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I know we don't need another prototype thread, but this is something I've been thinking about lately. When Capcom started developing 1.5 they were, from what I've always knew, building on top of RE1's engine. One of the in house criticisms of 1.5 was that it played too much like RE1, this sparked them to make changes and redesign the engine into what we know now in RE2. Does anyone actually know what went on during this period and what changes were actually made? Obviously I don't expect you guys to give detailed answers as none of you worked for Capcom at the time, however you guys have played these games a lot, some of you have even delved into it's coding, so I thought you might at least have a few answers.
Take the Trial Edition for example. The majority of 1.5's backgrounds are there a lot of which were still used in RE2, such as the lab areas towards the end of the game. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, a lot of the 1.5 backgrounds that are missing are the ones which were being replaced in RE2 at the beginning of the game, such as the police station. This would lead me to believe that development on 1.5 never really stopped, but in a sense continued on with the addition of new artwork and a reworked engine. Of course development on 1.5 wouldn't have stopped in a litteral sense, they didn't drop everything and start from absolute scratch is what I mean.
I don't see why Capcom would put out a demo build (Biohazard 2 Trial Edition) with all those resources contained inside unless this was a true representation of RE2's development at some point (or unless they left it there on purpose :/). While they could have done whatever changes they made to the engine and then imported all the backgrounds into the new build, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to do so when so much of the artwork was being omitted and you were essentially starting from scratch. It seems like Capcom were replacing the backgrounds area by area (replace police station A with police station B etc) untill they eventually knew what they were doing and figured it was time to get rid of the 1.5 content for good.
I'd like to think that even though the Trial Edition was a public release and is reasonably easy to get a hold of, it's still representative of development and just as much of a holy grail as any other beta. Personally I find the Trial Edition infinitely more interesting than Beta 2; even though Beta 2 has debug options and a lot of stuff to play with, the Trial Edition shows us an RPD that's vastly different to retail. A lot of it's ideas were scrapped, a lot of it's artwork too, it came from a time when assumingly Capcom didn't really know where they were going with RE2. I'd love to play a build that was slightly earlier or slightly later than the Trial Edition, I want to see the old Marvin scene complete the way it used to be, I also want to see if the alternate RPD layouts and the routes Sherry takes ever went anywhere. Personally I think the Trial Edition probably came from a time when they had already scrapped those ideas, as opposed to when they were working on completing them. Guess we'll never know.
Anyway I'm rambling, sorry for turning this into another rant, but I'm sure you know how it is with these things. What I'm interested in knowing is, what really changed between RE1 and RE2, engine wise? Is the code really that different? Or did Capcom make tweaks to the RE1 code, as opposed to rebuilding it entirely? The jump from 1.5 to RE2 always sounds so big, but are the games really that different? I wonder what happened to the 1.5 build during this period of it's development, if it was hacked apart and put back together, or whether resources were simply imported into new code.
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One piece of evidence that points to similarities in the code is the presence of an identical glitch/exploit and behaviour in both games (Biohazard 1996-01-31 and Trial Edition to be exact) which I discovered after some experimentation one day. In the 01-31 build of Biohazard it's possible to use the flag menus to regain control of the player during active cutscenes and events. It's only possible by checking flags for player movement, as well as checking the flag allowing you to press start. This alone doesn't do it as the game still has you frozen in place by something seemingly unrelated to movement flags, only once you enter the inventory and return to the game can you move around during the active cut scene (this is in RE1).
From what I can tell this exact technique is used in certain hacks of the Trial Edition (RE2) to allow you to get passed the Ada scene in the STARS office (not including Martin Biohazard's Ada scene hack which simply disables it all together). Not including whatever physical hacking that went into the job, the one thing that's required by the player to move around is funnilly enough, enter the inventory and return back to the game. What happens in RE1 is that during cut scenes the game disables a bunch of flags which allow you to do things like control the player or enter menus, so you can't interact with the game while it tells the story and plays out animations/sounds. From what I can tell the same thing is happening in this scene. I assume the hack stops the Ada scene from ending the demo, keeps you in the game and re-enables those movement and menu flags so the player can press start and use this glitch/exploit to release them selves from the cut scene, allowing them to carry on the game.
Of course, if the same team built both games then there's going to be some similarities in the way things work, however I don't really understand what Capcom have done here and maybe more importantly why it was done. Did they decide that they didn't like the feel of the game, so they rebuilt the engine and upon importing the resources decided to change the story as well? Or did they decide that they didn't like the story so decided to do everything from scratch, including rebuild the engine? Or maybe a combination of both? Capcom them selves told us that 1.5 played too much like RE1, so I guess that's the story we should take. However, the question I raise is that if the problem was in the way the game felt and played, surely making those kinds of changes to the engine don't require burying key characters, re-working the story and binning 75% of your artwork.
I'd love to know more about what went on during this period so feel free to use this thread for anything related to the devlopment of the early RE games, including RE3.
Take the Trial Edition for example. The majority of 1.5's backgrounds are there a lot of which were still used in RE2, such as the lab areas towards the end of the game. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, a lot of the 1.5 backgrounds that are missing are the ones which were being replaced in RE2 at the beginning of the game, such as the police station. This would lead me to believe that development on 1.5 never really stopped, but in a sense continued on with the addition of new artwork and a reworked engine. Of course development on 1.5 wouldn't have stopped in a litteral sense, they didn't drop everything and start from absolute scratch is what I mean.
I don't see why Capcom would put out a demo build (Biohazard 2 Trial Edition) with all those resources contained inside unless this was a true representation of RE2's development at some point (or unless they left it there on purpose :/). While they could have done whatever changes they made to the engine and then imported all the backgrounds into the new build, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to do so when so much of the artwork was being omitted and you were essentially starting from scratch. It seems like Capcom were replacing the backgrounds area by area (replace police station A with police station B etc) untill they eventually knew what they were doing and figured it was time to get rid of the 1.5 content for good.
I'd like to think that even though the Trial Edition was a public release and is reasonably easy to get a hold of, it's still representative of development and just as much of a holy grail as any other beta. Personally I find the Trial Edition infinitely more interesting than Beta 2; even though Beta 2 has debug options and a lot of stuff to play with, the Trial Edition shows us an RPD that's vastly different to retail. A lot of it's ideas were scrapped, a lot of it's artwork too, it came from a time when assumingly Capcom didn't really know where they were going with RE2. I'd love to play a build that was slightly earlier or slightly later than the Trial Edition, I want to see the old Marvin scene complete the way it used to be, I also want to see if the alternate RPD layouts and the routes Sherry takes ever went anywhere. Personally I think the Trial Edition probably came from a time when they had already scrapped those ideas, as opposed to when they were working on completing them. Guess we'll never know.
Anyway I'm rambling, sorry for turning this into another rant, but I'm sure you know how it is with these things. What I'm interested in knowing is, what really changed between RE1 and RE2, engine wise? Is the code really that different? Or did Capcom make tweaks to the RE1 code, as opposed to rebuilding it entirely? The jump from 1.5 to RE2 always sounds so big, but are the games really that different? I wonder what happened to the 1.5 build during this period of it's development, if it was hacked apart and put back together, or whether resources were simply imported into new code.
-----
One piece of evidence that points to similarities in the code is the presence of an identical glitch/exploit and behaviour in both games (Biohazard 1996-01-31 and Trial Edition to be exact) which I discovered after some experimentation one day. In the 01-31 build of Biohazard it's possible to use the flag menus to regain control of the player during active cutscenes and events. It's only possible by checking flags for player movement, as well as checking the flag allowing you to press start. This alone doesn't do it as the game still has you frozen in place by something seemingly unrelated to movement flags, only once you enter the inventory and return to the game can you move around during the active cut scene (this is in RE1).
From what I can tell this exact technique is used in certain hacks of the Trial Edition (RE2) to allow you to get passed the Ada scene in the STARS office (not including Martin Biohazard's Ada scene hack which simply disables it all together). Not including whatever physical hacking that went into the job, the one thing that's required by the player to move around is funnilly enough, enter the inventory and return back to the game. What happens in RE1 is that during cut scenes the game disables a bunch of flags which allow you to do things like control the player or enter menus, so you can't interact with the game while it tells the story and plays out animations/sounds. From what I can tell the same thing is happening in this scene. I assume the hack stops the Ada scene from ending the demo, keeps you in the game and re-enables those movement and menu flags so the player can press start and use this glitch/exploit to release them selves from the cut scene, allowing them to carry on the game.
Of course, if the same team built both games then there's going to be some similarities in the way things work, however I don't really understand what Capcom have done here and maybe more importantly why it was done. Did they decide that they didn't like the feel of the game, so they rebuilt the engine and upon importing the resources decided to change the story as well? Or did they decide that they didn't like the story so decided to do everything from scratch, including rebuild the engine? Or maybe a combination of both? Capcom them selves told us that 1.5 played too much like RE1, so I guess that's the story we should take. However, the question I raise is that if the problem was in the way the game felt and played, surely making those kinds of changes to the engine don't require burying key characters, re-working the story and binning 75% of your artwork.
I'd love to know more about what went on during this period so feel free to use this thread for anything related to the devlopment of the early RE games, including RE3.
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