Aliens : Colonial Marines

Overhaul Version 6

Developed by TemplarGFX



Special Thanks to

Larnievc for being a community champion and helping out since day one

TheSpoons313 for all the testing and support

Matt Filer for creating the awesome intro video and helping with moddb

NewTimeTimmeh for some quality playtesting and feedback

TeacherGalante for helping out and giving great feedback

XSlayer300 for creating the logo and helping out in the community

Kasugano for creating the restart bug fix

Agatsuma for figuring out how to mod ACM

Wellen1981, Deus Wolf and Masp1911 for being a stand out members of the community

All of the ACM community!

The hardworking developers and artists who made the stuff thats awesome in this game



Overview :

Aliens Colonial Marines Overhaul (ACMO for short) has always been about getting the best out of every aspect of the game. There is denying the game even after patches was lackluster at best. The AI sucked, the gunplay sucked, the story was eye-roll worthy and the characters under developed and overly cliched. It was not all bad though, and it had its moments. The levels could look fantastic, the weapons look great and the sound is very faithful to the source.

ACMO is primarily focused on three areas of the game, AI, Gunplay and Graphics. Each area has been heavily tweaked, playtested, balanced and tweaked some more to get the best out of every mechanic possible.

While there is nothing that can be done about the story the rest of the game is much more enjoyable than it was before with more varied and improved gunplay, unpredictable and deadly xenomorphs and darker atmospheric lighting and effects.

See below for a full rundown of the changes!

What to expect :

Unfortunately ACMO is not a miracle patch that turns the game into what was promised and teased back in the day and there are still many bugs and issues that remain that cannot be fixed with a hex editor.

Despite that buried under bad design choices, rushed development and typo's there is a decent game to be found, certainly better than the one that was released by Gearbox. When you play ACMO you are still playing the same game, its just everything works better, everything looks better and as a result the game is much more enjoyable.

The AI can still get stuck, and sometimes they still bug out and just stand still but it happens less often and is much less likely to impact gameplay progression than before. Human vs Human combat is not exactly what you would call tactically sound and their choices are often still suicidal

Due to how these changes have been applied to the game, it is one change for the entire game and all the modes. This can lead to pacing issues with your ally marines either leaving you behind or not following at times. Triggering the next sequence will make them catch up if they are behind or they will wait there for you. If you are seperated to much they will eventually be teleported to you.

When its all working however you can expect much more satisfying and enjoyable encounters, especially with the xenomorphs who move much more like they did in the bullshot video crawling over everything and being much less predictable foes





Pre Installation :

ACMO V6 should be applied to a freshly installed fully patched original version of the game with no modifications or tweaks applied. Please re-install the game or verify the installation before installing this mod.

If you have previously played ACM you will need to remove the games configuration files located in My Documents\My Games\Aliens Colonial Marines\

This folder must be renamed or deleted in order for the mod to function correctly after it has been installed. This includes users of ANY previous version of ACMO!

Installation :

Copy the contents of the ZIP into your games installation folder

e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Aliens Colonial Marines

Execute the Install batch file now located in your games installation folder. This will remove certain game files to allow mods to be used and apply a fix to the EXE to prevent the steam restart loop bug.

If the installation was successful, the install batch file should disappear. You can now run the game and enjoy the mod!



Graphics Options and INI Tweaks :

ACMO v6 includes all the ini tweaks I know of, as well as the various typo fixes and other improvements to take advantage of todays hardware built right into the game, no edits needed. Simply run the game and use the ingame video sliders to configure the game to your liking.

It is highly recommended to reconfigure the brightness in game video settings before playing the first time. This game is intended to be dark, and having brightness too high will wash out the graphics and ruin the atmosphere.



Hiding the in-game hud :

Pressing F6 during gameplay will toggle the ingame hud on and off for greater immersion on lower difficulty levels. Note that the hud is required for the smartgun display.



Features

Campaign (Main and Stasis Interrupted) :

Difficulty levels have been reworked to provide great challange variety.

Recruit - Ally Marines are very effective in combat and will kill enemies quickly. Enemies have less health. WY Mercs will not flank or throw grenades. Xenos rarely pounce with a long cool down if they miss

Soldier - Ally Marines are effective in combat but can be overwhelmed by Xenos if outnumbered. WY Mercs will flank sometimes and rarely throw grenades. Xenos will pounce regularly

Hardened - Ally Marines are mostly effective in combat but stumble easily and can be overwhelmed quickly. Enemies have more health. WY Mercs will flank if possible and throw grenades regularly. Xenos will pounce regularly with a short delay between attempts

Ultimate Badass - Ally Marines are effective when ganged up on a single target but otherwise its on you. Enemies have more health. WY Mercs will flank if possible and throw grenades if you give them an opportunity. Xenos will pounce if they can with very little delay between attempts

Ammo cache's around the levels are no longer based on the ammo you need but randomised. Random wieghting has been adjusted to compensate

Ammo dropped by WY Mercenaries is based on ammo you need

Bug Hunt :

Money earned while Solo increased by 1.5x to make the initial stages easier

3 and 4 player games each player earns 25% less cash to slow progression

Cash per kill increase reduced for xenos

Cash per WY Heavy Merc increased

Turret Kill cash halved

Super Weapon pickups cost slightly less and can be used 10 times

Secondary ammo refills cost slighly less

Xenos always use the dark skin instead of the brightly coloured ones

Competitive Muliplayer Modes (TDM, Extermination, Escape, Survivor) :

!!DO NOT USE THIS MOD IF YOU INTEND TO PLAY COMPETITIVE MODES!!

Unfortunately the multiplayer xenomorphs are based off the campaign AI xeno's and so are effected by changes made to them.

This also goes for the weapons for the marines

Engine / Other :

HUD toggle feature mapped to F6

INI tweaks and changes are now applied directly by the game itself into your config file, so no custom tweaks are required

Each graphic slider in game has been updated so that the last 3 positions on each apply more tweaks and updates to improve graphics

The lowest 2 positions on each slider remain unchanged from the original base game setup to maximise performance on old computers

Graphics :

Increased lighting quality, shadow distance, shadow count, shadow resolution and enabled shadow casting on most light sources

Texture upscaling and sharpening applied to all model and world textures

Increased particle emitter max draw distance, particle count, lighting quality, lifetime and spawnrate

Increased material shader quality and render distance

Increased decal creation distance, visible count and lifetime

Material properties on character and weapon models as well as most mettallic and infestation surfaces reworked to remove fake lighting effects and improve image quality

Higher quality shader settings applied to base game

Hud toggle button added to base game

Special Effects :

Smoke, Fog, Dust, Steam and Vapor particle effects reworked to ensure the highest quality effect is always generated when on screen

Slime, Sparks, Electricity, Rain and atmospheric effects reworked for greater visual impact

Acid Blood special effects reworked to be more visible and create significantly more burn decals on surfaces

Human Blood special effects reworked to be more visible from a distance to help with hit feedback

Character-on-fire special effect reworked so the entire body looks like its on fire

Bullet Impact sparks significantly increased to help with hit feedback

Bullet Tracers reworked to make shots visible and assist with aiming

Shotgun Shells, Bullet Casings and Grenade Shells are now ejected by the appropriate weapons and fall to the ground

Front and Rear Armor plates fall from the player when losing all armor and fall to the ground

Sound :

Ambient sound effect volume and pitch variance increased

Sound Occlusion enabled on all weapon sound effects and enemy voice effects

Sound Attentuation adjusted on many special effect sounds

Xenomorphs :

Heavily reworked AI state rules and attributes to give maximum freedom to the xenos

Removed and Replaced many instances of buggy functions with similar stable functions (eg replacing displace with repath)

Reworked pathing costs to heavily favor walls and ceilings, and anything out of view

Enabled tail attacks from any surface

Disabled melee encounters to allow xenos to attack you from the front

Increased melee damage, attack speed and maximum combo count

Reworked skin materials to be less visible in the dark, but show greater detail under light through specular lighting

Switched Soldier Xeno leap for the Lurker leap with QTE struggle

Ranger xenos allowed to spit while moving and are more likely to engage in melee combat

Lurkers have been given more freedom on how far they can roam and how long they can hide when stalking

Raven 2nd and 3rd stages are easier to make the boss fight more enjoyable

Colonial Marines :

Rebalanced health, accuracy and damage to increase marine reliability and usefulness

Reworked pathing costs to promote keeping close to the player but prefer covered and less open routes

Adjusted combat timing rules to improve reaction time to changes during combat

Reworked skin, metal, fabric and rubber material properties

Shoulder Lamp angle adjusted so that during combat it is pointing roughly where the AI is shooting

Weyland Yutani Mercenaries :

Reworked pathing costs to significantly promote use of cover and flanking positions over direct combat

Adjusted health and armor to make accurate shooting more important

Weapon usage and damage rebalanced

WY Mercs will throw grenades if an enemy remains in cover or still for too long. Elites throw firebombs

WY Heavys have significantly more health

Reworked metal, fabric and plastic material properties

Weapons - General

Weapon hip fire position moved down to a more realistic position

Weapon Wander aiming mechanic completely reworked

Recoil Recovery rate used to simulate weapon wander while shooting

Max spare ammo for primary and attachments rebalanced according to weapon power

Weapons - Pistols

Slight damage increase at range

Large damage decrease during a Xeno pounce QTE

Weapons - Pulse Rifle (Hudsons)

graffiti removed from body

Switched to fully automatic firemode

Rebalanced recoil

Large long range damage boost

Significant damage boost over MK2

Highly effective against armor

Weapons - MK2 Pulse Rifle

Rebalanced to be a less powerful more versatile and controllable Pulse Rifle

Medium long range damage potential

Underbarrel Shotgun now fires Incindiary rounds instead of standard buckshot

Weapons - Pump Action Shotgun (Standard and Hick's)

Very high close range damage potential but extremely limited long range potential

Hick's Shotgun stronger for medium range engagements

Weak against armor

Weapons - Tactical Shotgun

Extreme close range damage potential but extremely limited long range potential

Fires special high pellet count ammunition with a high spread

Weak against armor

Weapons - Assault Rifle

Rebalanced recoil and damage to excel in human combat

Increased Rate of Fire

Defaults to Fully Automatic, can be upgraded to 5 round burst

High long range damage potential

Very strong against armor

Underbarrel Shotgun fires Incindiary rounds instead of Buckshot

Underbarrel flamethrower has significantly more fuel to compensate replacing the flamethrower pickup with the smartgun

Weapons - Battle Rifle

High damage at all ranges

Significant damage boost to ensure good shots are one hit kills

Weapons - Submachinegun

Boost to rate of fire

Low long range damage potential

Very weak against armor

Weapons - FlameThrower

Rebalanced to require a short sustained burst on untouched xenos to kill

Damage over time from fire is high but not enough to kill on its own

Weapons - Smartgun

High damage at all ranges

Increased rate of fire

500 round drum magazine

Tracking mechanic improved to lock faster, stick with moving targets and compensate for recoil more reliably

Weapon dispersal inversion disabled to make short bursts more reliable than continual fire

Smartgun has replaced the Flamethrower during the campaign any time it was found in the game world

Weapons - Plasma Rifle (DLC)

Extreme damage output over a small target area

Switched to instant fire

Only 2 shots per cannister

Weapons - S.H.A.R.P (DLC)

Projects fly significantly faster

Projectiles will explode via proximity during flight otherwise projectiles explode a short moment after contact

High damage over a small target area

Weapons - Double Barrel (DLC)

Extreme damage at close range over a large area

Significantly more spare ammo

Weapons - Ripleys Badass Contraption (DLC)

Pulse Rifle portion mimics Hudsons Pulse Rifle above

Slightly less vertical recoil but slightly more horizontal recoil than Hudsons Pulse Rifle

Flamethrower starts will a full tank but otherwise mimics the standard Flamethrower

Also available for Download are a series of ADDONS that allow further customization of the mod for a more personal experience (see readme included with download for full details) :

Adjusting Xenomorph health and movement speed

Adjusting WY Merc health

Adjusting Xeno and WY spawn counts

Adjusting Smart Gun spawn chance

Adjusting Weapon hold position

Adjusting UI Style