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.
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
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.
Carmack and ID have been supporting moders for a long time, including adding a C like language to Quake 3 for modding. Then there's the fact that they release the code for older games, you can't get much more mod friendly than that "here have our code and do with it as you wish".
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Apparently I missed when id Software stopped doing this?
.plan files when someone has a really cool modification.
They release most of the applicable source code, give away the mapping resources, and even post on their
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?
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
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.
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
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.
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.
Where I come from, if you don't make money, you go out of business. So yes, their ultimate goal is to make money. Is that so wrong?
Consider this: They could go out and decide to go for the easy money, and make another deer hunting, or fishing or whatever top selling, easy and cheap to make crap they can.
Company makes money, we get a good game, and the designer of the mod gets some prizes and some recognition. How is this a bad thing?
Two Rules For Success:
1) Never tell people everything you know.
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.