Unreal 95 / 97 Alpha Research

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Aztec871d.wmv
A video I recorded from the 0.871d "aztec5" map, the napalmgun wasn't in the map originally but i figured I'd show it. I managed to get glide working there as well. The video doesn't have great quality but if I upped the original it would be over 1 GB..
You can spot the fireflies at the beginning, they give off light sometimes.

EDIT: Ruinsfort871d.wmv
Ruins and the mysterious "fortress entrance"(triton?) show off.
Yea don't ask me about those sounds playing randomly during one part, a strange bug for sure.

 

[Carbon]

Good stuff Leo. Thanks for keeping us in the loop. Quite fascinating to see the evolution unfold. Keep posting!

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

MonsterHall.rar
MonsterHall for the 97 may "test". This was made by me on request by Delacroix but I don't want to add more rooms/stuff. I already had lots of work reimporting/readjusting some stuff and also imported one very old skin for the other vase from elsewhere (not an actual unreal build but that was the really old vase version before the crypt skin). All decos are in the map I believe, just not all monsters, but all items/weapons are in too and most od the different/unique monster stuff is in, for the rest youll have to see the "fred" map and stuff but creating rooms for each inanimate monster etc is a bit wasteful.

 

[Carbon]

Great work as always Leo. I will check it out. Thank you!

 

[iLikeTheUDK]

TheKazuya didn't surrender, apparently.
This he sent me as a PM on YouTube:

before few weeks i got ass loads of unreal beta stuff, check that Thekazuya005 beta games fb page... the most interesting thing is: all unreal betas from 1997 with maps... anddd 3 UNREAL 1996 BETAS 0.83, 0.83 (that one is called the same, but its from october 1996), 0.84 (that one is from november 1996) the earlyest has 3 songs, early, early enemies and maps, seti siobhan, batset and "unreal", the songs are isotoxin, then an early version of "UTemple" and a really really early "Seti" i dont know why but "UTemple" is played on allmost every map, isotoxin is on the test lookng map which looks like the one where brute appears in the 1996 trailer which is actualy december 1996... oh, 4 weapons, automag (alt and normal fire, with early, early sounds differend from any we have), quadshot (alt and normal fire, this quadshot HAS SOUNDS), stinger (also early sounds, 2 fire models, and interesting enough it sounds were called nailgun, and this stinger's projectile bounce of the walls.), and Flamegun (no sounds, really buggy, when you pick it up, the game crashes), that was not the flamethrower described in unbible, this was before it. it sgares automag animations. oh also every enemie has early sounds...aaand there is the first red woman skin!!! movement is totaly differend and no dodging ofcourse. they added dodging in late 1997

 

[Delacroix]

He seems to have the stuff I leaked a few days back... the stuff Leo recovered....

 

[MakeMeUnreal]

I didn't read his message...What beta?

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

The 0.84 Unreal map is not the map shown in 96 trailer(which was an actual map). Those versions are originally from standalone unrealed installers and such dont really contain any actual maps aside unreal.unr usually which is a test map most often and only in case of 0.84 it reminds actual map but the map was created by tim sweeney and is called "Timstrosity" The reason why there were some actual maps recovered is tht they downloaded their zip files as example maps so the unreal engine licenses have some actual examples of maps. But it's not much, not even quarter of what was made for each version and most of them have no map examples at all.
And it's not all 97 betas(but most major builds anyway, but exclusidng early 97 stuff before the switch to java like unrealscript) and the maps are only few, as I showed before, but the late 96 versions were recovered recently but are NOT the same version which was the 96 leak, which I hope might be released soon. That version is earlier and probably has the bug eyed bigman skin still and acording to what i heard had few actual maps, and many song files.

- Leo

 

[leilei]

I think the progression of the softdrv is most interesting to me. There's no 32-bit 2D or model routines in the first 96 alpha, and the 8-bit color output got regressed as soon as they implemented screen flashes. That underwater turbulent-on-all-walls effect is a funny attempt at recreating Quake's waterwarp without touching the screen buffer.

All of these words I just typed above probably are way above TheKazuya's head lol

By the way did they really have to be in an installer, especially an installer that doesn't run in Windows 95, which just seems strange for something otherwise period correct?

Also the last 2 1997 alphas require a password.

 

[Delacroix]

I wasn't aware that InnoSetup is incompatible with Win95, sorry about that.

The password that will work for any alpha is: Epic / dj4ecrdciabcg7r

 

[leilei]

You'll have to use InnoSetup 5.4.3 non-Unicode

 

[Delacroix]

Ah. It's "Unicode" that is the problem. Thanks.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

This is the last video I'm posting in a while because I don't have much space left on unrealtexture and had to already delete a "mirror" of one large pack to free up space for the upsx release.
I am posting this to complete the set of the 871d map videos, because this is the last and only remaining one i didnt record stuff of.
871dmoros16p1.wmv
871dmoros16p2.wmv
As you can see Moros(e) changed quite a lot between august 97 and february 98, not only lighting wise but many areas are different. Please ignore the bugs, the version in particular is very unstable to record videos on especially, had to restart recording multiple times.
And the spiral pathnodes at the 98 leak version suggest that there was even staircase at place in one of the versions before it became the invisible bridge area.

 

[iLikeTheUDK]

TheKazuya told me that Master Unreal left the Unreal comunity, and stated that this happend because of me. Now I know he (probably) isn't telling the truth, but I just want to know just how grounded in reality this statement is.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

TheKazuya told me that Master Unreal left the Unreal comunity, and stated that this happend because of me. Now I know he (probably) isn't telling the truth, but I just want to know just how grounded in reality this statement is.

It is true except "happened because of me", what does he mean by that? Because of you? How so? I don't get that, how could you possibly be a factor to make master unreal leave.

 

[iLikeTheUDK]

It is true except "happened because of me", what does he mean by that? Because of you? How so? I don't get that, how could you possibly be a factor to make master unreal leave.

He said I "ruined Unreal" or something like that.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Whatever the case...I think he didn't mean you specificaly and more like he meant the people from the community in general, but I have no idea why you two started fighting and I'd rather not discuss it further, if he pisses you off just ignore him and vice versa.
I'd rather like if the game/differences were discussed instead of "kazuya this, kazuya that".

 

[leilei]

^ +1
The best defense against trolls is to ignore them. They want attention, so don't give them any and don't acknowledge their existence.

Also I wonder what unreal dev relics lie in whoever did Klingon Honor Guard? Several sound files in KHG have internal 1996-dated timestamps in them, and Umodel can't open their meshes... it's also unusual that they never made use of detail textures in the later Unreal branch and just stuck to a CD soundtrack.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

KHG felt like a mod for quake 2 than a game on Unreal engine, it's kinda sad all those great looking projects got cancelled and the first released uengine game was KHG, but it was microprose license so it wans't really under GTi, like the other projects, the only project surviving the big cancellation was wheel of time.
KHG having CD music doesn't mean anything, the old versions didn't even support cd music, but I uppose epic left that especially for developers wanting to have CD music in.
And sound files, what sound files exactly?

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Aug97conv.rar
Releasing the conversions from all the Unreal August 97 maps we have. I made sure they are as acurrate as possible, n exception of recration fot he firextures because they are impossible to recreate as they were unless the algorithm would be copied over. They are as they are, the maps, including the original bugs. So don't expect this to be coop playable or something, those are raw conversions and they took really long time, converting the 98 is plain easy compared to this. Replacing State instances with InitialState and adjusting positions and prepivots was just one of the many things needed to be done. I tried to recreate the old skybox look in moros16, the prerendered one, i would have left it without skybox because the other maps didn't have it, but since moros had the prerendered one, I managed to ecreate it somewhat in the map so the fakebackdrop surfaces are again linked. Warning, in 227 the sky in aztec might look odd because the surfaces had enviroment map tag(it didn't refer to the bmeshinviromap
though, the flag had totally ifferent purpose but does nothing in the final version).