However, the Marine can win out by keeping the Alien at bay with a range of arsenal, while the Predator’s invisibility is totally useless against the Alien (the Predator is also limited to the life of his charge pack and by the fact that he can only track either Alien or Marine at one time… otherwise he’s one mean mother).

Also, there is a points system within the game which gives far greater reward to a Marine for polishing off a Predator than vice versa. Best of all from a game design point of view, though, is the fact that this system also eliminates the race to get the most powerful gun, which is prevalent in just about every other first-person 3D game.

Speaking of other first-person games, I have often been asked why we didn’t use one of the many 3D engines which are now available. The simple answer is that they weren’t available when we began work on AvP (when Doom was the benchmark), but the real answer is that we believe that using our own code enabled us to include some unique features in AvP.

For a start, no other engine gives creatures the freedom to run on ceilings and walls. The lighting in our game world is ‘real’, so if you want to fight in a dark space, you only have to blow the lights out.

We also decided that we didn’t like the ‘fixed enemies’ offered by most of the competition. You know the type of thing… if you walk around a corner and are blown away by a lurking alien, you know that next time around he will be waiting for you, so you plan accordingly. We have created a system which, we believe, removes this drawback and allows for more impulsive gaming.

What’s more, the decision to create our own engine has given the Rebellion team a chance to develop their own skills to the point where I believe that we can match anyone in the world. I’ll get around to paying proper tribute to the team in the final diary piece, but for next week’s penultimate episode I’ll concentrate on the rigorous process of bug-testing and ‘polishing’ which we are just about to complete. See you then.