alien race, the Ascidians. The crew of the Patton joins forces with the Ascidians, and the alliance gives the game its name. Eight other new alien races were going to be introduced too. Development The concept for the game was originally conceived in 1995. Its initial working title was X-COM 4 (later X-COM 5); the project was code-named Fox Force Five to stop media leaks. Development work began in 1996 at MicroProse's UK Studio in Chipping Sodbury, then led by the Terror from the Deep producer Stuart Whyte and designer Andrew G. Williams, who had also worked together on the Amiga and PlayStation ports of the first two X-COM games (Williams was also simultaneously a co-producer of X-COM: Apocalypse). The game's concept was inspired in part by the head-mounted cameras of the Colonial Marines in the film Aliens. The use of such cameras was also similar to the 1993 video game Hired Guns, co-created by Scott Johnston, a programmer in the original development team of Alliance. According to Whyte, the game was intended to be multiplayer-based, possibly with one player becoming the team leader and directing the other players. X-COM Alliance used the Unreal Engine. Deformable and destructible environments (as in the X-COM strategy games) were one of the game's planned features; the game engine later created for Red Faction employed a similar concept. In April 1999, when "much of the foundation work had already been set," the work on the game was then taken over by MicroProse's Hunt Valley studio (creators of Klingon Honor Guard). Chris Clark became the new lead designer and Chris Coon was lead programmer on the project; artists included Bob Kathman. The game was redesigned, including a complete overhaul of the game graphics and HUD. Dave Ellis provided game design advice, helping to coordinate elements such as the featured weapons and alien races for canon compatibility between Alliance and the other X-COM title in development, X-COM: Genesis. The game was supposed to use the heavily modified Unreal Engine, featuring skeletal animation, motion capture, a completely different AI, a new sound system able to store and playback large amounts of speech, and a DirectMusic-based dynamic music system. The 1999 E3 conference by MicroProse featured people dressed up as aliens and other items from the game's universe, but the display did not include a playable demo. Julian Gollop, main designer of X-COM: UFO Defense and X-COM: Apocalypse,