Musings about the Unreal 98 beta

[Darkman 4]

I always thought it was strange that the map flow in the beta is consistent with the final version's until it is suddenly interrupted by fhub4, 5, 6 and the unused catacomb levels, then suddenly jumps back to the final's set of levels after completing Cryox. It seems to me that the out of place section in the middle of the game is from an earlier plan for the game, where you'd have to go through Na Pali's deserts for some reason. The maps using things like the translocator hint that the "desert" section was scrapped long before the beta was made. I assume they were kept because Epic hadn't finished the middle part of the game enough for it to be in the game, but eventually the whole middle that is occupied by the desert and catacomb maps was scrapped and the game jumped straight from the sky town to Velora's Pass.

Speaking of the translocator, I cant' seem to be able to select it after picking it up in Aztec. Anybody know how to use it?

What's with the skyboxes? Earlier screenshots clearly show the cool looking final skies, but the beta uses those awful skyboxes that are literally a cube with a sky texture on in surrounding the map. Maybe they're skyboxes used for the devs to test out sky lighting or whatever.

Is there anyway to make the beta version of Unreal ED usable? I'd like to crack it open and see if there are any earlier beta materials in the game's files.

[Shivaxi]

The editor works fine for me. And I dunno what's up with the skyboxes....I just guessed they never implimented the skybox info actor yet or something

[Leo T_C_K]

The editor works fine for me.  And I dunno what's up with the skyboxes....I just guessed they never implimented the skybox info actor yet or something

They did. In unreal.unr if you remove that myeleved skybox actor which doesn't work and use the normal one, it will have skybox. I tried it and can show you screenshots if you don't believe.
But I think they did it this way because it was at point of transfer of the engine and maps and didn't finish new skyboxes using new method.
This is actually a press beta. Press betas tends to be messy and incomplete. You can select the translocator using a command, but the script was buggy and unfinished, although only few adjusts would need to be able to make. Also it needed two parts but if you pickup the source module and target module it won't work either due to a bug.
The editor needs to be copied to system btw, it is outside of it by default.