Slashdot Mirror
Massive Unreal 2K3 Mod Contest Launched
code-e255 writes "Epic Games, the developers of Unreal Tournament 2003, and nVidia have announced a huge UT2K3 modification contest called 'Make Something Unreal'. This competition will reward the truly great modders out there, and will hopefully encourage more people to mod for UT2K3." Word is that "..entries can be made in 13 categories, including 'Best Mod,' 'Best Character,' 'Best Use of 3D Sound,' 'Best Real-Time Non-Interactive Movie (also known as Machinima),' and more", and prizes include over $1,000,000 in total, with first prize $50,000 and a $350,000-value commercial Unreal Engine license.
I plan on making a Slashdot mod based off of Slashdot Reloaded. All of the agent Smiths will be rendered in ASCII.
Hey, how about a Marathon remake using a the new UT engine? Man, I wasted many an hour in the genetics building playing that game...
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
he's a she.
MOD Ideas:
Hillary Rosen: The MP3 Hunter
"Executive by day, mercenary by night. If music is downloaded, she knows about it, and justice will be hers. Warning: This game include copious amounts of lawyers, therefore it may not be suitable for young children."
and of course:
Lee Carvallo's Extreme Putting Challenge!
Battle your friends in this knock-down, drag-out putting competion. It's in your face! In your mind! It's EXTREME!!
In the spirit of the contest and to play to the sponsors, Iâ(TM)m going for a mod that artificially boosts the displayed FPS when running on an nVidia card.
C:\Program Files\Sierra\HalfLife2> rename hl.exe ut2k3.exe
Wow, a software company that actively encourages the users to actively tinker with their product, with the understanding that this will only increase the popularity of their game. While this trend has been developing lately in the game world, this definitely takes it a huge step forward! Bravo!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Kill SCO execs for fun and profit.
The money is nice and stuff, but with the economy the way it is right now, how about making first prize A JOB???
Back in the days of Doom, I did systems administration work for a Dutch architect firm. I know I certainly thought of using the Doom engine to convert electronic drawings of a building to a complete Walk-Through Interactive Experience (tm).
Unfortunately, as all Dutch architect firms balanced the tight rope between going bankrupt and surviving that time, there was no money/time available for developing mods for that sort of thing.
I certainly hope that some beautiful projects will see the light of day that would otherwise, if it wasn't for this prize-money, never be realised.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Buy me Bonestorm or go to hell!
Because you could make a cool game with the licensed engine and make a ton of money.
Puts everybody in the tournament to sleep.
Then, I strike.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
I bought a new FX5200 128MB card to replace my aging Radeon 7500 which overheated and failed when the fan motor quit and my avg FPS in UT2k3 fell from 55-60 down to 30-40 with all details turned up high. Kept the FX 5200 only a week and got a Radeon 9500, now my FPS is back up to 75-78 will high details. I wish I'd never bought the FX 5200, and I would've have enough money to have gotten an R9700 instead of just the R9500. Oh well, live and learn.
PS: Anybody want a very slightly used FX 5200 real cheap?
Epic is really a great company. This is just another one of the great things that Epic does for the community. They've done a contest like this before for their last game, for example.
:)
:) Everyone I met there was awesome, friendly, helpful, talented and extremely knowledgable. I have the utmost respect for Epic as a company, and they have my undying loyalty and admiration for being such awesome and generous people.
Another great example of how much the support the mod community occurred a year ago this month. Last June, they flew in 35 modders and amateur game developers (including myself) from all over the world to visit their offices in Raleigh, North Carolina, to see the new game engine. They paid for everyone's airfare from places as far as Germany and Canada, paid all of our travel expenses, put us in a hotel, drove us to and fro, paid us back for the cab ride from the airport, etc etc etc. The only money of my own that I spent the entire time was for food at the connecting flight's airport.
They brought us all in to look at the then-unreleased Unreal Warfare engine. They gave us a huge lunch, catered from a local deli with all fresh deli meats and cheeses and everything, and TONS of soft drinks in a refrigerator, and let us eat and chill out in their break room where they have every console known to man on a giant wide-screen TV. We played that for a while, and then we all got to wander around the office and meet everyone that worked there and see where the games we modified were made, and the people that made them. For someone that's been playing their games ever since Jill of the Jungle and Brix, it was a really amazing experience.
After that, we got down to business, to the real purpose for our being there. They gave us a day-long seminar showing us everything the engine can do and how the tools work to do it, answered questions, gave great examples, and impressed us heavily the entire day. They covered every single aspect of the engine, explained everything in full and showed us everything that the public hadn't yet seen. We were all astounded.
After a while, we all go to try out the latest build of UT2K3 over the LAN. I got to play for probably half an hour and had a blast. I'm pretty sure everyone got a chance.
At the end of it, everyone walked away with a free GeForce 4 Ti 42/44/4600, an ATI Radeon 8500 (the best on the market at the time), or an Audigy. Once they handed all of that out, they took us all to see Minority Report.
The next day, we all flew back home. The day UT2K3 was released, we all had a copy in the mail FedExed (where available) to us at our doorstep, waiting for each of us in the morning.
That whole trip still ranks as one of the coolest and most exciting things that has ever happened to me.
In that case, my mod will be called "Static Clip Plane Extreme". It will be the most deceptively well performing mod on the market!
Though....I am thinking of changing "Extreme" to the hipper "X-Treme".
A million bucks is nothing compared to the revenue generated by "The Next Counter-Strike" which is exactly what Epic is trying to create with this.
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.
It's funny and sad that game developers are literally begging the community to create their next big hit for them.
On the other hand, a million dollars is a lot of money, and the poor CS developer probably got manipulated out of ever making that much money when he sold CS to Valve.
So hey, go make your mod and give it away to Epic!
# Erik
> Best Real-Time Non-Interactive Movie (also known as Machinima)
I'm sorry. I think that should read as:
"Best Real-Time Non-Interactive Movie (also known as nVidia drivers with prerendered SysMark 2003)"
Wow! They can have cube for their game for free!
(But seriously, I've always wondered why cube hasn't been more like the open source half-life. It should be easy to mod...)
-twb
I can provide voice. Mine's pretty deep and orgasmic. lol. Let me know if you're interested!
People still play this game a lot?
UT2K3 has always felt quite deathmatch-oriented (as opposed to team deathmatch, CTF, etc.) which makes for great fun for about ten minutes. I know there is a vocal minority who could play nothing but DM for hours on end, and more power to them. But for most other people, deathmatch is a dated concept, once you get over the novelty of playing against real, live people from all over the 'Net. Once that's done, I like the advanced tactical and strategic possibilities available with more team-oriented combat.
I think UT2K3 is also a bit underwhelming because many of the maps prioritize beauty and uniqueness over gameflow. I don't want the map itself to be the focus. Sometimes it's like trying to frag in a 3D Escher painting. I this is largely why BF1942 is more compelling. Familiarity with the environment creates faster immersion.
Also, UT2K3 doesn't significantly improve upon the rock-solid gameplay of its predessesor, and even took away a very popular and unique multiplayer mode (although you can add it with a 3rd-party mod). I understand a recent patch even included specific instructions for making gameplay more like the previous installment.
Oh well. I hope they push an envelope or two with UT2k4. Because it's looking like Sierra will have DoD, Team Fortress and Counter-Strike running on the Source engine come spring 2004. That will be Uber. Everyone's filling their piggy banks for these, plus Doom3, Deus Ex 2, and a few other high-profile, long-awaited titles. I just don't see how UT2k4 will create a viable niche.
According to the contest page: "All costs, taxes, fees and expenses associated with entry into this Contest and any prizes received shall be the sole responsibility of the entrants and winners." The federal income tax alone on the $350,000 Unreal Engine commercial license would, according to the latest IRS tables, be $103,832.
Each submission must be the property of and an original work of the entrant. Submissions must be available for free public download and playable with the retail version of Unreal Tournament 2003 (patched to the 2225 update) for Phase I and Phase II. For Phase III, and for grand prize consideration, mods must be playable in Unreal Tournament 2004.
While the modders aren't giving up their mods to Epic, it's still the same thing: Epic makes you give it away to increase revenue of the retail product.
Never lose sight of the reasons company do things, lest ye look at what they do with distorted eyes. Some things are a win-win for companies and the communities, and this may very well be on of those things. But remember that they don't care if it's a win-win, and most companies will do anything for a buck.
# Erik
I think we have a winner
Sweet merciful carp, I need sleep
Two Rules For Success:
1) Never tell people everything you know.
Presently it's the same as the old one with better graphics. And the Invasion mod gets old real quick.
Translation: "Well, dangit...we're just all out of ideas on this whole first-person shooter thing, and we've fired a bunch of creative help... Let's collect materi...ah...throw a contest!"
Honestly, how about a mod for that female character in the single-player release, so she doesn't look like she was beaten with an Ugly Stick? And seriously, leather is SO first version.
Please help metamoderate.
Ummm, if they claim that the Unreal Engine license is worth $350K, won't the winner automatically be liable for Federal income tak on that amount as income?
Now when you win a hugely pricey item like a car, house or a yacht, etc, in a contest, you can usually sell or get a bank loan against the item to cover your tax liability. Who in hell would want to buy a Windows-only Unreal Engine license or will loan you money on one to pay for such a breathtakingly huge sudden tax liability?
In all "REALity" (pun intended) you'd better decline that prize if your entry is the winner.
Thinking of story I saw on other site.
How about the I-am-an-idiot mod. I don't know, have the player hold the weapon backwards or something.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
The best mod out there is promode for Quake3--fixes all the bugs and crap that was put in there to keep the newbies happy. The difference between promode and vanilla quake 3 (and UT) is like the difference between professional baseball and T-ball.
But don't take my word for it, try it yourself: Try it yourself
Remain calm! All is well!
I've done quite a bit of UnrealScript coding, and have been disapointed with the documentation provided. If they had added a 'Most Comprehensive Tutorial' catagory, it could have done a lot to get people making future mods. I think a lot of GPL projects could benifit from this aproach also. If IBM spent 1% of the money they spent on linux on linux docs, it would really help linux spread longterm.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Or even Bill Gates for that matter. I prefer sco.
Thank you.
http://saveie6.com/
I suggest combining the UT engine with existing software:
UT2003 Word: you're weapons are literally A-Z
UT2003 Outlook: shoot the incoming virii and worms, penile erection mails act as a quad-damage
UT2003 Nethack: their's potential here...
UT2003 Emacs: M-x frag
UT2003 SCO: to consider this would be a thought crime
Who evaluated that engine? I have a million dollars in prizes in my pants.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Yea you'll need the money to buy UT2005, UT2006, and UT2007. I'm waiting UT2008 though, that's the one where they will finally make something that doesn't play like Quake III with eyecandy and actually qualifies as an upgrade over the original UT.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
One truly awesome Stargate SG1 mod for UT2003. :) Imagine using
I think it would rock if someone could write
code that would take you automatically from
one server to another online by passing through
a gate in the game. Imagine g'oud versus SG1 team
multiplayer where you gate out of one firefight with
your team right into another one (on a new server).
Imagine the fun of forgetting to plug in the
numbers and getting telefragged on the IRIS back
at your clan's command center.
IRIS codes to allow people to get on your clan
server. So so much could be done with this idea.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Hey there. You seem to be pretty cynical. It seems as though the company was very generous relative to other companies out there.
Yes, it's true that that mods add tremendous value to the product and wining-and-dining of the modders does do good things for work-of-mouth advertising.
I think that trips like these are a novelty, at least, this is one of the only I've ever heard of. Do big companies that hoard billions in cash (and could readily afford to do so) do anything like this? Does Microsoft bring people in free-of-charge to see cool new things for the XBOX and eat some food? Nope.
My point is that yes, this is guerilla advertising in a way, but it's nice to see a company connect with the community in a more intimate way than sending a few checks; even if they do gain from it.
(To answer my own question: probably.)
How in the hell is this new?
The Unreal engine is basically an UnrealScript based VM...it has been since the first release. 2K3 is just the next iteration of the same thing.
Epic has arguably "gotten it" since Unreal (the orignal) was released; everyone else picked up on it with the original UT.
Check out the Unreal Forever mod for what is possibly the most original mod I've ever seen:
www.planetunreal.com/u4e
I'm glad I played the demo without blindly handing over my money for UT2K3.
However, UT2K4 looks to have all the game modes UT has and more - plus vehicles.
...since, as an avid deathmatcher, UT2K3 is sorely lacking. The shipped DM maps are terrible, and few compared to the team-oriented ones. Even CliffyB admitted they probably spent too little time on the DM aspect of the game.
I think points should be awarded for cheat resistance. Cheating is ruining on-line gaming.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I think this is a big publicity stunt on the part of Epic. (Well duh.) What I mean is that UT2003 hasn't drawn the fan base that Half-life enjoys, despite HL being 4 years old now. (Ancient by game standards.) Now Epic is faced with the upcoming release of HL2 which is expected to blow all the other FPS clear out of the water. Plus, Valve has announced that the SDK for HL2 will be released ahead of the game to give mod authors a change to get ready for the big release in September. Furthermore, Valve has been known to take the better mods under their wing and make commercial games out of them, with the mod authors getting payed for their effort. I think Epic is about to get left in the dust, and I think they know it.
When all else fails, run.
I think the more important point would be why assume they weren't being generous? As long as Polyphemis had a good time and met some cool people it sounds great.
Quack, quack.
Hmm, if nVidia is sponsoring this contest, is there a category for Best Driver "Optimization"? I've found that if I turn all scene rendering off, and have it output pure black, I can get an amazing framerates! I've even modified the drivers so it will only do this when you're benchmarking ... sure to be an invaluable mod.
Groove Salad -- a nicely chilled plate of ambient grooves and beats.
This one's funny, but you need to slow down a little and wean off the /. teat a bit.
One of the worst trolls I've ever seen. Eugenia's a woman.
If you're going to troll, don't post things that are blatantly contradictory to common knowledge which expose your idiocy. At least let your stupidity be subtle.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Also, Microsoft has this www.ideashappen.com where people just write a paragraph of a great idea and could end up with $25,000.
Corporations do this all the time, so when you broadly say that a mega billion dollar company such as Microsoft does not do anything remotely like Epic, it shows that you should research a little bit.
Just passing by.
Hear hear. Something different is needed, a bit of evolution. Fluxbox et al are steps in the correct direction.
Have a great weekend everybody!
Also consider replacing the typical "Fight!" in the beginning of combat with "First post!". And the last player to be turned into a charring corpse should be renamed Trinity (in memory of Matrix Reloaded spoiler trolls).
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Wrong. XBox Live Boot Camp. They brought (amongst other people) Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade. Check it
...stated value of the prize as income. This isn't the same thing as paying sales tax on a purchase, where you are taxed on the amount of money that changed hands.
Sorry if this sounded cynical.
:)
;)
My point was purely technical : generosity implies that you do not get anything in return for your actions. So, Epic are certainly not being generous in that case since they most probably expected a good return on investment, but they surely are clever, and of course there's no harm being so.
I do agree with your whole point (as well as Polyphemis one), but let's just use some other word than generosity
--
PS: I warned I was nit-picking
Considering how much the Half Life folks made off of mods like counter-strike I am not sure $1 million in prizes is adequate. The makers of Unreal Tournament stand to make lots of cash if any of these mods are decent.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Hey there, dr ttol-
Microsoft has their great internship program to encourage the brightest people to work for them and put another brick and some spackle on their empire. Also, people have to make an effort to get these internships, the parent poster was invited.
With regards to the ideashappen thing, from what I remember from slashdot's article on it, you have to give up image rights and possibly the idea itself (it would be in the public domain, at any rate). Not to mention it's sponsored by visa which I'm sure will convince thousands of people to go into debt to feed their "ideas."
Anyhow, Trinary proved me wrong. I guess microsoft does to something to help the community.
I know you think I should research some more, but I think we just have different assumptions. Capice?
Greatest mod. For any game. Ever.
Realy, at night time, I will sneak ontop of the Lincoln Memorial and hold the statue of Minerva as Ransom!
Do as I say, or Justice gets it! I shall not serve Justice! Justice shall not be served today, or the next! I...AM...MOJO TROLLO!
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.
Most persons are securities by means of "citizens of the United States"
Income Tax is responsibility of the United States corporation's members; those in its Congress, Legislature, House of Representatives, Judiciary, and other related offices.
Don't confuse persons with corporations; spirits are not bodies, but IRS and other corporations tend to construe such to be the same. For example, the various federal bank branches that deal Federal Reserve Notes will construe the word "individual" to mean a single "citizen of the United States." It is upto you to conditionaly agree to any such contracts with your own construment that you are an *individual.
*individual; a single person, without the United States, upon its own public capacity under its consent of government chosen to administer this contract as reserved by the Common Law.
I call this mod the NVIdia mod. It runs sort of the same program, gets different results, but does so really fast...
working on it now. . .
soon, soooooon the mod will appear and everyone will like it a little bit.
heh.
It's a shame Microsoft employees aren't treated like employees. It's like every week now I hear a new story about some MS "permatemp" and their experiences.
From the Unreal Engine License Page: "...Unreal Engine licensees starting from version 829. It allows you to simulate solid objects such as crates" OMM needs to take care of this now that they are back!!
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
Puts everybody in the tournament to sleep.
Then, I strike.
3. Profit!!
I want to see that. If you have ever seen the "Daria" episode "The Daria Hunter" it could lend itself beautifully to a CTF game. Actually there could be a whole bunch of "Daria" related maps, all in various parts of Lawndale. You would play with various paintball-shooting guns and you would be "out" and "respawn" when hit by a ball of paint. Non-player "casualties" and "friendly fire" would be punished ala America's Army. Since one of the running gags about Daria Morgendorffer was that she was an enthusiastic player of First Person Shooters (one mentioned was called "Cannibal Fragfest" and another was called "Cyber-Kron") it would be great.
Too bad Viacom would prolly have kittens over that.
Oh yeah, shouts out to Clan B0rg, Santa Barbara, CA.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Just don't rename it 3DMurk03.exe.
Sadly, I find it somewhat less than surprising that "Best Gameplay" is nowhere to be found. :/
If I was a bit more optimistic, I'd pretend that's what they meant by "Best FPS", but I've been around gaming way too long for that.
This really does seem an awful lot like a quick stab at a "hey, let's see if we can get a CS-equivalent for UT2K3" scheme, because the game as it stands IS shockingly unpopular given its relatively recent release.
Still, gl to anyone who goes for it. Who knows: maybe one of the FPS variants WON'T just be YA clone of CS. There's an awful lot of truth to this...
The fact of the matter is that it's been YEARS since Epic or id (sorry JC) did anything even remotely innovative with gameplay: TA's HeadHunters mode, UT's Bombing Run, Instagib, etc, are all just ripped straight from mods (and in the case of Instagib even copying the name) without bothering to credit or even acknowledge the original authors. If this is the only way "new" gametypes are going to appear in FPS's on a widespread/"official" basis (and it certainly looks like it) then at least gamers will get to see something that they might not otherwise; and at least Epic will (potentially) for once mention the people who ARE creating the gameplay rather than just quietly swiping it.
I remember the original "Make something Unreal" contests... I actually think that Unreal and UT had great mod scenes - not necessarily for playability, but for sheer "cool" factor, people would try anything.
Check out the Neuschwantstein-like map (can't remember the name exactly, believe it's DM-Falkenstein) for UT, the "DMWickedMansion" for Unreal itself, half a dozen different things - and see just how far the mod community can go. UnrealEd + UnrealScript are simple enough for anyone with a little programming experience to learn. Combine new people + experienced scripters: great end product.
350K$ "value" is just the expense one would sustain to licence the engine, it's not like
you can sell it for that price or expect to resell it. So it's monopoly money you're winning.
While the expenses that would be involved into producing "The next Counter Strike" are well above $1 million in developers time alone.
Licence you creation to Epic Games for real money / stock / cut on balance statement profits after taxes, that's _real_ money.
That's odd, from the article I recall they are paid very well and are given places to live.
Seems pretty different than inviting people in for free, as the previous post was asking about...
As for ideashappen - who has gotten the 25k so far? Or is it just a giant idea mine that funnels directly to patent lawyers?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Quake II seemed pretty good. UT was a joy to install, run, and play. I bought the HalfLife set and everything but the main Halflife game was buggie for me on two different systems (with all the updates). Maybe that has to do with the fact that they started out as user mods???? That really bummed me out because the teamwork game play seemed like the next logical advance in my gaming experiences (CTF can be fun when you get teamwork, but that is rare...Bombing Run improved on that a little).
UT2K3 has been great for me since the first patch.
So, people, what can we expect with the stability and hardware/OS portablitly with these UT2K3 mods???
"Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit." R.E. Shay
.... the previous winners are Here
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Unreal sucks along with its horribly small player models and sub-par game engine. This game does not realize there's beauty in simplicity Rather, it's everything-extravagant, and that my friends, makes it lame.
- IP
No. who the fork thinks their licence is worth 350k?
For a forked process people it's a game. a 50-350k prize set would be something more like sex with Mila Jovovitch and Michel Radregez, second prize being a life time supply of cola or jolt, third prize would be nvidea buys you a hooker of your choice, forth a computer system, 5th a graphics card 6th-10th a ThinkGeek watch and Samsung SN060 Cellphone with 6 months payed for.
but a a licence? For a Cold Boot!
Certainly the winner mod should make UT2k3 behave and look like the original UT... ... nevermind, I guess I'll keep playing my ol' UT. I just wish I could get my $45 back for my UT2k3 CD ...
This sig can be distributed under the LGPL license
Epic's contest really brings up memories of Mihn "gooseman" Le giving up CS rights to Valve. Based on reading interviews at the time, he didn't seem like he wanted much, a pretty modest guy, so I didn't feel so bad for him. Now it's either Epic is a saint or Valve got Mihn pretty bad. Makes me wonder what kind of deals he's been offered for the in-development CS2 (HL2/TF2 engine), as well as the possibility for a port.
Like many other game and technology enthusiasts, I am pathetically lacking in any ability to code whatsoever. I understand the merits of and have great admiration for the programmers who give us creations like Half Life and Unreal. However, I don't think one necessarily _must_ have coding skills to make creative contributions in this arena.
If I like painting and creating art for others to enjoy, am I useless without understanding the chemistry of my paints? Plenty of great works of art come from people whose expertise is in using the tools, not inventing them. Maybe we're not that far along in the evolution of software tools, but the principle is the same. In the years prior to GUIs computers were for a small clique of specialists. It's fun being in a special club, but it was sure nice for millions of other people when computers became accessible tools.
Music and film are great examples of realms of creativity that have been made accessible by computers. Just look at the music and movies being produced by amateurs using home computers these days.
So while some game editors like Unreal's are cool, they are far from complete. I like to hope that one day soon a hallmark of all great games will be a fantastic editor. I suppose the ultimate goal of an editor would be to allow users to create an entire game. I doubt this would really threaten game developers or reduce their role to just engine-creators, but it certainly might provide increase the need for them to make games with good stories, fewer bugs, and better overall polish.
A-Bomb
So why didn't you fix it earlier? :)
...described here. They can be used as gates to different parts of the level(like the common-or-garden usage), or to another server(using the unreal:// url pattern).
In contrary to the other posts in the thread, the functionality is in both UT and UT2k3. It's just that nobody really goes to the trouble of setting them up.
Incidentally, there is an SG1-flavored UT2k3 mod in development, Atlantis.
--
I think a terrific mod would be a _comprehensive_ editor capabable of generating levels, models, weapons, tweaking engine physics, altering game rules (a la Civ 3), scripting events, creating voicepacks, and so on that required no coding _whatsoever_. This would open the doors to many people who are eager to use tools and make creative contributions, but who don't have the time to develop skills necessary to do so through raw coding.
I really like music. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to learn how to play any instruments. It would be really great if someone could create an instrument that would play itself. That would allow me to create all kinds of great music without having to do anything.
If you really want to get into it, then learn the tools. If you don't have the time to develop the skills, then you don't have time to develop a quality product.
Music and film are great examples of realms of creativity that have been made accessible by computers. Just look at the music and movies being produced by amateurs using home computers these days.
And these people have taken the time to learn the tools of home editing/production. What prevented amateurs from making quality works is the prohibitive cost of production. Computers have made this kind of development accessible not because of processing power, but because of the low cost.
These guys did the dirty work, eh.
James Schmalz is a f-ing genius!
Epic has told me personally that they have no interest in porting their editing tools to the mac. Since it looks like Halo will be actively supporting a modding community, and is more likely to have cross-platform tools, I personally will probably spend my future modding efforts there.
woof
Come back when you have a clue, k?
So I give up rights to pattent my great idea, in exchange for a one time payment of 25,000..
Sounds kinda lame to me.
The vast majority of people haven't had any problems with them: what do you mean by "buggy?" Often, problems are caused by really tiny and easily fixable things, like having the wrong video mode running or accidentally putting spaces in a cfg file. TFC is a great start on the team thing, but NeoTF and Natural Selection both improve on it by making team coordination much more necessary.
Isn't anyone aware of the fact that 2k3 is standard notation for 2.3k, which is 2300?
>The vast majority of people haven't had any problems with them
I would like to dissagree with that but I can't because it is hard for either of us to prove how many people have had problems and just gave up without telling anyone. I don't remember all the problems I was having or how I got them working -- sorry I can't define "buggy" any better. But when I finally got things to the point were I could really play the HL games, I had other games I was more interested in spending time on, which also hadn't been difficult to get to a usable state.
Guess I am just the type of person who expects that if I spend $50 on software and I have met all the hardware/software requirements on the package and in the manual that I shouldn't have to spend several nights sifting through user groups and manipulating config files to get things to be usable. In my opinion, I should only be doing those activities if I want to enhance the game somehow, not make it work.
On the other hand, when I download free software or free user mods, I expect that to be time consuming and not well tested.
Seeing how some mod creators just re-make older versions of games using newer engines.
C:\Program Files\Nvidia Corporation\Nvidia Demos\Dawn\bin rename fairy.exe quake3.exe
C:\Program Files\Nvidia Corporation\Nvidia Demos\Dawn\bin rename quake3.exe ut2k3.exe
A distinctive mark, characteristic, or sound indicating identity
It's certainly hard to tell, but games that have had widespread bug problems ARE bitched about quite a bit by people. Remember SIN? Aracronox? Comparatively, I saw very little of that with HL, and have had no problems myself.
The problem is, everyone has such quirky and unique hardware and OS configurations that there's always some small percentage of people who have a hard time with any game. Just because one particular game didn't work for you and others don't is no reason at all to assume that it was buggy and the others were not: you just happened to hit the jackpot on that particular game. The next guy over could have it work fine, but the others games won't work right for him. You can't even really tell whose fault it is most of the time unless it's really obviosuly the game designers'.
From a mediocre hardware and software designers' , and users' point of view , I agree with the challenges and issues you are talking about. And because of this, I am tempted to put you on my friends list.
Everything I typed was from my personal experience -- I made no assumtions of anyone elses' experiences, neither was I dogging the company or the games -- not that you said otherwise.
For arguments sake, we assume here that nothing is wrong with the hardware/software/drivers with the system in question:
To me, the quirky hardware/OS configuration argument sounds like a bad excuse for not doing the proper homework before programming or writing hardware/software requirements. From a consumer's point of view, for the PC there are 2 big processor companies, a few big video chip companies, a few big interface chip companies, and a number of companies that put all that stuff together. I believe that I have the right to be upset if I have standard hardware and OS (as listed in the manual), the software has been out for a while, and it doesn't work for me even after installing all the updates. If the software isn't ported for specific hardware I expect the manual or READ.ME to say so. Yes, reading everything in the package I have purchased is due diligence (including web links). That is the point here. I know that everyone is on a short schedule and everything (hardware & software) changes constantly. Keeping the intelligent and loyal customers up-to-date is argueably an extremely important thing.
There is also the argument for complete testing -- with all the people willing to test alpha software, it shouldn't be too hard to have software tested on multiple configurations and documented SOMEWHERE as such.
OR, maybe someone having issues is just the results of the software manufacturer playing the odds by listing min system requirements instead of what the software was tested on. Most likely it will work for most people. If a company pisses off 10% of the people that try their software but sell 200% more of their software because they only list min requirements, they still make out much better. No, I am not anti-capitalist, and no I am not pointing out any specific companies.
But then I am just rambling because I am enjoying waxing rhapsodic. I was originally just trying to open up a conversation about the quality we can expect from the mods. I expect good things. What do you expect from the mods?
No, I am not familiar with the SIN or Aracronox issues. Please inform me.
SIN was almost unplyable out of the box. Which pretty much sunk the game, and was really too bad because a patch that came out later fixed most of the issues. Ara (sp?) had the same sorts of issues, though not anywhere near as bad. Both were well known because people complained. Loudly. Everywhere. The same thing happened with HL's original netcode (which they've since completely revamped, allowing it the success it has today) and the DeusEx multiplayer (which was just a free addon, but which people bitched about anyway)
I think the problem isn't just hardware, but configuration of that hardware and other software living on the system. People don't always have the latest drivers, or set things the same way, and especially in Windows, all sorts of glut can pile up in the registry, little programs resident in memory, problems from old system crashes that muck up certain very specific operations (that some games might make use of, and some don't). You can try to simulate this when testing a game, but there's really only so much a company can reasonably do on this score. That's one reason why id's had some success with using public beta demos to get feedback from a much wider spread of users than they could assemble in a testing center.
Again, I'm not saying that the issues were or weren't the designer's fault in this case. I never bought the retail version of those mods: just downloaded the latest versions of them.
I expect reasonably good quality from mods primarily BECAUSE they can get such wide playtesting and bug reports, at least potentially. In a large part, however, a lot of the credit has to go to the game designers, who basically developed the environment within which one modifies things. If it's robust enough to support new ideas, then it will just work without introducing new issues to be resolved. The big 3 standard FPS game companies (Epic, Valve, id) have done a fairly good job with this. And the result are mods like Natural Selection, which can depart from the standard interfaces and gameplay modes, but still work without mucking things up too much. The bugs you generally find in mods are things like exploits that find holes in the extensibility of the engine that the mod makers fail to patch up with gameplay decisions. For instance, in NS, you can slow crash a server by planting an endless number of tripwire mines everywhere. In this case, the game designers never figured that their game would be used in this way, and their own MP game had failsafes (like blowing up extraneous entities that were clogging up a server) that the modmakers did not implement. Again, it's not clear who's at fault here. Should the game designers have hardcoded the failsafes into the engine, constraining, perhaps, people finding other solutions to the problem? Or are the mod makers for not realizing that servers can't take an infinate amount of entities? It's a tricky balance between giving modmakers freedom (to suceed or to screwup) and tying their hands (which may be reasonable, or may just conceal bad programming on the part of the designers, or even just a limited engine and programming environment).