U1 Trivia Thread (Clear)

[Dr. Walter]

.................

[UB_]

Harobed Village (Harobed.unr)

• Seeds and the Flak Cannon first appear in this map.
• You first see a Mercenary in this map but dead (killed by a Skaarj).
• Part of the top of the Terraniux is wrongly textured with a NaliCast.utx wall texture. It's impossible to see it without cheating, though.
• Harobed is Deborah spelled backwards. Most likely another Pancho's relative. Daughter? Unlike Evelyn she doesn't appear in any game credits.
• The Flies in the village do only appear if you either enter the first hut, or touch the two other small-radius triggers placed around the village. Other than that, the map has a bunch of really strangely designed enemy spawning: various Flies appear when you get one of the Flak Boxes on the tower of the church; reaching the top of the tower itself triggers a Skaarj Warrior who hunts you when you're in the church (the one who spawns in the village); one who spawn in the underground cave when you get the Super Health (not on Unreal difficulty because there's no Super Health); getting the Armor behind the altar in the church spawns the Skaarj Warrior who appears ALL THE WAY on the metallic bridge of the Terraniux lake; Mantas are spawned by touching a (quite large) trigger placed on the way to the Terraniux, which isn't even near the two Clips; the Flies in the Terraniux lake are spawned by a trigger on the first metallic bridge; the Skaarj at the end of the level is spawned by a trigger on the last metallic bridge of the same area. Most of these triggers can be easily missed but seriously, WHAT THE HELL, Pancho.
• The Armor/Skaarj spawning is justified in early versions of the map: instead of the Armor, there was a Toxin Suit which negated the Corroded damage from the Terraniux lake, and the Skaarj himself appeared there to make up for the lowered challenge in crossing said lake. This excuse doesn't really carry on to the final version of Harobed but ok the Armor gives pretty high resistance to the player.
• One of the only-one trip Birds is triggered by two really small-radius triggers in the first valley.
• Harobed's music is named Hub2 because the original title of the level was FHub2.
• Hub2.umx has an unused songsection (1). It's unknown where this was ever going to be used, however.
• You don't need the Nali to open the secret in the church, you can bump on the wall and it opens normally.
• As mentioned already, Harobed Village was connected to Dark Arena but in Dark Arena's own map - as seen in the 1998 beta version, in the shareware version it was sort of justified. The version of Harobed connected to Dark Arena was pretty much the same as the 1998 beta's Harobed, except the absence of various items/enemies, the entrance of the church having a staircase instead of a ramp and the lack of an exit teleport (including the Terraniux entrance room). Before the 1998 unreal beta, Dark Arena had Harobed connected to it and it was initially conceived to have the Terraniux pool bridge to be the shareware version end (all brushes lying in the pool weren't added and you couldn't make it to the other side).
• The first torch you see in the pathway to the secret cave is wrongly floating. It's not attached on the wall.
• At the beginning of the secret cave there's an unused trigger which is supposed to activate an event named "cavein". Something was suppsed to collapse.
• There's a strange, small stone wall in the secret cave that doesn't seem to be attached to anything. Most people say it was there to cover a HOM or BSP hole but rebuilding the map without this solid brush doesn't break anything. This cave could have been a leftover from the Underflow.
• The Terraniux lake is actually hot boiling water (I suppose); in early versions of the map, like the 1998 beta one, the water hurts you with Corroded damage. In the final version, the smoke generators were removed but the "slime" ambient sounds are still there. You were supposed to jump on the obstacles to cross the lake. The water texture used for this lake was made to be exclusively used for nitrogen/goop pools, also.
• Most, if not all the junks in the Terraniux lake are movers but they have no key animations. Most likely they were going to move around a little and not just totally sink in the nitrogen; in the 1998 beta version, the lamps were also movers, including the one sinking in the lake. Jumping on this specific lamp will make it sink a little. The trigger for this former mover has never been removed in the final version of Harobed.
• The Terraniux' greenhouses are fully closed (even in Noork of course) and as anybody may expect, they are hell A LOT SMALLER than what is seen inside the ship.

Terraniux Underground (TerraLift.unr)

• This is not part of the Terraniux itself; it's an entry outpost built by Mercenaries in an underground cave.
• The Mercenaries first appear in this map, for real. In this map and the next one, Mercenaries have modified properties such as fatness, high health and possibility to shoot with the GodMode shield on. This is why they're much tougher there.
• This map houses the infamous power generator of the elevator where you can go through its wirewall; this didn't happen in the earlier versions because it used solids but Inoxx went with the mighty unstable semisolids for the release version.
• There's an unused trigger right at the starting point of the map. It is supposed to activate an event named "ggg". Perhaps the door behind you was supposed to be a mover and you could open it and go outside.
• One of the metal planks on the ground that connect the elevator pillars at the bottom level (the one right in front of the entrance) is kind of short; you see terrain between the plank and the pillar. The sheet was wrongly positioned one unit inside one of the pillars. This issue wasn't present in the 1998 beta version.
• The alarm wheel movers can KILL YOU if you touch them as their rotating movements crush/push you to brush. The laser beams are totally harmless - it's just two stationary triggers put in the middle of the pathway just where the wheels are. They have a small radius so you can walk on the very ledge of the pathway to avoid them but it's dangerous with those insta-kill wheels. Besides, triggering the alarm doesn't change absolutely nothing gameplay-wise.
• In the guard room, the button on the left hand side reactivates the elevator, while the button on the right hand side unlocks the guard room door as it gets locked after touching a trigger in the corridor to the main part of the room (and I got to say, the way this door gets locked/unlocked is done in an amazingly awkward way).
• In the 1998 beta version of the map, gradual movers were used as sheets with a smoke texture for when the elevator would approach the bottom floor.
• As seen in the 1998 beta version, this map was way shorter and different. It started with the alarm corridor first (there was no guard room) and it would end as soon as you would have approach the top floor with the elevator. The second half of Terraniux Underground was part of the main Terraniux level and the biowaste in there would still remain.
• Stupidly, Inoxx set to BHiddenEd=True all the brushes and actors of the top floor of Terraniux Underground (meaning almost everything there is invisible except the already built brushes in the non-wireframe view). Only the ZoneInfo actors and everything about the exit room aren't invisible.
• The Toxin Suit first appears in this map. In Terraniux, its only use is to 100% protect yourself from the Slith's acid orbs.
• This is the only map in Unreal which ends after pressing a button.
• Terraniux and Terraniux Underground were originally a single map.

Terraniux (Terraniux.unr)

• Terranius is a crashed ship. Map description mentions that it would have resembled the ship Cygnus from the movie The Black Hole, especially it's organic farm areas. The Mercenaries, mysterious humanoid aliens (an unarmored model was mentioned to be made in the UNBIBLE), are after minerals, flawless soil and plants. They obtain this stuff to then sell them to other alien races at a very high price; they are also described as being very greedy. They found valuable the Tarydium minerals on Na Pali but ignoring the "legends" of the adverse effects caused on starships in the space region around the planet, the Mercenaries and their Terranius eventually crashed. Their objective now is managing to fix the ship and return to their homeworld, not without as many resources as they can find on Na Pali. Mercenaries themselves aren't all war-like; many of them are farmers and they are mostly busy checking their resources, even if that means risking their life to protect them (this might explain why in the map some Mercenaries are way stronger or way weaker than others). Mercenaries are fully neutral and aren't allied to anyone - they're simply greedy, opportunistic jerks.
• Now, yeah, it was named Terranius but it was changed to Terraniux. This is simply because Inoxx put a "X" in every one of his Unreal maps, wherever he saw fit (TerraniuX, NeXus, CryoX and EXtreme).
• The biowaste in the ship is not acid, it's water. Water mixed with processed, organic plant waste, still. Ugly-looking but totally harmless. In fact it seems the Mercenaries are constantly monitoring the water for impurities.
• Looking the ship from Harobed and Noork, Terraniux seems to have FOUR greenhouses instead of THREE. However, the DecayedS.utx shows a Terraniux panel with just three greenhouses and one much shorter structure for the fourth side, so this is a mistake by Pancho done on Noork and on Harobed as well. Simply put the position of the exterior Terraniux is wrong. Facing the ship from Harobed, Terraniux had to be pushed and rotated 90° to its right; facing the ship from Noork, Terraniux simply had to be moved to its left, beyond the exit balcony. Note that water tanks are located inside the mountains.
• The greenhouses are open in this map unlike what's seen in Harobed and Noork, unless there's some mysterious camouflage technology at works. Also, Inoxx was planning to add exterior ship details that could be seen in the greenhouses as viewed from a certain part of the 1998 beta version of the map.
• From what is shown in the 1998 beta version of the map, there was supposed to be a room next to Greenhouse A - a twin of the one accessible in Greenhouse C. It's totally empty, however, except for the biowaste pool. In the final version of the map, the room is removed.
• Some biowaste pipes could lead you to the underground water tanks as a quick shortcut. However, no water was inside them, and this caused you to fall in a long hole which damaged you a lot (the accessible pipes in question are the ones seen in the elevator rooms). This was present in early versions of the map, like the 1998 beta one.
• The JumpBoots, the Forcefield and the GES Bio Rifle first appear in this map.
• This is the last Unreal 1 map where you encounter the Slith. The other maps that had them were cut.
• Having said that, the Mercenaries seem to be totally unaware of the uncanny presence of Slith in their ship. They are like "ghosts".
• There are sayings that Mercenaries are using Nali as fertilizers due to a vague message in Greenhouse B. It seems like they're searching something else instead in Nali's (devastated) huts.
• As seen in the 1998 beta version of Terraniux, biowaste was never going to be removed in the entrance and hub sections. Terraniux Underground's second half was exclusively made for the full Terraniux at first.
• Terraniux and Terraniux Underground were originally a single map.
• Terraniux was the map to have the infamous area with the Skaarj Lord stunlocked in a cylinder forcefield as seen in Unreal trailers. However, the area itself (quite large but empty) was completely disconnected from the rest of the map; possibly Inoxx was thinking of showing to the players that Mercs were catching Skaarj. This room was removed early, when Terraniux was divided in two maps (before the Unreal 1998 beta was a thing). It might had to do with the undeveloped room next to Greenhouse A (mentioned above).

Noork's Elbow (Noork.unr)

• Noork is Kroon spelled backwards. Kroon is once again another name like Evelyn and Deborah and possibly another Pancho's relative but who knows at this point.
• The rare Mercenary Elite first appears in this map (and he's easier than 90% of the Mercenaries you fought in the Terraniux).
• There's a Fly next to the two huts but it's killed by the Mercenary Elite because the latter steps on it. This happens a bit quickly, so if you want to steal the kill you have to attract the attention of the Mercenary Elite down in the valley (which is a bad idea since there's a Mercenary next to you all the time).
• From the Terraniux's balcony, this is one of the rare times you can see the skybox's borders without cheating.
• Just like in Harobed, a part of one of the two Terraniux's greenhouses has a wrongly applied texture. This time it's the standard rock one which is used for the Noork's mountains.
• In the temple valley, there are three, REALLY SMALL triggers (default collision radius values) that spawn the Manta group next to the drawbridge. In the 1998 beta version, it spawned a Giant Manta but two of those triggers were even placed inside the mountains. Pancho moved them in the valley in the final version but still forgot to fix the collision values.
• The drawbridge is lowered by a trigger placed on the wooden bridge, by yourself. The Nali does nothing (and the lever is only a brush). Besides, that Nali is afraid of you no matter what; his attitude is set to FEAR.
• Noork's original track was still Hub2.umx. Its current track, Fourth.umx, was made for the FHub4 map.

[UB_]

"cavein" event sounds like something related to a MusicEvent. Maybe Songsection 1 was going to be used there.

A fascinating read so far, UBerserker. I am very intrigued by the original concepts of Unreal, and it appears there are a few new maps I have not seen referenced in some of the original design documents (Acerack & Amethyst, for example).
I have entertained the possibility of going about to recreate some of the long lost / cut maps + ideas and including them in the original campaign, so I look forward to seeing further development of this trivia thread. Good work so far!

-Dr. Walter.

Sadly there isn't much known about those maps (especially the former) but at least these lesser popular cut maps will get some recognition.

[Hellscrag]

"cavein" event sounds like something related to a MusicEvent. Maybe Songsection 1 was going to be used there.

Sounds to me like he intended part of the underground section to "cave in" or collapse. I wonder which?

[UB_]

Hmm well yeah the map's MusicEvents have pretty basic tag names attached to them (slow, silent, fast) but the only things that could collapse in the cave are those two large stalactites. The trigger is placed right in the doorway as you enter the cave, can't be missed and can be triggered only once. It could also mean "cave in" as "you're in the cave".

And oh my god I just realized Ruins and the Underflow are next. Wellllllllllll that's fun

[StalwartUK]

Some interesting stuff you go there, UBerserker. Can't wait to see more.

This near final version you mentioned looks it it would've been fun. Always wondered what a "Director's Cut" of Unreal would've been like if they didn't have to throw out stuff due to time/space constraints. I can only hope it's out there, somewhere.

[Hellscrag]

This near final version you mentioned looks it it would've been fun. Always wondered what a "Director's Cut" of Unreal would've been like if they didn't have to throw out stuff due to time/space constraints. I can only hope it's out there, somewhere.

Agreed. I thought we'd got that with the 1997 beta, but it seems there was more...

[UB_]

They pretty much cut like another half of the game and all of it was practically completed. Then suddenly they cut everything a month or so before release.
I don't think they ever got the hub system working.

[UB_]

Forgot to mention something that's really not right to put alongside level trivia - the known fact that the weapon of the Mercenaries was the flamethrower at first. The Mercenary model was already done before they dropped the flamethrower concept, so that's the reason why the backpack doesn't make any sense now.

[UB_]

Addressing several things on which Leo had to correct me

• About the Harobed's enemy spawning, the one of the Armor triggering the Skaarj Warrior near the lake is a leftover from a more sensible situation in the 1998 beta version that I forgot. In that beta, there's a Toxin Suit instead of an Armor, and the lake itself deals Corroded damage (I suppose it's really hot boiling water then? And not nitrogen). The Skaarj Warrior just spawns there to make up for the lack of challenge in crossing the lake with the Toxin Suit.
• Scrag is right, "cavein" could definitely be about a collapse of the cave itself; this event name is used several times in the Unreal PSX maps. The stone wall is a forgotten leftover probably as well. Hell, it could be really possible the cave itself is taken from the Underflow map.
• There weren't THAT much cut things from the game. A lot of the cut maps (that you didn't see in the 1998 beta) were considered for a level pack by Epic. Various levels were scrapped already in 1997. Also they had a semi-working Hub system in the early years of development but its code was incompatible with later versions; they also planned one huge HUB map but...
  Snippet from Myscha: "The HUB map was probably the old portal map we toyed around with so we could link maps and entire expansions to, but we never really had time toexpand that properly."

[UB_]

Edited some slight stuff about Harobed and Noork.
The following two might get edits in the future.

Temple of Vandora (Ruins.unr)

• Vandora is the only thing related to a female Nali you can see in the game. However, it could be just what the Nali imagine her to be. If you take the Unreal books in account (old story docs directly referred stuff from the novels, such as the Prophet story), female Nali are almost identical to the male ones. And they are rare.
• Vandora is the Nali's Goddess of Lightning. Considering the Hinduism nature of Vandora's picture, she could have been inspired by Hindu Gods of Sky or Thunder such as Varuna or Indra (both being some of the most important deities in the Hindu religion).
• It's not mentioned anywhere that Vandora is part of the group of gods of the Good Lore. Besides, the message where the "God of Good Lore" line is found is in Sacred Passage by Pancho, not even in Chizra itself.
• The Invisibility first appears in this map. For the fountain secret, the triggers used are of ClassProximity type; basically, this option type makes sure the trigger is activated by a specific actor put in the ClassProximity string, which in this case it's the Flare.
• Gasbags, Cave Mantas, Skaarj Troopers, Skaarj Infantries, Skaarj Gunners, Skaarj Berserkers and Nali Cow/Calf first appear in this map.
• Earlier versions of the map included Krall (with their old dark skin) and also a Giant Gasbag. Shane Caudle seems to have really liked Giant Gasbags.
• The starting point of the map depends on which pathway you've chosen at the end of Noork. The default PlayerStart for when you open up the map from the console/editor is placed on the right hand side staircase, though.
• There are three Coop-related passages here due to battles that lock you in rooms (entrance is closed, so you can't retreat and coop players can't advance); these passages are: one at the beginning, before the first doorway to the courtyard. It leads on top of the ruins (second floor) and you can also get Eightball ammo; one next to the gate that you have to open by activating the torch of tranquillity - it's the little door you see in the middle of the wall next to that gate; the elevator which takes you on the ledge of the exterior round wall of the colosseum, at the end of the map. All these passages are unlocked once the respective battles are triggered; you can go back and use them in single player too once you're done with said battles.
• A Skaarj Trooper was once the enemy to defeat in the first courtyard ambush in earlier versions of the map (after the 1998 beta version one).
• The water pool in the courtyard looked much more like a fountain in previous versions of the map. The archway also looked quite perplexing back then... (see the picture).
• The map had different lighting in its earlier versions - it was set during day rather than late afternoon.
• The infamous cylinder pool with the "HOM" bottom. In reality, it's just the texture having the Translucent and Small Wavy flags on. Could have been intentional since it has been a thing since earlier versions of the map. On way older versions of the map though, there was no pool: it was instead one long death pit with a water texture at the end (which had the Small Wavy flag on). It's unknown if it was ever going to be a proper pool or lead to another map entirely, considering Ruins had the most evident connection to the Underflow.
• The green marble stone on the altar in Vandora's room was a mover with an attached explosion effect actor to it; mover's first key animation was just the stone lowered down into the ground. Could possibly be related to Vandora's thunder strike that happens when you shoot her painting: a lightning bolt from the hole would destroy the stone. Before Vandora was ever added, the stone wasn't a mover but later (like in the 1998 beta version) when the goddess made it in the map, the stone became a mover (but the Vandora's lightning secret scripted sequence wasn't added yet). In the final version of the map, the stone went back to being a brush.
• The first Skaarj Trooper you meet is unarmed, before he picks up the GES Bio Rifle. This is a rare case.
• All the Devilfish in this map are spawned from nowhere, when you're not looking at the spawnpoints.
• The gate to the colosseum in the Skaarj Berserker ambush tunnel cannot be open in any way. It's a brush. In previous versions of the map it didn't exist though, and you could go right through the passage.
• Early versions of Vandora had the Stone Titan instead of the regular one. It would have been its first appearance in the game (even though the only thing that's different between a Titan and a Stone Titan is the skin).
• Beyond the exit of the map there's a large empty courtyard which feels like it was supposed to be part of the temple before the ISV-Kran crashed into it. There's no info about why that courtyard exists (besides, in an ISV-Kran description, they had no idea yet how the Trench could have been accessed).
• The map is called "Ruins" because that's what Vandora's temple originally was, just standard ruins dedicated to nobody. We don't know if it was ever supposed to be connected to other maps at first but Ruins was probably one of the explorable destinations from the Underflow (or an access point to it). An older build of Ruins shows quite a lot of differences, besides the obvious things that weren't added yet. Let's check this one...
• Before the Vandora painting was added, there was just an empty wall with a flag brush (not a decoration) sticking out of it.
• Before the valley/colosseum section was added, there was (probably as a placeholder) a garden room with walls having GenTerra textures, some rocks, plants and the ground being a bit raised. The weirdest thing there is a small tree made out of brushes.
• The dock area looked very different, with a series of archways instead of a single pillar. Two archways are locked with iron bars and the boat itself is different (and not a mover, yet). The water tunnel quickly ends with a stone wall, as it would have been a way to a different map; indeed, this may be definitely true as the PlayerStart is in this dock area and not anywhere else. It's strongly believed that the dock was an access to the Underflow - a place known to house an underground river where you would mainly travel by boat - before it was connected to Noork and Trench.

[SKAARJ FORTRESS 2] The Loche Of Underflow (?.unr)

• It's not known who made the map but it has connections to Myscha and Shane ones, which implies any of the two was behind it. No images of this map are available, unfortunately.
• This map is simply referred as "The Underflow"; it's the name of an underground river highway given by the Nali. Nali mantained this place and it was mainly used by merchants. Until the Skaarj came and used it instead to transport technology and resources like Tarydium from place X to place Y (from mines to the Mothership, for example). Transport operations are controlled by the Skaarj from the fortress located in the core part of the Underflow cavern.
• The map is fully set underground. It's a vast, progressive hub-type map that connected all the underground-themed maps each other. It's unknown how many locations this map was connected to; most evident ones seemed to be Harobed's cave, the Ruins' docks, maybe Triton but it was definitely tied with Bluff (known as SKAARJ FORTRESS 1 back then); Bluff's concept had an exit to this map.
• The map is described as being filled of Skaarj left and right (infiltration-style map). While you enter it by boat, you could swim by yourself to the ground in order to bypass the Skaarj guards. To proceed throughout the river, the player had to find in the fortress the control room for the large wooden loches used to set the transition of water levels of the river.
• Player can explore mini-maps before he/she could make his/her way to main part of the map (the fortress).
• The fortress was supposed to contain an "amazing Tarydium weapon". A Skaarj project, perhaps.
• The map ended with the player finding a radio trasmitter which would cast human voice sounds. However, before reaching it, the floor would break, making the player fall in a part of the Underflow river with a very strong current, which would lead to the next map.
• While it's completely unknown that the map has been made, it's heavily implied that Dasa was in reality the ultimate result.

[UB_]

Man could you imagine a long underground river connecting tons of locations in the game? From possibly Dark Arena to evidently Dasa? Could have been fucking amazing.

At least that explains how Skaarj could carry their stuff throughout places.

[Semfry]

Man could you imagine a long underground river connecting tons of locations in the game? From possibly Dark Arena to evidently Dasa? Could have been fucking amazing.

At least that explains how Skaarj could carry their stuff throughout places.

From what you've said it sounds like you still had to go to the next area in a somewhat linear order though. So was the plan for the level to gradually unfold as you revisit it throughout the game or something?

[UB_]

I suppose the fortress part of the Underflow was accessed from Bluff only, and then you could unlock the previous areas from there (kinda like what they did with FHub1 in the beta I guess) in order to have full free-range on where to go. The fortress was mandatory though as it was the only way to go after Bluff; it'd likely lead to Dasa or maybe Serpent Canyon.
This map wasn't listed by Myscha when he was questioned on what maps he created for the game so Underflow was definitely made by Shane (who also made the sunken castle maps and some, REALLY overdetailed decayed map).

Here's a tidbit from the doc
MAP CONSTRUCTION: This map shall consist of the facade of a fortress in an underground cave. The front of the fortress is paralelled by the under ground river "the Underflow". In the middle of the undergound river are two large wooden loches used to control the transition of water levels between the rivers. The player cannot go further down the river until she explores this map's interior. The primary construction of this map shall however be the interior of the Fortress now run by Skaarj and all the Skaarj comrades. The interior of the map will include many connections to the water river and many interior water areas. Some portions of the map may include water powered devices that spin in the flow of the water. The entire map shall have a "wet" feeling to it.

It appears also that the locked gate to the colosseum in Vandora wasn't there at first as shown in one of the rare trailers.

One thing I have to say is that 1998 beta wasn't supposed to have all the maps done and completed by that time. SkyCaves for example was already made beforehand but it wasn't part of that leak somehow.

One has to check if there's still a Hub system in the game (after 1998) that was never documented or known by nobody except Tim but I don't have non-GOLD Unreal to test that.

[UB_]

Another thing is that me and Leo have no fucking idea where all the unused music was supposed to be used (including the ones that eventually ended up in Legend's RTNP).
I forgot most of the umx's proper titles (I remember at least Cyrene is "Moros (Dark Presence)") but some of the songs in the beta leak had nothing to do with Unreal at all but were for another game, like UnrCirc.

Seti's action songsection was written for Moros/Jrath. Also yeah the original name is Moros not Morose. UTemple (Unreal Crypt) obviously wasn't made for Vandora at all.