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UT2004 Shows Upgrades, Spaceships, Onslaught
Thanks to GameSpy for their hands-on preview of Unreal Tournament 2004, checking out the PC FPS title that's due out this Xmas. This latest upgrade "...will ship with vehicles, new weapons, two new game modes, and more new maps than all the maps UT2003 shipped with", and a new space level has you "...piloting small Wing Commander-style space fighters [before] the action switches to more traditional-style combat." The novel 'onslaught' mode, in which competing teams use vehicles and special weapons to "...control a series of nodes connecting your base to theirs" was the "clear favorite of the day" for the author, and IGN PC has another hands-on report that suggests these new modes introduce a "surprisingly satisfying strategic layer" to the upgrade.
When UT2003 came out last year the bar for system hardware was raised ten fold. The graphics engine alone was/is awesome, then you throw in the whole Karma engine for real-time physics you have to upgrade your CPU AND vid card for this game...not to mention more RAM to support the HUGE maps and 64bit textures (textures require video ram, so a 64mb card is a good start)
Looking at UT2004, I'm still wondering why this requires a new release and not something like a "mission pack" or "expansion" for UT2003. It is the same engine, the vehicles are only new because they did not bother to make any for UT2003 (the code is there, just unused expect for the demo) the new game types are great, but they are just umods added into the already existent engine...the only cool thing is if you have been putting off getting UT2003, UT2004 is what you want to get now. For those of us that got UT2003 have a slight feeling of being ripped off...
But hey, it really doesn't matter much at all since both UT2003 and UT2004 ship with a Linux installer and support! Wahoo!!
Oh, and if any of my facts, thoughts or opinions are incorrect...please correct me!! =)
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
I seem to recall that the Epic said that they had improved their engine so that it would now take less horsepower--they even included a software renderer for those without the graphics card.
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The minimum specs for UT2003 were
CPU: Pentium III or AMD Athlon 733MHz processor (*Pentium(R) or AMD 1.0 GHz or greater RECOMMENDED)
Memory: 128 MB RAM (256 MB RAM or greater RECOMMENDED)
But I think the requirements are still the same, but with DirectX 9, according to this thread in the BeyondUnreal forums:
http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t
I assume you are joking. You have to be. I wouldn't even play the original Unreal Tournament with less than 128RAM, and ram is cheap as hell.
If a what, three year old processor and 64M of ram puts this out of your reach, then you are not one for current 3-D technology. Stick with tetris.
Because it's Epic's new business model. They keep the money coming by releasing yearly installments of the series, essentially shortening the release cycle, while continuing to integrate awesome new technology directly from the engine development team. This has been known since the release of UT2003.
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Personally, I think vehicles will be the next fad in FPS games. Meaning, all the latest releases will have them, but they won't improve gameplay significantly. They seem especially problematic in ground-based FPS games. Usually you can kill people by merely running over them or even just brushing them.
Several games have actually suffered from the inclusion of vehicles, such as Tribes 2. The vehicles ended up detracting from the gameplay and turning what could have been an exciting game into one where you often had to wait to get on a vehicle to get around. If I wanted to rely on other people to give me a ride somewhere I need to be I'd put myself back in high school.
Done right they can be fun, but they should be very careful that the vehicles add something unique to gameplay and don't become essential. The second they become decently powerful they become essential to survival, and then it becomes no fun when you have to board a vehicle to get somewhere.
I do agree that the current crop of FPS games is mostly very lacking in the gameplay area, but I don't see vehicles improving the picture much. Tribes 1 provides enough challenge for me to keep playing it to this day.
This is really an unfair comment. If you knew the community at all, you'd know that by making a single post pointing out a bug, or a requested feature, you'd sure as hell see it in the next patch. Epic are one of, if not the most responsive gaming company in regards to their customers.
UT2004 Adds significant gameplay additions, this isn't Secret Weapons of WW2, which everybody seems happy with paying full price for an expansion pack that mimmicks the freely distributed Desert Combat.
The new onslaught and assault modes could be sold as a new game entirely, And when you consider that Epic are planning nation wide discounts to previous owners of UT2003, You really do have no right to complain.
http://www.eboutique.com/ebx/categories/products/d eptpage.asp?wherefrom=comingsoon&web_dept=PC%20Gam es
I think that has more to do with the requirement to have a valid key. As a consequence, people who leached the game can't play. As a consequence of that, the game servers are mostly empty save for the few weeks of hype that accompanies a game release.
A game like ut2003 stands or falls with a community. If there's a critical mass of users (legal & illegal), mods will appear, levels be written and people will just continue to play and buy the game. That never really happened with UT2003. A few people bought the game, went online and found a handfull of other people who bought the game. Then a few of them bought another game and after a few months almost nobody played ut2003 online anymore.
I understand that gamecreators want to protect their stuff. However, their actions are actually hurting their revenue because nobody buys their games after the hype is gone. What use is an online only game if the online community has moved on to the next game? Right none. Worse then hurting the revenue, they are also hurting the few people who do buy the game. These people are eager to play and after a few months their expensive game is worthless because nobody else plays it.
So here'a a suggestion. Release the game with the usual restrictions. Geeks will drool over the screenshots and buy the game no matter what. After a few months, when revenue starts to decline, remove all restrictions. By then the game will have been cracked&distrubuted anyway. Now rather than withering away, the gaming community will stay alive. You will continue to sell copies (new gamers & converted leachers) and maybe a few upgrades. This will last as long there is a community.
Quake 1 & 2 and Doom 1 & 2 continued to sell years after their release. They didn't have any restrictions. Quake 3 sold lots of copies based on the popularity of its predecessors (and the unrestricted demos that had been ciculating for months). It wouldn't have gotten that far on its own.
Jilles
Ummm.... haven't you heard of Planetside? It's a well balanced and beautifully designed MMOFPS (the first of it's kind I believe). In a sense, it's similar to Tribes 2, in that there is a wide range of vehicles, troop configs and roles (engineer, grunt, heavy armour, medic and hacker). The full version has a $15 subscription fee and even though I was initially dubious about the fee, I found that it was well worth the money. I remember boring my mates silly in the pub with anecdotes from the front. Since there are no NPCs and no scripted events, all the action is caused by people. Storming an enemy base, with about dozens of other players, complete with heavy armour, troop carriers and air support is a serious rush. I think that in the future, we'll see more games like this, but for now Planetside is in a league of it's own.