An extremely enterprising Alien: Isolation mod project, OpenCAGE, has released its latest set of tools for the game: And demonstrated just what a big deal this is by unimportant Counter-Strike’s Dust 2 map into Alien: Isolation and releasing the relentless Xenomorph and some Working Joes to hunt the player down (thanks, RPS). Obviously one would hope to never meet an Alien anywhere, but a big open space where your only protection is wooden crates certainly doesn’t seem ideal (though weirdly enough is basically a reduction of the unmade Alien 3).
“I’ve just released a big update to the tools that adds support for custom meshes, materials, and textures—something that has been requested for years,” said Matt Filer, creator of OpenCAGE. “[It] also supports custom scripting in the game’s proprietary scripting format, and modification of behaviour trees & a load of other game configurations.”
Naturally, Filer thought the best way to show this off was whacking an Alien into Dust 2, and apparently it only took him 15 minutes. The implications for Alien: Isolation modding are of course much deeper and wider, though that all depends on what modders decide to do with OpenCAGE: This update will let them import new models, animations and so on into the game, which hasn’t previously been possible.
The new OpenCAGE update launches as Alien: Isolation itself is heftily discounted at 80% off (surely you’ve all played it by now, though worth noting that the very good DLC is also going cheap). I also learned that OpenCAGE launching yesterday, April 26, apparently ties in which what has been designated ‘Alien day’ by space nerds, something I initially thought was a wind-up but no: The moon LV-426 is where the xenomorphs are discovered in Ridley Scott’s masterpiece. Not sure how you’re supposed to celebrate that: Have dinner and enjoy your chest bursting open?