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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

oh well... back to playing my "fake" UT2003 on debian...

There's no category in the "Make Something Unreal" competition for "Star Wars Mods" that I can see. Make Something Unreal Categories.

So the other teams have to use original ideas or those of a company that doesn't jump on people? Is that a big ethical problem in a contest to create creative content? Presumably it is on the strength of the art assets and gameplay value that the Star Wars team puts together, not on the strength of "it's cool to be a jedi" appeal in an unplayable mess, that they intend to win.

With that thought, here are some of my biggest disappointments (in no particular order):

1. Unreal Tournament 2003 : I played the original UT from the day it came out, up to the day the UT2003 demo (actually the leaked alpha) was released. I actually bought a new computer to play UT2003. I can't even tell you how disapointed I was by UT2003. The biggest reason is it seemed like Quake2003 and didn't have the feel of Unreal or Unreal Tournament. On top of that, the weapons were weaker than the ones in UT. The great thing in UT was all the weapons were useful, and most of them were top tier. Lastly, the characters seemed to be so much smaller than the original UT (no, it's not my monitor resolution either).

2. Ultima 8 , "pagan". After playing Ultima 1-5 and loving them I took some time off (ie the time between me having an Apple II and an a PC) and came back to playing computer games. The first PC based RPG I bought was "Pagan". It came on 8 disks ( I guess to match the sequel number...), and didn't run on my PC even though my PC fit the specs. After a few calls to Origin didn't help I gave up. A few days later I took it to a friends house and played on her PC. Then I realized the game sucked anyway and I wasn't missing much. It's funny how game companies can turns classics into crap after a few too many sequels.

3. Super Mario Brothers 2 - Way too easy, and too different in a craptacular way than the first one. Nintendo hit a home run with SMB3 though.

4. Wargods - From Midway, one of my favorite gaming companies came this crap. Sure, it looked really cool but trying to get off a 15 button fatality in 2 seconds was no fun. Never mind the complexity/sillyness of the combos. Ugg.

5. Mortal Kombat 3, 4, 5 - While I'm on the midway kick, Mortal Kombat has sucked for a long time now. It's downfall was trying to emulate the killer instinct dial-a-combos and putting in a run button in MK3 (which was correctly colored yellow...the CHEESE button). 4 was pretty bad, and 5 was aweful. This is a shame because 1 and 2 were both very good IMO.

6. Street Fighter Alpha 1 - chain combos..Ugg. Capcom much like Nintendo followed this up with a great game in SFA2. Maybe the mark of a good game company is to fix their own crap when they screw up a sequel.

Funny, I run Linux and seem to recall enjoying playing:
Neverwinter Nights,
Unreal Tournament 2003,
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory,
America's Army,
Return To Castle Wolfenstein,
and Quake 3

None of which require WineX or VMWare to be installed.
Yes, there are some games that only run in Windows, but developers are starting to see how easy it is to make a Linux port and pick up some free advertising and some more sales simply for the fact that there's a native linux client.

Another game coming soon that will ship with a linux version included in the windows box is Savage.

(what was I saying about free advertising?)

Unreal Tournament 2003 runs fine under Linux. You have to watch out for the installer bug and the supermount bugs but those problems and their work-arounds are well documented

Video System: 3D Accelerator card with 16 MB VRAM (*32-128 MB VRAM RECOMMENDED) 16 MB TNT2-class DirectX® version 6 compliant video card. (*NVIDIA GeForce 2/ATI Radeon RECOMMENDED) DirectX® version 8.1 (Included on game disc)

On a side note, I recently read an article about some programmers that said it was actually unbelievably easy to port their program to *nix from Windows. It was however an application/design program and not a game, but hell if Winex works. . . I'll see if I can find it.

1) Unreal Tournment 2003, Enemy Territory, Quake3, Neverwinter Nights, etc. And much, much more with Wine such as Soldier of Fortune 2.

2) Grip, VERY good CD Ripping app. Will auto download CDDB, run the encoder of your choice, etc. As for raytracing Povray can do a lot too, but you just need a good modeler, such as Kpovmodeler. As for a one click installer, check out RPMs or RedHat's Package Management System, looks just like Install Shield.

3) KDE,Gnome,etc. You DO know that they can be themed to look just like the crappy Windows GUI too don't you?

Also, it was quiet interesting Americas Army came out before UT2K3 using the UT2K3 engine. So the engine does look good on other non-bouncy fps games. (Any other U2K3 engine based games out?)

From the Unreal Wiki, released UT2k3 engine games:

America's Army
Devastation
Raven Shield
Splinter Cell
Unreal 2
Unreal Championship
Postal 2 ...and of course itself, and any others I have forgotten.

Notable upcoming Unreal Engine games include:
Deus Ex 2
Thief 3
XIII

Unreal Warfare, Epic's worst-kept secret, is next-generation (from UT2003's engine) and is said to rival Doom 3s and Half Life 2s. Speculation I have heard is that is seems to be a large scale combat game (either that or i'm getting this confuesd with Digital Extreme's Stargate game), perhaps in the style of BF1942 or PlanetSide (yes, there are games in development (unannounced) that are using the Unreal Engine as a platform for a MMORPG, so it is a possibilty).

people into retro gaming, or required to use other old software. I'm so glad we are slowly approaching this point. UT2K3 has Linux support out of the box. The demise of Loki is something that I initially thought was going to set back the Linux gaming community for years, but then I've seen games like UT2K3, Castle Wolfenstein, and if you want to count their late to the punch arrival Never Winter Nights come out native. If we could only get Blizzard on the bandwagon, and Maxis more firmly seated the other developers would have little choice but to jump onboard. gatesh8r is right. If Wine gets to good to fast not only will it slow some developers to adopt Linux natively, it may loose a couple that we already have. I'm counting Apple as our new Ace in the Hole. The Mac actually has the attention of the developers, and porting from BSD to Linux should be much easier than porting from Windows to Linux. Of course if everyone adopts and improves on SDL and OpenGL they will have little to worry about when porting anyways. Especially if OpenGL2 ever makes it way to daylight with all the Active X type replacements it's supposed to have available.

I don't subscribe because I feel that WINE is holding back the state of native application ports. After all, if Linux has "perfect" emulation of Windows there is no practical reason for developers to port their code to be platform independent. Without a visible need to port to Linux, developers will continue to release games that only support Windows.

You have a choice: emulate Windows (forever), or seek native software ports. I've chosen native ports, because I think that is the better long-term solution. But if you just can't stand to give over your EverCrack until they provide a Linux client... that is your choice. Just be aware I won't be sympathetic to complaints about the dearth of Linux game ports.

No need to imagine. Check out UT2k3. Does "the way it's meant to be played" count as 'NVidia' recommended?

Well, Unreal 2k3 IS an Atari game...

UT 2003!
Linux Games!!
Tux Games!
Neverwinter Nights!
In your face you greasy little "Linux doesn't have any games" troll!

Games are a strong incentive to use Windows. Personally, I use Win2k for recreational purposes and Linux for everything work-related. But give me some good games for Linux (I'm talking full ports here, not "but you can't use the editor" crap), like UT2003 and IL2 Sturmovik plus a program that has similar capabilities to VirtualDub for grabbing and editing video and Windows will get off the disk.

In most of the cases the "remake" if you will, is continents apart from it's predacessor.

But doesn't the availability of a game (admittedly with simpler graphics) for an older console weaken the apparent "exclusive"ity of the newer title?

I'll answer your question with a question. Ford produced the Mustang in 1965. What makes the 2003 model any better?

I'll humor you by taking a guess at the answer to your question. In general, a newer sports car has at least the following: improved safety features, improved climate control, a better stereo system, and an engine that produces more power with less fuel and less emissions. The Ford Mustang may have other features.

I'd guess that the new Superman game for Xbox probably has sharper textures and more detailed models than the N64 version. But is involving play there, or is it lacking? I've answered your question; now you answer mine.

Sorry, some people don't have $200-300 dollars laying around to spend on a decent video card to play UT2003.

True, you need a newer video card for UT2003. But you also need a special video card (i.e. one with TV in) to play Xbox games in a crowded dorm room with no space for a stand-alone television set.

Yes, [Unreal Championship] will play online via the Xbox Live service, according to M. Rein.

UT2003 will (barely) work down to a 33.6 modem. Xbox Live, on the other hand, requires high-speed Internet access, which isn't available at consumer prices to all families in the United States. Given that somebody already has dial-up Internet access at $20 per month, Xbox Live costs about $24 per month ($4 per month for Xbox Live and $20 per month for the upgrade from dial-up to cable).

Unless you're 12y/o and like to play PG13 games, then GameCube is for you.

Super Smash Bros. Melee is the most popular video game played on the TV in the lobby of a dorm room in a college. Not a middle school, a college. Well, if Xbox has few if any good exclusive E/T rated games, that's Microsoft's problem.

Next time you interact with orcs, demons, and can shoot people, get back to me, if you're just running and throwing a ball around, don't bother.

Instead of just buying it because it supports linux? The linux and windows demos can be found here.

If you already have a linux distro or windows, you can find a list of mirrors here. Warning : Its over 90mbs, but its smaller than the CD

More fast mirrors...

A little checking would have revealed much about UT2K3 on the Mac. The real reason that we have a Linux version right now was that OpenGL support had to be added for the Mac version anyway. The codebase of the Win32 and Linux version are quite similar when OpenGL support is added. The Mac port is supposed to be underway and should be a couple of months behind the retail win32 release. Go to UnrealTournament2003 and check the forums for more info.

The official UT2003 page has a list of mirrors with the Linux client.

Too bad the message here hasn't changed. Although a certain thing that goes by the name "927" has been keeping me busy. Demo pls!

Atari is one of the developers working on Test Drive, Unreal Tournament 2003, VRally3, Godzilla, Terminator, Splashdown, Transworld Surf, MX Rider, Neverwinter Nights, and Stuntman.