The April - May beta (unknown build) detailed discussion

[Leo T_C_K]

Oh yea and if you are lacking music packages for the maps (like the february ones use some of these)...use the ones from the mac version...here is a convenient zip, though I
RECOMMEND REMOVING or renaming Queen.umx and SkyCity.umx because it will conflict with the texture package names. I suppose it once didn't..

macmusic

[Leo T_C_K]

I wanted to still note down, about amplifier, that with asmd it tends to make a small circle/delayed expansion red circle unlike later versions.

I only played some dm/koth today on the february maps and solaris, because I'm not feeling too well...but umm well the dp has problem applying amplifier in dm, i suppose in SP it works usually after map travel anyways so it has time to "register". With asmd you can still throw the weapon away and pick it up and then its guaranteed to work. Similar problem also occurs in regular unreal, its just here its "more regular" lol.

Also What's up with the ASMD in DmSolaris? Does it have some different properties or what is happening there? Because most of the time the ASMD combo move is broken there with the sparks not appearing in it. Why? What's wrong there or is it the properties of the zone?


Also I wanted to note down that chizra/passage in the february version is also apparently inconsistent one map has the same texture as the front with thinner hallway(I like that a lot better tbh) and other has thicker with different texture.

[Leo T_C_K]

As for chizra...
well I made it past the wooden logs/trap that is not so much trap as slight annoyance anymore, but I'd swear that when I fought the slith (and I made him fall onto the floor opening hatch), that after killing him and after he killed the nali before, that there was some kind of blue spark there. I can't explain it what happened and why that appeared or if there's any code explanation for it. Strange

Also...at the bridge with the Slith I managed to make the Slith stuck in the jumping anim while shooting him and he didn't fall off the bridge the fight continued on the bridge in fact.
Funny how you can more easily interrupt the scripted sequences here.

[Leo T_C_K]

I saw the blue spark again but in different place but it might have been a random lighting error. With some maps those tutti frutti lighting errors tend to happen, but here its just blue so I wonder.

Or its related to the nalis because it was again at a spot next to a nali. Is there something special with their code or alarm points or something?

Speaking of Nali the one thing I noticed different about this Chizra is with the Nali in the cable car area.

They used a different method of making you follow the nali, this one is entirely scripted like some scenes in Unreal PSX. But also initially they had to make the nali go in a fear state to be able to execute this or so or be triggered. This is why in the release version that particular nali fears you. But they stripped it of that sequence too.

The point is that he gestured you from far and already goes ahead and gets killed by the Slith at the ramps. You can still save him and only then he will fear you lol.

The point was to hint to the existence of that shieldbelt secret I bet or to point you to the cable car controls, not sure which. But it serves as a hint. And he's supposed to get killed so you don't get to see him fear you. As usual they fucked this up lol...and its worse in the released game. They forgot to set him back to friendly after they removed the complex sequence.

Speaking of that, is "makenalifriendly" even used? I know its not reliable also. I often had to modify stuff for unreal psx to make some sequences work better.

[Leo T_C_K]

Ah...so Solaris has explicit detailmode set to false in levelinfo and apparently that is being overriden there in the beta.
bHighDetailMode=False

That is why no sparks. I assume its because of all the warpzones so it will be less tasking online...

Either way asmd altfire completely cancels/destroys dispersion pistol shots so it works as some sort of forcefield against that too so its useful against bots and skaarjtroopers for sure. The tazerproj won't get destroyed by those shots.

edit: also you know what I like sometimes? That the bots decide to start running away/running for items instead of fighting you all the time. That actually makes them more player like now and then. Not sure why that was changed or "fixed".

edit2: The skaarj can dodge underwater lmao...
also devilfish have no carcass and causes scriptwarning when it happens as its set to None. Is the skin the same actually, same resolution as in the release version? Just wondering as I can't check that.

Also I'd swear there's one more Slith in the hall with stick of 6 fires lol.

No knife in the chamber of death despite the name...

[Leo T_C_K]

one more bonus map (by importing the combined may7 morbfanza back to the orig version), this one had to be fixed with turning two semisolid crates into solids because of the intersection with the zones that caused a huge hom. I didn't test this version though but it should be ok.


dmmorbfanzam7

[Leo T_C_K]

So...apart from testing new stuff, I did play through Ceremony. Not that much different here apart from some strange bugs. Like that with scubagear you can get protected against lava similar to the upakscuba, when you surface and breathe in...so that bug existed once in the original too, huh?

But yea I think there are like two more sliths than the regular version, also the cable car gets part of it stuck above, so yea that whole is also different with the trees and its clear why that boulder was placed, to mask the collision issue where you could get stuck but not stuck for good.

The velocity of the river here is not fatal unlike with nyleve so myscha obviously tested stuff more with "current" versions than pancho did.

Like on 200/vanilla the healing water zone can reduce your health to 100 as well if you have above, lol.

Anyways its also very easy to save that nali from the skaarjscout. On vanilla its "near impossible" in a way.

Oh yea and the most jarring thing is that the co-op passage after the stuff gets locked with the spawning skaarj, that passage has very bright lighting that torch is like super bright lol. That is a very obvious difference.

EDIT:
Oh also...pressing the number keys will result in the out of ammo messages but not pressing nextweapon/prevweapon keys or mousewheel. Then it acts like in Doom. That's the thing.

edit2: also strangely i didn't spot that harpoon cable being in the ravine, at least its not so obviously visible anywhere. interesting.

[Leo T_C_K]

I wanted to post this before still.

I did instruct jackhonda to make a couple of things still, the first being conversion of votlan, since it was based on a beta vortex2 from before this version and the original plan was to revisit vortex rikers at least once anyways. Even though this is a third party gti implementation originally from france as bonus cd.

so here is the first version (obsolete)
votlanpack

and here is a fixed version, recommended.
the dm one got added stinger and rifle pickups where the snipers and infantry were, a test myleveled stinger class that shoots the unused dispproj projectiles and uses shells because they were unused on the map without there being a version of the quadshot. (even though quadshot was supposed to appear in the original re-visit plan of vortex rikers as per unreal bible and i guess in a way also the unreal novel serves as inspiration where they also get more weapons from the wreck later like flak cannon with less ammo and flamet)
also the screen was made shootable again as was intended or whatever. just doesn't get swapped like in the flp version with the damaged monitoring screen


votlanfix

original votlan cd covers:

[Leo T_C_K]

So, after a while it is a bit devastating to go back to the public library instead of a public computer at the installation that doesn't have time-limits on it. But the assholes decide to lie about me to the folk who got us the place in the first place. All I did was to raise my voice against the treatment they were given me(and I wouldn't have if I wasn't antagonized by certain somebody right before) but again I am accused of things just so they can justify their behavior and ban me out of spite. You know...remember that card that masterunreal,hyzoran and co made that said "banned from possibly every forum ever", well now it can say the same thing about homeless shelters instead.
JUST. F My S Up.

Either way to stay completely on topic, the hardware mode is stretched out on the library computer, while connection is faster, its just inferior in graphics even with glide2x. And the game runs too fast while on the other one it was a corect speed even on software and it looked so much better on that screen. And there's no sound(you see thats against noise in library) and they don't even have headphones to lend anymore. Crap.

I also forgot to say about team colored skins, there is M1_Yellow on Chizra at the room with the torches and buttons at them, the one after the stepping stones the skaarjscout and the devilfish. Otherwise on passage and ceremony there was no teamcolored skin carcasses that were missed.

I tested the votlan stuff, obviously the pickup message at the new "stinger" wasn't changed but whatever lol. Otherwise it "works as expected".

[Leo T_C_K]

I did create a "basic" wip tcrf article on this version. Not sure if I'll ever finish it. As of now its collection of notes from people.

[Leo T_C_K]

KTC version of GateWay map as put together by JackHonda on my instructions

gateway

you can play this on dm/dk modes as well, though the cowshrines will still appear so do "killall cowshrine" if you're bothered by them.

Anyways I didn't have that much time to test/play any maps further much but Dark Arena is one of the least different maps in May7, though the front doors lock forever and don't get unlocked it seems, so its recommended you go down first. I didn't verify if they can be opened again from the outside though.

The Titan is a bit tougher and amplifier won't cut it with him easily like on the regular version.

edit: also DKQueenEnd

DKQueenEND

[Leo T_C_K]

I tested those maps, though now that I think of it some item/weapon should have been lowered down with the queen pod. It should work just like with the queen.

Either way ktcgateway is a bit funky but works alright. The bots are idiots though even with proper pathing. But that's to be expected. They keep skating and bumping their head against the lifts. So you have to help them with eightball etc.

Anyways Dark Arena confirmed to have locked front doors forever. Funny thing is that you can still access it via the cellars later. So coop only works via the cellars there.

Also there might be more trees etc on the cliff edges as opposed to vanilla, not sure.

[Leo T_C_K]

Confirming that the door is indeed forever locked thus forcing players to take the cellars in co-op in the beta.

Now harobed: The well thing is bugged and has impassable bsp bug inside or something which might explain why the cross beam mover thing doesn't work. You can just stand in the air there.
There is also bsp bug in the church where you fall through the wood, however you can avoid this by hugging the left side and then jumping up, instead of falling down onto the church floor, so this is not a game-breaking bug.
There are more flies, a carcass hangs in the air and a misplaced female body and table partially in wall are a thing.
And indeed the skaarjwarrior that spawns and goes into the caves never appears here. There might be some small item differences too.

Terralift: the lift still has corona/lens flare at the bottom and there is cool lighting with it (but they removed the smoke fireeffect when it opens up already). Also the corona thing is probably broken on later versions since moving coronas always were problematic. Also due to that bsp bug the slith gets destroyed but doesn't trigger the event so the counter never gets the final one. You can spawn a slith and add him tag "gorille" or whatever it was called. Then when you kill him you can open the door and there's that extra mercenary with the tarydium barrels out of place. Again Terralift and Terraniux are suspsected to have been modified by GTI employee at the time and not Inoxx himself. This is the first map that cannot be completed without cheats completely. (well dig kind of counts too)

I'd swear one of the translator messages is different but not sure which one anymore.

[Leo T_C_K]

"you can no longer edit or delete that post" dammit I was just doing that. Then the magic time limit hits and I lost the progress. Great. Amazing.

Well I am not sure if I noted down the differences in Gateway and Unreal. The misc maps.

Gateway is mostly the same except that the windows to space in the upper corridors don't have glass/fakeglass on them. So you should be sucked out into space vacuum but you aren't LOL.

Also the introship is not rotating around the ship. That's about it though.

The Unreal map which is a flyby version of NaliC, doesn't have the cable car despite the NaliC one already having it in this version. Yet it has that balcony, which they NEVER added back to regular NaliC, at the tower with the two barrels and the Nali. Talk about consistency. The damn door at ExtremeLab be DAMNED too! lol
edit: yet as I said in the previous version of the post, they did add the cable car for consistency in the release version to the flyby...lol
but not the other way. You always see that balcony when starting the game and then when you play the actual game its not there.

MY MONEY BACK LOL. ITS FUCKIN RAW!

[Leo T_C_K]

I'm done, I don't want anything to do with these elitists. I started to add day by day the notes in a more precise manner than in this thread and detail...I don't even have a copy of the article.

03:42, 30 April 2025 Rachel Mae talk contribs deleted page Proto:Unreal/May 07 1998 Beta/pre-release, possibly version 180/181 (this page sucks and multiple people agreed that it shouldn't exist)
01:02, 26 April 2025 Leo TCK talk contribs created page Proto:Unreal/May 07 1998 Beta/pre-release, possibly version 180/181 (Created page with "===Short description:=== Mistaken for a fake due to the build being possibly modified in GT Interactive offices and thus falls outside of Epic's internal builds. Some develope...")

In this light, the recent attacks on tcrf.net are actually justified because they just attack their own userbase and block innocent connections.

[Leo T_C_K]

OK...so this thread will be the only one to note down the differences then. Terraniux is more barren than the released version, less ammo and items all around, more deadends. The obvious was already said the extra buttons and the misaligned doors and the screwed up pillars, also some extra triangle below water. Still it was mostly fucked up by someone at gti, but still weird.

Noork, the doorway at the start doesn't grow that ceiling suddenly, there's more tentacles, three mantas and that mercenary on the cliff are the main differences. Ruins not much different there but gasbags are a bit more difficult to kill imo and the devilfishes spawn more dynamicaly in the weaponpowerup area and outside of it oh and the end fight with titan you have to climb up first as the door is locked at first.

Not much different in trench and isvkran4, maybe the gasbags being always in two at first or something but it might be just the beta's behavior in general. bbl

[Leo T_C_K]

Also I think that the vent in isvkran4 looks different (well the one in the loose "isvkran" version has the same textures as in the feb beta) but I'd swear that this is the case too, its still different to retail a bit.

Otherwise there's really not much that wasn't already discussed. Oh yea the "robot" suit at trench, there are two of them instead of one. And the mover sequence doesn't flicker like in the released version. So its overall a better SNYDERCUT version lol.

Its funny how you can just pick out these things that are better in the beta or not.

[TigerTheGreat]

To have a more complete Snyder Cut version of ISV kran, IMO one could consider including the new areas Seven Bullets introduced. It'd feel more complete with them.

[Leo T_C_K]

To have a more complete Snyder Cut version of ISV kran, IMO one could consider including the new areas Seven Bullets introduced. It'd feel more complete with them.

There are also the mysterious vent shafts above the coolant control area in the beta suggesting at least spawning monsters, plus we know that there was at least one other floor/area cut from isvkran32 as such based on screenshots. its kran32 specificaly that once used to be bigger.

Anyways...I made some very important discovery about a cut deathmatch level that has been sitting under our nose all the time. I will make a separate post.

[Leo T_C_K]

I altered the ctf tutorial script for it to work on the beta version (though we had to break the scoring system for lack of time it wouldn't matter anyways) and gave it to jackhonda.
so its the same map as ktcgateway except with that (doesnt function properly just a basic test). Also ospweapons.ospdoublemag is here, its adapted original first release from may 1998. This is how greenmarine started out, before he got hired by Epic.

ctftest

And here, a conversion/backport of inoxx's "DM-Core" MothershipCore

I felt it fitting since this is a cut level and it features a location already found in the beta version.

[Leo T_C_K]

the last mod for the beta for now (and for a while), because I don't see what else can be tested/tried right now. (apart from maybe the march unreali being reconstructed but that would take more time)

So here's the converted february "shareware" hub maps with the push and pop system added in and zoneinfos adjusted. This is to test the actual hub functionality in this beta and how good it works.

hubsystemTEST

[Gamesharder]

the last mod for the beta for now (and for a while), because I don't see what else can be tested/tried right now. (apart from maybe the march unreali being reconstructed but that would take more time)

So here's the converted february "shareware" hub maps with the push and pop system added in and zoneinfos adjusted. This is to test the actual hub functionality in this beta and how good it works.

hubsystemTEST

Tested it. It does work nicely!

[Leo T_C_K]

while the "conversion" isn't perfect(there are some minor blinding zones left and bugs) it does work well, I did however a network test and there it doesn't work at all, not even normal map switching/server travel on co-op. Its completely fucking broken lol. Kill the Cow on dedicated server strangely works well on the other hand LOL.

Translator doesn't even show up on dedicated server too, can't read messages. Reminds me of those UT bugs honestly that sometimes pop up randomly.

It seems like they had real trouble getting co-op to work properly after numerous updates.

Anyways, I did notice a bug at the translator that at one point it did show a previous message or maybe it was a missing feature. After all the hint system is also broken.

As for the rest of ISVKran, I played through it and isvdeck1. All the gunners and officers use eightballs as was said before. But the spawning of troopers on deck1 doesn't happen its instead scouts that get spawned even after disabling forcefield. There are texture differences like at the bridge elevators/pillars and indeed the dancing wires. Like we said with yrex and even zeur, they should have added a config variable for the wire decoration that controls the animspeed. Its not too bad from some angles but with some it looks a little strange. Well people used to be able to set it up in older 1997 versions the speed of any ambient animation, but yea epic changed too much lol.

And this stuff is just hardcoded.

Isvkran32 also doesn't have those bsp bugs the later version has like the side of the signs is not invisible here/HOMing. At the golden cores before accessing them I mean.

In teamgames the bots on your team are even more sore losers than the vanilla ones if you start to friendly fire them lol. And they dodge so instantly fast and flakshell you etc. They forget their own "orders" and just start standing, being all sore at you and firing back sometimes and dodging at most of your fire.

Also on deck1 the start spawning skaarjscouts don't hesitate at all and will rush through the barrier, killing them, like is implied in the messages. For some reason they did add fearspots or whatever later, so they are more wary of it. Here they just get happily killed lol.

[Leo T_C_K]

Oh yea and I noticed while playing vortex2 online, that the glass window from below, the one with the health in it, appeared above right before the escape hatch entrance. Like a keyframe being stuck there. Weird shit really. Just a random rectangle hanging in the air, random block of glass.

[Leo T_C_K]

There's not much about spirevillage and sunspire that hasn't been said yet I guess. But given that there is a gasbag at spirevillage and less stuff to hide behind it does make it a harder map. Like the whole rock missing and some other "adjustments". In both sunspire and here there are some leftover floating corpses too. There's that extra nali in sunspire and the whole path is with the lamps to sunspire....

There's a lot different including the placement of monsters, the fact that more eightball wielding troopers are here, etcetera.

The stupid misplaced lift makes it impossible to complete map without cheats so there's that to add LOL. But yea most of this was already said.

Funny how some chests just pop out those books. Decoration use used to be more flexible, then at past 220 they changed it to only contain inventory and only in old maps it worked (until 227 fixed that lol).

Overall sunspire is a better map in this if it wasn't for the issues. its really odd how this version was put together and you get two maps that you can't finish without cheats while all maps in the february beta can be "basically" finished. Even if some of it requires tricks and dodges you don't have to use cheats...here that's not the case despite being a "complete" beta.