UT2003 LiveCD

ztc writes "Gentoo has added a Unreal Tournament 2003 demo to a version of their Linux-based LiveCD. It has up-to-date nvidia graphics drivers, sound drivers, network drivers, etc. on the CD ready-to-play. LiveCDs have always been a great way to sway potential Linux-converts, but this should really impress them! You can download the iso here." A sneaky way to promote Gentoo. I like it.

Comments

UT2k3 - linux impressions

[Merlin42]

I downloaded and installed UT2k3 demo on both my linux partition (up to date gentoo) and my W2k partition. I am running an admitidly unbalanced celeron333a w/ 192mb ram and a gf4ti4200-64mb.
Under linux I get very choppy sound and an almost-kinda-sorta-playable slideshow after setting all the options to their min (ok I left the res at 800x600 ... 320x240 was in the list!).
While w2k gives me a reasonably playable game ... heck its not completly unplayable at 1600x1200.

FTP mirrors

[mortis_aeturnus]

Gatech Sunsite.dk Norweigen Mirror Another Norweigen Mirror

Re:FTP mirrors

[ananke]

Just because it's a slow day at work... I mirrored it too

Answer

[Mustang Matt]

LiveCD is a standalone bootable CD that you can pop in most newer computers, boot up and play the game.

ATI Cards

[solarce]

I have not seen this mentioned yet, but I think it should be noted that it is not Gentoo's fault that the UT2003 LiveCD does not run on ATI cards. Epic made the call to only support the newer nVidia cards in the demo and it has nothing to do with Gentoo or the fact that XFree86 has less than ample support for the newer Radeon card line.

Re:ATI Cards

[jvmatthe]

Epic made the call to only support the newer nVidia cards in the demo

This is false. To cut down on traffic over the AGP bus, Epic used texture compression. Specifically, they used S3TC/DXTC, which is supported by every major, modern 3D video driver on Windows (i.e. their target audience). This extension is currently supported by only two drivers on Linux: the ones from NVIDIA and the ones from Xi Graphics. The XiG drivers support the Radeon cards, but are pay-to-use drivers. However a time-limited demo is available for free. (The server must be restarted every 25-30 minutes or so, in the demo, as I understand it. Buy the real thing, and you get unlimited use, naturally.)

Epic has also said they're working with ATI and PowerVR (makers of the Kyro cards) to improve the binary-only drivers that each of those companies provides for their cards under Linux. If and when these drivers are released, they will be free-as-in-beer.

Again: it is the failing of the drivers under Linux to support a required extension, not Epic. Without that extension, performance would be terrible, so it isn't an option of just turning it off.

Re:ATI Cards

[jvmatthe]

Not being a programmer, I can't speak with complete authority, but I can tell you what I know. The full game has an amount of textures measured in gigabytes. (Not on a single level, naturally, but this gives an idea of just how much data we're talking about.) The beta build I've played with was a bigger than 2Gb, of which a big chunk was those textures. They shipped lower resolution textures with the demo and it was still 100Mb compressed. I don't know the size of an individual, high-resolution texture, but I imagine that the S3TC/DXTC is required, given the size of things so far.