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Unreal 1 -KARPATHIAN KASTEL- An original map rework from 1995

Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 10:33 am
by makemeunreal
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[center]---The Story Behind the Classic---[/center]

Cited from an old Gamespot article "Blinded by Reality":
The day after Schmalz's fateful decision to show the prototype, the Epic Apartment was, as usual, entwined in a sea of cables that connected an ungodly number of computers - machines that were supposed to be used for software development. At the time, Bleszinski, then a California high-school senior (complete with pony-tail), was attempting to finish up his new adventure game, Jazz Jackrabbit, while Schmalz was tinkering with the demo that would eventually become Unreal.

Progress was slow. Although software development was their full-time job, Bleszinski and Schmalz were gamers, too, and 1994 was the golden age of Doom. Id Software's first-person shooter was the rage of the industry - a palpable, adrenaline-laced, run-and-gun action phenomena. And Schmalz and Bleszinski were not immune. "The bottom line is that we played a lot of multiplayer deathmatch," says Bleszinski - to the point where they had to hide their habit from company founder Tim Sweeney. "About twice a day, Tim would come over to the apartment to see how things were going on our games - the games we were supposed to be working on. So, when Tim knocked on the door, we'd be in the middle of playing our daily dose of deathmatch. Surprisingly, as soon as the door opened, all the computers would mysteriously be rebooting. 'Oh gee Tim, all the computers just crashed!' we'd tell him."
Weeks passed, and Schmalz - who does most of the programming, art, and design for his games - was still toying around with his technology demo. "At that point, the game was going to be really small. It was just me doing my own thing," he says. But as work progressed, he decided to take some risks. "I added textures to the environment to make it richer and took off the ceiling of the caverns to see if I could do an outdoor game. Then, medieval elements were added, and I started to add buildings to the environment. It really started looking good, but I needed to crystallize my ideas into a real vision for the product."
Enter Tim Sweeney, the University of Maryland-grad and programming-genius-turned-Epic-founder. When Sweeney saw Schmalz mapping a demo level on a piece of paper, he realized Schmalz was working in the development equivalent of the Stone Age. "Tim couldn't believe James was mapping things out on paper," remembers Epic's VP of marketing, the ebullient Mark Rein. "So Tim said, 'Hey James, I'm going to build you an editor!'" Sweeney set to work building a computerized palette of shapes and brushes that would make it much easier to build a game environment.

As work progressed on both the demo and the level editor, the excitement - and the trepidation - began to build. The development team didn't know what the demo was going to turn into, but it was becoming clear that it had the potential to take Epic into an entirely new direction. "Up until that point, we had made some pretty cool little platform games and pinball games, but no one really took us very seriously," says a blunt Bleszinski. "We needed to make a huge splash with this game."

The game shipped in May 1998 as a game very different from the one they started with.
Let's study the cover of the vanilla game from '98:
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duh fans of the game quickly realized how different the advertised game was compared to the final product.
Even the retail-cover gave it away:
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Note that this is nothing compared to the real ammount of things we've never seen.
With the hard research work of the community people slowly recovered tons of unsued stuff we would have never seen otherwise thus expanding the lifespan of the game.

Nowadays, pre-release content is one of the hottest things in the community, most projects featuring them. See: Resurgence.
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[center]The impaler being reused and it's a great "tool" to eliminate some foes![/center]

One of the earliest versions surfaced pretty early giving players a look of what Unreal could have been.
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Don't mistake me, I'm glad Unreal turned out the way it is now, but I also love the feel of the early versions.


-CAV-FORM. HERE

My goal is to mimic the behaviour and feel of the Unreal planned in 1995 by recreating an "only-seen-on screenshots" map, making a new gametype, recreating the "eyeball cannon", a new HUD and using enemies from the 1995 version only (BIG THANKS TO LEO AND THE OTHERS WHO SCRIPTED THEM!)

The recovered screenshots were in .PCX format and are pretty great quality, giving me a chance to use Photoshop to recreate the textures used in the shots.
Note that none of the textures used in the screenshots survived until the final release, so I had to recreate every one of them.

The original shots:
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WIP Screenshots:
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Re: Unreal 1 -KARPATHIAN KASTEL- An original map rework from 1995

Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 11:05 am
by Leo(T.C.K.)
I'll respond first to something before I forget, about that cover analysis image:
*clears throat* - like Delacroix tends to say now
"Another unseen map with different nali model and texture"
What are you talking about? That's the beta skytown church.

The cover image with skycity/nalicast textures is not, that was identified as Amethyst from Eric C. Reuter, one of his last skycity maps before leaving Unreal.
EDIT: Now to comment on your work. The dimensions etc are not as accurate as they perhaps should be, however if you are not attempting 1:1 remake go for it. I just hope you'll end up releasing this one, since there were so many projects you haven't released.
I believe the original creator of most of those early maps was actually Myscha, this being an example of his first maps he created for Unreal, on the original screenshots. Too bad they weren't ported to the November/December version and we never saw these outside of the screenshots.

Re: Unreal 1 -KARPATHIAN KASTEL- An original map rework from 1995

Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 12:54 pm
by makemeunreal
I tend to believe that I got most of the sizes good. I studied the original maps from '95.
They used a lot of awkward shapes and sizes too tho.

Let me know which sizes are not good. I'm not going for 100% (As it is far beyond of what a human is capable, considering how odd the shapes and sizes could be) but I'd like it to be "faithful".

That monstrosity (the pics from different covers) is just "informative". I didn't have time to like make an appropaite one.
I've got to memorize a 400 site book till tomorrow...

Re: Unreal 1 -KARPATHIAN KASTEL- An original map rework from 1995

Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 3:02 pm
by Leo(T.C.K.)
Well the only person making really accurate recreations of screenshots have been yrex that I know, he's really extraordinary and precise at that.

But one needs to have a very special mind for that, one that I don't have. But, just like with everything, you excel at one thing while not being good at others.

One time I was almost exclusively making levels, then I started doing all kind of content at once while also arguably starting to lack behind in what I used to be better, but such comes with a major respnsibility/managing a whole project like the UPSX rework etc.

Re: Unreal 1 -KARPATHIAN KASTEL- An original map rework from 1995

Posted: Mon Apr 08, 2019 3:09 pm
by makemeunreal
True.

He is really precise. We love his work too! :D

Re: Unreal 1 -KARPATHIAN KASTEL- An original map rework from 1995

Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2019 12:31 pm
by makemeunreal
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Re: Unreal 1 -KARPATHIAN KASTEL- An original map rework from 1995

Posted: Tue Apr 16, 2019 11:36 am
by Leo(T.C.K.)
Awesome and belivable, except that the wooden part seems a bit odd/incomplete. I think the dimensions there were a little different originally. But it's no biggie, this is acording to your vision.

This map actually (the screenshots of the original) inspired me to make or have the plan to make the map that would follow isle of sharighar btw. I wanted to recreate that room with the pillars and those weird frescos(without the frescos, I would instead use shanechurch or something) and statue in the middle I would have.

The plan for legend of sharighar was to have 4 to 5 maps, with isle of sharighar being second or third based on if I had to split the skaarj prison and mine as separate maps. If split then isle of sharighar (plus new parts of it, extended with a puzzle) would be the third map, followed by fourth (inspired by this) and fifth.

Re: Unreal 1 -KARPATHIAN KASTEL- An original map rework from 1995

Posted: Tue Apr 16, 2019 2:22 pm
by makemeunreal
Well, you can use it to finish up your campaign if you want.
The more maps we have the more fun we can have.

Re: Unreal 1 -KARPATHIAN KASTEL- An original map rework from 1995

Posted: Tue Apr 16, 2019 5:12 pm
by Leo(T.C.K.)
Yea well I'm still chewing out the final e1 patch and full episode release as we speak. Becuase of the reoccurence of the linker crashes on ut and classic version of unreal ( I only tested it on one machine while travelling, not enough apparently), I took time to improve some of the maps, initially by giving yrex instructions, then I took over. Now yrex is not really working on it anymore at the moment, hence why it's coming a little slower now. I still don't know whether he wants to finish his e1l8c further edit or whether I should, because that and a minor fix is all left to release.

So we'll see what I'll do afterwards, either the FLP further addon, or I might try this. We all need a little break from UPSX stuff after episode 1 is released anyway and yrex is already taking the break.
EDIT: Note that the linker patch will contain improvements and fixes for levels from e1l7d up to e1l8d, yes that will make e1l7d the most patched level either, but for crying out loud i released the stuff initially as LITE and I knew that e1l7d was finished up way too fast for proper release

Re: Unreal 1 -KARPATHIAN KASTEL- An original map rework from 1995

Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 5:13 pm
by makemeunreal
A little update.

Looks like the project got to a dead-end as I've ran out of ideas...
Also tried to animate and skin the winged horse but I couldn't.
Skinning wouldn't be a problem but animating it would.

Re: Unreal 1 -KARPATHIAN KASTEL- An original map rework from 1995

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2019 11:25 am
by makemeunreal
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Re: Unreal 1 -KARPATHIAN KASTEL- An original map rework from 1995

Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 1:23 pm
by makemeunreal
Most of the custom pickups and weapons are ready.
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Health potion in motion.

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The Eyeball spell pickup model and it's ammo.

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The Tome of Thunder and it's ammo in the background.

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The Tome of Thunder in FPS while firing.