien behavior in backstage mode
Basically, this should feel like v0.4 but with an even more natural Alien, more tension, and player vents that now really represent a threat! Also, on older versions, it was written that the Alien would act differently than without the mod toward the non-player vents: turns out it was accidentally never implemented, and so, now that we have a version of the mod that is quite stable, I think adding them back would be unnecessary.
This update is a major update of the mod. A lot of testing was needed to get a better balancing of the Alien behavior as well as something I could be proud of. This gets us a lot closer to the 1.0 release! (which should be the next version if no major issue is found)
v0.4:
- Greatly reduced the resting time of the Alien
With v0.3, I felt like the Alien behavior was working better and was effectively less unfair. Although, with the Alien now "fixed", it seemed the creature wasn't as aggressive as before and not as frightening. With this change, the search of the Alien is certainly tenser while keeping enough breathing time for the player and the encounters dynamic. Based on my testing it works well! We'll see how further testing can improve even more this modified Xenomorph.
v0.3:
- Made it so the Alien abandons its intuition even faster
- Made it so the Alien wants to use the player vents a little bit more
- Modified a scripted sequence slightly to normalize it with the changes made to the rest of the AI
I basically tried to push some parameters of the mod even further because I was not satisfied with the results. If it doesn't fix the issues or even break the AI (make it uninteresting), I will abandon this path, start over and try to get better results by using other variables.
v0.2:
- Initial public release
I found this mod to be a much better alternative to the "Unpredictable Alien" mod, in fairly every way.
I discovered within literally seconds that Betty (The Xeno) enjoys deploying from ceiling vents previously unused, throughout my 550 standing hours in the game. I also noted some very interesting movements, as though the she was trying to head me off, in certain areas. Very Fun, and wonderfully surprising!
One thing to note, however; she still doesn't like to go into the wall vents, and I never noticed her checking out any lockers or cabinets, throughout the entirety of my experience; it's one of those 'under utilized' areas of the game that I'd like to see some progress made in.
All in all, I'm happy to give my blessings to this mod, and its author.
Can't wait to see what more you can do!
So cool how you and I had the same experience. You should read my comment on the main page for the mod, lol. Take it easy.
Thank you so much for your feedback! I really appreciate it and it will help to improve the mod.
I answered Penumbra's comment on the main page as mentioned so you might want to check it out! To summarize: the Alien not going enough in the player vents is going to be fixed, the behavior of the Alien towards the lockers will not be altered, and a lot of tweaking is going to be made (primarily to make the Alien a little less aggressive while increasing the tension when you don't know what it's going to do next).
I hope you'll give the update a try when it releases! Thank you again!
Do you think you'd be able to update it,
so the Alien would also go into the wall vents?
No pressure or anything.
Hello!
This mod already changes the Alien behavior so the Alien goes much more often in the wall vents!
Going to try this one out, because I have played through the game only once and I'm about to start my second playthrough. Last time I had the Unpredictable Alien mod, which was quite alright, but not 100% there.
Hopefully this mod touches a few key issues:
(1) The big one: the alien always inspecting the lockers when you are there, but NEVER when you aren't
(2) Super aggressive alien at random intervals. Like you can't even get out from your hiding place before the thing comes back from the vent. Repeat ten times > reload
It would be neat if the facehuggers would also hide in slightly random spots or do a little bit of patrol, but guess that's not technically possible. Will be interesting to see how the experience differs :)
Hello,
Thank you for giving this mod a try!
The Alien does inspect lockers when you're not in them, it's just really rare (think I saw it happen twice). I would like to fix this aspect of its behavior as well but unfortunately, it's handled by the behavior tree and not the AI Director which this mod alters. Maybe in the future!
What you call the super aggressive Alien at random intervals should be fixed in this mod :)
Finally, as for the Alien, this behavior of the facehuggers is handled by their behavior tree which I do not mod right now.
Have fun!
Follow up. So far the alien has surprised me twice by coming to a previously safe spot and, thankfully, never coming to the lockers. Both of which are good, skipping the repetitive inspection routine.
Sadly, now the alien doesn't seem to show up very often.
Would this mod be good for someone's first playthrough?
This would be my very first, but I'm deciding whether to play the game vanilla on normal difficulty or on Hard with your mod. I've heard a few complaints about the Alien's tether being a bit distracting on Hard in the vanilla game, but your mod seems to be the exact thing I'm looking for.
Hello!
I've designed it to be not too far off from vanilla so I can recommend it for a first playthrough!
Please give me feedback if you decide to give it a try!
Have fun
Thanks! Will do!
Hello, thank you for your feedback, I really appreciate it!
Your observations match mines: the Alien is not coming to get you enough, I'm working on that part for the next version.
It should be much more aggressive in the upcoming version of the mod but there are still issues I need to address before I can release it.
Please stay tune!
@Mr_Koroshiya
Thank you for your continued support for this mod. Now your gonna make me want to play again...lol.
Can I use this mod on any difficulty?
I was thinking of playing on normal or hard difficulty.
Hello !
You can absolutely play this mod in any difficulty!
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I haven't tried this mod in the campaign yet, but in the Crew Expendable DLC (hard difficulty), it seems like the alien is constantly on the player's tail no matter how carefully I move or how quiet I play.
Additionally, the alien seems to patrol the same area where the player is located, I gave it like 10 minutes to change its behavior but it keeps goin in loop in the same corridor outside the door where I was hiding.
Hello!
The mod is supposed to fix these kind of issues, are you sure the mod was installed?
I will investigate the issue on my side, thanks for reporting!
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