MAJOR UPDATE
Leo's most recent find is not just preservation of gaming history. It's a discovery, plain and simple. As it turns out,
Cyberlore Studios, the team behind such hits as
Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal,
Heroes of Might & Magic II: Price of Loyalty,
Entomorph and
Majesty also experimented with action gaming. Their later success with
MechWarrior 4 expansion packs proves their competence in that regard, but at the time when they developed
Emissary, they were completely green.
Initially, they planned to use the
Build engine that fueled
Duke Nukem 3D but made a risky decision of switching to Unreal Engine, which at the time was still in its infancy. Despite frequent and drastic changes Epic made when developing Unreal Engine, they still managed to create content... and it was high quality content. The developers paid a lot attention to detail. Unfortunately, in early 1998, due to budget cuts within GT Interactive, the game was cancelled before anybody announced it in the first place and so it disappeared in the darkness of oblivion.
Or not.
Those of you who obtained the X-COM: Alliance leak (or more specifically: the little archive Leo released with design docs and various other little treasures) may have discovered several text files authored by none other than
Tim Sweeney. Within them, early licensees of Unreal Engine were mentioned (as well as some of their projects) and Cyberlore was among them. Leo then set out to find the people behind Emissary -- and his search has given fruit. One of the developers has provided two large archives with early Emissary content and although it wasn't the most recent they made, it's still pretty impressive. Better yet - there are several treasures linked directly to Unreal history contained within.
- several apps containing sample stuff already recovered with X-COM files.
- Unreal.ucx source that Leo managed to compile under May 1997 Unreal build.
- September 1997 Unreal build (no maps or textures from Unreal, but Unreal.ucx IS in, in its original, unmolested form!)
- An old version of Seti.s3m music file
- four files from 1996 -- two t3ds, one utx and one unr (the last two are totally unopenable by normal means, but work is being done in order to hex-edit-hack-out things off'em
- A file from March 1998 Unreal beta build. Unopenable by normal means, but who knows what code or other stuff we can hack out...
- A text file detailing planned features for the Unreal expansion pack. How much different is it from Unreal: Return to Na Pali!
However, Emissary content roster is much more breathtaking:
- design docs
- sound effects
- texture library
- models for weapons and monsters
- multiple pieces of code
- many maps in multiple versions
Should anyone want to take over the Emissary project and finish the game, significant effort would be required. However, regardless of whether someone chooses to perform this task or not, one thing is certain: Leo has once again done something incredible. He unearthed a title we wouldn't have found out by normal means. And, in a way, I had my role in it as well, albeit indirect -- if it weren't for my assistance in recovering X-COM: Alliance, we wouldn't receive Tim Sweeney's log file which led Leo to this.
The most important thing...
When will this be released to the public?
Soon. Right now we would like to avoid scaring off any other Cyberlore people Leo may contact in the future. However, should there be no further findings in a couple months, you have my word: you'll have that build as it is.
In the meantime, please observe this image gallery, showcasing Cyberlore's work done on Emissary's maps.
Now... as you can clearly see, Unreal guns were placed on some maps. And yes, they're (partially) functional. One map even has an enemy, that one comes from Emissary. So, there's a lot to see. However, the entire content is in alpha state, obviously. No real scripting or gameplay. Just bare-bones levels to wander around on.
