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The Lost Addon Packs (and some concrete info on one)

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Leo T_C_K
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The Lost Addon Packs (and some concrete info on one)

Post by Leo T_C_K »

I'd swear I made a thread here somewhere about the lost addon packs in general.
Either way I made that list of the lost expansion packs of Unreal on beyondunreal at one point, before the everlasting RO ban happened (due to politics really, saying "politically incorrect" thing and neonite going back in my history and flagging every post as something offending).

But there were a couple of discoveries I made since that I might have mentioned in some places. Even though I wanted to avoid talking about some of them as there was a hope of recovering some and I didn't want anyone to get in the way.

Apart from some more info on the Intel OEM level pack (officially under the Fusion Creative Design handle, basically people who split off from Epic, headed by Eric Reuter, in a way Unreal PSX can be seen as their effort too as it was mostly just Eric and John W. Anderson who were the core of this team), I have also discovered other info and things that started as Unreal addons.
Either way, the Intel OEM pack is still not recovered despite having more leads from ex-intel people. Its possible that it even shipped limitedly with some product as intended, but these days you can't even find a copy of the S3 Savage 4 Unreal thing (with the alternate 219), let alone something even more rare like this...

But at some point I interviewed someone who worked on another addon pack which changed names and engine like three times. It became its own standalone game that got ultimately cancelled. It was called Crest of Dharim and initially Rites of Acerbus. This fantasy/rpg game started as Unreal addon. I did browse the old websites and got some screenshots and artwork and model screenshots.

It was made by a group called "OMG Games" and well it was lead by Ken Post and Jeff Miner, who both were involved with Steele Dawn and formed their own company. Since I never re-established contact with Ken who reportedly had everything in storage including other projects he was involved with, I have to say that I never managed to contact Jeff Miner himself (despite I believe him or someone else appearing in the duke4 thread for deadly kiss later on, again can't contact them, might have been marty howe actually but he also worked on an addon so contacting him would be prefered too, if someone can still do it *hint hint*)...

Either way, most of the info and material remaining is sadly from the time it was its own game unfortunately. But you can still see Unreal influences in some of the creature design, like there are creatures that would fit right in with the nali cows and rabbits etc. And I believe they started as new creatures when it was simply an Unreal addon at the very beginning.

But yea I believe it switched from Unreal engine to another proprietary engine to engine of its own.

I did speak to a programmer who worked on it however, but he seemed disappointed at his treatment and the cancellation, so he didn't speak further with me and I can safely assume he didn't have anything left of the project.

I was going to post about this including wayback machine links but unfortunately IRL events prevented me to do so at the time. I just thought this might be an interesting information and another addition to the cancelled games and addons that started with Unreal and never saw the light of the day.

Part of this project even reminds me of my planned "bloodgate 2".

So to summarize there were these projects that started as addon packs and never were finalized or became something else entirely, or some of them might have been released for a very short amount of time:
"A World Gone Dead" - the first "authorized/unauthorized" third party addon that went from being under gti/wizardworks then nearly cancelled, then continued developement until no new publisher was found anyways and remnants of this project went into projects like steele dawn, stone killer AND return to na pali, hence the creative carnage credit because of UDSDemo.u.
Unreal Level Pack - scrapped and some content ended up in both rtnp and unrealtournament
Unreal Mega Pack (possibly a compilation/combined thing)
Unreal Level Editor (as it included some more content like textures and extra maps)
Intel OEM Pack and the OEM pack that had the original dm arcane temple from Shane as seen on his old website
more gwpress levels (the original latest morbfanza, latest skydm and splash as featured in te strategy guide, the roninmastafx remakes don't count and are inaccurate/figment of his imagination)
the cyberlore level pack that would have come out if Emissary wasn't cancelled (known as expansionpack notes document, with the na pali civil war and the new hub system)
The Abyss of ???? level pack that was planned in the UnBible days together with the direct sequel to Unreal called Unreal II, but this is related to "Unreal as it never came out", the 1996-1997 iteration before the halfway 1997 reboot. The difference of this is that the
Steele Dawn - since most of this has been recovered and even remade into a community edition, its kind of pointless mentioning it anymore but since it has ties to return to na pali and world gone dead and was at one point mentioned to be authorized addon pack it does deserve a place here. Jess Crable worked on it and also on some rtnp code and then went to work for duke nukem forever.
Stone Killer - more of an "unrelated" TC project that felt more like a partial conversion in practice. Utilizing some of the base code that powered AWGD and containing team of people who worked on other addon packs as well, and the same company/team behind it produced "the last warrior" addon for shadow warrior as well, the only one that didn't in the end get a planned commercial release, but still should be counted imo, the original dos/windows installer version remains lost also, only the macintosh and repack sourceport version still remain. As for Stone Killer, the music was fully recovered by Atilla Stopic and thanks to archived sites there was also a voicepack made out of sounds from the protagonist (for ut, the project also had a short lasting UT phase and it would drop the singleplayer campaign which it already did by the end of the later unreal dev phase as it was difficult to port to 224+ versions for the team as so many of the old things changed)
Rites of Acerbus - mentioned here and on several places listed as "Unreal TC"
Diacra - an addon/tc/separate game on the unreal engine that dwelved into the greek mythology
The unnamed Impel Productions addon and the Zen Tao Interactive addons - some people worked reportedly on both, not sure how far along the Impel one went, but Zen Tao one got transofrmed fully into the tc/game martial arts simulation game that also got cancelled. Fortunately thanks to Jason O' Connel images of the addon have been recovered and posted(jason also worked on stone killer). One notable member that worked on this AND later half of 2000 original Unreal Engine's Unreal II is none other than Mad Martigan, Geoff Field. If only he could be contacted again...
Alien Legion - tough one to describe as it had endless phases, ultimately starting as more of a mappack for Quake called Alien Savior, then having a Quake 2 addon phase, then Unreal addon phase which slowly evolved into its own game. Then it had two UT based phases and is still to this day being considered to be released in some polished form as a TC or addon, with the historical files supposedly following, but given the undesicive nature of the team lead I am not sure if we'll ever get to see this again. This is the addon that had a preview in the level magazine that I took some high quality shots from. One particular image didn't feature in drevlin's or strife's archives and that was that skycity themed map with an iceskaarj standing in the background. This map was once incorrectly assumed to be a version of Radikus or Amethyst even though I doubt it had anything to do with those. It must have been from the early phases on Unreal of this addon.
drevlin's "invasion of na pali" that shares some similarities with AL (but technically before he got onto the AL team), strangely this project ultimately linked to legend's website for rtnp etc, so it seems like this might have been ultimately in talks to be "Mission Pack II" even if Drevlin doesn't remember this bit or anything much about the project, most of the info again found via wayback machine.
and for UT: the original Addon Pack by Digitalo (eventually evolving into Unreal: Devastation a standalone 2001 game spinoff that got cancelled, only remade into the released 2003 game Devastation with most explicit Unreal references removed, except you can see it as a prequel kind of like Prometheus to the Alien stuff as it does mention Liandri and has many of the same weapons of Unreal/UT just more "primitive forms" as it takes place in the past and several weapons like the Bolta were obviously made for the UT addon as it has nearly identical art style/low poly count to the UT Eightball.
realtournament (kind of), original epic demo lost, the released unfinished mod version still avaiable for grabbing


Did I forget anything? let me know
lol

Oh yea technically I guess the "Shareware levels" of the separate shareware version that was once scrapped and originally planned to be released under version "100" of Unreal and not the "200" like it was released.
The only thing that came closest to shareware was in the end the Unreal Special Edition and at the time Epic was still planning to release the shareware real version around the version 220 (hence unrealshare.u appearing etc). But it became too delayed and scrapped.
that later version was completely different though and didn't have all unique campaign like the 100 version had(reportedly from the male player perspective while the main game would force you in singleplayer as a female). So it was more similar to the special edition so not much of value was lost in the "220" shareware version.

edit: ah well the other thread does appear in the suggestions list:
viewtopic.php?f=49&t=10203

Also "Revelation: The Forgotten" was mostly complete under a Quake 2 phase and worked on by Jason O'Connel as well, he had few screenshots from it too. Just looked at the BUF threads again so I might as well explain this.
The MP_01 thing was not related to invasion of na pali or anything similar as I spoke to the author since, it was a personal expansion pack that was dropped and the rest of the levels seem lost now including the quake in unreal continuation thing.
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Gamesharder
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Re: The Lost Addon Packs (and some concrete info on one)

Post by Gamesharder »

Awesome, I think this post was needed.
Now I have a better understanding about some of these.
Crazy how many projects were cancelled or lost. (or even project we've never heard of...)
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Leo T_C_K
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Re: The Lost Addon Packs (and some concrete info on one)

Post by Leo T_C_K »

I just hope I can get some help still with contacting a couple of people I mentioned. Because all my last year or so efforts were nowhere despite getting some contacts and talking to some people I lost contact with in the past (including the unreal 2 stuff which also lead to nothing further so far despite the files being ready years ago, suddenly they got lost past covid "era" etc and multiple moves/job changes).
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ZeaLitY
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Re: The Lost Addon Packs (and some concrete info on one)

Post by ZeaLitY »

What kind of help do you need? Just trying to find contact info?

I'm with you; this is probably the last chance to dig up this information before it's lost forever.
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Leo T_C_K
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Re: The Lost Addon Packs (and some concrete info on one)

Post by Leo T_C_K »

ZeaLitY wrote: Mon May 29, 2023 12:01 am What kind of help do you need? Just trying to find contact info?

I'm with you; this is probably the last chance to dig up this information before it's lost forever.
Well sometimes some people are only avaiable on social network sites, which I don't use for example.

But yea I guess, that too. There's also a matter of some unreal 2 hard drives being found years back, but they were unusable, they didn't even spin when trying to boot, so it would cost a lot of money I guess to get the data out but if anyone would have been willing to contribute maybe something could have happened. Because there's still majority of U2 material lost for example. And that thing might be the only way to get more, given everyone else has nothing due to the whole atari takeover thing that happened.

Sometimes people inexplicably stopped communicating. During the whole covid stuff. And I don't know their status or anything really.

But yea it would even be useful to find contact for some other people that worked on steele dawn (and related projects) like Ryan Isenberg (i heard someone contacted him but not about SD or anything else), Jeff Miner (he worked at least on one more addon) and other people. Because iirc I never managed to contact those. Not 100 percent sure on Ryan now but I think not. Most if not all the other level designers I did talk to at one point for sure.
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