Alone in the Dark (DOS)

Alone in the Dark
Developer: Infogrames Publisher: Infogrames Platform: DOS Released in US: 1993 Released in EU: 1992 This game has unused animations. This game has unused areas. This game has hidden developer credits. This game has anti-piracy features.

Alone in the Dark is a French 3D survival-horror game that is now widely known as the grandfather of the genre (and tank controls).

Unused Areas

Scrapped Room

On the 2nd floor, there is a hidden room between the living room and the 3rd bedroom, behind the ritual chamber. Only colliders are drawn; the rest is missing.

The first camera view seen above can be viewed by going out of bounds and touching the appropriate camera triggers, or by extracting the file 00000013.dat from CAMERA02.PAK. The second camera view is located in 00000015.dat.

Hidden Cellar Stairs

Based on their positioning, they were probably supposed to lead to a cellar door outside.

Similarly, the stairs in the small room to the cellar on the first floor are not used. Instead, the PC teleports directly to the cellar once it has passed the door.

Secret Tunnel

There's a secret tunnel in the caverns with a jagged shape that was probably left in the game by mistake. This tunnel is possible to enter from the tunnel between where the first flying wasp-creature is and where the big purple spider is.

Unused Animations

Water Animation

Water can be animated by cycling colors 225-239 of the game's palette.

Unused Polygon Type

The game renders polygons in different ways - flat, transparent (e.g. glass), noise (e.g. doors), gradient (e.g. metallic objects) - calling different functions depending on the polygon type. One such function, MyAffPolyFlou (can be translated to "MyRenderPolyBlurry"), goes unused.

Below is an example of forcing the game to render the main character with that function:

Developer Credits

Present at 0001CC80 in the executable.

Debug by Fred le 25/11/91

Oddity

The axe thrown in the Gallery (from the Native American picture) is actually a smoke pipe.

Anti-piracy Protection skip code

The anti-piracy protection screen (only present in the original floppy disk release) can be skipped if you type in benjaminyaelfred. Part of this secret skip code comes from the game developer names Frédérick Raynal and Yaël Barroz.