Unreal 95 / 97 Alpha Research

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overtoad

New Member
Sep 1, 2011
4
4
1
Leo, I won't go into a long, boated history of who I was when I played this game in the late 90's and then Unreal Tournament in the early 2000's, but I did want to say that Unreal was my first FPS game and it remains very close to my heart more than fifteen years after I first played it on my computer in software rendering mode.

It's a labor of love that you have spent so much time digging through the murky haze of versions-past, and I wanted to offer you a heart-felt thank you for all the fascinating work you've done here. The history of the game fascinates me, and to see all these little nuggets of lost information come back to life after all these years is amazing.

Back in 2001 (I think it was 2001) I was flown to the home of Epic, Raleigh North Carolina in the USA, to film a documentary for a TV show on UT1. Mark Rein and Cliffy B came down and took us all out for lunch that day. One of the discussions I had with Cliffy and Mark revolved around the history of Unreal and all the leaks of it. When we got to that point in the conversation a shadow seemed to come across Mark's face and he quickly changed the subject. Cliffy just winked and smiled, hehe. It seems a great travesty to me that Epic isn't interested in releasing all of this stuff to the public, because I happen to believe it would bring renewed interest in their programs, but I'm not running their show, am I, hehe.

Again, thank you for all the work, and for all of those whom I didn't specifically mention. Playing Unreal and the DM maps for the first time was a level of discovery which stays with me today, and to know that people out there hold the game as special as I do makes me feel good.

I wish there was a way I could use my old name to coax some deeper level of cooperation out of people who could help you. If I can don't hesitate to reach out to me.

Keep up the good work, gents. There are rewards down the road for all this work. :)
 
Carbon

Carbon

Altiloquent bloviator.
Mar 23, 2013
557
10
18
overtoad said:
Leo, I won't go into a long, boated history of who I was when I played this game in the late 90's and then Unreal Tournament in the early 2000's, but I did want to say that Unreal was my first FPS game and it remains very close to my heart more than fifteen years after I first played it on my computer in software rendering mode.

It's a labor of love that you have spent so much time digging through the murky haze of versions-past, and I wanted to offer you a heart-felt thank you for all the fascinating work you've done here. The history of the game fascinates me, and to see all these little nuggets of lost information come back to life after all these years is amazing.

Back in 2001 (I think it was 2001) I was flown to the home of Epic, Raleigh North Carolina in the USA, to film a documentary for a TV show on UT1. Mark Rein and Cliffy B came down and took us all out for lunch that day. One of the discussions I had with Cliffy and Mark revolved around the history of Unreal and all the leaks of it. When we got to that point in the conversation a shadow seemed to come across Mark's face and he quickly changed the subject. Cliffy just winked and smiled, hehe. It seems a great travesty to me that Epic isn't interested in releasing all of this stuff to the public, because I happen to believe it would bring renewed interest in their programs, but I'm not running their show, am I, hehe.

Again, thank you for all the work, and for all of those whom I didn't specifically mention. Playing Unreal and the DM maps for the first time was a level of discovery which stays with me today, and to know that people out there hold the game as special as I do makes me feel good.

I wish there was a way I could use my old name to coax some deeper level of cooperation out of people who could help you. If I can don't hesitate to reach out to me.

Keep up the good work, gents. There are rewards down the road for all this work. :)
Click to expand...

+1. Great post. Pretty cool that you met the boys. :2thumb:
 
Leo(T.C.K.)

Leo(T.C.K.)

I did something m0tarded and now I have read only access! :(
May 14, 2006
4,794
36
48
overtoad said:
Leo, I won't go into a long, boated history of who I was when I played this game in the late 90's and then Unreal Tournament in the early 2000's, but I did want to say that Unreal was my first FPS game and it remains very close to my heart more than fifteen years after I first played it on my computer in software rendering mode.

It's a labor of love that you have spent so much time digging through the murky haze of versions-past, and I wanted to offer you a heart-felt thank you for all the fascinating work you've done here. The history of the game fascinates me, and to see all these little nuggets of lost information come back to life after all these years is amazing.

Back in 2001 (I think it was 2001) I was flown to the home of Epic, Raleigh North Carolina in the USA, to film a documentary for a TV show on UT1. Mark Rein and Cliffy B came down and took us all out for lunch that day. One of the discussions I had with Cliffy and Mark revolved around the history of Unreal and all the leaks of it. When we got to that point in the conversation a shadow seemed to come across Mark's face and he quickly changed the subject. Cliffy just winked and smiled, hehe. It seems a great travesty to me that Epic isn't interested in releasing all of this stuff to the public, because I happen to believe it would bring renewed interest in their programs, but I'm not running their show, am I, hehe.

Again, thank you for all the work, and for all of those whom I didn't specifically mention. Playing Unreal and the DM maps for the first time was a level of discovery which stays with me today, and to know that people out there hold the game as special as I do makes me feel good.

I wish there was a way I could use my old name to coax some deeper level of cooperation out of people who could help you. If I can don't hesitate to reach out to me.

Keep up the good work, gents. There are rewards down the road for all this work. :)
Click to expand...
I think the reason for Mark Rein's response was because I believe some of the leaks happened because he left some files on a harddrive of some computer used for presentation or deleted them improperly, at least that's what I heard. Right now I have technical and more difficulties(my laptop doesn't work atm where I have everything basically).
But I'm not sure if you can help, I'm also still after the other (or two) leaks that weren't recovered back, but I'm not sure if you could help finding some people who might have got it back then.
But if you mean contacting some people of the developement team, maybe. I am not sure if I mentioned it here but at the end of August I managed to reach out finally to Myscha and he talked a bit about his maps(and some cut ones), but I haven't heard from him since then again.
 
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dinwitty

DeRegistered User
Nov 10, 1999
860
1
18
midwest,USA
www.qtm.net
I remember picking this game up in the computer store, and putting it back on the shelf several times on differrent visits, read the cover stuff and specs, while I perused other games, playing Tomb Raider, etc. My PC wasn't up to its specs, then I saw EPIC Megagames on it, ah, the pinball games, and they did this?...so I bought it, thinking later I would try to upgrade my PC to run it. I finally found the CPU for my rig, 200mhz. Played the game, I was hooked. 320x200 software mode. Eventually down the road the 200mhz speed slowly fried the system it was too much for the technlogy then, new PC and 3DFX card you could finally play it better, later TNT card...and so on and so on. I dont think I got it played till about october 1998, had the game about a month till the upgrade.
 
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Wraith777

New Member
Dec 6, 2013
1
0
0
Hi to everyone.
Nice and interesting stuff, I always wanted to see how Unreal looked like in 96-97.

And I even had an opportunity to do this, but.. missed it, all links to builds 0.84 - 0.88 are dead now, so I can't find them anywhere :(. Can anyone share them or.. is it forbidden now for some reason (I can understand if yes)?
 
Leo(T.C.K.)

Leo(T.C.K.)

I did something m0tarded and now I have read only access! :(
May 14, 2006
4,794
36
48
You're right, ROR-UNRM link works but not the other ones, not even the one that was posted by delacroix on the previous page of the thread.
However I am not responsible for hosting those, that was stuff delacroix put up on his dropbox directory. Try to contact him, if he's interested. (and if he doesn't share the "Betas Suck" motto now with leilei)

Btw some further research was done and t3d exported with the help of "damaged", the editor mode can also be used if executed additional command.
 
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Wowbagger

Wowbagger

Curing the infection...
May 20, 2000
667
0
16
Sweden
Visit site
Dunno how i ended up reading this whole thread but its been a nice moment of nostalgia :)
I went through all the Unrealated stuff i have since the first news of Unreal started to appear but it seems i have nothing new to add.
I have this short music file that might be a bit obscure tho.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/91974582/UNREAL.MP3

I dont think it ever got used in the end.

Edit: Im not 100% sure it is from Unreal although the filename suggests it.
Does anyone recognise as it?
 
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Leo(T.C.K.)

Leo(T.C.K.)

I did something m0tarded and now I have read only access! :(
May 14, 2006
4,794
36
48
I think this wasn't discussed here before but it belongs here either way. In one of the early docs/notes there was a full description of the original '95 ideas for Unreal and such.
Also described was contents of an Intel version of Unreal, ready in about June 1996.
It was at the time the biggest version they had ready.
The content was following (quoted directly):
* 10 levels: Crashed ship, Sky city level set, Muck castle set, Pyramid set.
All of the levels exist in some form (some architecturally finished, some need design work, all need enemy/pickup placement).
* 7+ enemies: Skaarj, Baby Skaarj, Minotaur Skaarj, DeathAngel, BigMan, Manta, Beholder, maybe the alien dragon. All of the meshes are done. Most of the animations and artwork are done. Much AI programming remains.
* Lots of special items: Health pickups, armor, shells, bullets, etc.
* 6 weapons: QuadShot, AutoMag, Napalm launcher, some fireball shooter, and two TBD's (not to be confused with BFG's). Minor work needed on first 4, major work needed on remaining 2.
* Music: 5+ songs. Those are done. More songs would be nice, more variations would be nice. Optional.
* Sound effects for everything. Major work needed here.
* All levels will need to be played and tweaked carefully once the bulk of the AI work is complete.
 
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D

dinwitty

DeRegistered User
Nov 10, 1999
860
1
18
midwest,USA
www.qtm.net
alexander brandon has done more work than just Unreal. I'm kinda dissapointed EPIC had to mod the game up before release but then they made a lot of storyline changes which I think helped it out. But its underlying concepts were fleeting what they could do and a lot of gaming today reflects where Unreal almost went for release.
 
Leo(T.C.K.)

Leo(T.C.K.)

I did something m0tarded and now I have read only access! :(
May 14, 2006
4,794
36
48
My original post from way ago is gone due to various reasons, but I talked about Minotaur Skaarj and speculated what it is. I wonder if they used the minotaur mesh or something else. There was a script of minotaur in unrealscript examples and it did fire fireball projectiles for some reason.
This "Intel" version info was written about in April '96 even though it was to be finally ready by June for delivery to Intel.
Baby Skaarj was probably a small skaarj or early pupae.
DeathAngel could have been earlier name for DarkAngel, the early Krall, but not so sure here. It could have also been reskinned Wizard.
Beholder was implied to be early name for Gasbag, coming from Dungeon and Dragons, like many other early Unreal things or cut things. There were DnD references early on and even later in the developement, ranging from a kobold-like creature described in the earliest texts and going up to the fire-god temple map, Acerak, based on Acererak from DnD as well.
 
xBRYAN2000x

xBRYAN2000x

Betatester
Jul 2, 2013
25
0
1
23
Arkansas, USA
www.youtube.com
Mnk8Iol.png

Found98 on 0.874d
as Found88.unr
Conversion by me JamesKX2 aka xbryan2000x

Download Here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kqvrn086tlon54m/Found88.zip?dl=0


Enjoy the first revision of this conversion...
 
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