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Agreed, with one thing to note. The game Pariah made by Digital Extremes flopped. I know it's not Epic, but it's Epics closest partner in developing the Unreal Tournament Series of games.

It might not be the engine, it might be the implementation. Besides, have you seen all the features the engine has? It's bound to have a few bugs in it. Windows, Linux, and OSX all do. And if there's so many problems, you'd think more of the companies that licensed it would complain. There's lots of companies using it.

Yeah, cause nobody got free additions to games before Valve and Steam, right?

Now I'm picturing a Duke Fortress mode. :D

Nah, we'll probably see:
Dukeperative
Dukematch
Team Dukematch
Dukeslaught
Dukesault
Capture the Duke
Double Dukination
Last Duke Standing
Dukevasion

(Dukeified from the UT 2K4 games mode list)

Not according to this: http://www.unrealtournament.com/ut2004/specs.html

If it's included, does it work right out of the box or do you have to go through all kinds of hoops to get it working?

If so, would that be good enough for the Blizzard experience?

Did Unreal Tournament 2004 sell almost 7 million copies to all kinds of demographics like World of Warcraft?

Does Unreal Tournament charge $15 a month for a service that works as perfectly as possible, as a business model?

Clearly your comment suggests you know very little about the capabilities of Linux and the state of Linux gaming - or you're just being a troll.

For your information, Flash is often ported to Linux a fair time after it's written for Windows so the likelihood of this game being Flash 9 is slim to none since there will probably not be a Linux port of Flash 9 by that time. Also, there are several games that look and play better in Linux using OpenGL than they do in Windows on the same hardware. I would expect that this game simply will use OpenGL as the graphics engine allowing the majority of code written to be cross-platform with very little to port between Windows, Linux and Mac.

Thank you.

Let's not forget Savage and Unreal Tournament 2004 with their direct LINUX products, and the whole slew of things the kind folks at Loki port and work on.

You're missing the point! A better heatsink means that the heat gets more efficiently transferred to the computer's surroundings, therefore heating your room more efficiently.

I will grant you that computers make great space heaters--they not only heat the room, but they can do all sorts of interesting things in the mean time.

I have to agree. I own an X-Box so I wont be out of the loop for this game but that doesnt mean crap if they are going to throw this thing out as a big online game.

As a single player game I could see such massive possibilities the missions and story in such a great universe could be nothing less than epic. Now the single player appears to be stuck on to the far easier option of make a handful of levels plug in some generic AI and let people take care of the gameplay themselves in the same multiplayer experience they have had time after time after time.

I wouldnt mind quite so much but looking through there own site each screen I went to managed to drain a little more hope out of me. You have 4 characters which are essentially heavy medium light and stealth troopers. No alien races no attempt at something interesting like Alien Vs Predator.

Look at Vehicles and youve got fairly standard affair here as well the only vehicle that even begins to stand out is the siege tank which appears to be a poor mans Leviathan from Unreal Tournament ( http://www.unrealtournament.com/ut2004/vehicles.ph p ) Admitedly UT probably stole the idea from Starcraft in the first place but Starcraft has a multitude of units. Think SCV for repairing the other units in combat or any of the flying vehicles. If theyd gone to the other races it could have gotten really interesting.

Look at the psi abilities and you have a set of abilities that have been around since Doom. Nothing like the range of abilities Unreal Tournament has let alone Unreal Championship 2 which has numerous different powers for each of its dozen characters.

The weapons are equally lack luster the lockdown gun being the only thing of interest and its no stake gun from painkiller or gravity gun from Half Life 2.

Even the modes offer nothing. They have a handful of typical modes and only one expansion to these called capture the base which sounds like a cross between your normal capture and hold on to a base game and capture the flag. It could be interesting but a single additional mode of play is no where near enough.

I dont know if it will be a terrible game or a great game Ive not got a copy of it and itd be foolish to just assume. Blizzard have pulled off some of the best games around there isnt a single line of theres that I have not enjoyed, but I can safetly say all of my anticipation for this game has drained away. On the plus side if it does turn out great it will take me by surprise and be all the better for it.

There's a ton of "user published content" action in the field of PC gaming. Pick just about any recent PC title on the planet, and chances are very good that someone has hacked/modified it and released their findings. Tons of companies nowadays (esp. developers of FPS games) wholeheartedly encourage modding games, releasing docs, developer tools, providing support, and even holding prize contests to encourage the practice.

Why? Because everyone wins. Its a symbiotic relationship. Mods provide extra content for an already published title, increasing its popularity, longevity, and sales (Half-Life 1, anyone?). The community feeds itself as well as the existing game. And the cherry on top is that plenty of dev studios are recruiting the cream of the mod-scene crop to bolster their own ranks. End result is better games for everyone. :)

See the Unreal Tournament Community Bonus Pack, and the SuperStorm fan-made patch for Earth 2160. Both hosted on official download sites. The UT2003 community pack was actually included on the UT2004 DVD.

These are just the two examples I've played today...

I got my start doing Machinima in Planetside. The response that I got from the community was really impressive. I could give people about a week's notice and have a turnout of 10-20 people just from my server willing to help me with a film project.

Sometimes it was really hard to express what I wanted them to do and there is always the inevitable people that will screw off and not really pay attention, as well as those that have no idea that there's filming going on and ruin the fun by playing the game the "right" way.

However, all in all, I've had a very rewarding experience. In fact, in Planetside, I ended up deleting my character and switching sides (this was before you could have characters on multiple factions. it was really painful to delete a fairly high level character and restart as a newbie) to get into a clan that had been helping me a lot. To this day, I'm still an active member in that clan, although I've stopped playing Planetside awhile ago.

Film is a very expressive form and Machinima is no different. There are humorous series, like those done by the Rooster Teeth bunch, there are extremely artsy works like those that won the Make Something Unreal Contest Machinima catagory, there are music videos and there are even video memorials for players that have passed away in real life. Machinima is a lot of fun and a lot of work. While the goal is always to create something visual and compelling, along the way, you immerse yourself with the community and make something as equally important as a good film; friendships.

I appologize if that came off really sappy, but I've had Machinima films succeed and I've had them fail, but regardless of the outcome of a project, I couldn't have gotten as far as I did with it without the help of many other people.

My UT2k4 copy is on DVD. Yes, you can buy it on 6 cds, but WHY? World of Warcraft is currently on 4 CDs, and there's no DVD version (the Collectors Edition shipped with 4 cds and a dvd) available.

DVD is currently becoming the new cd 'standard' for sharing software. Families are distributing home movies on it at christmas (at least, ones I know are) and people are starting to backup to it. Heck, you can get Encarta or Wikipedia (soon) on DVD. The benefits of dvd for software are not going to go away just because you can download movies over broadband now (while almost half of the country still sits on dialup and with major broadband isps not looking to expand there...), so I am quite sure it'll stay around for some time.

Plus, there's those new DVD-Audio type things sound like they'd sound great, although I don't know if I'd notice the higher quality as much as the surround sound. I don't know (currently) of any software that could play them in my computer, either :(

Most of us have moved away from plain web-based stuff a while a go and moved into the wide-world of G U Is, movies, and graphical games.

Though I do enjoy being sarcastic on /.

UT2004 (and the older UTs also)

The Battle for Wesnoth very good freebie.

These are the ones I'm focusing on right now. I've played lots of others. Quake III, Frozen Bubble, I saw someone complain about lack of tacticle shooters, I did have Soldier of fortune. Now that Loki is gone ports don't happen quite as often, but they do still happen. Right now Blizzard is probably the biggest gaping hole in the Linux game library.

Cedega is a non-free version of wine with directx capabilities. You can browse their supported games here.

Of course not all games now-a-days require wine or cedega in order to run on linux. Games like unreal tournament and doom III include fully functional linux versions.

There are several open source games developed for but not limited to linux. torcs, flightgear, tuxracer are some examples.

Projects like libsdl are making cross-platform game development easier.

Probably the biggest problem you'll encounter is building drivers for your video card. I've heard it argued both ways but as I understand it, both nvidia and ati drivers are ass-pains in linux. Nvidia's drivers are free as in beer, not speech. If you don't really care about free-software principles and philosophy then this is not a problem for you. ATI's drivers I understand to perform less than ideally. If you haven't already purchased your video card, I would encourage you to do extensive research beforehand.

In reality, linux distributions have few differences. Any recent, major distribution should be able to accomodate gameplay. I myself use debian unstable for amd64.

As far as performance, it really boils down to hardware. My advice is to install the linux distribution of your choice. Once you get glxgears to run, give ut2004demo a try, and if you like the way it works, then stick with linux.

Machima isn't all about a game type. You can do it without it. UT2004 offers great tools, using it's "Matinee" system you can create complete movies and together with oc3 entertainment's "imposter" tool you can create great things.
Some examples:
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?id=793/
http://www.unrealtournament.com/news/view.php?id=2 229/

Unreal Tournament is way better, in my opinion.

Is there any area of IT that actually requires the best available graphics card?

Yes there is. It is called recreation and fun time.

Otherwise, all most people need is a 32MB on board graphics card. No big deal.

Unreal Tournament 2k4 is also available on DVD, comes in a nice DVD case and has a bonus disk with a couple dozen hours worth of video tutorials on UnrealEd.

In my town we have a shop dedicated to LAN games any day of the week & a large public LAN once a month.
Most of those games are never played at LANs I've been to.

The most popular games are (in order of popularity):
Call of Duty
Battlefield Vietnam
UT2004
BF1942: Desert Combat mod

When some of the students in my degree have a private LAN, we play all the above games (except for call of duty) as well as Star Craft: Brood War & C&C Generals: Zero Hour

Honestly - someone should take something like SDL and start building a suite of commercial games for all the major platforms.

If anyone could do it, I'm sure Aspyr could, if the market were large enough.. If the linux desktop market approaches OS X's, we should hope to start getting games ported only a year or so behind schedule..

In the meantime, I'm good with UT2004...

We do see this model at work in the modding community. Just look at all the cool things that can be done with the same core module.
Mods take less time than the original game, because the original game you have the complexity of creating the engine, this is the economies of scope the article describes.

Epic has moved back the dates for Phase 4 and the Grand Finale. They are September 10th and November 15th respectively. More details here

the price is high, and i always build new pcs myself (theres no fun in just-plug-iit-in-and-it-works, not that that happens to often). but still, I prefer pcs over consoles because of the hackability. im not talking about stealing passwords hacking, im talking about make something unreal hacking; modifying the games to make them more fun
gameshark doesnt count.

A few years ago the company I worked for used to supply a few of us with ISDN lines (this was before cable/DSL was readily available) so we could work from home. They paid for the connection and footed the bill for rental and calls. At the time, though, ISDN was still metered by the minute in the UK and so you paid for the duration of your call - what's more, if you bonded the two channels into one 128Kb connection then you paid for each channel (ie. it was effectively two separate phone calls). Off peak this could be as much as 5p per minute per channel. In otherwords it wasn't cheap :)

Well, all was fine until the sorry day when I downloaded the Unreal Tournament demo to try out. Suddenly I found that being one of the l337 few with a 'low ping' connection I was really good and so I bought the full game when it was released. Next thing I knew I joined a clan and was playing all the time. Then - you guessed it - the bills started arriving....

You try explaining to your boss how you've managed to wrack up a bill for over 100 ($185) a month by 'working from home'. Not easy, especially when the server logs seem to indicate you'd never actually telneted to the server more than a couple of times to read your mail... Bah!

So, the Linux drivers exist, and I know they have hardware-accelerated OpenGL support built in... Does anyone know if this machine+display combo will work "out of the box" without any tweaks to applications?

An option or two applied to XF86Config is OK by me, but per-application mods would be a little excessive... Anyone tried UT2K4 on one yet?

Why would you use an emulator when you can have the real thing?

Because I cant play this in those terminals!

Robert
For real 64bit performance visit VooDoo software tuning and download the 64bit 2004 Longsword Gamez Demo. The Download of UT2004 64-bit English Linux Demo is around 200Mb.

Here's a picture of the device that emits the laser: link

And here's a picture of the laser itself: links

I'm sure they could get it much much smaller with some effort : compress the textures, sounds and maps, use a tracker (i.e. MOD files, etc.) instead of a digital soundtrack for each level, use procedural textures, etc.

But as someone pointed out, that just doesn't pay anymore when 100GB HDs are under $100.

Still, 1.5GB for maps does sound a bit extreme, no?

... and unreal tournament - SDL/OpenGL.

Well put... Lookup tables were one of the most widely-known (and used) tricks of the game/graphics programmers back in the days of the '486 and such. Hand-rolled assembly in a few key places also made a world of difference.

The only problem with it nowadays is that there is usually so much *crap* going on (lots of models/sprites/etc) that if you were to prerender them all, it'd take up a whole lot of room... maybe something like, I don't know... 6 CD's?.

Back then the processing power wasn't nearly fast enough to keep up with something that complex or large, so prerendering all the graphics took up minimal room.

The game still rocks though. :)

• UT2004 (Also Unreal - 2003 work as well)
• Neverwinter Nights
• SAVAGE: The Battle for Newerth
• Enemy Territory
• Quake3
• Americas Army

• Forzen Bubble
• Scorched3D
• Legends (Tribes2 Clone)
• Chromium (Space Invaders Clone)

Hmmm, I thought Unreal Tournament 2003 & 2004 came with a native Linux version on CD? And so did Uplink ( great game! ) if I remember correctly. Coupled with NWN, this gives you some quality FPS, quality RPG and quality uhm... something... ...whatever kind of game Uplink really is...

Unreal Tournament 2004 is expected to be available worldwide on March 15, in both a standard and a "Special Edition" format. Unreal Tournament 2004 DVD Special Edition will ship as a double-DVD set - disk one will include all of the game content while disk two will include hours of Video Training Modules (VTMs) from 3D Buzz that teach fans and amateur mod makers how to use the Unreal Editor to create custom game content. Unreal Tournament 2004 DVD Special Edition will come in a limited edition metal box and will contain a Logitech Internet Chat Headset for use with the game's exclusive voice-over-IP (voice chat) technology, as well as an Unreal window sticker.

According to this, the game also is in a 2-disc DVD edition with extra goodies. It is available at the same price at most retailers.

Source

As already pointed out, it will run on Linux, in fact, there is a 64-bit version for Linux. Download all versions of the demo here.

I quite agree. While UT2004 certainly isn't the first FPS with vehicles, nor does it have the huge collection of some games (e.g. BF1942 and/or DesertCombat), its vehicles are well-designed, well-balanced, and so much fun, it's kind of ridiculous.

It's a shame no one's making Linux games any more

Oh really?

The first thing you should do is hop on over to 3D Buzz. They have video tutorials that you can download for free. Thats how I learned to use Unreal Ed. Unreal Ed is easy to use compared to any of the other editors that I tried. I tried the Valve Editor for Half Life. It is also very good but a little more difficult to learn than Unreal Ed I found. Maybe it was because I didn't have the easy video tutorials though.

I also used the Neverwinter Nights Editor which was pretty easy to learn just using my previous knowledge and experience with other editors. You might want to start with something REALLY basic if you don't have any experience at all. Try making some levels with the Starcraft Editor. It is very very basic. If you know C++(or any language like it) that will be a big asset too because any of the really cool stuff that you can do to create dynamic events is done with script in any editor that you pick.

I'm also interested in getting into game design. One of the things you can do is to get a group of people together and create a mod. That is one way of getting in the door. I think you'll find it hard to get into a game company without a resume with some actual experience with a published game. Otherwise they won't even look at you.

You can also search on google for free 3D engines, or inexpensive ones like Torque. I've also entered the Make Something Unreal Contest. The first round is over but I think you can still enter the second two rounds. I could be wrong on that though.

Yeah... and you could have every single gaming company write drivers for different video cards, and you get pissed when your $600 Turtle Beach card doesn't play sounds in Doom III. You also get to reset your computer every single time you want to play.

Do people multitask while playing games like Doom III? HELL YEAH! I can't remember how many times I've 'windowed' UT or TO:AoT to tweak my TeamSpeak settings. Or how often I take a break while woring (I work at home) to let off some steam lobbing grenades or rushing SF with my trusty AK.

Besides, Doom III is as much a proof of concept as it is a game. By developing the engine in a console-like enviroment you're limiting it's 'real world' parameters, you're not letting it get tested. Let's not kid ourselves, in 2-3 years time there's going to a *lot* of games toting the Doom III Engine badge.

Anyway, we've been in this situation before - praying your game can detect your video and sound card. This is why DirectX and OpenGL are popular - they provide a much needed interface and abstraction layer to your sound and graphics. This is one of the promises of a modern OS - set up an interface to differnet devices. Configure it once and you're set! The lack of this was one of the worst things about DOS, and I don't really want to go back there.

Thank god I'm not in your shoes!

I can burn CDs, browse the web, watch a DVD (with menus and DeCSS and everything!), and play some games , too, all from my GNOME desktop on Linux!

[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.

My current addictions are:

• Grand Theft Auto III for PS2
  Combining racing, shooting, dark humor and wonton viloence in one game. Plus, you get to be the bad guy for once :).
• Tekken Tag Tournament for PS2
  Practice at home to play Tekken 4 in arcades and provide maximum pain to my adversaries.
• Final Fantasy X for PS2
  Ooooo... pretty...
• Yahoo! Eucher
  No one else in my family plays, so I play with complete strangers.
• Unreal Tournament on PC
  Team Deathmatch and Domination with 3+ teams is good. Mods like Jailbreak and FragBall are also highly time-consuming.
• Diamond Mine
  Great little Shockwave game. I play this constantly at work :)

Wow, looking at the list, it's amazing that I'm bored all the time...

real weapons

realistic maps

thriving user community

Grab Loki's patch to install Unreal Tournament, then hop over to Strike Force Center to try the mod.

But so what? If Microsoft looks at a little GPL'd code (which I'm sure they have) what's the problem? As long as they don't use any of it verbatim, and write their own (mostly messy, mostly crashing) code, what do we have to worry about? I'm sure most of us have looked at GPL'd code for ideas, but not copied them simply due to not wanting to go through the procedure of releasing our source everytime we release a build/lack of documentation in the original source (although, the second really isn't a GPL issue :) ).

I signed up with Verizon DSL (768 down/128 up) in October 2001. In about 25 days I had a working connection, and to date I would estimate the downtime as virtually zero (maybe an hour or two in 6 months). My connection speeds are usually in the 700 - 800 kbps range during the day, going up as high as 870 kbps during off-peak hours. Upload speeds are consistently in the 130 kbps range. Packet loss is zero. Latency is decent enough that I can play (and serve) UT games without problems. I couldn't be happier.

But you must consider that my apartment is on one side of the block, and on the other side is the CO. Distance means a lot with DSL, and (if the houses weren't there) an athetically inclined person could throw a baseball from my window and hit the CO.

Also, I am using a local ISP with great bandwidth. I pay a little bit more than if I had gone with Verizon as my ISP, but I welcome the chance to support the few remaining independent ISPs.

So that is my experience (a great one!). When people are knocking DSL, remember that not everyone has had a bad time with it.

IMHO, Q3A is not the best example to site for sales of Linux games... Why? Well... in many ways the game was not as "fun" as its major competitor Unreal Tournament..

Now before everyone flames me because of my use of an obviously subjective term, let me just state that Unreal Tournament was voted by a great many gaming magazines and groups as the "game of the year" (take a look at UT's press page). It outperformed Q3A as far as retail sales last year are concerned.

Furthermore, it has been reported that Q3A's sales were low across the board. Granted the Windows versions sold enough to keep id in business.. but it wasn't a real big smash hit.

So maybe, just maybe, the low Q3A Linux sales might have reflected more the general dissatisfaction of the game rather than a lack of Linux game players. And maybe Carmacks comments in the past (rather lashing ones I might add) should not have been directed at the Linux gamers, but at his developers for not "pushing the envelope" more with Q3A.

I know that I personally did not purchase Q3A for Linux until I could for cheap because I did not like the game as much as UT (which I did purchase full-price when it came out). UT had so many more options and so much more depth, it wasn't really a contest in my book.

Granted, the latest UT patches (436 is the most recent) have sucked the performance out of this game on my system... and it is now next to unplayable (what's up with that?!)... but that's a whole 'nother issue! ;-)

Does this ring any bells for ya?

It's really spiffy stuff try The Official Page or Daily Radar's article the movie's a 42mb download, but it's darn impressive.