Unreal 95 / 97 Alpha Research

[Hyper]

Leo's latest recovery:

[...]

Grab here.

Very cool! Thanks for sharing this gem!
Though I'm glad these monsters did not make it to the final in this state. The dragon is quite nice however.

 

[Carbon]

I can't imagine how a wizard would have fit into the whole thing anyhow. A kind of monster I suppose, but still an odd duck.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

I can't imagine how a wizard would have fit into the whole thing anyhow. A kind of monster I suppose, but still an odd duck.

The "Scrag" monster in Quake was originally called a wizard too, in the qtest still(though this is much earlier stuff than qtest to begin with). And as the "readme" said in the original leak, this is the first 3d polygonal characters seen in a game basically. If you played quake missionpack 2 there were those "wraith" and "overlord" creatures, the second one even having four arms, but of course the general style of this reminds heretic.
The wizards have eventually became the Nali monk statues though. Yes each time you stare at these statues now you will know what they really are.
Also if you played Xargon there are enemies similar to wizards but they actually use technology(as well as the hooded enemies in xcom I guess). Xargon is kinda predecesor to Unreal in a sense that it contains mix of fantasy/sci fi themes, though Xargon is in different dimension altogether so it's not strange there is strange stuff around though. Maybe that was kinda the idea for Unreal as well.
The odd look of the early woman is a bit of a mystery but we already had that skin from the mesh archives of another build recovered with the emissary stuff.
However it's possible she was equiped a "gladiator" like costume at some point after entering the planet/unreal world. Her eyes look a bit odd though I wonder what was the explanation for that.

Not sure if I mentioned but on one of those skins when exported(though the game messed up the colors a bit/background pallete upon export) is a part of skin which i did not recognize from the shape to fit in anything in particular. However then I remembered the meshes from the tools and the skin actually fits into the winged horse creature (which we nicknamed pegasus though i have no idea if that was the intended name). Because of the messed up pallete the "ed2" doesn't read it correctly so I can't truly view how it was supposed to look (because it actually smoothens the other part of skin without it getting all "poly" visible, but I did try it in unrealed at least and the wings really do fit nicely except the body is screwed up and has incorrect uv maps(at least for the later builds/formats) and we have no body skin of the horse creature anyway.

 

[Eternus]

Very interesting stuff Leo. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Raynor.Z]

This is some marvelous recovery. Thumbs up, Leo!

 

[leilei]

Notice the lack of lightmaps? The lighting is practically Doom-ish 'fog'. Could the engine be earlier than that Tech Demo? Would make sense with the tech demo help file mentioning these monsters referring to this old build.

not to mention that lack of the orthodox cross in this earlier June 1995-dated icon......

 

[Delacroix]

Yeah. The monster preview is from September 1995. The level preview is from December 1995, with some of the levels being from November 1995. The September map will not open under December 1995 build.

 

[Raynor.Z]

I've not been following each build, but how many tech demos like that one are known to exist before 1996 betas?

 

[Delacroix]

Two, the level preview and monster preview. We have both, I believe.

 

[Raynor.Z]

Good

 

[Eternus]

Some website called The Cutting Room Floor has tons of other beta stuff for Unreal. http://tcrf.net/Proto:Unreal/1997_Tech_Demo

 

[Delacroix]

They don't host betas from what I see.

The build they describe is 0.864v and is available all right.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Notice the lack of lightmaps? The lighting is practically Doom-ish 'fog'. Could the engine be earlier than that Tech Demo? Would make sense with the tech demo help file mentioning these monsters referring to this old build.

not to mention that lack of the orthodox cross in this earlier June 1995-dated icon......

It has lightmaps but by default its in someting like rmode 6. You can change this Mode by going into Mode menu.

As for tcrf, the 97 "tech demo" or whatever you want to call it is a build that was once leaked in 98 but gained hardly any attention, it's clear it was though a stripped down bare version of the unrealed installer package that the early unreal licenses had(and also this explains the mysterious shot1 at misc) and someone made a map to put most of the monsters in while removing some files like unreal.ucx containing the whole code/mesh stuff.
This build got resurfaced in 2011(thank to my efforts again) but it was by that "hacker", but this wasn't from epic's ftp it was actually a directory with leaks as it turned out as the guy kinda tricked us to believe he was epic employee, hence the initial "don't share" attitude.

 

[Eternus]

Hmm, interesting. Thanks for sharing Leo.

 

[dinwitty]

The Wizard looks something like the Crypt Statue in Unreal, its like certain early game ideas got reconstituted.

 

[Eternus]

The Wizard looks something like the Crypt Statue in Unreal, its like certain early game ideas got reconstituted.

Now that you mention it, it does.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

The Wizard looks something like the Crypt Statue in Unreal, its like certain early game ideas got reconstituted.

Yea we already figured that out when the loose meshes were recovered but we had no robe skin for the wizard, so the plan was to make later a custom skin based on the monk statue. Though apparently the robe was more detailed than that.
Also I made various screenshots in ed2 after pasting the wings on a skin with proper pallete.
FHORSE.RAR Flying horse aka Pegasus or whatever it was meant to be. This mesh is apparently from april 1995, making it a really early mesh at that. Perhaps this was the horse for the woman to ride on.
Also two more screenshots:
[SCREENSHOT]http://unrealtexture.com/Hosted/Leo_T_C_K/rare/Gargo0.png[/SCREENSHOT]

[SCREENSHOT]http://unrealtexture.com/Hosted/Leo_T_C_K/rare/Un95sky.png[/SCREENSHOT]
And a tip, you can land on top of the buildings in this monsters tech demo, just select Look - Entire Map and do show coordinates on. You'll notice the Z value lowering, when it gets close to zero you'll be close to the start area. While you will slide off the building you can safely land on the fence.

 

[Eternus]

So our protagonist was originally gonna be able to ride a pegasus in Unreal's unfinished days. Wow. P.S., I have no idea why, but the skybox reminds me of something I would see in an animated movie.

 

[dinwitty]

kinda fun to see the girl and dragon for real this time.
This image was in one for their other games I have (probably one of the pinball games)

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

kinda fun to see the girl and dragon for real this time.
This image was in one for their other games I have (probably one of the pinball games)

And that map is in the december 95 tech demo, except that it was missing from the release on yper's page because whoever gave it to him ran the game first using the batch files thus overriding the default unreal.unr.