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Unreal is a first-person shooter computer game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes and published by GT Interactive (now owned by Atari) in 1998. It was powered by an original gameplay and computer engine that now bears the game's name, one that had been in development for over three years in founder Tim Sweeney's garage before the game was released. Since the release of Unreal, the franchise has had one sequel and two different series based on the Unreal universe.

Unreal Mission Pack I: Return to Na Pali was released on May 31, 1999, and added new missions to the single player campaign of Unreal. Unreal and Unreal Mission Pack I: Return to Na Pali would later be repackaged as Unreal Gold. On August 30, 2001, Unreal was bundled again as Totally Unreal featuring the contents of Unreal Gold and Unreal Tournament that contained the mission pack and some bonus content.

Unreal has been most recently included in the Unreal Anthology. This collection contains Unreal Gold, Unreal Tournament, Unreal 2, and Unreal Tournament 2004.

Sommaire

Premise

The player takes on the part of a criminal (Prisoner 849) aboard the prison spacecraft Vortex Rikers, designated NC114-85EKLS, which has crash-landed on the lip of a canyon on the planet Na Pali. The natives of this planet, the four-armed, pacifist Nali, have been subjugated by a collection or alliance of alien races in thrall to the Skaarj Empire. When the Vortex Rikers crash lands, Skaarj board the downed prison ship, killing all survivors that could be found. Since almost everyone on the prison decks is killed upon impact or soon after, the player is presumed to be marooned on an unknown planet. The primary goal of the game is to locate and destroy the Skaarj mothership and escape the planet.

Unreal features a broad range of settings and artwork. In the course of the game the player explores the Nali Iron Age culture, a crashed research vessel (the ISV-Kran), the dizzyingly tall Sunspire, a floating city, Nali castles and villages, Skaarj bases, and ultimately the Skaarj mothership. Several Nali documents refer to a messiah who will deliver the Nali from the Skaarj, with the implication that the player is that messiah.

Two novels, titled Hard Crash and Prophet's Power respectively, were published that expanded on the premise and story first introduced in Unreal. After the release of the two novels, both of the covers were accidentally switched, making it harder for readers to understand what happened in the story.

Original storyline

The game begins with the player waking up inside their prison cell on the ship Vortex Rikers, badly wounded. The chaos around them suggests that there's been a prison break, however as the player reaches the bridge they learn that the prison ship was caught up in the gravity field of a strange uncharted planet - that planet was Na Pali. Whilst on the ship, the player often catches glimpses of large reptilian-like creatures, the Skaarj. At one point a battle between some survivors and a creature occurs behind a door - the player can only hear what's happening, however the door soon raises to reveal a scene of chaos as the monster runs down the corridor. Eventually the player finds an escape hatch and steps out onto the surface of the planet.

As the player travels further, he soon learns that the monster they saw on the ship was from a malignant alien race called the Skaarj, and soon realizes that he has crash landed in the middle of an occupation. The Skaarj Empire has invaded and enslaved or killed many of the planet's peaceful inhabitants, called the Nali. The Nali utilize technology similar to that from human history's Dark Ages, and are a seemingly pagan religious group, worshipping a number of gods, such as Chizra the Water god and Vandora the goddess of Lightning.

Also evident around the planet is a strange crystal called 'Tarydium'. This is the cause of the planet's strong gravity field and it appears to generate power. The Skaarj, seeing the value of this crystal, have built mines to extract it.

Traveling through the Rrajigar mines and the Temple of Chizra, the player reaches the Dark Arena where Nali have been crucified around the area and screams can be heard from inside. After fighting off numerous Skaarj, the player comes face to face with a Titan, the first 'boss' of the game - a behemoth of a creature that hurls large boulders which cause great injury. The huge beast can also shake the ground and send the player flying. After the Titan is slain, the way forward is revealed, leading to a small village complete with a monastery and cemetery.

The player encounters an alien installation called 'Terraniux' belonging to another alien race who are simply referred to as Mercenaries, and are hostile to both Skaarj and the player. After navigating the maze, a large temple built for the Nali goddess Vandora appears to be the only way forward. Eventually the player reaches a crashed human spaceship called the ISV Kran. Any hopes of finding live humans inside are shattered when the player sees a corpse in the airlock along with a translator log about the Skaarj invasion. After struggling through the wreck, the player arrives at the Spire Village - a small town at the base of the Sunspire, a colossal tower visible practically everywhere on the player's journey. The Spire itself is no less contaminated by the vicious Skaarj and other creatures, and only a few Nali remain there. As the player steps onto the bridge leading to the Sunspire, a poor Nali plummets past from the top of the tower to the lava below. After struggling to reach the top, a tarydium crystal beacon signals a strange elevator from the skies to which the player enters.

Up in the sky is Na Pali Haven - a chain of beautiful islands floating above the clouds. Despite being called a haven, this place is no longer safe. A Nali is forced by a Krall to walk the plank, strange creatures also enslaved by the Skaarj. After entering the city above, the player soon discovers that the Skaarj have occupied the town and have built a base inside the nearby mountain. Taking a teleporter built inside of it, the player arrives at a strange ring of stones, and soon battles a monstrous Stone Titan who is even more formidable than the regular Titan. After defeating this creature, the player moves on to the Nali Monastery, Bluff Eversmoking.

The suffering of the Nali due to the Skaarj is more present here than ever, as numerous Nali can be seen crucified at the top of the surrounding cliff walls. After battling his way past the Skaarj here, the player passes through a Cellar system, and eventually reaches a river system where he takes a peaceful yet brief boat ride to the Nali Castle. This location is also under occupation by the Skaarj, as well as a large 'Gasbag' creature in the Castle's main tower. At the base of the Castle lies a dungeon with torture devices as well as a guillotine and the exit of the castle. In a Hellish cave the player does battle with a Skaarj Warlord - a large demon-like creature with wings and a large rocket launcher. Before the final blow can be struck, the creature suddenly teleports away, and a beam leading to the exit moves into position. The player takes a lift up into a warehouse facility where he eventually reaches the control room for a teleporter. Outside of a window he sees an incredibly large spaceship, bigger than all prior ships, in the base of a crater named Demon Crater. It is soon discovered that this is the Skaarj Mothership.

The Mothership itself proves to be a vast labyrinth, with large numbers of Skaarj patrolling at all times. After finding a huge reactor, the player does battle with the Skaarj Warlord once more and emerges victorious. The ship's reactor is destroyed, plunging the vessel into darkness. After navigating the corridors in the dark, the player arrives at 'The Source' - a vast chamber where the player comes face to face with the Skaarj Queen. The queen is a worthy opponent able to teleport and cloak herself. After the queen is killed, the entire ship begins to shake, and the player jumps into an escape pod. Although he managed to escape the ship and the planet's atmosphere, the shuttle's entire fuel supply is consumed and the player is left floating in space. The story continues in the expansion pack 'Return to Na Pali'.

Expansion storyline

The story picks up not long after Unreal's ending; the player is picked up by a large Human Warship titled UMS Bodega Bay. Upon learning of the player's identity as Prisoner 849, the player is given the choice of returning to Na Pali as part of operation 'Talon Hunter' to locate the downed UMS ship Prometheus, locate a secret weapons log and activate the ship's ELT Transmitter, or to get a one-way trip out of the ship's airlock without a spacesuit.

The player is dropped off in a remote facility along with some basic equipment, most notably a self-recharging scuba gear kit. After traversing a small section of the planet, the Player comes across an old Nali well that has been dried up. Filling the well up again, the player takes a boat ride similar to the one on their last visit to the Planet, and winds up at the Nali Village of Glathriel. Not only is the village under Skaarj rule, but many people have been killed due to the supply runs carried out by the Bodega Bay. There is also a 'Spinner' infestation, which appear to be small spider-like creatures. Soon the player catches sight of the UMS Prometheus, a colossal military spaceship.

Upon arriving at the only entrance available, the player is attacked by a group of Mercenaries - it becomes apparent that they are salvaging any useful supplies from this ship for themselves. Upon locating a way deep inside the ship, the player retrieves the weapons log, but in doing so overhears a transmission from the UMS Bodega Bay. As it turns out, the player is to be terminated due to the fact this assignment is 'Deep Ultra' classified. The player reaches the bridge, activates the ELT transmitter, and does battle with a platoon of Marines. After a hard battle, the player manages to escape into a nearby mine system where they emerge at the Spire valley, which is located right next to the Sunspire.

After battling a group of Titans, they arrive at Nagomi passage. A large facility lies to the east, however it is locked down and the creature holding the key is nowhere to be seen, and so the player must instead go through Velora Temple. Upon navigating the trap-ladden temple, the player finds an exit and realizes they've traveled in circles - however the creature 'guarding' the facility is now present. Upon killing it and getting the key, the Player then travels through a large Tarydium plant, as well as a foundry. Eventually the player reaches the upper arctic regions of Na Pali, where they find a large building surrounded by a large abyss, the bottom of which is not visible. Traversing a slippery path, the player fights all opposition before them, and activates a teleporter inside the building.

This teleporter takes them to another Nali Castle, where they learn of a small spacecraft ready to take off. After defeating numerous Krall and another Skaarj Warlord, the player finally leaves the planet once again. However, the UMS Bodega Bay is waiting, and after the player fails to identify themselves, fires a seeking missile. The player's small scout-ship outmaneuvers the missile, and manages to lead the missile straight back into the UMS Bodega Bay. As the large ship suffers extensive damage, the player flies away into space.

Creatures

There are many creatures throughout Unreal. They may be friendly, such as the Nali, or enemies, such as the Krall or Brutes. There is also a wide variety of enemy Skaarj units such as assassins, lords, and scouts. There is wildlife scattered throughout Na Pali, such as Nali Cows or rabbits. Additionally, there are carnivorous monsters which attempt to kill the player but are unaffiliated with any league; these include the devilfish, the cave manta, and "blob".

Cut material

Originally, Unreal was going to be a Quake-style shooter - earlier screens showed a large status bar and centered weapons, similar to Doom and Quake. The main character was also going to be a woman, however in the final version the main character's gender is selectable in the game's "player setup" screen, though the default is a female character named Gina.

One of the weapons shown in early screenshots was the 'Quadshot' - a four-barreled shotgun. The model remains in-game, while there is no code for the weapon to function. Another weapon shown was a different pistol, however this may have just been an early version of the Automag. At one point the rifle could fire 3 shots at once, which is wrongly stated as the alternate fire in the Unreal manual that comes with the Unreal Anthology.

As development progressed, various levels were cut from development. A few of these levels reappeared in the 'Return to Na Pali' expansion pack. A number of enemies from early versions are present in the released software but with variations and improvements to their look. One monster that didn't make the cut was a dragon.

Reception

Upon release, Unreal was praised for not only for its graphics and environments, but also for above-average AI and gameplay. Enemies would dodge out of the way of projectiles, and pose a competent threat as well. Headshots would do more damage as well, and the player could even decapitate enemies with weapons such as the Razorjack and the Sniper rifle. The planet of Na Pali was rich in atmosphere compared to many other FPS out at the time - outdoor levels were populated by many small creatures and birds, who did not attack the player. Its engine was considered revolutionary at the time, boasting huge environments and colourful lighting available in software as well as hardware-accelerated mode.

Competition with Quake series

The Unreal game engine was seen as a major rival to id Software's id Tech 2 engine, and the Unreal game itself was considered to be technically superior to Quake II, which was out on the market at the same time. Since Unreal came packaged with its own scripting language called UnrealScript, it soon developed a large community on the Internet which was able to add new mods (short for "modifications") in order to change or enhance gameplay. This feature greatly added to the overall longevity of the product and provided an incentive for new development. A map editor and overall complete modification program called UnrealEd also came with the package.

Epic Games has encouraged its community to contribute to creating modifications through sponsoring big dollar contests, including one for Unreal Tournament for $150,000 in cash and prizes, and another for Unreal Tournament 2004 for $1,000,000 in cash and prizes.

The all-new Unreal engine provided a plethora of possibilities to third-party content producers.

Graphics

Unreal is known for boosting the expectations of 3D graphics considerably. Compared to its peers in the genre, such as Quake II, Unreal brought to life not only highly-detailed indoor environments, but also easily the most impressive outdoor landscapes ever seen at the time.<ref>Shamma, Tahsin. Review of Unreal, Gamespot.com, June 10, 1998.</ref> This graphical splendor brought with it the side effect of requiring powerful hardware to run the game fast enough to enjoy. The minimum requirements stated that a Pentium 166 MHz with a mere 16 MB RAM and no 3D accelerator would be capable of running the game. This was not realistic, however, and many gamers were very disappointed when they tried to play the game with such a system.<ref>what are the minimum sys requirement for unreal? on Usenet, April 1999.</ref>

The Unreal engine brought a host of graphical improvements, including colored lighting. Although Unreal is not the first major release with colored lighting (see Quake II), it is the first to have a software renderer as feature rich as the hardware renderers of the time, including colored lighting and even a limited form of texture filtering referred to by programmer Tim Sweeney as an ordered "texture coordinate space" dither.<ref>Yong, Li Sheng. Texturing As In Unreal, flipcode.com, July 10, 2000.</ref> Early pre-release versions of Unreal were based entirely around software rendering. SIMD technology is integral to allowing the software audio and 3D graphics engines to perform as well as they do. Unreal uses several SIMD technologies, including AMD's 3DNow! along with Intel's MMX and SSE (known as "KNI - Katmai New Instructions" within Unreal).

Image:Unreal screenshot.jpg
Screenshot from Unreal. Note that the player is allowed to choose their own gun placement - left-handed in the example here.

Unreal was one of the first games to utilize detail texturing. This type of multiple texturing enhances the surfaces of objects with a second texture that shows material detail. When the player stands within a small distance from most surfaces, the detail texture will fade in and make the surface appear much more complex (high-resolution) instead of becoming increasingly blurry.<ref>6.20 Detail Textures, OpenGL.org, August 6, 1999.</ref> Notable surfaces with these special detail textures included computer monitors and pitted metal surfaces aboard the prison ship, and golden metal doors and stone surfaces within Nali temples. This extra texture layer was not applied to character models. The resulting simulation of material detail on game objects was intended to aid the player's suspension of disbelief. For many years after Unreal's release (and Unreal Tournament's release), detail texturing only worked well with the Glide renderer. It was, in fact, disabled in the Direct3D renderer by default (but could be re-enabled in the Unreal.ini file) due to performance and quality issues caused by the driver and present even on hardware many times more powerful than the original 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics.

Because of Unreal's long development time, the course of development occurred during the emergence and rapid progression of hardware 3D accelerators. So, along with the advanced software 3D renderer, Unreal was built to take advantage of the 3Dfx Glide API, which emerged as the dominant interface towards the end of the game's development. When Unreal was finally released, Microsoft's Direct3D API was growing almost exponentially in popularity and Epic was fairly quick to develop a renderer for their game engine. However, the Direct3D renderer, released initially to support the new Matrox G200, was less capable and slower than the Glide support, especially in the beginning when it was unstable, slow, and had many graphics quality issues.<ref>MATROX OFFERS SNEAK-PEAK AT UNREAL DIRECT3D®PATCH, Epic MegaGames Inc., September 24, 1998.</ref> The Glide renderer's superiority can be seen in a review of the 3dfx Voodoo 5, where it outperformed every other card in Unreal Tournament (same engine as Unreal), due to its native Glide support. Even video cards which consistently defeated the Voodoo 5 5500 in other games could not win against Glide's greater efficiency.<ref>Witheiler, Matthew. 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 PCI, Anandtech.com, August 4, 2000.</ref> Unreal also had official OpenGL support, but its compatibility was very limited due to poor OpenGL client drivers from most hardware vendors at the time and Epic's resulting disinterest in furthering development. OpenGL could perform better in some rare situations, but Glide and Direct3D were usually the APIs of choice.

Later in 2004 and onward, OpenGL drivers developed by independent programmers and offered for free online began to supersede the official drivers for speed and quality. Perhaps the best of these releases was Chris Donhal's enhanced OpenGL renderer for Unreal Tournament, available for Unreal at OldUnreal.Com, which enabled native support for anti-aliasing, advanced multi-texturing including single-pass detail texturing, and hardware T&L, amongst a selection of other advanced and experimental features.

Sound effects

Unreal's "Galaxy" audio system is highly optimized for speed and quality, utilizing Intel's MMX extensively. It manages both music and sound effects. For sound effects it uses uncompressed waveforms in 8-bit or 16-bit monaural format. The engine is capable of playing back at all common sample rates but is set by default to 22 kHz playback to reduce CPU load on computers available at the time of release. One can change the unreal.ini file's sample rate setting to 44.1 kHz ("44100" in the file) and receive a boost in quality for both music and effects.

Galaxy supports rudimentary software-based 3D audio positioning as well as hardware 3D sound support (although this is quite buggy.) In software mode, sounds are only stereo-panned. Phase shifting and band-pass filtering are used to imitate changes in position and distance. The sound system is limited to mixing and playing back a maximum of 64 channels, but the default is 16 channels because of CPU power limitations. This option is also user configurable within the unreal.ini file.

In hardware 3D audio mode, the engine is designed to support sound cards with hardware 3D audio mixing and positioning capabilities. At the time of release this included primarily the Aureal Vortex line of audio cards. In this mode, the sound card takes over sound placement with the game providing only positional information to the hardware. If the game uses more channels than the sound card supports, then the extra channels will be run on the game's software engine; this can cause sound consistency problems.

If the processor Unreal is running on lacks MMX support (i.e. a Pentium Pro), then the game will automatically reduce sound quality to low. Quality can be turned back up to full, but the audio engine is less efficient without MMX support. On non-MMX machines, the sound code does make some quality and speed trade-offs by limiting sound effects to having only 64 volume levels. We can hear this limitation by setting up an ambient sound effect with a high radius in an otherwise quiet area; the discrete steps between volume levels are quite audible. Epic also noted nearly a twofold speed boost with MMX code.<ref>Sweeney, Tim.Unreal Audio Subsystem, Epic MegaGames Inc., July 21, 1999.</ref>

The sound system supports both the legacy WinMM sound system, and DirectSound. DirectSound generally achieves the lowest latency, while WinMM works on Windows 95 without DirectSound or Windows NT 4.0 machines.

Music

While many game companies went from FM synthesis or General MIDI in the early 1990s to CD audio and pre-rendered audio, many of the Epic games used the less common system of module music, composed with a tracker, which used stored PCM sound effects sequenced together to produce music. Epic had been using this technology for other games such as Jazz Jackrabbit and One Must Fall 2097 which allowed relatively rich music to be stored in files usually smaller than one megabyte. Naturally, this technology allowed easy implementation of dynamic music for mood changes in Unreal. The Unreal soundtrack was written by MOD music authors Alexander Brandon and Michiel van den Bos with a few select tracks by Dan Gardopée and Andrew Sega. Alex Brandon and Michiel van den Bos were also responsible for the soundtracks for Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex, which also use the Unreal Engine; Michiel van den Bos also produced the soundtrack for Age of Wonders.

Unreal's music engine also supports CD audio tracks.

Image:Unreal music sample.ogg

Map editing

Unreal's method of creating maps differs in major ways from that of Quake. The bundled UnrealEd map editor uses the Unreal engine to accurately render the exact scene, as opposed to external editors like Worldcraft attempting to recreate it with different methods. Whereas Quake maps are compiled from a variety of different components, Unreal maps are inherently editable on the fly. This allows anybody to edit any map that is created, including the originals from the developers. Though UnrealEd loads quite a bit slower than most map editors, it runs maps smoothly and swiftly: hitting rebuild automatically finalizes the level within minutes (or even within seconds, on a modern day computer), as opposed to the hours or (at the time) even days with a full Quake map compile.

In addition, Unreal starts with a completely solid world in which the user extract areas with primitives instead of starting with a void and building rooms by adding primitive shapes to fill it. Many map designers believe that this eliminates the tedium of matching up separate walls, floors and ceilings.

Unreal for Linux and OSX

There was no Unreal version for Linux but Unreal Tournament is available for Linux and able to play Unreal as a modification. A Mac OS X version was created using a hacked Unreal Tournament preview 3 binary, and thus has no music, but nonetheless, runs natively in OSX. [1]

References

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External links

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