9 replies to this topic

[Gurluas2000]

Taken from www.betaarchive.com special thanks to Delacroix.
http://www.betaarchi...c...=14&t=23269
___________________________________

Greetings.


Many of you have been waiting for this day. Well in my timezone, it's Christmas, or more precisely, the Boxing Day when you get to open your Christmas gifts.


Here is one from Lord Victor Albert Sebastian Delacroix, the Dark Lord of the Glyphs, Unreal Engine Archivist and Historian.


Ladies and Gentlemen of this noble community... I give you...

X-COM: ALLIANCE

Being in concept since 1995, in development shortly afterwards, X-COM: Alliance was to revolutionize the X-COM franchise by combining the strategic and tactical elements known from the first X-COM/UFO games with the in-your-face gaming scheme of a first person shooter. Developed on the reknowned Unreal Engine, practically simultaneously with Unreal, it was first announced for release in 1999, then 2000 and finally 2002. Sadly, the release never took place, the game met its demise most likely soon after the closure of Microprose UK and, what's worse, its assets were later re-used for the most horrible atrocity known to X-COM fans... Enforcer, the dumbed down, simplistic, straightforward, non-climatic, arcade-ish shooter. The ambitious Alliance was lost.

Or so it seems. Leo(T.C.K.) and myself tracked down one of the Microprose LDs, whose name we are not in the liberty to give you. This gentleman has provided us everything he had on Alliance, including a beta running on the Unreal build 219 codebase, an initial conversion alpha on the Unreal build 220 codebase and plethora of sources, documents and related materials.

Today I'm going to share the most important piece with you: the 219 beta.

http://www.multiupload.com/9IS9KY2NFY

It is here, in a 350 MB archive, self extracting, for your enjoyment. Extract to C:\Alliance and run levels through UnrealEd's autoplay function. Otherwise, the menu is not going to leave you alone.

Some system configurations can have problems with the Galaxy soundsystem or the game overall. Whereas we will *attempt* to provide support, I'd like to remind you that in no way we are obliged to do this -- this is in fact, beta software, leaked, to boot.

I am planning to assemble a team to turn this into a fully legal, freely available Unreal / Unreal Tournament total conversion in which I hope I shall succeed. For now, please enjoy the original beta.

Edited by Gurluas2000, 29 December 2011 - 08:31 PM.

[Fomka]

Thanks, but UnrealEd this is not working on Windows 7.
I went to the betaarchive forums you mentioned for more info. There was a suggestion to install UnrealEdFix4. I got it from http://www.oldunreal...ialpatches.html it resolved a problem of "threed32.ocx is incorrect" but UnrealEd crashes after that nevertheless.

If I manage to start UnrealEd, what should I do to launch the game?

[Gurluas2000]

Open one of the maps and run them, but that is also giving me issues right now. Hopefully Delacroix can help.

[Gurluas2000]

Delacroix has released a new beta.

http://www.multiupload.com/YREXN8ZZXO

Another X-COM build. This has only three maps (unknown at the time whether the ones from previous build will work or not), but is on a more recent Unreal build, 220 as opposed to 219. Consider it an alpha.

Much of the issues with Unreal Engine development is that Epic was, is and will be constantly updating it. Some of these updates are drastic enough to make older resources incompatible, so that they need to be either just reimported, or sometimes recoded or whatever. That's one of the reasons why John Anderson left Unreal dev team (none of his maps survived, save one level for Unreal PSX, probably reused from the alpha and one level in the Unreal95 tech demo).

[kafros]

Very interesting!!! Downloading now, although it'll be some time before I check it out. Thank you very much for sharing, Gurluas!!!!

[Valken]

Wow! TY! I will take a look at this right away. I've been spending my game time with another UE game, Killing Floor - zombier shooter but will try this out asap! Good news along with the new real xcom remake from Fireaxis!

[Hobbes]

Can you post some pics please?

[Valken]

I just tried it and it appears to require Unreal / Unreal Gold or Unreal Tournament, and not Unreal Tournament 2003/2004. Installing that now via Steam so will update everyone once I get it loaded and working.

To Gurulas - I think it would be worthwhile to look at porting the game over to UDK (unreal engine 3.0) since it is freely distributable for non-profit use and this way, everyone can try it out, even without a copy of unreal or UT2004.

The newer engine will allow you to also upgrade the graphics if you're able to.

Edit -- ok the games are actually standalone and you have to use the instructions posted on the first post to get it to work.

I cannot get 219 Beta to work since it keeps asking to insert the cdrom. Damn copy protection on test builds?! This is by trying to run unrealed from the 219beta directory. I can see the maps inside the editor though. Very crude compared to today's standards.

Will try to get 219Beta to load up and take more screenshots.

I loaded the levels into the editor and took desktop screens shots. First few are mainly prefab contents. The last few are actual levels. Even for the tech it had back then, I think they capture the UFO bases very well!

Edited by Valken, 11 January 2012 - 04:10 AM.

[Gurluas2000]

I just tried it and it appears to require Unreal / Unreal Gold or Unreal Tournament, and not Unreal Tournament 2003/2004. Installing that now via Steam so will update everyone once I get it loaded and working.

To Gurulas - I think it would be worthwhile to look at porting the game over to UDK (unreal engine 3.0) since it is freely distributable for non-profit use and this way, everyone can try it out, even without a copy of unreal or UT2004.

The newer engine will allow you to also upgrade the graphics if you're able to.

Edit -- ok the games are actually standalone and you have to use the instructions posted on the first post to get it to work.

I cannot get 219 Beta to work since it keeps asking to insert the cdrom. Damn copy protection on test builds?! This is by trying to run unrealed from the 219beta directory. I can see the maps inside the editor though. Very crude compared to today's standards.

Will try to get 219Beta to load up and take more screenshots.

I loaded the levels into the editor and took desktop screens shots. First few are mainly prefab contents. The last few are actual levels. Even for the tech it had back then, I think they capture the UFO bases very well!

Thank you for the feedback
to get the 219 beta build to work, you have to either place it in C:/Alliance or change the cd path in one of the INI.
The 219 beta is the most complete one, it includes several playable missions, where you can make your own squads etc.

[Gurluas2000]

EDIT: Accidental double post.

Edited by Gurluas2000, 19 January 2012 - 05:23 AM.