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???

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.

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.

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.