Unreal Engine 1 Announcements Page

* Update: I've also added the missing .BMP file for the debugger.  Please place this file in your /HELP directory.

• Click here to download UDE and the retail uscript source files
• Click here to download the retail .U packages compiled in debug mode
• Click here to download DebuggerLogo^?.bmp
• Click here to download the extremely important UDE patch

* Update #2: A user found a big bug that would cause UCC to attempt to recompile all of your .U's, not just new ones.  If this has happened to you, don't worry.  You can find the original .U's in your system dir with the extension .~U or on the CD.  Install the patch above to fix it.

* Update #3: Wow.. so that's how you bring a T1 to it's knees.  We had to move the files to a new home with a lot more bandwidth.  So if you have had problems downloading them, please try again.

Support for 3rd Party Server Querying Oct 1, 2002 - by Jack Porter

We have made server lists available via HTTP for both demo and full version UT2003 servers so that 3rd party server query tools can add UT2003 support.

• http://ut2003master.epicgames.com/serverlist/full-all.txt
• http://ut2003master.epicgames.com/serverlist/demo-all.txt

ut2003.exe unreal://ip:gameport

- Jack

UPaint Update Sep 30, 2002 - by Erik de Neve

A patch for the excellent UPaint program included with the retail version of Unreal Tournament 2003, created by Right Hemisphere, is available here: UPaint 1.0.1 self-installing patch.  It addresses the following issues:

• Fixed an alpha bug with Face Projection - caused feathered mask areas to become transparent.
• Fixed a memory leak in the renderer - caused performance loss over time.
• Right-click will now cancel the polygonal selection tool.

- Erik

Unreal Tournament 2003 Tools Update Sep 27, 2002 - by Steven Polge

We have included a full suite of tools with Unreal Tournament 2003 for mod authors to make maps, game modifications, textures, and models.  Below are a couple of updates to the UT2003 tools.

• If you are using the Unreal Editor, unzip this file into your UT2003\system directory, to fix a crash when rebuilding AI paths: Editor Update (1.26 MB).  There is also a problem running the editor on Windows 98.  We should have a fix for this problem posted shortly.
• We are also going to be making the Unreal Development Environment, a powerful script programming IDE, available very soon.

- Steve

UT Custom Skins October 25, 2000 - by Steven Polge

As part of the skin cheat fix in recent versions of UT, skin packages must now be prefixed with the meshname + "skin".  For example, the skin package FCommandoAsia^?.utx will be rejected for use in online play.  Renaming the package to FCommandoSkinsAsia^?.utx will fix the problem.

Job Opening October 11, 2000 - by Steven Polge

We have a job opening for an Unreal Engine Senior Technical Support Manager.  Check this page for the qualifications and responsibiilities.

UnrealEd^? v432 Fix October 9, 2000 - by Warren Marshall

A few people have reported a weird crash with the dockable browsers in the new UnrealEd^? included in the 432 patch.  I believe I have a fix for that, and a few other things I noticed.  You can grab that file here ...

UnrealEd_432_fix.zip

To install this, just unzip it into your system directory.  Here is a quick list of what is included ...

- the "TextureLock" option should work 100% now
- fixed the crash that some people were getting when docking a browser and getting a crash when trying to restart the editor
- rewrote "UEditorEngine::polySelectMatchingBrush" because SHIFT+B was crashing at random times. Should be stable now.
- brush clipping was merging faces on the resulting brush
- may have fixed the random "WinMain/message pump" crash

The first item may raise an eyebrow or two.  :)  TextureLock is something I put in a while ago, but just haven't made a UI button for it.  What it will do is stop the editor from resetting texture alignment on brushes that you manipulate vertices on.  To access it, go into Advanced Options, open up "Editor", then "Grid", and you'll see the option there called "TextureLock".  Change that to TRUE and restart the editor.  It should work for you now.

I'm 99% sure that I've fixed it, but if you still get the crash related to docking browsers, please email a copy of your "editor.log" file to unrealed2@epicgames.com.

Thanks!

- Warren

Unreal Tournament Patch v432 Released! October 5, 2000 - by Steven Polge

We've released version 432 for the Win32 version of Unreal Tournament.  It is completely network compatible with all previous publicly released versions.  Check the Unreal Tournament Versions Page for download locations for the Win32 patch, which is about 6 MB.  Here are the release notes.   We're also releasing new public headers for version 432 - check the downloads page.  Send bug reports to utbugs432@epicgames.com.

- Steve

Editor Status Update September 22, 2000 - by Warren Marshall

Been a while since I did one of these so I figured I would just take a moment to show you a few of the new features that are coming in the next version of UnrealEd^? ...  and I brought pictures!

Texture Browser

You can now go into an "actual size" mode, similar to the texture browsers in some of the Quake editors.

Old Way

New Way

You can still use the old way if you prefer it ... it's totally configurable.  Also notice that the texture names/sizes are much easier to read now.

Sky Boxes

You can now view sky boxes in the editor when you go into the real time preview mode.

Old Way

New Way

2D Shape Editor

You no longer have to export a texture, convert it  into a BMP file, then load it  into the 2D shaper in order to get a background image.  Now, you can simply follow  the steps shown in this series of pictures.

1. Select a texture.
2. Choose the "Get From Current Texture" menu option.
3. Texture appears as your background image.

The 2D shaper will also support zooming in the next version.  You can stop asking me for that now.  :)

-Warren

Latest Unreal Engine News September 8, 2000 - by Tim Sweeney

Check out:

• New Unreal Technology Preview (Daily Radar)
• NVidia and Epic Announce Strategic Partnership (Yahoo)

-Tim

"Creeping Ping" bug with Windows 2000 August 31, 2000 - by Jack Porter

Some server admins have reported that after a while all of the players get increasingly
lagged out when the UT server is running on Windows 2000. This seems to happen only
when the remote administration webserver is running. We believe it may be related
to this Win2K issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q258/1/00.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=tech&FR=0

The workaround is to only run the remote admin webserver when you actually want to administer your
server. Disable the remote admin webserver by removing the line which says

ServerActors=UWeb.Webserver

in your server's INI file. To activate the webserver, join your server as an admin and
type the following command:

admin summon uweb.webserver

When you've finished administering your server, you can disable the webserver with the command

admin killall webserver

- Jack

A Note to Modmakers August 25, 2000 - by Jack Porter

A lot of people have noticed that it takes the UT menus a long time to start up when you have lots of mods installed.  This is because the code which creates the Mod menu loads all of the mod packages into memory to add them to the mods' items to the Mod menu.  We've addressed this for the next UT patch, but we need modmakers to make a small change to the way they add items to the Mod menu.  Previously, mod menu items were created with an .int file entry something like this:

Object=(Name=ChaosUT.ChaosUTModMenuItem,Class=Class,MetaClass=UMenu.UMenuModMenuItem)

To make your mod load quicker when UT starts up, you need to add a Description field on the end.

Object=(Name=ChaosUT.ChaosUTModMenuItem,Class=Class,MetaClass=UMenu.UMenuModMenuItem,Description="ChaosUT Config,Configure ChaosUT")

The stuff after the comma is the text that appears on the help bar at the bottom of the screen.  If you don't make the change to your int file, your mod will still work with the next UT patch, but it won't load any faster - so please make the change for the next release of your mod.

- Jack

Editor Status Update August 25, 2000 - by Warren Marshall

Just wanted to take a moment here to let everyone know about some of the editor stuff that will be in the next patch that comes your way.

2D Shaper

The 2D shaper can now handle multiple shapes, like the old one did.  But the coolest thing is that it can now handle bezier segments (you can have as many as you want).  You select a side, turn it into a bezier segment and you get 2 control points that you can use to control the shape of the segment.  The segment has multiple detail levels so you can control how smooth the curves are.  It also allows you to create whatever kind of shape you want, and it will triangulate the shape automatically when the time comes to create a brush from it.

The file format has changed, so any shapes you've currently saved won't be usable in this new one ... so print them out or something.  :P

Movers

When you right click a mover there is a new menu option called "Show Polys". What this will do is add the movers polygons into the current BSP.  You can then change the texturing, surface flags, etc of those polys and those changes will be reflected on the mover itself.  So you don't have to recreate movers anymore to change the way they look.  The only drawback to this is that the polys it stuffs into the BSP -- they're just temporary, but you will have to rebuild your map to get rid of them.  But I think that's a more than reasonable trade off.  :)

Modes

"Brush Clipping" has been made into it's own mode ("MODE BRUSHCLIP").  This allowed several good things to happen ..

-  You can place clipping markers anywhere you want to now.  On top of brushes, actors, etc ...
-  Placing clipping markers will no longer deselect the currently selected brushes
-  Many bugs have been fixed, including the ever nasty "can't clip a brush that you've vertex manipulated"
    - NOTE : this mainly applies to any NEW brushes you create after getting this version.  Old brushes may work OK if you transform them permanently before trying the clip though ...

"Vertex Editing" is also it's own mode now ("MODE VERTEXEDIT").  Mainly for ease of use reasons.  It's also got all of the dragging weirdness worked out of it.

And there's a brand new mode, called "Face Dragging" ("MODE FACEDRAG"). This mode allows you to resize brushes much like QER.  You select the brush(es) you want to drag faces on and enter this mode.  CTRL+Left clicking and dragging in a 2D viewport will grab the faces on the selected brushes which are facing the mouse cursor and drag them.  So resizing a cube becomes a simple affair without having to resort to the snap scaling tool.  It's also great for skewing brushes.  The important difference is that the entire brush doesn't scale evenly while you drag ... only the specific faces it grabs will move.

Misc

Some of these might be repeats from above, so if you see any that are, just pretend you didn't see them ...

* Actor grouping (like vis groups in Worldcraft)
* made all browsers dockable inside of a master browser window (individually configured)
  * you can have a mix using this system ... have some browsers docked, others floating
* added ability in texture browser to rename textures
* all browser windows will fill in a default filename when saving packages or exporting items
* 2D shape editor
  * you can build shapes however you want - no more worrying about triangles
  * shapes will auto-triangulate when you create a brush
  * now supports multiple shapes
  * supports bezier segments
  * had problems with beziers on the left hand side of the shape
  * would have problems with tons of polys in the shape
  * now has the ability to scale shapes up or down
  * brush pivot point should now be in the correct place after creating a brush
* "Radii view" will now work in the 3D window by rendering the collision cylinder as an 8-sided wire cylinder
* "Radii view" will also show the radius of things like lights in the 3D window
* made the "snap vertex" graphic on the bottom bar larger
* various vertex editing fixes/improvements
* Brush Clipping
  * changed the marker to a little push pin
  * clip markers are now numbered as you add them in - like QER
  * clip markers have a circle drawn around them that doesn't scale with zoom distance
    * you can select clip markers by clicking the circle as well as the actor itself
* fixed MeshBrowser^? not playing individual animations
* changed vertex editing color to always be white
* may have fixed the way the tabs would overlap each in the "surface properties" and "build options" dialogs
* turned the mesh viewer into a regular browser window - it can be docked and is treated the same as the other browser windows
* cleaned up the UI on all the browsers - things are much more consistent and cleaner now
* when an image is loaded into the 2D shaper, the lines should be dark gray instead of black
  * the image also shifts around when you move the origin.  It shouldn't - lock it at the origin.
* box selection mode will no longer occasionally leave the box sitting there until you move the camera again
* fixed the "can't clip brush after using vertex manipulation on it" bug. If something goofy DOES happen with the brush clipping it can be fixed 99% of the time by transforming the brush permanently, and trying the clip again.
* CTRL+E hotkey for "Save As"

- Warren

Latest UT Buzz August 23, 2000 - by Tim Sweeney

Lots of cool stuff is happening with Unreal Tournament.

First, check out the latest preview at IGN PS2!

IGN also has coverage of Infogrames' upcoming product lineup.  Infogrames has been a great partner and we're thrilled to be a major part of their plans.

Next, according to GameWeek, Unreal engine games are holding two of the top ten spots, even 2 and 9 months after release!

1. Diablo 2
2. The Sims
3. Roller Coaster Tycoon
4. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
5. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire 2
6. Unreal Tournament
7. Slots
8. Deus Ex
9. Age of Empires II
10. SimCity^? 3000 Unlimited

A big congratulations to the ION Storm Austin team for creating a great game, and for their project's commercial success.

-Tim

Unreal Tournament Full Server-Only v428 Released! August 14, 2000 - by Steven Polge

We've released a full server-only version 428 for the Win32 version of Unreal Tournament.  It is completely network compatible with all previous publicly released versions.  Check the Unreal Tournament Versions Page for download locations for the 72 MB zip.   Send bug reports to utbugs428@epicgames.com.

We strongly recommend that server admins upgrade to version 428.  We've made a lot of improvements to server CPU utilization and network performance, as well as fixing a lot of bugs and cheats.  We've also added cool new features like file download redirection (added in version 413), which allows users to download files from another server at high speed, getting them up and playing faster without sucking bandwidth and CPU cycles from your server.

Here's the server specific changes made since version 400:

Version 428

- fixed 'killall bot' working on servers even if not admin.
- fixed creeping ping problem with Win2K. 
- fix for occasional accidental port changes on servers using NGStats.

Version 425

- fixed the skin cheats
- fixed creeping pings problem for passworded servers 
- fixed problems with passwords with spaces
- improved server CPU utilization
- improved prioritization of network traffic for low bandwidth users
- fixed ActorLineCheck^?() crash
- fixed suicide spamming
- Last Man Standing now can have time limit
- fixed collision bug which cropped up in 420 (overlord)
- lowered NGStats thread priority on dedicated servers, so NGStats doesn't hold up level changes.
- Added bExternalBatcher configuration option to [Engine.GameInfo]. If true, the game doesn't try to run the NGStats world log batch process.

Version 420

- fixed security holes with ServerRestartGame^?() SwitchLevel^?() and SwitchCoopLevel^?()

Version 413

- fixed problem causing Bunch->IsError() assertion which was causing some server crashes
- fixed last man standing late entry cheat
- fixed head gib not replicated on headshot in network play
- fixed die at start of feign death and can't respawn in network game
- Servers can adjust the minimum compatible version number reported to clients using:
[IpServer.UdpServerQuery] MinNetVer^?=405.  This can be used to prevent older
clients from seeing your server if you are running a mod which requires a UT
version newer than 400.
- ngWorldStats version 1.5.5 is included in the patch.
- The UT server now queries ngWorldStats log batcher to determine if it is
correctly processing stats logs.   413 servers report this information
to UBrowser, and shows both whether ngWorldStats is enabled on the server, and
whether it is actually working correctly.
- Server admins can now redirect auto-downloads to a remote HTTP (WWW) server. 
Custom content such as maps, skins and texture packages can be stored on the remote
website either uncompressed or in a compressed file format (.uz) for
faster downloads.

Version 405

- fixed problem with one of the 402 server optimizations causing pickups to be shown when they should be hidden if high packet loss
- fixed gold players showing up in CTF
- fixed deathsounds and hit sounds from other players not being heard in net games
- downloads from server are now rate controlled
- Servers can deny auto-downloading of content by setting AllowDownLoads^?=false in the [IpDrv.TcpNetDriver] section of the Unrealtournament.ini file.
- reduced how long carcasses hang around on servers
- Improved bit packing for network packets (server performance improvement)

Version 402

- fixed guided warhead blowing up if no client response with 300 msec after spawning
- players can no longer switch to illegal team if server is full and force team balance set
- Major server CPU utilization improvements

- Steve

Unreal Tournament Patch v428 Released! August 13, 2000 - by Steven Polge

We've released version 428 for the Win32 version of Unreal Tournament.  It is completely network compatible with all previous publicly released versions.  Check the Unreal Tournament Versions Page for download locations for the Win32 patch, which is about 6 MB.  Here are the release notes.    Send bug reports to utbugs428@epicgames.com.

- Steve

D3D performance August 5, 2000 - by Erik de Neve

We plan to quickly address any performance, networking, and editor issues people may have with version 425 in an upcoming patch. If you have any issues with the Direct3D support in patch 425 and would like to help test the latest revision, download this d3ddrv.dll to replace the file that is in your UnrealTournament^?\system folder. All feedback welcome at utbugs425@epicgames.com

- Erik

UnrealEd2^? Trick August 4, 2000 - by Warren Marshall

Just a quick note about the 425 patch. You can now add your own buttons to the button bar on the left hand side, but I failed to document this fact in the patch readme file. So here's how to do it ...

To create an example button, add this to the end of your unrealed.ini file ... 

[UserDefinedGroup]
NumButtons^?=1
Button0=Align Camera on Selected Actors,AddMover,CAMERA ALIGN

This sets up 1 user defined button, defined by the "Button0" line. There are 3 fields, that break down like this... 

1.  Tool tip text ("Align Camera on Selected Actors").
2.  The filename of the bitmap you want to display on the button ("AddMover"). This bitmap MUST be the "system\EditorRes" directory and be 30x30 pixels in size (for best effect). The color depth is not really important, but the UnrealEd^? ones are 24-bit.
3.  The "exec" command that you want the button to execute ("CAMERA ALIGN"). This command gets sent to the editors command parser and executed. In the example, the command "camera align" will align all the viewport cameras on the selected actor.

And that's it!  Adding more than 1 button should be self explanatory. :)

On another note ... I'll likely be posting updates to this page on a somewhat weekly basis letting you guys (specifically the editing community) know what I'm doing in regards to the editor and what to expect in future versions.  Who knows, maybe even a screenshot or two.  :)

UPDATE : It was brought to my attention that 425 has a small bug in it which prevents you from creating more than one user defined button.  I made a quick fix here for the people who want to use this feature.  Make sure you make a backup of your original unrealed.exe file before copying this one into your system directory.  You can download the fix here : UnrealEd425-UserButtonFix.zip.

- Warren

Cool Web Sites August 3, 2000 - by Tim Sweeney

I just wanted to point out the web site UnrealEd.exe, an awesome resource for Unreal level designers.  The site has an active set of Forums and, for beginners, a very thorough Tutorials section!

While I'm plugging web sites, FlipCode.com also deserves mention; it's a cool leading-edge site for game programmers, with an emphasis on 3D graphics.

Also, the frequently-updated Unreal community web sites, Unreal Universe and PlanetUnreal, are great resources for Unreal Tournament players, and UnrealEngine.com follows the broader scope of Unreal engine based games.

- Tim

Epic partners with Loki for Unreal Tournament Linux support August 2, 2000 - by Steven Polge

Here's the press release.  You can also get Linux version 425 from Loki here.  You must have the UT Windows CD to install the Linux version.

- Steve

Unreal Tournament Patch v425 Released! August 1, 2000 - by Steven Polge

We've released version 425 for the Win32 version of Unreal Tournament.  It is completely network compatible with all previous publicly released versions.  Check the Unreal Tournament Versions Page for download locations for the Win32 patch, which is about 6 MB.  Here are the release notes.   We've also released a full server-only version of 425.  Send bug reports to utbugs425@epicgames.com.

- Steve

Final Unreal 1 Patch Released July 13, 2000 - by Erik de Neve

Yes - hell froze over, allowing the cows to skid home - we released the final Unreal 1 patch. Based on version 226 from July last year, it includes the latest Direct3D and sound code from Unreal Tournament. Click here for download locations.

- Erik

Unreal Tournament Patch v420 Released! May 22, 2000 - by Steven Polge

We've released version 420 of Unreal Tournament.  It is completely network compatible with all previous publicly released versions.  Check the Unreal Tournament Versions Page for download locations for the Win32 patch, which is about 5.6 MB.  Here are the release notes.   This version includes the new UnrealEd^? version 2.0, described in this press release.

- Steve

IpDrv^?.so Update for Linux 413 Apr 17, 11:25 AM - by Brandon Reinhart

I had a bad makefile when I built the release version of 413 for Linux, which caused it to build in a null interface for the IP driver. This means you won't be able to run servers or connect to network games with it. You can get a fixed IpDrv.so by clicking on that link. Put it in your System directory to fix the problem.

I've also put together a new version of the patch for people who haven't downloaded it yet. This is version 413a:

• UT-Patch413a-Linux.tar.gz
• UT-Patch413a-Linux.tar.gz

- GreenMarine^?

UT 413 for Linux Patch! Apr 16, 1:25 PM - by Brandon Reinhart

The Unreal Tournament 413 patch for Linux is up for release. This patch includes all of the game related fixes from the windows version of 413 and a lot of new stuff for people using the Linux client. The OpenUT team has added a ton of cool features to the client including:

• Music! If you have libmikmod you can now play music inside of UT.
• SDL input! SDL adds a lot finer control over the game.
• SDL mesa GL support! Mesa support now in very good condition.

HUGE HUGE HUGE PROPS for the following hackers from the OpenUT^? project:

OpenUT Programming

• John Fulmer
• Joshua R. Kaldon- Garvin
• Chris Gilbert
• Jeroen Janssen
• Jeremy Muhlich
• Marcus Sundberg
• Nicholas Vinen
• Daniel Vogel

• Doug Dahl
• Andreas Ehliar
• Albert K T Hui
• Jeffrey H. Ingber
• Matt Matthews
• Andy Piper
• Dustin Reyes
• Andy Ward
• Jeremy Weatherford

Speaking of open projects, I plan to put up a new version of the UT headers for Windows and Linux and all of the rest of the Unreal Tournament public source in a couple days. Also, I'll put up new debugging libs for 413 at the sourceforge site.

- GreenMarine^?

Bright released Apr 10, 9:15 PM - by Erik de Neve

Buckling under popular demand from the UT skinning/mod community we are releasing a public version of 'Bright', our trusty old command-line-based texture palettizer tool. Get it right here. Documentation included in the zip file. We used this throughout development of Unreal and Unreal Tournament to convert source art textures into 8-bit formats with minimal loss of quality. 

- Erik

413 Patch Issues Mar 30, 2:15 PM - by Steven Polge

Several issues with the 413 patch have been pointed out. We will have an updated patch as soon as possible to address these issues.  In the meantime, if you are having D3D video performance problems, see Erik's update below.  If you are having problems installing UT, or getting an error after installation that "UnrealTournament.exe is not a valid Win32 application" or "UnrealTournament.exe is too big to fit into system memory", try installing into the default directory for UT (c:\UnrealTournament).  Our patch installer seems to be occasionally corrupting files when installing into different directory structures.  We are still working on the problems of the 413 patch not working with minimum installs, and problems patching the Spanish/Italian version of UT.

- Steve

Direct3D support in 413 Mar 29, 9:00 PM - by Erik de Neve

The latest Direct3D code in version 413 was changed to be compatible with more cards. However, if your Direct3D experience after applying patch 413 is less than optimal, you may want to replace the d3ddrv.dll file in your Unrealtournament\system folder with this version of the file. Thanks to everyone who has given us feedback on D3D compatibility and performance so far. For detailed instructions and more options, refer to our Direct3D troubleshooting page.

- Erik

New Version of Unreal Tournament Mar 27, 4:30 PM - by Steven Polge

We've released version 413 of Unreal Tournament.  It is completely network compatible with all previous publicly released versions.  Check the Unreal Tournament Versions Page for download locations for the Win32 patch, which is about 5.6 MB.  Here are the release notes.   We will shortly be releasing the patch for Linux, as well as free, downloadable standalone version of the Win32 and Linux servers.

- Steve

News Tidbits Mar 8, 7:45 PM - by Tim Sweeney

Happy birthday to Unreal Universe, the cool Unreal Tournament news site run by Robert "Apache" Howarth!

And, at GameSpy.com, it's Engine Week, featuring a series of interviews with engine developers pimping their wares.

Tomorrow, we're headed out to the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California to show the latest Unreal engine goods.

-Tim

GameSpy^? Mod Developers Week Feb 28, 10:30 PM - by Tim Sweeney

Check out the keynote article on the state of mod development, by our own Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart.  This is the first feature in GameSpy's new Mod Developer Week feature.

Upcoming articles in the series feature Jesse Taylor from the Infiltration mod team for Unreal Tournament, and David "crt" Wright of Rocket Arena for Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament.

Now is an exciting time for mod development, as the best teams of enthusiasts are earning tremendous praise, opening up serious biz opportunities.  This dynamic reminds me of the shareware game business around 1991 when Epic, Apogee/3D Realms and id Software were born.  Back then, we were just a handful of kids making games for our own enjoyment, and releasing them online for others to enjoy -- hoping that we might be able to make some money to pay the bills.

Today all three companies are industry leaders.

Now, think about where today's best mod authors will be in 9 years!

The advantage that enabled id, 3D Realms, and Epic to rise to the top is something that today's mod authors have too: we're in the middle of a thriving community, and that gives us an awesome feedback loop.  If we release something that sucks -- whether it's something big like Unreal 1's network code, or something subtle like weapon balancing -- then thousands of people will email us complaining until we fix it.  Thousands of smart people besides ourselves are expanding the game universe by running web sites, making mods, building levels, and running servers, and they let us know what they like and dislike.  In this kind of pressure-cooker environment, only good games and good ideas survive.

-Tim

UT Bonus Pack Released! Feb 25, 5:25 PM - by Brandon Reinhart

The UT Bonus Pack has been released! This free expansion to Unreal Tournament includes 3 new player models, a bunch of new DM and CTF maps, and a ton of extra skins! You can download it from GameCenter^?:

• GameCenter

To install the Bonus Pack, just double click the .umod file and it should begin installing. If you are having trouble, extract the ZIP file to a temporary folder such as C:\Temp, and then use Start | Run to run the following command:

Hungarian translation of UT available Feb 25, 12:00 PM - by Steven Polge

Tibor Kaszás created a hungarian translation of Unreal Tournament, including player and narrator voices.  It is available at www.extra.hu/magyar_ut.

Common Questions Feb 22, 6:20 PM - by Tim Sweeney

9 out of 10 doctors say now would be a good time to prune the Unreal tech page, and that sounds like a good idea to me. I'd like to start over by talking about a bunch of things I've been meaning to cover, but never found the time.

Common Questions I'm Asked

Q. I'm an aspiring game developer and I want to get into the business.  What's the best way to be hired?
A. The single most important thing game companies will look for is past experience: what cool stuff you have worked on previously.  This might sound like a Catch-22: "You need experience to get a job, and you need a job to get experience".  But nowadays, the mod communities around leading games like Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, and Quake 3 Arena are great proving grounds where aspiring game developers can work on projects freely (mostly in their spare time), and build levels, mods, and other game-play enhancements.  In the past few years, the majority of new talent Epic has hired have been people from the Unreal and Quake communities:

• Steve Polge, creator of the ReaperBot^? mod for Quake.
• Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart, early Unreal mod maker and writer of cool UnrealScript^? programming tutorials.
• Jack "mek" Porter, Unreal mod maker and PlanetUnreal^? news correspondent.
• Alan Willard, maker of cool Unreal and Quake levels.
• Shane Caudle, amazing artist and level designer who was building his own Quake TC.

While past work on cool projects is the number one criteria for most game developers, having a University degree is a major advantage.  While this isn't a must at Epic, most larger game developers place more emphasis on having a degree.  Besides that, college is a great opportunity to learn useful stuff.   My degree is in Mechanical Engineering (University of Maryland) -- by the time I was in college, I had been programming for about 10 years and didn't feel getting a computer science degree would be challenging.  So, I chose engineering, and that turned out to be a major challenge, and incredibly valuable.

The math I learned there, including vector calculus and finite element analysis, which are directly applicable to 3D games, is something I never would have studied independently.  Self-taught programmers pick up algorithms just by looking at other code and reading the occasional book (that's how I learned to program).   But differential equations are just not the kind of thing you're likely to rediscover on your own, though understanding them brings clarity to lots of real-world problems you'll encounter.

Q. What do I need to get started making mods for popular games?
A. Just a copy of the game, the editing and compiling tools, and access to the web sites that contain information for mod authors.  For Unreal Tournament, you just need a copy of UT, which includes the editor (on CD#2) and all the UnrealScript code for the entire game; visit the Unreal community web sites (listed at the top of this page) for tons of pointers to Unreal information.  For Quake 3 Arena, you need the retail game and the utilities; visit PlanetQuake to get started.  For Half-Life, get the game and see PlanetHalfLife for tips.

Q. I'm working on a project; do I need to license the Unreal Tournament engine or sign any paperwork?
A. That depends on what you're doing:

• If you are making a freely available mod, all you need is the retail version of the game.
• If you are using the engine for non-commercial academic purposes, all you need is the retail game.  Lots of people have been using the Unreal Tournament engine as part of university projects and theses.
• If you are a startup game developer and are prototyping a game in the Unreal Tournament engine (using the tools available in the retail version), you don't need a license agreement while you're prototyping the game. You do need a license agreement in place before you advertise a game, sign a publishing agreement, or otherwise profit from the game.

Programming Languages

Ever since my GameSpy Developer Week article, "A Critical Look At Programming Languages", I've been getting questions about whether we plan to "do something about it" and define a new programming language.  The answer is, we're already doing that to a certain extent with UnrealScript, which is a high-level, object-oriented, platform-independent language with some cool extensions aimed at game code development.

As an engine developer, we'll always be involved in language design to a certain extent.  In the future, the scripting language could evolve into a simpler form, more true to the "scripting" term: controlling sequences of in-game events.  Or, the scripting language could grow to subsume even more of the engine code.  We'll be evaluating these options anew with each major iteration of the engine, doing whatever is most appropriate for the technology, recognizing the benefits and drawbacks of going with well-known proven tech, versus creating newer, better tech.

Also...

• The cool soon-to-be-public site Linux Newbie already has posted a cool article on how to get started with Unreal Tournament under Linux.  This site is a great idea; the biggest barrier to widespread Linux adoption right now is the difficulty of getting started, and now in standard decentralized Linux fashion, sites and resources are starting to pop up to address this.
• Common answers to UnrealScript^? questions on ChessMess.com (saw this on Blue's News).

-Tim

Action UT! Feb 22, 2:00 AM - by Brandon Reinhart

Kick ass! The A-Team has announced their latest mod in the Action series will be for UT! Here are the details from their announcement:

The A-team, makers of Action Quake2 and Action Half Life, would like to
announce that we are in active development of Action Unreal Tournament.
Action is the game that lets you experience your favorite action movie
from your very own PC, bringing realism with a fast paced touch. Have
you ever seen a good action movie, and wished your regular old death
match could be as furious, fast, and exciting? Action does that and
more. With the Unreal Tournament engine powering Action, be prepared for
an experience not soon forgotten. Watch for it at:
http://aut.action-web.net

The Action Team has really been hardcore on putting together this project, I've already seen their discussions on weapons and features and it looks like its going to be packed. Its really cool seeing top notch mods like this move to Unreal Tournament!

Older News (1999)

November 29, 1999

Updated UT Linux Distribution (400A)

An updated version of the UT Linux distribution is now available. This version fixes several installer problems and adds a few performance improvements. If you already have UT Linux installed, just unarchive the LinuxCoreSystem^?.tar.gz file in your UnrealTournament^? directory and add DGAMouseEnabled^?=True to the [XDrv.XClient] section of your UnrealTournament^?.ini. Otherwise, follow the installation instructions in the README.

The README covers the changes and has additional instructions.

- GreenMarine^?

• Epic Games, USA DOWNLOAD UT Linux 400A (3.47MB)

November 22, 1999

Running Full-version Servers with the Demo .INI files

Server administrators - please do not run full version of UT with the .ini files from the demo version.  It causes everyone to have a messed up skin.  To fix this problem without replacing your .ini files, make sure the [Engine.GameEngine] section of the .ini has the following ServerPackages^? lines:

ServerPackages=SoldierSkins
ServerPackages^?=CommandoSkins
ServerPackages^?=FCommandoSkins
ServerPackages^?=SGirlSkins
ServerPackages^?=BossSkins
ServerPackages^?=Botpack

- Jack

November 19, 1999

Porting Unreal I maps to Unreal Tournament

Unreal I content is automatically replaced by Unreal Tournament content if you run an Unreal I DM map with one of the Unreal Tournament gametypes.  However, we recommend that you manually replace the Unreal I inventory items in your level with their UT equivalents and release an updated version of the map.  Otherwise, both the Unreal I and UT versions will be loaded on the content, which will cause swapping on clients with low amounts of memory.

- Steve Polge

November 16, 1999

This document describes how to set up your levels to support the new UT gametypes and bots.

- Steve Polge

November 9, 1999

Patch for server performance

This patch (489 KB) contains improvements to server performance for version 348.  We are also working on some other optimizations for the full version, but we did not want to include any changes which impacted network compatibility in this patch.

- Steve Polge

October 20, 1999

Demo Playback Crash Fixed

Here is a fix (488KB) for the crash in version 348 when playing back recorded demos.  It does not break net compatibility and is only needed if you want to play back recorded demos.  Sorry about this oversight.

- Jack

UT for Linux 348 Demo README

Here is the README for the UT Linux demo.

- Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart

October 19, 1999

New Unreal Tournament Demo Released - Version 348

This version will be the last demo version avaiable before UT appears on store shelves.   This version is NOT network compatible with previous versions, so we encourage everyone to upgrade.  It doesn't contain any new content - only performance improvements and bug fixes.   ngWorldStats will also be reset for this demo release.

• Download links are available here.  More mirror sites will be added soon!
• There is a list of changes since the last demo.
• Be sure to check out the list of Known Issues as well.

- Jack

October 6, 1999

I recently upgraded to Windows 2000 Release Candidate 2, and wanted to mention that it's extremely solid!  With NVidia's latest Windows 2000 TNT/GeForce drivers, DirectX7^?'s Direct3D and OpenGL^? both work flawlessly.  What's cool about the new OS:

• High-performance DirectX7^? Direct3D and OpenGL^? support.
• USB mouse support -- mouse movement is very smooth.
• Much more stable than Windows 98, especially for software development.
• Good administration tools, more powerful than NT4 and far easier to use.
• Great international support.
• Dual processor support.
• Plug and play.

Windows 2000 Internationalization

This is a topic we're very interested in, because we're always trying to make our games and engine as widely accessible as possible.  As a matter of fact, today I'm working out the font management issues for the Japanese version of Unreal Tournament.

The Windows 95/98 OS had very weak international support, and a confusing array of incomplete features such as supporting Unicode in a few API's but not all, weird and undocumented multibyte character set handling, and mixed ANSI/OEM file system conventions.  Localizing Windows 9X apps is a very difficult undertaking.

On the other hand, Windows 2000 is by far the most thoroughly internationalized piece of software I've ever seen.  All international versions sharing the same binaries, fonts, and input support. Everything is 100% Unicode.  So, you can open up a Japanese language document on your English computer, visit Arabic web sites, use an Input Method Editor to type in Chinese text, and so on.  While most people might not care about that, it's infinitely beneficial for developers to have that power at their fingertips, because it enables you to do all of your international development and most of your testing without jumping through hoops and installing multiple OS's.

When Windows 2000 makes its transition into the consumer OS market, it will be a great day for worldwide software development.

-Tim

October 2, 1999

Unreal Tournament players overtake QuakeWorld^? at #5

Top Game Servers By Players
from http://www.gamespy.com/stats/index.shtm @ 7:52 PM EST

Game               Servers Players
============== === =======
Half Life          1502    4344
Quake II           1628    1711
Starsiege TRIBES   589     1162
Quake 3: Arena     1040    1156
Unreal Tournament  423     520
Quakeworld         623     517
Kingpin            127     256
Unreal             134     144
Turok 2            20      43
Descent 3          8       23

-Tim

October 1, 1999

TNT Users, Try This!

Tweaks:

• Play in 16-bit color, which is significantly faster than 32-bit color.
• Turn the detail options down in the Preferences/Video menu.
• Use the "-" key to reduce the HUD size.
• In Preferences/Game, turn off the display of your weapon.
• If you have enabled Advanced Options / Audio / Use3DHardware audio support, TURN IT OFF for now! Big driver performance problems.

Experimental improvement for the brave:

• Try NVidia's Beta Detonator 3.34 drivers (thanks to <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/" target="_parent">Anandtech's site for the link).
• Try putting this new D3DDRV.DLL into your \TournamentDemo\System directory. Please back up your existing one first!

These two downloads are beta and haven't been rigorously tested yet, but in our gameplay sessions here, they're a huge improvement on low-RAM machines with the TNT, TNT2, and GeForce256^?.  

Please let us know how these work for you, by emailing utbugs@epicgames.com

Latest Findings

We've been benchmarking UT performance and memory usage on many 3D cards, and we've found the source of the performance problems on 64-96 meg machines with TNT/TNT2 cards.

Our measurements indicate that the TNT/TNT2 drivers consume up to 25 megabytes of page-locked system memory with UT, while other Direct3D cards don't.  On machines with 64-96 megs, that kills performance, as one would expect.  The game runs, but data is swapped to the hard drive so frequently that playability is compromised.   We've been comparing with other 3D cards and aren't seeing the issue on the Rage 128 or Voodoo3 under Direct3D.

System-wide memory allocations measured with SYSMON.EXE on a 64-meg Celeron running Windows 98 SE:

• TNT D3D: 51 MB baseline, 122 MB playing UT in 16-bit color, 134 MB playing UT in 32-bit color.
• Rage 128 D3D: 55 MB baseline, 107 MB playing UT in 16-bit color, 109 MB playing UT in 32-bit color.
• Voodoo3 D3D: 51 MB baseline, 100 MB playing UT in 16-bit color.

We're working with the NVidia guys to track down the source of the extra 25 megabytes of memory consumption.  I'm going to hold off on posting our benchmarks till we've had a good chance to deal with the memory consumption issue, so everyone is on a level playing field.   The NVidia cards already perform well on PC's with lots of RAM, so they should be in good shape once the memory issues are solved.

Links

Unreal Technology in the news:

• The Little Engine That Can Do More - MSNBC
• Playing With The Big Kids - Newsday

Cool Sites:

• Unreality.dk - Cool Unreal site & community host in Denmark.
• GameSpy.com - The GameSpy^? empire's new portal site.  Check out their live stats page, where Unreal Tournament is #6 and rising quickly.  Hopefully someday we'll overtake that 3-year-old QuakeWorld^? thing. :-)

-Tim

September 29, 1999

More Hardware Troubleshooting

• We received some more confirmations of Unreal working better on TNT's with the Creative Labs unified drivers using Glide than Direct3D.  If you have a Creative Labs TNT card and have having performance problems, try that. Especially if you have under 128 megs of RAM.
  
• Lots of reports of slowdowns from users with Monster Sound's who have enabled the "Advanced Options / Audio / Use3DHardware".  If you're having this slowdown, disable Use3DHardware and try again.  Then please email utbugs@epicgames.com and let us know whether that helped.  I've seen three confirmations from users that their problems (huge slow down) went away after disabling this.
  
• Jack and I have been tracking down the performance problems with the TNT on 64-meg (and lower) machines.  To our great surprise, it appears that the TNT is keeping duplicate system memory copies of all our textures--we saw system memory grow and shrink in almost exact proportion to our "supposed" video memory texture allocations.  Thus the game uses an extra 12-26 megabytes of system memory--a very inefficient allocation of resources. This is a big surprise, because the NVidia guys has always told us this isn't the case.
  
  Problem in my code?  I don't think so, but I'd love to be proven wrong.  I'll follow up with our henchmen at NVidia and Microsoft and see if we can track this down...

Direct3D Anomalies

We've been looking at the feedback on Direct3D performance and investigating some strange reports.  Recently, we've mainly been testing on 96-meg and 128-meg machines (I have a Celeron 400, Jack Porter has a K6-2 450).  On these machines, TNT1 performance is good -- average 28 fps at 648x480, 25 fps at 800x600.  The TNT2 performance is significantly better.

However, upon removing some RAM and testing Direct3D on a 64-meg K6-2, the "precache" time increased by about 5X, and performance dropped to a few frames per second.  These performance drops don't occur in the software renderer, and don't occur in Glide.  Something is going wrong between Unreal, Direct3D, and the TNT's Direct3D driver, and we're investigating.

Overall, the feedback indicates a very wide variance in performance among TNT users, much more so than with any other card.  Our internal testing has indicated this too; for example, we've found (and worked around) a lot of driver bugs that only happen on one machine, and not others with otherwise similar configurations.

Don't Try This At Home Dept.: Some TNT users have reported that tweaking their BIOS's "AGP Aperture Size" improves performance on 64-meg machines.  We have tried this and couldn't find any differences on our 64-meg test machine.  Others report that the Creative Labs unified drivers (with TNT Glide support) outperform Direct3D on their cards.  If anybody finds definite improvements or workarounds, or has insight into what's happening, please email utbugs@epicgames.com and let us know.

Thanks.

Athlon In The House

Mark Rein walked into Best Buy and picked up a 650 MHz Athlon off the shelf -- an IBM Aptiva with a TNT2 Ultra bundled in.  Fastest off-the-shelf machine we've ever seen!  Click here for our in-depth Athlon review.

-Tim

September 28, 1999

Unrealty

More on this later, but for now I just wanted to mention that the Unrealty team at Perilith Industrielle have released a demo showcasing the Unreal Technology applied to real-estate walkthroughs.  They've also have posted a research paper on the topic, which was presented at VSMM'99.

UnrealTournament^?.co.uk

Check out UnrealTournament.co.uk, a cool and growing news site with a focus on the UK and Ireland.  There's a lot of excitement over UT in the United Kingdom and Europe in general, as we experienced firsthand when a bunch of the guys went to the ECTS show in London.

-Tim

Known Issues With The Demo

The known issues list is continuing to be updated, and is accessible here.

Unreal Tournament Demo Mirrors

Just got the latest list of UT download mirrors from Blue's News.

Full Demo:

• FilePlanet
• 3DGamers
• Unreal Universe

Patch for 3dfx-only demo:

• 3DGamers
• Unreal Universe

Final Demo File Information

A few versions of the final demo that were not intended for release have been released on various news sites. We made these builds of the demo so that server operators could set up servers. Unfortunately, a few unscrupulous server operators decided to release these builds on webpages. This only causes to create confusion. We have been working with GT on synchronizing a release and have been working on final issues with the demo.

Specifically, a test patch for upgrading the 3dfx only version of the demo was made available. This patch worked, but lacked the new DeathMatch^? map being released with the final demo. We pulled the patch, but various news sites had already made it available without our authorization.

Finally, a version of the demo "338a" has been going around that is also not legitimate. This version was built by the Epic team last night to test for a server map change problem (that was fixed). This version was mistakenly copied to the server operator's ftp, somebody downloaded and put it up for download.

Following me still? Here are the file names of the final demo and the file sizes. Demo version 338a will not work with the final demo. It is not new and you shouldn't download it if you find it.

File: UTDemo338.exe
Size: 55,603,712 bytes
Description: This is the final demo. Website administrators, please make sure the version you end up mirroring matches this.

File: UTDemo338cPatch.exe
Size: 9,892,864 bytes
Description: This is the patch to update the 3dfx demo to the final demo.

Please don't mirror anything else. It only serves to confuse the end user. We apologize for the confusion and the difficulty.

Brandon Reinhart

September 24, 1999

Demo Changelog

We've posted a changelog of all the bug-fixes and improvements we've made since the 3dfx beta.  These improvements will be in the full demo, which will be released in a couple of days. You can check