Hello everyone, I am very glad and excited to share some news with you. I'm currently working on a new revision of Unrealed which will work with most of the Unreal Engine 1 games.

It is utilizing Nokia's Qt 4 toolkit and does not depend on any of the Unreal Engine source code. I had this working many years ago but I lacked crucial information to finish the project. I now have this formation and can complete this editor.

The benefits? No more dependency on Visual Basic. Compatibility with Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7 and probably Windows 8.

In my spare time, I have been working with what I consider to be a research build. It exists only to research. A rewrite has begun and it should not take too long to have a useful build for you guys/gals to use.

There was an obvious choice to make and I made it. Whether or not the original user interface theme should be copied. I decided against this. I want this editor to cause less fatigue on the hands and wrists. Less movement and more output.

Some screen shots (Large images ahead)

http://oi40.tinypic.com/10prhaf.jpg
http://oi41.tinypic.com/344w410.jpg
http://oi42.tinypic.com/veav7q.jpg
http://oi44.tinypic.com/1e9h50.jpg
http://oi42.tinypic.com/2hwfw53.jpg

Thanks for the response GreatEmerald. I had heard about the release of a new editor and I think this is great. Awesome people keeping an awesome community alive.

Unreal Creator( The best name I could come up with ), is meant as a direct replacement for the editor written in Visual Basic. It exploits the very same interface. It cannot be used for any of the newer revisions of the Unreal engine. Strictly for old skool editing. 

As I'm sure you know, many older Unreal engine games still depend on the Visual Basic revision of Unrealed. Games like Rune, Nerf, and a number of others. The developers never ported the respective editors to C++.

This is especially true with the beta versions of Unreal from 1995,1997, and 1998. They all use the Visual Basic Unrealed. Yes, this editor will work with these beta versions. The 1995 alpha will need some extra attention though.

I'm not expecting any large scale acceptance of this editor. It's more of a sentimental project. I'm sure many of you understand how I feel.

Anyways, here are some user interface mock ups I have been experimenting with.

Brush building interface:
http://oi43.tinypic.com/2v1r8eo.jpg

Resource browser (Classes):
http://oi41.tinypic.com/mt4ew4.jpg

Resource browser (Sounds):
http://oi43.tinypic.com/2ep7y55.jpg

Resource browser (Currently selected texture):
http://oi44.tinypic.com/2rogy2p.jpg

Texture browser experimentation:
http://oi44.tinypic.com/351brbk.jpg

Level management:
http://oi42.tinypic.com/vnkpj8.jpg

That is correct. This editor exploits the same interface and consequently will have the very same editing features as the Visual Basic editor it is meant to replace.

To further clarify though, the original Unrealed was capable of much more though it was never exploited. At one time, there was a plugin api that was never used and subsequently removed.

So, the goal here is to provide an editor that no longer depends on Visual Basic but that can also replace the original editor in its entirety. This includes the floor loft tool and shape editor.

Not all of the Unreal engine game communities have the same level of support as Unreal and Quake. Rune is still loved, but it is stuck with the Visual Basic editor.

I'll tell you what, Let's see how this project turns out and then we can talk about the future of Unreal on Linux and other platforms. But yeah, the user interface could be adopted for a native Linux editor.

GreatEmerald wrote on 02/25/12 at 22:45:07:


Nothing is concrete at the moment. My ultimate goal is to make the interface faster and more productive. Anything you, or anyone else, has to say is extremely important. The current design reduces the area of movement in order to accomplish tasks. The user interface is not even functional right now (aside from the view port splitters) so nothing is implemented.

In any case, here are some more screens of the editor working with the betas (1997 and 1998):

http://oi43.tinypic.com/2eyl16w.jpg

This is Fred.unr from the 1997 beta. As you can see the script for the Dragon actor is visible.  The manner in which this accomplished is different than the 1998 beta.

http://oi42.tinypic.com/1zxm5gm.jpg

This is VillaDM.unr from the 1998 beta.

Each of these screenshots were taken from the very same binary using a plugin which handles the beta editor interface. The view port sound functionality works fine in the 1998 beta and retail revisions of Unreal.

Very nice to see that, indeed. I wonder if it's possible to do something with the '95 tech demo like that...

GreatEmerald wrote on 02/29/12 at 17:10:04:


That it is a very good question. So far, the 1995 Unreal engine crashes upon starting up. I remember solving this issue in 2000 though I had yet to discover how the view ports operated.

Well, let's see what the old screen shots reveal.

http://hyper.dnsalias.net/infobase/archive/unrealbeta/uned800.jpg

We know this is the 1995 alpha or a build very similar to it. The famous blue sky is visible as is the cross icon in the title bar of the main window.

http://hyper.dnsalias.net/infobase/archive/unrealbeta/uned1024.jpg

This screen shot also shows the window icon from the 1995 alpha. More importantly, both shots show the view ports operating within Visual Basic which is a great sign that it'll work.

Aside from these shots, my own research shows that the editing functionality is present within the 1995 alpha. This alone is mind blowing. Quake was not even out in 1995. I doubt it even had dynamic lighting at that time.

I may work on the alpha stuff today and see if I can remember how I did it.

I can't help but notice that

THERE WAS A HELP IN UNREALED AT THE TIME

.

Why was it not included in the end Epic ? Why ? WHY ? WHY ?

Hellkeeper wrote on 03/01/12 at 14:58:29:


From what the help there says, I guess they thought it was written like an advertisement

Quote:


It depends on an interface. In all honesty, how Unrealed came to function should be a Computer Science course. 

Gemberkoekje wrote on 03/09/12 at 11:02:54:


Hello and sorry for the delayed response.

The viewports are not really a classical quad view. Actually, those screenshots used the code from the "chips" example provided with the Qt toolkit. I wanted to see what it would look like without having to write a bunch of code. Originally, I was going to have a header widget within the viewport to place buttons and what not but came up with something I think is much better.

Unless you write a large amount of custom code, you are limited to using the QSplitter classes. In order to create a pseudo quad view, you use three different QSplitters. Two vertical and one horizontal. The viewports are resized much like the Visual Basic Unreal editor.

Updating the view ports was a lesson learned. The mechanism used to open and update the viewports appears to be very clear, there are still problems with unknown causes. The easy part was getting the command correct. If it isn't a free standing viewport is opened which isn't constrained by the frame.

From there, it was resizing the viewports. all four of them. Sometimes, and erratically, the viewports would not refresh entirely. I learned through experimentation that that the command "LEVEL REDRAW" actually refreshes the viewport and fixes this issue. So far, this hasn't been a continuous occurrence.