Aliens: Colonial Marines was a game that let down a lot of gamers and fans of the franchise. And modder ‘TemplarGFX’ decided to mod it in order to improve it in every possible way. Or at least as best as he could.
TemplarGFX has released the TemplarGFX’s ACM Overhaul that improves the game’s AI, Gun Play, Materials/Lighting and sports a number of bug fixes. Going into more details, this mod reprograms and rebalances Xeno AI, Human AI, Weapon Mechanics, Ballistics, Animations, Shaders, Particles, Decals, Lighting, and engine features to get the best out of the game possible.
Regarding the visual changes, TemplarGFX had this to say:
“Basically there are 3 changes I have made to the game engine itself.
Materials: All materials used by all the objects in the game control how Shiny they are, how reflective they are, how emmissive (glow in the dark) they are, and how bumpy (normal mapping) they are. EVERY one has been reconfigured to not have completely unrealistic settings (like specular power 30 + specular scale 8 + specular contrast 4) so now everything is shiny in a much more realistic way
Shaders: All shaders used by all the objects in the game have been reworked to correctly (shocking stuff) apply normal maps, diffuse maps, specular maps and detail maps to objects. Now that textures are actually used correctly, alot of objects look MUCH better. Normal detail tiling has been increased and reflective surfaces look better through increased reflection map size
Particles: All particle emitters have had the LOD levels for consoles and long distances replaced with the in-your-face uber detail LOD level for each emitter. This means fire a few hundred feet away from is just as detailed as it is when your standing next it. Same with Sparks, Smoke, Steam, Water, Rain, Blood, Acid, Drool, Goop and Fog/Dust.”
Those interested can download the mod from here.
Have fun everyone!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Downloading & reinstalling Colonial Marines… thanks for the info…
Really?!!
This comment looks sarcastic in my opinion. Like veiled “who gives a crap? Why do you even write an article about this bad game?”
Whaa, I’ll bite. This game was such a let down, mainly because of the high hopes I had and Gearbox blowing a ton of smoke (not volumetric!) up everyone’s behind. I still havn’t really forgiven them as they seemed to write off a shoddy game just to get money and time to support borderlands. If this mod brings the game up even just a bit it will be worth it as a Huge Aliens fan who didn’t really get into Isolation
Update:
Installed mod and can say the difference is readily apparent. Visuals wise the game just seems alot clearer, there are still fog and flickering lights but those changes in specularity really help to make it coherent and not look like a brown blurry mess like it did before. I installed the Ultra preset and didn’t really notice a big hit to performance at all, the only negative I saw was aliasing (stair stepping pixels on straight edges) seemed more noticeable but I think I’ll remove the read only on the engine config file and see if there’s anything I can tweak in that regard. But overall a big improvement, better than any other reshades I’ve tried w/ this game. For once I actually feel like playing it for an extended period.
As far as the other tweaks I only played level 1 so will need more time to make a judgement on the AI but it did seem harder than it did before, only a couple hits from the xenos was death. Excellent mod, another reason why PC gaming is so great.
While true polishing a turd doesn’t make it not a turd but a shiny diamond coated turd is much more desirable than what was going on before.
Thanks for the update, considering trying it out for myself!
Can polish a turd all you want it will always be a turd.
PC modder polish turds all the time.
Playing this in co-op with 3 other people is hella fun, single player it is dull though.
Nothing can save that game. Drop all that non-sense and make yourself a favor, BUY ALIEN ISOLATION. That game captured 100% the “vibe” and “feels” of being hunted by an alien in soon to be ripped apart ship.
“That game captured 100% the “vibe” and “feels” of being hunted by an alien ”
True and it stuck with it for 15 godamn hours which was insanely borring and repetitive it might be optimized and atmospheric but it is so godamn borring and repettive. Colonial marines never meant to capture being hunted by aliens but mowing down aliens with a pulse rifle.
I’ll give you that but colonial was crap on first day and still is. But that’s my opinion.
at this point with this update id say its mediocre.
Make myself a favor?
Like one of those kazoo things….?
I don’t quite think you are aware of the intended appeal of the 2 games you are comparing. AI is absolutely intended to appeal to the hunted, plodding, horror-genre style gameplay. It’s a unique experience that successfully makes use of a classic, fantastic franchise.
Colonial Marines (and I may be wrong on this as I never played it) was assumingly meant to tap in to the bad-ass, heavy-weapon toting, military brotherhood idea the 2nd film delivered so amazingly. Whether the game actually accomplished that goal, I couldn’t say. But it was NOT the same intended experience that AI was.
You are right but i thought, if you’re developing a pc game based on the Alien franchise why not make it accurate ? I haven’t seen a single Alien movie where 4 person kill hundreds of alien with machine guns. I just thought Alien isolation was much more close to the movie than any of it’s predecessor.
Well, yea. The fact that a movie that goes into the Col. Marines more and shows that kind of action was never made is truly a national travesty (I think Cameron *should* have done that in the 90’s). But like I said, that’s a totally different approach to the franchise, and it’s a shame this game was such a failure.
Indeed it could’ve been SO much better.
You’re entitled to that. “everybody’s gone to the rapture” would be a walking simulator. Alien isolation, while it has alot of walking indeed, is much more than just walk and look around. But you can still hate it.
its not a walking simulator, it is a crouching in the darkness simulator.
sounds like viral marketing to me. why this game? why now? oh, what do you know rumor has it a new alien game by gearbox showing up at e3… hmmmmmm……….
you do the math people.
lmfao you think randy pitchford would be allowed anywhere near the aliens license ever again hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha good one.
Don’t be a idiot. Use your noodle
do a duke nukem insteadm
Thank u for this mod. Really appreciate it when there are people trying to help polish up the game even if its a little becuz i know it’ll take a lotsa effort just to produce a little. Never played the game more than an hour. Will definitely try this out soon!!
It seems you can polish a turd. Nice job. Just a pity the game is simply beyond redemption. 🙁
Thanks I might try the game now.
It looks fine for a 2005 game. I honestly think Doom 3 looks better.. its a real shame. Actually Doom 3 with mods looks better than most modern games, but that’s just my opinion of course. 🙂
P.s. Thanks for the mods of course. Its always good when people try to make things better. The sweetFX mod actually made a big difference for me. That’s how i played it myself. If i wasn’t a huge fan of the ALiens, id totally ignore this game.
The game itself was slapped together for a quick buck.
No not really check some screenshots instead after the patch.
I gotta yea, i saw the video but it didn’t look too good on my phone lol. Either way, the game aint too special.
Those mods will just make it alright for a single playthru. I cant bring myself into downloading it again. The game has a cool idea, but somehow it all feels boring. Its hard to explain.. i guess we all know that 😛
I appreciate the work thsi person put into it. Especially as it mustve been a hell of a learning experience. But the fact a modder was ale to do this, and lone person on steam was able to increase the efficiency of the AI initially (responsive xenos with less system resources needed) and the company couldn’t do any of this is even more of a reason to not want to give gearbox any more of my money. Hopefully they sell off the duke nukem franchise so I can still enjoy that title.
What i liked about that game was that you did not have health regen but you had to find medkits and armor and you could run out easilly and end up in situations you have very little health and have to make do, also that you could carry all the guns with you and choose which ones you have equiped also the leveling system and weapon customization, what i did not like was the abomination the campaign was. Graphics wise, ai and bugs was ok since i played it after that gigantic update that improved the graphics and fixed up the ai.
It could have been so much more than what it ended up being. When you enjoy killing wayland yutani troops in a spaceship more than killing aliens you know that something got messed up in an aliens game.
I’ve put about 50 hours into this modded version of the game and it really makes a huge impact. AI is the main draw for me because of my low range laptop I play on but the screen shots look awesome.
I’m getting a weird blur around the outline of the weapons when I go into the loadout screen from the main menu. I’m not sure what it is… Drivers are all up to date and I’ve made sure that I haven’t twerked anything out… So… :/ Hmmm… Anybody have any idea? Been holding off without playing before I get this figured out… 🙁