Mysteries of old vortex rikers

[Leo T_C_K]

Of one of the old vortex rikers' like ONPGUY would say.
VORTEX MESSA in other words....ahem...

No but seriously, think about the map and how it changed over time. We have seen few versions ourselves and saw more on screenshots.

The betas we have (plus votlan) show different stages of developement, in some the stairs under bridge are climbable, sometimes they have to be jumped instead too, not to mention the developement versions of unreal psx having their own vortex rikers set of levels, but that's not even the original map and is slightly different continuity. Then consider the version in the unreal novels and also unreal bible....

We need a SNYDER CUT of Vortex Rikers. No but really...once things settle down and we start to live somewhere as opposed to being in shelters and temporary places (or worse, being stuck in a big city just on the street). One things settle down me and zeurkous will resume working on what we already started with "nn_fhub1", but we will expand it into the whole game, it will be more like RTNP Ultimate Edition than Unreal Evolution in spirit, don't worry. It won't be like Unreal Redux either. But indeed more closer to a remaster and the beta levels being entirely optional to play, the actual beta levels as opposed to changes made to maps and original intentions/new takes on those ideas.

There are also the cases of me and other people having played a different pre-release version of vortex2/nyleve as well.

There are small details like corpses that differ in every version, or the computer screens and panels, in some of them they are cracked or even were movers, the doors between the escape hatch and the bridge used to be just proper movers, too. Then the whole area between the february version and the may version at the actual prison having been changed multiple times before they settled on the execution room.

And...like was originally planned and like unreal novels show, you were supposed to re-visit vortex rikers (hence votlan cashed on that idea as well).

yrex added an additional thing apart from the warlord room, in the flp version of votlan, but that's not exactly how I remember it being. I believe at some point there was a coop passage between the bridge and that mysterious door, yes. I remember once taking it, it might not be identical how it was recreated, but either way instead of the execution room there used to be not even the lift down but instead straight there was an active forcefield and the room with computers and humans, possibly some leftover of the security but they wouldn't let you through and they were obviously bots, but being scripted, not randomly walking around and picking weapons. The old bots you could even use in machinimas like "powerout" shows, before 220 versions.

Anyways even earlier in 1997 we know there were forcefields of different kind also on some of the cells being active or partially active. This is also the case still in unreal psx with that smaller cell block. The forcefields are still mentioned in the manual, but by the time you wake up they are all disabled. The voice line forcefield disabled remains unused in most versions, but it refered to the big one I talked about. However I never got it disabled but because in the march/april version that I played and possibly used the push and pop system still, the map vortex2 and nyleve/fhub1 seemed to be combined, so the point was to revisit the vortex rikers later and that might have been the only version to explore that in 1998. Even if it was mostly a coop thing. The ship was still oriented differently in that version like one recovered screenshot showed. So the main entrance was possibly not buried or fully buried, thus you could re-enter the ship I guess.

In yet another version and maybe even in the same one, you could go at the second nali hut to the caves and then turn right where there would be a mine door that would lead to an elevator that could only be activated from down and its default position would be up. This would end up in a cave above behind the first nali hut, as a shortcut that could only be taken from below, as above you'd be blocked by non-functioning lift. This was most likely because they couldn't get the cage lift working right and people got stuck down below often. So they added another lift, until they fixed the issue. But it would be a nice touch to restore, a lift that has a broken panel upstairs/isn't working and can only be called down from below...

Now, another even older version of Vortex2 would have you fight the skaarjwarrior after he runs away (remember he is also damaged from all the explosions) so he would have lower health than a regular skaarjwarrior. This would be the first fight...

because you never meet that particular skaarj again in the game and it doesn't make sense where he disappeared to. The point was to get the gun, heal yourself and THEN fight him. Instead we got the first skaarj fight in dig instead.

But...the version that had the cave lift had reportedly a skaarjwarrior wandering next to the second nali hut, so it might be "him" instead, still no explanation how he got there though.
And that sometimes he went into that hut to harass the nali or kill him. Not just the tentacle being the danger there..
he would be only 'maybe' present on higher difficulty too. Its difficult to tell without having access to it. But that version reportedly already had the final vortex2 rotation in. Just it was so buggy otherwise that they had to make this cave lift only to revert to a previous version later once that problem got magically fixed.

[Gamesharder]

In yet another version and maybe even in the same one, you could go at the second nali hut to the caves and then turn right where there would be a mine door that would lead to an elevator that could only be activated from down and its default position would be up. This would end up in a cave above behind the first nali hut, as a shortcut that could only be taken from below, as above you'd be blocked by non-functioning lift. This was most likely because they couldn't get the cage lift working right and people got stuck down below often. So they added another lift, until they fixed the issue. But it would be a nice touch to restore, a lift that has a broken panel upstairs/isn't working and can only be called down from below...

But...the version that had the cave lift had reportedly a skaarjwarrior wandering next to the second nali hut, so it might be "him" instead, still no explanation how he got there though.
And that sometimes he went into that hut to harass the nali or kill him. Not just the tentacle being the danger there..
he would be only 'maybe' present on higher difficulty too. Its difficult to tell without having access to it. But that version reportedly already had the final vortex2 rotation in. Just it was so buggy otherwise that they had to make this cave lift only to revert to a previous version later once that problem got magically fixed.

This is kinda new to me, or maybe I just forgot about it. How do you know this?

[Leo T_C_K]

In yet another version and maybe even in the same one, you could go at the second nali hut to the caves and then turn right where there would be a mine door that would lead to an elevator that could only be activated from down and its default position would be up. This would end up in a cave above behind the first nali hut, as a shortcut that could only be taken from below, as above you'd be blocked by non-functioning lift. This was most likely because they couldn't get the cage lift working right and people got stuck down below often. So they added another lift, until they fixed the issue. But it would be a nice touch to restore, a lift that has a broken panel upstairs/isn't working and can only be called down from below...

But...the version that had the cave lift had reportedly a skaarjwarrior wandering next to the second nali hut, so it might be "him" instead, still no explanation how he got there though.
And that sometimes he went into that hut to harass the nali or kill him. Not just the tentacle being the danger there..
he would be only 'maybe' present on higher difficulty too. Its difficult to tell without having access to it. But that version reportedly already had the final vortex2 rotation in. Just it was so buggy otherwise that they had to make this cave lift only to revert to a previous version later once that problem got magically fixed.

This is kinda new to me, or maybe I just forgot about it. How do you know this?

That was from the pre-release version that was "accidentaly" sold or something like that, I was told this, don't have time to explain further right now though.

[Leo T_C_K]

Its just a summary of what I was told by few people, one of them being zeurkous himself, because it was sold by a book store back in 1998 in the netherlands. It was later pulled off, so it might have been a test version sold by mistake. Unfortunately the disc broke very early on so his copy wasn't preserved. It wasn't as unique as some of the other versions that are missing, but still it was a unique version. Its like those jazz jackrabbit 2 oems that were also somewhat rare and were beta...so maybe it wasn't a mistake but was technically oem/limited version. I have no clue.
These things tend to be weird and they are hardly documented. Remember it even took ages to get back the s3 savage version in full glory and only one guy seemed to have it still.

Like there's still possibility that the intel one was released after all (the one with the fusion creative addonpack). Because initially it was talked about as if it was released and eric had it on his portfolio too, he didn't use the words cancelled unlike with unreal psx. Its just completely unclear whether it was put out there or not in the end. It was completed unlike unreal psx, that's for sure.

All in all, that period of Unreal developement was chaotic and messy. Its a small miracle the game even held together and was released in that crunch. Many people thought it shouldn't have been so rushed before release. Unlike Unreal 2 they never updated/patched maps either, for obvious reasons of mismatches and desyncs...except for the pre-release/special versions of course. With Unreal Special Edition you can't join a regular server/coop with Dark Arena running on it. But the other levels yes. Some can be even downloaded like SkyTown, while some have flags preventing you from downloading them online. Yea...I do remember even applying the 226 patch on it and playing online on few servers, but not everything was accesible. Bizzare stuff really. I bet the actual shareware version if they released it, the one around 220, would have had all the maps renamed anyways. Just like UT Demo had or Unreal 2 demo.

[Leo T_C_K]

In yet another version and maybe even in the same one, you could go at the second nali hut to the caves and then turn right where there would be a mine door that would lead to an elevator that could only be activated from down and its default position would be up. This would end up in a cave above behind the first nali hut, as a shortcut that could only be taken from below, as above you'd be blocked by non-functioning lift. This was most likely because they couldn't get the cage lift working right and people got stuck down below often. So they added another lift, until they fixed the issue. But it would be a nice touch to restore, a lift that has a broken panel upstairs/isn't working and can only be called down from below...

But...the version that had the cave lift had reportedly a skaarjwarrior wandering next to the second nali hut, so it might be "him" instead, still no explanation how he got there though.
And that sometimes he went into that hut to harass the nali or kill him. Not just the tentacle being the danger there..
he would be only 'maybe' present on higher difficulty too. Its difficult to tell without having access to it. But that version reportedly already had the final vortex2 rotation in. Just it was so buggy otherwise that they had to make this cave lift only to revert to a previous version later once that problem got magically fixed.

This is kinda new to me, or maybe I just forgot about it. How do you know this?

I forgot to mention, but also that door leading to the lift wasn't open all the time apparently, it gets unlocked after some trigger, maybe just passing around the cage mover or killing the skaarjwarrior opens the side passage to the lift. Again not something I experienced directly but its possible the version I played had an alternate access like this too, I did watch the other guy play it and I don't thus remember it as clearly but he kept saying there are multiple ways to go around/go back.

edit: it was reportedly also a bit more improvised, suggesting it was done in more of a hurry than the rest of the level, that section with the extra lift.