Unreal 2 Alpha conversion maps

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

A quick Unreal 2 Alpha conversion.


Part 1 of the pack

Should work in UT/Unreal 227. There are some things/engine features that won't work on regular Unreal and it requires BotPack and UPak at the same time too.

Now I'm not sure given my IRL situation if I can even finish Part 2 so that's why I'm releasing this. This is not a fully fledged mod, it is simply conversions of the maps from the recently uncovered Unreal 2 Alpha from 2000. With some extras. I used THS' Marines as replacement for U2Mercenaries because recoding that would take too much time. Don't summon random things from the .u files, they might crash your game and those actors are not used in the actual maps. Just warning you.

There was too much different in the engine honestly, to the way lighting works and actors like scriptedlights I had to replace with triggerlights, the glassmovers with movers (and adding breakingglass actor....

I did make two videos from the actual alpha I am converting from if you're interested.


Demonstrating how the u2flashlight is different how it behaves on the real version as opposed to the conversion in u2misc.u2flashlight
misc alpha stuff And as I said to some people before:
I decided to demonstrate some of the unique engine features here.
The conversion won't have that sadly, I'm quite far along with it though.

[OjitroC]

Thanks for this, Leo - looks good.

Just to note - the package JamesT.utx that comes with this zip is larger than the one that people may already have and so the new one needs to replace the old one (keeping that one somewhere off the UT path of course).

[EvilGrins]

Looking forward to checking these out, Leo.

Any chance you're going to convert U2 monsters to ut99? I've only got 1 so far.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Thanks for this, Leo - looks good.

Just to note - the package JamesT.utx that comes with this zip is larger than the one that people may already have and so the new one needs to replace the old one (keeping that one somewhere off the UT path of course).

I wasn't aware of any map that uses it but yes you can make a separate ini or something if necessary. I know that wheel of time had packages named like that and they are completely different but anyone who did wot conversions should have renamed them because after all wot is not in the unreal universe and it makes more sense for stuff to be like this. These packages are from the original alpha and because they work alright I didn't convert them at all or rename them. Is the JamesT package from wot or did someone do some unreal 2 related stuff before?

[OjitroC]

Is the JamesT package from wot or did someone do some unreal 2 related stuff before?

Yes, the JamesT package I have is the same as the WOT one and so probably came from a map that used WOT textures.

Just been exploring the Atlantis map which is impressive - the seagoat is cool. I presume that the hub map is the proper way in to these maps?

Again just for people to note that they will need the ASPInsekt package to run the maps.

Any chance you're going to convert U2 monsters to ut99? I've only got 1 so far.

Do you have U2_Arachnid.u? I think there are five in that. There's one new one in the packages released in this thread.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

That's unfortunate they didn't change the package name.

Either way, I did add monsters/visibleteleporters to maps that lacked them and indeed i used asp.u that also requires insekt.u for a couple of maps. The starting map is L99HubTest. This was a real map in the build but I added the messages there. The oldest atlantis t3d was too much to convert but there is a screenshot of the big room from some earlier version in the game textures, it is that screenshot that appears in player's room on atlantis. I had to mylevel that particular seagoat and reuse the nali rabbit code because the original code after porting was crashing the game. But yea it works...

[OjitroC]

Pity about the izarians, it would be nice to see them working. Still, nice to be able to play these maps.

[EvilGrins]

Do you have U2_Arachnid.u? I think there are five in that.

It does, but they're all 5 classes of that toxic spider, so I count them all as the same monster.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

You can play resurgence about the Izarians(but only works on the oldunreal 227 patch since the pack uses staticmeshes and other features). The Izarians in this old alpha had a temporary skaarjtrooper mesh anyway so that's why i created the zaarjtroop class for mylevel and copies the drawscale etc properties over.

The Janus maps later on use actual skaarj gunners but its hard to tell it does because of the izarian classes in that alpha so I assumed janus was under the threat of izarians too. We know that they were supposed to appear since there are skaarj corpses near that broken turret in the janus map in e3 2001 demo. Plus the battling merc/marine factions.
EDIT:
There is also a new skaarj skin in that old alpha but only part 1 of the skin and the model itself is missing, but its for a new mesh that was seen in one screenshot and its closer to the unreal style.

[OjitroC]

I've got Unreal Gold and have just realised I have Resurgence! So will have to give it a go.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Good. I recommend playing it even though it's not finished yet. It does stray away a bit from the simpler stuff, it has its own take on the cut unreal weapons, like the impaler is partially the version that was described in unbible even though that version had a different mesh with two skins at once(the only way I know it is because there was a leftover mesh import code somewhere, but we didn't have the mesh). The unbible impaler was different from the later 1997 version that i ported almost exactly for the psx version. As I said different mesh and two skin slots, no crystal in the center either, but the altfire was kinda like the pulsegun in ut but meant more complex with possibility of linking multiple targets. Also it has a stabbing animation from the import code and so it was in line with the closeup melee functionality from late 1996. Like the automag had one and all the weapons could be used closeup anyway when ran out of ammo...

But yea all the 1996 versions we have only have four weapons and not more and this impaler was only made really late in 1996 only to be scrapped during 1997 and replaced with the crystal one when the game was rebooting itself with new designs.

The impaler then continued onto unreal 2, the izarian rifle is the impaler, the "shock lance" was only shoehorned in later on to give UT fans something of a service. Even though they were still going to have a variant of shock rifle for the multiplayer (and it even exists in this unreal 2 alpha mind you).

[Hellkeeper]

Amazing work as usual. This is fascinating stuff, I can't believe you got all that and have so much of it working.

Now I'm not sure given my IRL situation

I hope you're doing alright.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

This feels embarassing but now when I sent it for a test server I noticed I had mismatch on mission 03 draft and guess what I accidentaly packed the older version of the map that makes it impossible to finish without cheats or asmd boost jumps. Oops.

I'm working on converting the rest of the maps as much as I can but as you can see the stress is getting to me. This never ever happened to me before that I uploaded the wrong version than the one I had on disc in UnrealTournament directory.

EDIT: The big archive was reuploaded, also there's a fix separately.

fix

[OjitroC]

Oh well - don't worry about that - we all make mistakes from time to time.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Part 2.
There will still be part 3 but that's it really. This closes off the M03 levels and also includes a M01e level that I forgot before. Also the asteroid levels are included but one of them isn't linked to a map yet. It will close off with m07/m09 which I didn't do yet.
- Leo