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.

Comments

Nice prizes

[Anonymous Coward]

The money is nice and stuff, but with the economy the way it is right now, how about making first prize A JOB???

Re:Nice prizes

[Anonymous Coward]

Well:

1) If their sales increase, who says they won't be expanding and look at the people who did these mods first?

2) I assume all the entries will be available to the public (okay, I could be wrong). Why can't other companies check out these mods and hire some new talent from this pool?

I'm seriously considering a couple entries myself actually..

Back in the days...

[leomekenkamp]

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.

Re:At last somebody gets it

[DragonMagic]

Apparently I missed when id Software stopped doing this?

They release most of the applicable source code, give away the mapping resources, and even post on their .plan files when someone has a really cool modification.

I'd say that actively encourages users to tinker with their games. Or if you meant they needed to provide incentive like money and an engine license to get what id pretty much does with just great quality games?

Also known as...

[SuperBanana]

"[...]entries can be made in 13 categories, including 'Best Mod,' 'Best Character,' 'Best Use of 3D Sound,' 'Best Real-Time Non-Interactive Movie[...]" etc, etc.

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.

Fix the game, too

[0WaitState]

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

I want to see.....

[Sevn]

One truly awesome Stargate SG1 mod for UT2003.
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. :) Imagine using
IRIS codes to allow people to get on your clan
server. So so much could be done with this idea.

Re:I want to see.....

[HBergeron]

I was going to mod this up, but instead, I just want to reply to say this is one of the coolest/slickest concepts for a fps I have heard in a while.

To refine: Every server has a home "world" map which, if run by a clan they can customize at will, or use an off-the-shelf world. The SG1 idea is good for a concept, but no need to stick to that world. Moving from server to server is not through some fourth wall busting menu system, but a fully immersive stargate system. A clan can kick back on their own world or go maruding through the cosmos. Ronin players can infiltrate other servers or join in another clans attack. It is possible that the level of exploring this would engender would encourage other uses for the world than just shoot-em-ups.

Think of a mmorpg that truly was a massive world, with hundreds of thousands of players on the same "world" (the great fiction of MM is that there are more then a few 1000 players on the same world, there are just many worlds) Each section of this world (or galaxy in the sg1 concept) is hosted on a different server, allowing someone to hunt (or be hunted) or quest, over truly epic distances.

Hell, space based game (galaxies) every solar system by ship is a single server, landing on a planet, moon, or station takes you to another server(s) covering that world, warping to another system takes you to another server. Harness the power of the gaming community to provide a seemless truly massive, million players at a time, gaming experience, using the lastest 3d engine rather then the compromised mmporpg engines.

Then you're cooking with grease.

The should award points for anti-cheat

[Eric Damron]

I think points should be awarded for cheat resistance. Cheating is ruining on-line gaming.

Epic is nervous

[Whammy666]

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.

Re:Consult a tax advisor before you win.

[Glock27]

Mod parent up...it is Insightful.

Just ask the poor schmucks who exercised stock options before the bubble burst and didn't sell the stock before it crashed. They aren't happy people, since the IRS taxes on the value when the options are exercised, not what the stock is worth at tax-time.

Re:Consult a tax advisor before you win.

[claud9999]

Couldn't you, instead, take the cash instead of the "prize" of the license? I believe US law requires that contests (game shows) provide a cash alternative based on their real cost not based on the retail value (thereby giving an incentive to take the prize, but as you say you have to pay taxes on that $350k, surely more than the $50k [35% tax bracket?]!)

Needless to say, the grand prize certainly favors developers already producing mods commercially as they'd certainly get a lot more out of a license of the engine.

IANAL, and I didn't read the article but that never stopped me before... ;*o

Re:Meh?

[Omestes]

Log onto the server, and do a head count. TDM games far outnumber DM games. Its all about intigib Team DM, or Instigib CTF.

Re:Epic is a great company.

[.com b4 .storm]

Epic is really a great company

Yeah, I love how they handled their IRC client in the original UT. There was a crasher bug in it that, if you msg'd someone with the right string (or typed it in a channel), the program would crash and burn. It didn't matter if you were even in the IRC window, if you were connected and the message came through to you somehow, *poof*. In game, in the server browser, didn't matter. Idiots would come on IRC and crash entire channels with 100s of people in them, or they'd crash rival clans while they were in the middle of important games.

Epic knew about this bug for well over a year, and they did absolutely nothing about it. We at Gameslink (then the IRC network for UT) ended up patching the ircd just to fix Epic's problem, and keep UT users happy. It should not be the responsibility of an IRC network to patch their whole network of servers to fix a terrible client-side crasher that could be solved in 5 minutes by a competent programmer.

Great company, indeed.