Abandoned video game challenge

[Anderson]

Rebels: Prison Escape, an abandonware video game from 2004 by a Hungarian studio that went bust.

To me it was always a mystery why it wouldn't work. There is no information about the game, no walkthroughs, no fixes, patches or even videos on YouTube except a few cinematics and old amateur footage.

 

 

The challenge, if anyone has time and curiousity - figure out if it's possible to go beyond the first level prison. To me both this version and the retail copy I had about 10-14 years ago would crash after finishing the first prison. It produces a crash log but I have no clue whatsoever. It's one of those games that Ross Scott might want to do a video of Game Dungeon considering how cryptic the internet is about this game, but until then...

This is the only game I saw that took the prison thematic seriously and made it work.

It's basically an Isometric RTS/Steath like Commandos or Robin Hood.

 

Update: By accident I found on some obscure sites the necessary files that include a patch to fix the crash to the second level.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WFSESXj3YdJdv8KGraVpqHpKXHvUCHc2

I also uploaded it at Moddb: https://www.moddb.com/games/rebels-prison-escape/downloads/rebels-prison-escape-patch-for-crash-at-the-romero-memorial-second-stage

 

Here's the game itself because it's only sold second hand these days:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VDgYLReyQWlPPN3TPzWF5RvvRWh29jF6

 

Tweak:

Edit the rebels.cfg file by changing the 'checkvideo=#' entry to 'checkvideo=6'. Save the changes and you can start on any level.

 

Edited May 4, 2020 by Anderson
Found some files.

[freyk]

I took a small look inside the data, but haven't load the executable thorough.

(it asked for my administrator priviliges. No dont want that, just yet. Didnt loaded it in a vm)

 

My theory:

if you want to play the other levels, change the level-play order (as a workaround for the crash.)

Go to folder "rebels_data", open levels.cfg with your text editor (after you made a backup of the file), inside the file goto "[levels]", change the level-order and save the file.

 

And what does rebels_tweak executable in the rebels_data folder?

Edited January 28, 2018 by freyk

[Anderson]

I took a small look inside the data, but haven't load the executable thorough.

(it asked for my administrator priviliges. No dont want that, just yet. Didnt loaded it in a vm)

 

My theory:

if you want to play the other levels, change the level-play order (as a workaround for the crash.)

Go to folder "rebels_data", open levels.cfg with your text editor (after you made a backup of the file), inside the file goto "[levels]", change the level-order and save the file.

 

And what does rebels_tweak executable in the rebels_data folder?

Thanks, good try but...

Didn't help, the game still considers upon "new game" the first level as the first level.

 

The way it works, is when you complete the first, you open the next level, and etc. Therefore it's not really a problem to load the second level straight away. I'd want to find out what's in the other and how to unlock them, but among others things, I'm curious why won't the second level (psychiatric hospital) work. But you can't play them in random order and you can't avoid the game crashing upon loading the second level.

 

Tweak.cfg has only this:

 

[game]

fixedframerate=0

fixedfps=20

autozclip=0

autozclip_targetframerate=5

fog=1

 

Edited January 28, 2018 by Anderson

[Anderson]

Any ideas?

[nbohr1more]

Source Code?

 

If there's no source code it would be nearly impossible to fix such a crash.

Some folks have worked miracles by reviewing ASM in de-compiles but it's not typical that such things would yield useful insights.

[V-Man339]

I came into this thinking this was about games nobody else has played or covered and to my dismay I found out it was in fact about literally unfinished games.

 

What genre is this thing?

[Anderson]

Source Code?

 

If there's no source code it would be nearly impossible to fix such a crash.

Some folks have worked miracles by reviewing ASM in de-compiles but it's not typical that such things would yield useful insights.

 

I have no clue. The link provided is the only thing I found.

Sad if this is the final answer.

 

I wonder though if it's possible to circumvent the locked levels and access other levels to see if they work, because the thing that I saw crashing was only at loading the 2'nd level.

Edited February 12, 2018 by Anderson

[Anderson]

I came into this thinking this was about games nobody else has played or covered and to my dismay I found out it was in fact about literally unfinished games.

 

What genre is this thing?

 

It is a finished game but one that seems to have had horrible troubleshooting and apparently didn't sell well at all.

 

It's a stealth, real time strategy, tactical adventure. Picture the Commando series with different characters having different traits, strengths and weaknesses.

Rebels : Prison Escape is so obscure and unknown that there are no walkthroughs, no news, no discussions about it, which leads me to believe nobody ever completed it.

 

There might be​ a way to force the game to unlock/launch next levels beyond the Hospital one (second level) that causes crashing but I have no knowledge of how to do this on my own.

Edited February 12, 2018 by Anderson

[Anderson]

With a little free time on my hands wanted to open the .pak files to get the music at least.

But even here the files are of a special breed.

 

Some info from the internets:

"PAK files are primarily used by video games but may also be used by other applications such as the Google Chrome web browser. The format for a PAK file used by one game may differ from the PAK format used for a different game. Therefore, you may have to try multiple programs before opening your PAK file."

 

And so, none of those Quake programs work to unlock these .pak files!

Edited May 29, 2018 by Anderson

[Anderson]

Just a heads up to inform that I've found a hot fix patch and uploaded it on Moddb. The admins of Moddb kindly added the game itself to the site. So now, the game should be completable.

https://www.moddb.com/games/rebels-prison-escape/downloads/rebels-prison-escape-patch-for-crash-at-the-romero-memorial-second-stage