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"...and the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3" So if he is talking about Unreal Tournament 2007, that would be Unreal Tournament 4 in the numbering scheme of how many Unreal Tournaments there have been. 1 would be Unreal Tournament (1999) 2 is Unreal Tournament 2003, 3 is Unreal Tournament 2004. Finally 4 is Unreal Tournament 2007.

I suspect he meant the upcoming Unreal Engine 3. Unreal and UT99 used the Unreal Engine 1. UT2k3 and UT2k4 both used the same basic Unreal Engine 2. UT2k7 will be based on the new Unreal Engine 3. Epic's Unreal Technology Roadmap has the details.

Many games provide you with the tools to build new levels and even modify the game out of recognition. I've done a fair amount of work-related coding and mapping using the Unreal engines and it's pretty easy to pick up, with a lot of resources online. Unrealwiki and UDN are good places to start. You don't even need to buy the game, as they have released a free cut down version for exactly your kind of project. This has the advantage of not having tons of someone elses code in it so it's easier to get started.

Good luck, I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun.

Many games provide you with the tools to build new levels and even modify the game out of recognition. I've done a fair amount of work-related coding and mapping using the Unreal engines and it's pretty easy to pick up, with a lot of resources online. Unrealwiki and UDN are good places to start. You don't even need to buy the game, as they have released a free cut down version for exactly your kind of project. This has the advantage of not having tons of someone elses code in it so it's easier to get started.

Good luck, I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun.

Been traveling a bit (just finishing up a Machinima workshop in Vienna at the Top Talent Festival), but came across this thread and thought to throw in some cents (Euro or US, you decide)...

Machinima development has come a long way in the last few years - fulfilling upon its expected promise - though it still has lots of room for maturing.

Fountainhead Entertainment's Machinimation program (which uses the Quake III Arena engine) is the definitive make-machinima-quick tool. Its the first real program for machinima production. In addition, it comes in Demo, Academic and Professional flavors depending on the projects you may have in mind (those interested should check out the Machinimation version differences and the Machinimation FAQ. Machinima filmmakers should stay tuned to the continual development of this program.

In the "promise on the horizon" dept., the afore-mentioned Half-Life2 has a number of tools that could make it the standout machinima production engine. With its internal character facial/gesture animation tool, Face Poser, the ever-so-missing dramatic expression of faces and lip-sync finally gets its due. While the Hammer editor doesn't get as much of an overhaul as I would have liked, this machinima filmmaker hopes there's scripting support in the full SDK to be released next week.

One of the most satisfying of current machinima production-ready engines is probably Unreal Tournament 2004. While even the Epic Games tech can use some help in the machinima department (its internal camera system, Matinee, only goes so far), it does have a large community for support as well as Epic's own Unreal Developer Network (which should be a model for any game developer looking to support their engine post-purchase). That said, the UT2004 tech has room for development and could be the platform for further Machinima development in the future (without spilling too many beans, interested parties should stay tuned). The Unreal 3 tech looks great too!

Other engines: The Sims2 is a good Machinima contender (and the engine behind Rooster Teeth's The Strangerhood) - one hopes that Maxis/EA will build up its Machinima use, either through internally developed tools, or supporting third-party/end-user development of such programs. Linden Lab's Second Life is also a good Machinima platform, although the control of characters and events through a remotely located server can impact production. Still, it allows the end-user to upload their own gestures as well as givens them IP ownership (big deal for those looking to profitize their work). A Machinima filmmaker may also want to consider the Torque engine from Garage Games with its low-cost ownership model and large community as well.

As mentioned in the original posting, Lionhead's The Movies looks promising - an application that blurs the line between game and productivity tool (as least from the Machinima filmmakers perspective). Lionhead unfortunately hasn't looked to the Machinima community for recommendations (which could have been a valuable resource, IMHO), but hopefully they will post-release.

Finally, I will do a selfish plug and make the recommendation to my book, The Art of Machinima, which I created with the beginning Machinima filmmaker in mind. The book covers using Fountainhead's Machinimation (a demo of which is included in the book's CD) as well as more advanced Machinima using UT2004.

The upcoming Machinima Film Festival (Spring 2005) will be showcasing the majority of these engines and developments - people should st

...because I can see how I'm getting old as the clan kids dominate me. It's a nice reminder of how time passes and makes campers of us all.

The stats also shows I'm such a flak monkey .

Anyway, this is the EULA [yes, it's a EULA, if you thought Epic GPLed Unreal Engine 2 you're wrong) so if you feel like trying your hand at playing with the code here are the limitations you have to work under. Void where prohibited. Sorry, Tenneseee.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/UnrealEngine2RuntimeE ULA

You are completely wrong.

Two of the most critically acclaimed games of last year are Grand Theft Auto 3 Vice City and Splinter Cell.

I'll have you know Grand Theft Auto and damn near every other top game uses Criterion's Renderware while Splinter Cell and all the other games use the Unreal Engine .

Last time I checked, those two titles stood out from the pack about... as much as you possibly could. Top reviews, Splinter Cell 2 got top awards at E3, and top sales across all platforms. Oh yeah, that's right, ACROSS ALL PLATFORMS as in their development tools practically port from one platform to the other at the click of a button. No more shitty ports written by half-ass developers that take two years to come out.

You, sir, are completely wrong. Even companies that make their own engine don't do one for a single game and then scrap it anymore. They usually make an engine and use it several times such as Final Fantasy X, X-2, XII which is basically the same as using middleware.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.... Wrong.

Good news for LithTech, GameBryo, Unreal Engine, Source Engine, id Software licensing and so on. All the other options available to middleware-using developers now that they have a good reason to make a switch.

Their only true competitor has been the Unreal engine, which has had a relatively poor showing in the market.

This list [udn.epicgames.com] tells a different story

UT2004 EULA states that cheating is illegal I don't know what Valve puts in their EULA but Epic would certainly have a case in courts.

UnrealScript Language Reference

Sorry, but I just had to post that... :)

Peace!

Technically they're all different flavours of the same engine. They started out with the "Unreal Engine" (its official name) way back when to make, duh, Unreal. That was version 1 to 226. Then they made Unreal Tournament (which was kind of a Unreal Engine 1.5) that went up to v436. Allong the way lots of other games lisenced various versions of the engine and modified it for their own uses (eg: Wheel of Time, Rune, Tactical Ops, Deus Ex, etc).

Then they revamped the whole thing and came up with their "Unreal Engine 2" (sometimes called the "Unreal Warfare" engine, though the oft rumoured Unreal Warfare has yet to appear, and according to the developers, doesn't even exist). By the time that hit (UT2003), it was somewhere around the v2000 mark, with a short run up to v2225 (2227 in house). Then they have their "Unreal Engine 2.5", which powers UT2004. Same engine, only its up to v3204 as of now. That should give a good indication of just how many changes there are between UT2003 and UT2004, for those of you who doubt. As for licensees, there are a lot of them in this generation, and they're spread all over the place. Epic's UDN claims "Unreal 2.5" is the engine behind all their latest and licensees latest games, but in reality the whole mess spans over a thousand build numbers. Unreal 2, for example, uses a modified version of the UT2003 era engine. Of course, they made their own in house changes and improvements ("GOLEM" animation system, and a much improved particle system), but technically its UT2003 based. Other titles include *deep breath*: Splinter Cell, Deus Ex: Invisible War, XIII, Lineage 2, Postal 2, Devastation, Americas Army, Unreal Championship, and much more. (God only knows what kind of franken-unreal-engine the DNF team is working with now. ;))

Now beyond that, you're looking at a bit of a fork. Namely "Unreal Engine 2X", their custom X-Box version of the engine (which will be powering Unreal Championship 2), and "Unreal Engine 3" which is the big bad kahuna daddy they flashed around at E3 this year. UE2X is a dead end build though, and UE3 won't be out until 2006 or later. Those are their known current to future plans at least.


So yeah, thats Unreal in a nutshell (my advance apologies to the few Epic employees reading this incase I screwwed something up ;)). Its an amazing little engine, and it changes so quickly and so easilly its hard to keep track of what version is where and who modified it. But thats why the developers (and community mod makers, if I may say so myself) love it so much. You can do damn near ANYTHING with Unreal. They really did pick a ringer of a name for it all those years ago. :)


-MD (Unreal fanboi for life)

Technically they're all different flavours of the same engine. They started out with the "Unreal Engine" (its official name) way back when to make, duh, Unreal. That was version 1 to 226. Then they made Unreal Tournament (which was kind of a Unreal Engine 1.5) that went up to v436. Allong the way lots of other games lisenced various versions of the engine and modified it for their own uses (eg: Wheel of Time, Rune, Tactical Ops, Deus Ex, etc).

Then they revamped the whole thing and came up with their "Unreal Engine 2" (sometimes called the "Unreal Warfare" engine, though the oft rumoured Unreal Warfare has yet to appear, and according to the developers, doesn't even exist). By the time that hit (UT2003), it was somewhere around the v2000 mark, with a short run up to v2225 (2227 in house). Then they have their "Unreal Engine 2.5", which powers UT2004. Same engine, only its up to v3204 as of now. That should give a good indication of just how many changes there are between UT2003 and UT2004, for those of you who doubt. As for licensees, there are a lot of them in this generation, and they're spread all over the place. Epic's UDN claims "Unreal 2.5" is the engine behind all their latest and licensees latest games, but in reality the whole mess spans over a thousand build numbers. Unreal 2, for example, uses a modified version of the UT2003 era engine. Of course, they made their own in house changes and improvements ("GOLEM" animation system, and a much improved particle system), but technically its UT2003 based. Other titles include *deep breath*: Splinter Cell, Deus Ex: Invisible War, XIII, Lineage 2, Postal 2, Devastation, Americas Army, Unreal Championship, and much more. (God only knows what kind of franken-unreal-engine the DNF team is working with now. ;))

Now beyond that, you're looking at a bit of a fork. Namely "Unreal Engine 2X", their custom X-Box version of the engine (which will be powering Unreal Championship 2), and "Unreal Engine 3" which is the big bad kahuna daddy they flashed around at E3 this year. UE2X is a dead end build though, and UE3 won't be out until 2006 or later. Those are their known current to future plans at least.


So yeah, thats Unreal in a nutshell (my advance apologies to the few Epic employees reading this incase I screwwed something up ;)). Its an amazing little engine, and it changes so quickly and so easilly its hard to keep track of what version is where and who modified it. But thats why the developers (and community mod makers, if I may say so myself) love it so much. You can do damn near ANYTHING with Unreal. They really did pick a ringer of a name for it all those years ago. :)


-MD (Unreal fanboi for life)

Technically they're all different flavours of the same engine. They started out with the "Unreal Engine" (its official name) way back when to make, duh, Unreal. That was version 1 to 226. Then they made Unreal Tournament (which was kind of a Unreal Engine 1.5) that went up to v436. Allong the way lots of other games lisenced various versions of the engine and modified it for their own uses (eg: Wheel of Time, Rune, Tactical Ops, Deus Ex, etc).

Then they revamped the whole thing and came up with their "Unreal Engine 2" (sometimes called the "Unreal Warfare" engine, though the oft rumoured Unreal Warfare has yet to appear, and according to the developers, doesn't even exist). By the time that hit (UT2003), it was somewhere around the v2000 mark, with a short run up to v2225 (2227 in house). Then they have their "Unreal Engine 2.5", which powers UT2004. Same engine, only its up to v3204 as of now. That should give a good indication of just how many changes there are between UT2003 and UT2004, for those of you who doubt. As for licensees, there are a lot of them in this generation, and they're spread all over the place. Epic's UDN claims "Unreal 2.5" is the engine behind all their latest and licensees latest games, but in reality the whole mess spans over a thousand build numbers. Unreal 2, for example, uses a modified version of the UT2003 era engine. Of course, they made their own in house changes and improvements ("GOLEM" animation system, and a much improved particle system), but technically its UT2003 based. Other titles include *deep breath*: Splinter Cell, Deus Ex: Invisible War, XIII, Lineage 2, Postal 2, Devastation, Americas Army, Unreal Championship, and much more. (God only knows what kind of franken-unreal-engine the DNF team is working with now. ;))

Now beyond that, you're looking at a bit of a fork. Namely "Unreal Engine 2X", their custom X-Box version of the engine (which will be powering Unreal Championship 2), and "Unreal Engine 3" which is the big bad kahuna daddy they flashed around at E3 this year. UE2X is a dead end build though, and UE3 won't be out until 2006 or later. Those are their known current to future plans at least.


So yeah, thats Unreal in a nutshell (my advance apologies to the few Epic employees reading this incase I screwwed something up ;)). Its an amazing little engine, and it changes so quickly and so easilly its hard to keep track of what version is where and who modified it. But thats why the developers (and community mod makers, if I may say so myself) love it so much. You can do damn near ANYTHING with Unreal. They really did pick a ringer of a name for it all those years ago. :)


-MD (Unreal fanboi for life)

Really! There was no official software renderer for UT2003. A 3rd party, w/ the blessing of Epic, did come out with one. Go to http://unreal.epicgames.com and scroll down to the May 19, 2003 news post.

i'll offer my opinion on this....i've been a gamer for most of my life (starting with the early arcade machines, an atari 2600 and my apple ][) and i have about 10 years of professional development experience in games and related industries (animation programming and 3d special effects).

i'm currently teaching two videogame classes at MCAD - one is a history of videogames, the other is vs3370 : creating 3d virtual experiences / an introduction into 3d videogame design. basically, this class is an introduction to creating 3D game environments -- emphasis is on content creation tools and pipelines. for my class, i wanted a general purpose 3d game engine that would serve as a nice introduction to creating 3d game content and environments.. for this, i focused mostly on first person perspective engines.

you'll need to evaluate what type of game content you'd like to create (FPS, RTS, RPG, etc) and choose an appropriate engine and toolset that will allow to focus on the type of content interested in. increasingly, level design and level creation are becoming two different tasks -- if you are creating a demo yourself, you'll be filling both roles.

after evaluating the games and engines last summer, i chose Unreal Tournament 2003 and the ut2003 engine for my class, for many reasons:

• ut2003 is a derivative of the unreal engine - it's been out a while and is generally stable and easy to install
• the editing tools ship with the game (on the cd) and include decent documentation.
• the editing tools aren't perfect (none are), but are certainly more polished and professional than typical game editing tools. it's also very easy to import 3D assets from 3ds max and maya, which allows you to leverage any existing 3d experience you've got.
• video editing tutorials from buzz3d are available for free online (slashdot article)
• the ut2003 game engine directly loads the files that are created by the editor -- this makes things much easier in general, and also allows you to directly inspect (in the editor) any level that you can play with the game.... if you see a cool effect in a level, you can check it out and see how it was created.
• level lighting and compiling is a relatively foolproof single step process. it's much easier to setup and use than the quake engine based games (quake 1/2/3 and derivatives, like half-life). the down side to this is that visibility culling - determining what to draw and what not to draw - is a manual process in the unreal engine. this can be good and bad...
• this engine supports indoor environments as well as larger outdoor environments - most games tend to specialize to one or the other.
• the unreal engine is widely used - many games, many companies, many platforms. the quake 1/2/3 engines are also very popular - as are game engines like renderware (although renderware and commercial engines like it do not have a standalone general purpose engine...)
• Epic Games seems to be very committed to helping people create content for this engine. a free version of the engine is available (slashdot article) - so you can easily create a self contained demo of what you've done...

i'll offer my opinion on this....i've been a gamer for most of my life (starting with the early arcade machines, an atari 2600 and my apple ][) and i have about 10 years of professional development experience in games and related industries (animation programming and 3d special effects).

i'm currently teaching two videogame classes at MCAD - one is a history of videogames, the other is vs3370 : creating 3d virtual experiences / an introduction into 3d videogame design. basically, this class is an introduction to creating 3D game environments -- emphasis is on content creation tools and pipelines. for my class, i wanted a general purpose 3d game engine that would serve as a nice introduction to creating 3d game content and environments.. for this, i focused mostly on first person perspective engines.

you'll need to evaluate what type of game content you'd like to create (FPS, RTS, RPG, etc) and choose an appropriate engine and toolset that will allow to focus on the type of content interested in. increasingly, level design and level creation are becoming two different tasks -- if you are creating a demo yourself, you'll be filling both roles.

after evaluating the games and engines last summer, i chose Unreal Tournament 2003 and the ut2003 engine for my class, for many reasons:

• ut2003 is a derivative of the unreal engine - it's been out a while and is generally stable and easy to install
• the editing tools ship with the game (on the cd) and include decent documentation.
• the editing tools aren't perfect (none are), but are certainly more polished and professional than typical game editing tools. it's also very easy to import 3D assets from 3ds max and maya, which allows you to leverage any existing 3d experience you've got.
• video editing tutorials from buzz3d are available for free online (slashdot article)
• the ut2003 game engine directly loads the files that are created by the editor -- this makes things much easier in general, and also allows you to directly inspect (in the editor) any level that you can play with the game.... if you see a cool effect in a level, you can check it out and see how it was created.
• level lighting and compiling is a relatively foolproof single step process. it's much easier to setup and use than the quake engine based games (quake 1/2/3 and derivatives, like half-life). the down side to this is that visibility culling - determining what to draw and what not to draw - is a manual process in the unreal engine. this can be good and bad...
• this engine supports indoor environments as well as larger outdoor environments - most games tend to specialize to one or the other.
• the unreal engine is widely used - many games, many companies, many platforms. the quake 1/2/3 engines are also very popular - as are game engines like renderware (although renderware and commercial engines like it do not have a standalone general purpose engine...)
• Epic Games seems to be very committed to helping people create content for this engine. a free version of the engine is available (slashdot article) - so you can easily create a self contained demo of what you've done...

i'll offer my opinion on this....i've been a gamer for most of my life (starting with the early arcade machines, an atari 2600 and my apple ][) and i have about 10 years of professional development experience in games and related industries (animation programming and 3d special effects).

i'm currently teaching two videogame classes at MCAD - one is a history of videogames, the other is vs3370 : creating 3d virtual experiences / an introduction into 3d videogame design. basically, this class is an introduction to creating 3D game environments -- emphasis is on content creation tools and pipelines. for my class, i wanted a general purpose 3d game engine that would serve as a nice introduction to creating 3d game content and environments.. for this, i focused mostly on first person perspective engines.

you'll need to evaluate what type of game content you'd like to create (FPS, RTS, RPG, etc) and choose an appropriate engine and toolset that will allow to focus on the type of content interested in. increasingly, level design and level creation are becoming two different tasks -- if you are creating a demo yourself, you'll be filling both roles.

after evaluating the games and engines last summer, i chose Unreal Tournament 2003 and the ut2003 engine for my class, for many reasons:

• ut2003 is a derivative of the unreal engine - it's been out a while and is generally stable and easy to install
• the editing tools ship with the game (on the cd) and include decent documentation.
• the editing tools aren't perfect (none are), but are certainly more polished and professional than typical game editing tools. it's also very easy to import 3D assets from 3ds max and maya, which allows you to leverage any existing 3d experience you've got.
• video editing tutorials from buzz3d are available for free online (slashdot article)
• the ut2003 game engine directly loads the files that are created by the editor -- this makes things much easier in general, and also allows you to directly inspect (in the editor) any level that you can play with the game.... if you see a cool effect in a level, you can check it out and see how it was created.
• level lighting and compiling is a relatively foolproof single step process. it's much easier to setup and use than the quake engine based games (quake 1/2/3 and derivatives, like half-life). the down side to this is that visibility culling - determining what to draw and what not to draw - is a manual process in the unreal engine. this can be good and bad...
• this engine supports indoor environments as well as larger outdoor environments - most games tend to specialize to one or the other.
• the unreal engine is widely used - many games, many companies, many platforms. the quake 1/2/3 engines are also very popular - as are game engines like renderware (although renderware and commercial engines like it do not have a standalone general purpose engine...)
• Epic Games seems to be very committed to helping people create content for this engine. a free version of the engine is available (slashdot article) - so you can easily create a self contained demo of what you've done...

UnrealEd Manual: Interface (includes screenshots)

If you want to try-before-you-buy, get this: UnrealEngine 2 Runtime - small, lightweight, but includes the editor. Also UT03 Demo

The unreal engine is behind many, many games; I believe more than the Quake engine. Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, America's Army, Deus Ex, etc... 10 current games! UnrealPowered

I'm kinda suprised you want to develop games, and yet have never built a level! If I were you, I'd start ASAP - are you really sure you it is something you will like doing for a career? In the stress of a budget-bound company, with tight deadlines???

What experience do you have? If you've ever used CAD, level designing will make more sense. I strongly recommend taking a one-semester or night computer graphics technology (drafting) class. If that isn't an option, google Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG), AKA Set Theoretic Geometry. (Also google svlis, look through the docs. Some of that stuff is not found elsewhere.)

AFAIK, Unreal has everything any other game has, as far as features: mipmapping, particles, smoke, fractal-based textures, heightmap terrain, [many, many things left out]... It also has a lot of features not found elsewhere. Karma Physics engine, for one. UnrealScript, for another. Are you any good at C++? Unrealscript is similar, though it adds many features that are important in a game, such as functions that execute every gametick, time expirations, etc...

The only cool thing I know of that's in another game, and not in Unreal, is Cube's in-game editing. That, it doesn't have.

--Anonymous cow farted

UnrealEd Manual: Interface (includes screenshots)

If you want to try-before-you-buy, get this: UnrealEngine 2 Runtime - small, lightweight, but includes the editor. Also UT03 Demo

The unreal engine is behind many, many games; I believe more than the Quake engine. Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, America's Army, Deus Ex, etc... 10 current games! UnrealPowered

I'm kinda suprised you want to develop games, and yet have never built a level! If I were you, I'd start ASAP - are you really sure you it is something you will like doing for a career? In the stress of a budget-bound company, with tight deadlines???

What experience do you have? If you've ever used CAD, level designing will make more sense. I strongly recommend taking a one-semester or night computer graphics technology (drafting) class. If that isn't an option, google Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG), AKA Set Theoretic Geometry. (Also google svlis, look through the docs. Some of that stuff is not found elsewhere.)

AFAIK, Unreal has everything any other game has, as far as features: mipmapping, particles, smoke, fractal-based textures, heightmap terrain, [many, many things left out]... It also has a lot of features not found elsewhere. Karma Physics engine, for one. UnrealScript, for another. Are you any good at C++? Unrealscript is similar, though it adds many features that are important in a game, such as functions that execute every gametick, time expirations, etc...

The only cool thing I know of that's in another game, and not in Unreal, is Cube's in-game editing. That, it doesn't have.

--Anonymous cow farted

UnrealEd Manual: Interface (includes screenshots)

If you want to try-before-you-buy, get this: UnrealEngine 2 Runtime - small, lightweight, but includes the editor. Also UT03 Demo

The unreal engine is behind many, many games; I believe more than the Quake engine. Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, America's Army, Deus Ex, etc... 10 current games! UnrealPowered

I'm kinda suprised you want to develop games, and yet have never built a level! If I were you, I'd start ASAP - are you really sure you it is something you will like doing for a career? In the stress of a budget-bound company, with tight deadlines???

What experience do you have? If you've ever used CAD, level designing will make more sense. I strongly recommend taking a one-semester or night computer graphics technology (drafting) class. If that isn't an option, google Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG), AKA Set Theoretic Geometry. (Also google svlis, look through the docs. Some of that stuff is not found elsewhere.)

AFAIK, Unreal has everything any other game has, as far as features: mipmapping, particles, smoke, fractal-based textures, heightmap terrain, [many, many things left out]... It also has a lot of features not found elsewhere. Karma Physics engine, for one. UnrealScript, for another. Are you any good at C++? Unrealscript is similar, though it adds many features that are important in a game, such as functions that execute every gametick, time expirations, etc...

The only cool thing I know of that's in another game, and not in Unreal, is Cube's in-game editing. That, it doesn't have.

--Anonymous cow farted

More aggressively with game developers. I mean its sort of sad that even though there are a handful of active commercial (and non-commercial albeit high quality as in my sig) game developers who are supporting Linux there is still the perception that Linux doesn't have games.

Gentoo seems to get it, but I'd expect to see a more aggressive commercial distribution seriously pimping this and I believe in we really need some good exposure like this.

So it's not really a fair example. Take a look at the harrowing tale. It would be a shame if we collectively forgot this early part of Linux (in business) history and wrote if off as an example of why Linux isn't ready for business. Loki, or more specifically, Scott Draeker wasn't ready for business.

Besides, lets not write off companies like Linux Game Publishing (or ID Software or Epic Games or ..).

I think if Epic were really serious about promoting modding their engine, they'd release some documentation for it. The only useful documentation I could find is the Unreal Wiki, provided by frustrated mod developers. That plus the source scripts for the UT2003 games is enough to get started, but only for the dedicated. A few focused and annotated source examples would go a long way, and some reference documentation would be gold. Why not put more content on the UDN technical wiki that isn't for engine licensees only?

The software renderer, which you can download and try (it also works for UT2003) and read about here, is really built more for people who buy computers with integrated (i.e. crappy) 3D graphics from the big manufacturers and still want a taste of the game. Framerate and graphics quality-wise, it really is just a taste--on my P4 2.4 GHz, I don't get more than 20-30 fps at 640x480 (actually rendered at 320x240 and scaled up, except the HUD). There's just too many polygons for a CPU to handle all by itself.

Still, it's a nice move on Epic's part to make the game accessible to more people.

• Bright (download) is the best non-dithering quantiser in the whole world, and reasonably fast, too; based on dlquant
• pngrewrite sorts the palette
• pngcrush removes junk chunks, fixes Photoshop's gamma bug and tries many filters to find a smaller filesize
• OptiPNG is similar to pngcrush, but executes much faster
• pngout uses an alternative deflate, yields sometimes even smaller filesizes
• tweakpng manipulates chunks comfortably with a GUI
• pngquant quantises PNG24 with alpha transparency to PNG8 with transparent palettes, the result is alas mostly ugly

sleightplus demonstrates how to overcome IE's rendering bugs without polluting your markup or styles; no silly style inlining required, either. Use PNG images or backgrounds all the way they were intended.

Predecessors with only support for foreground images: Youngpup sleight, WebFX PNG behavior, mongus pngInfo, Bob Osola. PNGHack, a server side solution, is doomed to fail because of dysfunctional browser sniffing.

If that was useful for you, and you are a C hacker, I have a plea. Take the dlquant sourcecode (see above) and massage it so it works with PNG instead of the archaic PPM. I want a functional Bright clone for Linux that takes a true colour PNG and outputs a paletted PNG. Can you do that?

Regarding documentation, check out the Unreal Developer Network for a huge amount of documentation.

Also, the 3D Buzz team has created many excellent training videos covering many aspects of the Unreal tech, from programming to content creation.

>> Ultimately, the developer of such a mod should be fairly compensated based on the popularity and ultimately, the sales, of their mod, not a one-time payout.

The mod developer keeps complete ownership of his work. The contest doesn't take that away.

For example, if you enter an early version of your mod in the contest, you could later create a retail game based on it and pursue a publishing deal. The Tactical Ops mod for the original Unreal Tournament went this route and was published in retail by Atari.

Regarding tax issues, one should definitely consult a tax attourney upon making the finals for the grand prize. My understanding (IANAL) is that, if we gave you a $350K cash prize, that would be revenue for your mod team's corporation or small business. If you then spent that $350K on an Unreal engine license with the intent of using it commercially (which is the only reason one would want such a license), you would then incur a $350K expense, leaving a net tax liability of zero. So a direct award of an engine license is not necessarily a taxable event.

I believe that America's Army, Splinter Cell, Unreal Tournament 2 and Unreal Championship were all built on the Unreal 2 engine. Unreal 2 was not released for months after the other games were.

Nvidia Games: America's Army
UT2K3, UC, Splinter Cell

Admittedly, it is difficult to discern whether some of these were written with the original Unreal engine, but I think they all used the most recent one.

The UT engine utilizes (and this) your first two points. And the UT community utilizes the other two.

Still, the problem persists. Apperently cheaters are immune to common sense.

Incidentally, Epic Games' games, like Unreal Tournament and Unreal Tournament 2003 don't require additional fees for being used in a game house setting. All you need is a legal copy of the game for each PC it is running on:

www.epicgames.com/faq.html

[19:35] DE/Epic: Will UT2003 make it to Linux? If so, server, client or both?

[19:35] Server for sure on Linux

[19:36] MarkRein[Epic]: any word on a client

[19:36] Irix--> Don't know yet about a client but it will probably happen eventually

[19:37] Irix--> We'd definitely like to see it and I know Dan Vogel is talking with some friends of his who would like to do it.

Scripting languages embedded in C or C++ game engines, like Unrealscript in Epic's Unreal series, seem to provide a good compromise - many of the advantages of Java, but without the performance problems. (but then, I make Unreal Tournament mods, so perhaps I'm biased...)

Why they didn't use Java:

During the early development of UnrealScript, several major different programming paradigms were explored and discarded before arriving at the current incarnation. First, I researched using the Sun and Microsoft Java VM's for Windows as the basis of Unreal's scripting language. It turned out that Java offered no programming benefits over C/C++ in the Unreal context, added frustraging restrictions due to the lack of needed language features (such as operator overloading), and turned out to be unfathomably slow due to both the overhead of the VM task switch and the inefficiencies of the Java garbage collector in the case of a large object graph. Second, I based an early implementation of UnrealScript on a Visual Basic variant, which worked fine, but was less friendly to programmers accustomed to C/C++. The final decision to base UnrealScript on a C++/Java variant was based on the desire to map game-specific concepts onto the language definition itself, and the need for speed and familiarity. This turned out to be a good decision, as it has greatly simplified many aspects of the Unreal codebase.

Game content and even third-party mods designed for Windows work perfectly on the Linux and MacOS ports of UT:

UnrealScript is bytecode based: UnrealScript code is compiled into a series of bytecodes similar to p-code or the Java bytecodes. This makes UnrealScript platform-neutral; this porting the client and server components of Unreal to other platforms, i.e. the Macintosh or Unix, is straightforward, and all versions can interoperate easily by executing the same scripts.

Why performance isn't always vital (my emphasis):

UnrealScript is a slow language compared to C/C++. A typical C++ program runs at about 50 million base language instructions per second, while UnrealScript runs at about 2.5 million - a 20X performance hit. The programming philosophy behind all of our own script writing is this: Write scripts that are almost always idle. In other words, use UnrealScript only to handle the "interesting" events that you want to customize, not the rote tasks, like basic movement, which Unreal's physics code can handle for you. For example, when writing a projectile script, you typically write a HitWall(), Bounce(), and Touch() function describing what to do when key events happen. Thus 95% of the time, your projectile script isn't executing any code, and is just waiting for the physics code to notify it of an event. This is inherently very efficient. In our typical level, even though UnrealScript is comparably much slower than C++, UnrealScript execution time averages 5-10% of CPU time.

You might like to investigate Unreal's network architecture for ideas.

Is it just me, or did anyone else think this was gonna be EPIC games vs MS, in an AOL-TW style?

There's this page with some screenshots of the engine in development.
The latest is a few months old though, but there's pictures of landscapes and special effects.

To get the perspective correction right, we subverted the OpenGL code in the open-source portion of UT's C++ code.

this is why Open Source is so cool. this doesn't hurt sales of Unreal Tournament in any way, and hackers can still build cool things with it. incidentally, they have open-sourced CaveUT.

way to go, guys!

My real reason for posting this is not so much the linux ref, but rather the sense of satisfaction one can get from using so called obsolete hardware and software to accomplish real work.

ELKS and DOS 5.0 both run on my old Toshiba T1100 plus. Why bother? This machine originally retailed for $2500 U.S., I picked it up for $10 CAN. At some point in time when the buck was worth more, people paid a considerable amount for this hardware. Has that value disappeared? I don't think so. I can still run word processing software (WP5) and play games (Ancient Art of War, ZZT, and Rogue). The machine still does what it was designed for. Do you really need a massive OS and hardware to write a letter or bash a few bats? No.

Some will question this thinking. Why play Rogue or use WP5 when you can play Quake (or whatever the trendy fps is right now) or use MS office / Star Office. Even though we have Civilization and Free Civ some people still sit down around a Risk or Diplomacy board. Even though we can send email across the world in a few seconds, there is still something satifying about getting a real letter.

&lt Ducking the obvious anthrax posts. Email virii have probably caused more economic damage, and no, the loss of life is NOT funny in the least &gt

Finally, New may have more features, more functionality and in fact be "better" than Old, that does not make Old bad.

Grab a clue. There are plenty of profitable games companies around. There always will be. Just because some can't make a business model work and others are led by idiots you shouldn't conclude that there is no future. Of course, you have to be good.

I believe you are referring to Ken's Labyrinth which was created before Wolf3D. For some reason tho, it didn't have the same impact as Wolf3D. (Probably that fact that Apogee was cool and Epic Megagames was not.)

I would actually start by getting a CS degree (good math, algorithmics, ai... courses). Sometimes, I don't understand how people think... anybody (well, with a brain) can learn simple technical stuff like directx by himself over a few days. You don't need courses about that.

Now a good computer graphics course (you can take one in your CS degree), where you learn about 2d and 3d rendering, recursive ray tracing, visible surface determination, dithering, and other basic techniques, will be interesting. Just look at the discussion (from Tim Sweeney) about the scripting language and scripting engine design Epic did for Unreal Tournament (http://unreal.epicgames.com)... this is serious and interesting game programming challenges that involve higher challenges that making a sprite move with directx...

Now, if this will get you a job in the computer gaming industry, I can't tell you for sure. I just finished this month my CS degree, and I will look into that pretty soon (I already have a job in cs, but i'm really interested in games and computer graphica)

Hope this helps,

(P.S. English is not my first language)
phobos% cat .sig

Er, what would it help with?

Does anyone know of any sites dedicated to using 3D gaming engines for non-gaming purposes other than the article we saw a while back about a company using Q2 engine for an architectural walk-through? You know, maybe with resources that help take Autocad files and convert them to Quake maps?

There are plenty of people who use the Unreal engine for these sort of things, like the before mentioned Unrealty and the Notre Dame virtual tour. The Unreal engine is so easy to extend and modify because of its modular and object oriented design. The engine actually recently won a price for being so powerful and making development easier. Here is a list of recent improvements to the engine and the editor. Looks really sweet! DirectX 8 + GeForce + UnrealEngine looks like a good recipe for great upcoming games.

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Er, what would it help with?

Does anyone know of any sites dedicated to using 3D gaming engines for non-gaming purposes other than the article we saw a while back about a company using Q2 engine for an architectural walk-through? You know, maybe with resources that help take Autocad files and convert them to Quake maps?

There are plenty of people who use the Unreal engine for these sort of things, like the before mentioned Unrealty and the Notre Dame virtual tour. The Unreal engine is so easy to extend and modify because of its modular and object oriented design. The engine actually recently won a price for being so powerful and making development easier. Here is a list of recent improvements to the engine and the editor. Looks really sweet! DirectX 8 + GeForce + UnrealEngine looks like a good recipe for great upcoming games.

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Go ahead! LEAVE EARTH! But be warned: When you come back, we're gonna sick our raptors on you! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Don't moderate me down just because I wasn't among the "CHOSEN" to leave Earth.

As for your lag problems, who knows. I have a P-II 350 with an ancient Voodoo2 card that runs Unreal just fine. I'll grant you that the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine is damned slow to start, though.

> Q3 also came fairly close to have a JVM instead of the QVM interpreter, but it didn't quite fit my needs
Does C++ now?

Mod writing from a DLL makes sense as it will be quite speedy to do the entry point look ups from the engine core. Is it a speed issue? Did you find JNI to be too slow or that the wrapper over the C structs and your trap calls would be too much bloat?

I read (I haven't played it yet though) that Vampire, the Masquerade uses a JVM , but it's game engine may have had different design goals.

I could see it being a hacking issue as hard core gamers who like to cheat would attempt to augment the variables or algorithms in the bytecode when playing multi-player.
Matt Prichards Cheaters Article

The unreal team also decided against using Java calling it a language for Web Programmers. It seems that adding language constructs outweighed using conventional debuggers and other tools.

I ask as I'm a Java and C programmer who found C++ takes too long to compile and the added language constructs allow programmers to be sloppy.

Well, if you can't afford to buy/maintain your own table, there's always the computer version...

Pinball page at Softseek: List of a whole bunch of downloadable pinball games.
Epic MegaGames Pinball: My personal favorite. Especially the Android table.

The closest thing to what is being described in terms of a non-experimental/non-academic language seems to me to be either Haskell or BETA. Haskell is free and available for Linux, Beta is also free and comes with an extensive development environment (called Mjølner) and it is also available for Linux (yay!). Both of these langauges are very interesting.

Most of the other systems that implement new ideas are experimental and not available AFAIK, but papers describing them are available.

Some good papers to look at are:

• Kim Bruce's Papers: pretty much everything he lists under research is related to this thread.
  
• Luca Cardelli's Papers: most of the stuff that relates is under Types and Semantics, but the other catagories have worthwhile stuff too.
  
• Phillip Wadler has so many fascinating papers on so many interesting topics that I'm just gonna link to his main page... what else can I do?
  

These are good starting points. For more places to look see my list of language bookmarks , especially under people & projects (or specific languages).

umm, actually, Unreal Tournament is already out for Linux. you can download the free Linux demo: here. or, if you've already bought the game, you can get your linux binaries here And anyway, Loki's not porting Q3, they're simply distributing it. I have a feeling that they'll make out ok in this whole deal, fiscally, which is cool.

umm, actually, Unreal Tournament is already out for Linux. you can download the free Linux demo: here. or, if you've already bought the game, you can get your linux binaries here And anyway, Loki's not porting Q3, they're simply distributing it. I have a feeling that they'll make out ok in this whole deal, fiscally, which is cool.

You must have been looking at the download links for the Linux UT /demo/ and not the executables for the full game. Here are download links:

download UT400 executables