[RELEASE] Biohazard 1.5 Hacks

[Carnivol]

Nice to know. I think Alzaire was the first to publicly call the PSM build the "40% build" but it's been so long I'm not certain. How did you guys come up with the 40% value? What was that based on?

I already said that. We checked what little we knew of the build at the time up against available media and just roughly threw it on a timeline where 0% was start date and 100% was what evt. was our assumed cancellation date (ie. more or less the oldest RE2 assets, which generally dates back to April 1st, although there were probably 2-3 months of pre-production and what not before that). That's context. Gives an idea of roughly where they were time wise, but not really assets wise.

The last build shown was technically the last build made, since the official Complete Disc footage was released long after the project was scrapped and Capcom would have no reason to use an outdated build to showcase the Prototype. It was missing some assets that were later revamped, though. Meaning that while they were certainly done by that point, it was never burned to the disc (or coded into the game, like some of the assets floating in the PVB [or PSM] disc).

Game development isn't linear. Stuff like the builds they've used for footage could be anything from complete milestones to just someone's daily for hardware testing of a single function (or compiled just for the purpose of capturing that footage - despite it not being operatable/implemented in the main code base or part of the current milestone target). The Complete Disc footage was probably just assembled from footage in the archive or the most recent stable build from the vault (since dailies are generally not archived outside of active development anyway - especially not back then)

[Kegluneq]

The 40% moniker most likely stems from a brief group chat between THIA staff (group was basically the usual gang featured on the podcast) on Skype when talking about the build PSM had acquired years ago, and then the 40% number was just thrown out there as a reference to just approximately how far into 1.5's development period that build "most likely" was -- based on the very limited information we were given when we were both negotiating with PSM and also assisting with content verification and some translations before he basically entirely pulled back thanks to the fantastic public drama the game's sudden discovery unearthed (and by the logic used at the time, "cancellation date == 100%" - So the number wasn't even referencing to "retail goals", but rather time period from start of development to cancellation ;D) Curator also used the 40% moniker, iirc, but I think it came from us after we helped with identifying the state of which his build was in.

The more you know.

Nice to know. I think Alzaire was the first to publicly call the PSM build the "40% build" but it's been so long I'm not certain. How did you guys come up with the 40% value? What was that based on?

Is it safe to assume the game was cancelled post 24th December 1996? Surely there's no reason to keep developing content for a game with no certain future.

Yes, that seems to be the case. None of the assets featured in the Trial Disc were present in the official Complete Disc footage, and that was released in mid-1998.

And there is always the possibility that the last build shown isn't the last build that was made (or the last thing that was implemented), it could have been their last "Milestone" build though. For instance, when Im covering Stargate on my site, I was given the last milestone, but the game had been worked on off and on after that.

The last build shown was technically the last build made, since the official Complete Disc footage was released long after the project was scrapped and Capcom would have no reason to use an outdated build to showcase the Prototype. It was missing some assets that were later revamped, though. Meaning that while they were certainly done by that point, it was never burned to the disc (or coded into the game, like some of the assets floating in the PVB [or PSM] disc).

[Borman]

And there is always the possibility that the last build shown isn't the last build that was made (or the last thing that was implemented), it could have been their last "Milestone" build though. For instance, when Im covering Stargate on my site, I was given the last milestone, but the game had been worked on off and on after that.

Is it safe to assume the game was cancelled post 24th December 1996? Surely there's no reason to keep developing content for a game with no certain future.

[RMandel]

... the more you learn. Thanks. Always wondered about that.

[Carnivol]

The 40% moniker most likely stems from a brief group chat between THIA staff (group was basically the usual gang featured on the podcast) on Skype when talking about the build PSM had acquired years ago, and then the 40% number was just thrown out there as a reference to just approximately how far into 1.5's development period that build "most likely" was -- based on the very limited information we were given when we were both negotiating with PSM and also assisting with content verification and some translations before he basically entirely pulled back thanks to the fantastic public drama the game's sudden discovery unearthed (and by the logic used at the time, "cancellation date == 100%" - So the number wasn't even referencing to "retail goals", but rather time period from start of development to cancellation ;D) Curator also used the 40% moniker, iirc, but I think it came from us after we helped with identifying the state of which his build was in.

The more you know.

[Kegluneq]

There are two problems with the percentages used.

1. The "40% build" was never acknowledge by any of the developers. That was a term coined by Alzaire, if I'm not mistaken. No one in the community worked with Capcom 4, therefore they have no way to assert what the PSM build (or the "40% build) would be (in terms of percentage) to the actual developers.

2. The "80% build" and "65% build" percentages was said by two different developers who were working in two different things. Hiroyuki Kobayashi claimed that the game was 80% completed in a GameSpot interview and he was working as a Programmer. Shinji Mikami claimed that the game was 65% completed in a Famitsu interview and he was working as the Executive Director. As you can imagine, both of them have very different roles in the development of the game; while Kobayashi's statement refers to the technical mumbo-jumbo (coding and programming), Mikami's refers to everything past the architecture of the game (such as FMVs, soundtrack, voice-acting, gameplay balance, extras, marketing, etc). You cannot take these percentages at face value; there needs to be some understanding what they mean given what the roles of these people were.

This is why I always refer to them as Era Builds or "event" Builds (V-Jump Festival, TGS, Famitsu, PSM or Complete Disc/Final). Percentages are fine because people know what you're referring to, but cannot be considered as an actual estimation because all of them have different sources. As for the actual debate whether there is a vast difference between the "40% build" and the "80% build" exists, I'd say it's pretty evident that it does. Consider the two following things:

1. The amount of information we had of the "40% build" exclusively based in magazine scans screenshots and video footage provided by PSM owner and to what we've learned ever since it was leaked. It's completely insane just how much information we were missing from that build by not having played it.

2. Much like the "40% build", a lot of other stuff might exist in the "80% build" that had yet to be implemented. Even if the game was not completed, there might be assets that would certainly help to polish and provide a closer experience to the intended final product.

Also, it's always helpful to remember that the time-gap between "40% build" and the "80% build" is estimated to the placed at least a month. Go and check out the data on the PSM leaked build and see just how much the developing team had done during October. My guess is as good as any other but from what I've seen the "80% build", while it lacked presentation, was pretty much integrating the missing pieces from the 40% build, like cutscenes, events, puzzles, gameplay balance, character models and perhaps, corrections to the enemy A.I.

And to answer someone who asked if the bioflames and Complete Disc builds were the same, the answer is yes. If you want to, I can explain in detail why.

[RMandel]

"80%" was and always will be a misnomer, applied several years later by someone at Capcom (can't remember who, don't have my RE15 history handy right now) in an interview. Shinji Mikami said at the time that the game was only 65% complete, and that's from the famous Famitsu interview given (within a year or two?) at the time. I've always interpreted the "80%" figure to mean the game PLUS the finished final FMV cutscenes, which as we know were ready to be added but never were. That's the only way to make any sense out of that "80%" figure. If anybody would have known how finished the game was, it was Mikami himself. He was the project leader, after all.

As geluda has pointed out, there's all kinds of evidence in the data we have that the "final" build wasn't as finished as some would like to believe. There's evidence of room jumping in the Inflames images, as well as missing/misaligned masks and 3D objects, unfinished dialogue (see a few posts back), and so on. As others have suggested, anyone who wants to get a feel for how the final build of RE15 might have played ought to try the BH2 beta 2 sometime - especially in the latter stages. It's the closest we have so far to what was probably the actual experience. A lot more content than the PSM/40% build, but still very "broken" in a very real sense.

[J0shuaKane]

makes sense to call the final build the final build, whatever leaked one is dated closest to cancellation, which as far as we know is the one from bioflames, so if we are not going by our imagination, that is the final build.

still very excited about you fixing up the PVB DB, i cannot show my appreciation enough! THANK YOU!

[Accell]

I just refer to it as the "Final Era" build. Do we know if the Bioflames build is the same one featured in the complete disc videos?

[Darkness]

Very much possible. There are other sources which estimate that the final build was just 60-70% complete. Would it make sense to just drop the term "80% build" altogether, and we could just start calling it "the Final Build" instead?

"bioflames build"

[Northman]

Could it be that the gap between what's called "40%" and "80%" is smaller than estimated? I know those were never approximate in the first place, but the "80%" seems fairly generous.

Very much possible. There are other sources which estimate that the final build was just 60-70% complete. Would it make sense to just drop the term "80% build" altogether, and we could just start calling it "the Final Build" instead?

[Zombie_X]

There are lots of unused animation for Birkin as well. He has running animations, standing up animations (from lying face down on the floor), and other unused attacking animations. It makes you wonder, how complete the 80% build actually is. Looking at the 40% build, I'd say it was far less complete than what we think. There is so much unused stuff on the 40% build (animations, effects, music) that it makes you wonder if most of that stuff was meant for later builds, which I think it was.

Could it be that the gap between what's called "40%" and "80%" is smaller than estimated? I know those were never approximate in the first place, but the "80%" seems fairly generous.

That's my impression. There's many verifiable things that were never fixed in the bioflames build such as masks, boundaries and mesh collisions despite all the extra rooms the build has. The PSM build also contains a large chunk of bioflames material such as background camera angles and animations that really bridges the gap between the two. A lot of what was added just seems to be updated character/enemy models and textures, as well as implementation of the unused PSM build animations in new event script and cutscenes. On top of that there's no evidence anywhere to suggest that the air jesus bug was ever fixed, really lending to the idea that the bioflames was just about as buggy and incomplete as the PSM build was.

[Don Piano]

Ahhh, sad to hear