Unreal Tournament 2004 Goes Gold

psyco484 writes "Unreal Tournament 2004 has gone gold, the game will be in stores on March 15th. After an impressive demo, I'm certainly looking forward to this one." There are several improvements over UT2003, but my favorite is the ability to carry dual assault rifles.

Comments

Vehicles

[wed128]

The vehicles in the Onslaught mode have to be the coolest addition ever!!!

Re:Vehicles

[GrodinTierce]

I quite agree. While UT2004 certainly isn't the first FPS with vehicles, nor does it have the huge collection of some games (e.g. BF1942 and/or DesertCombat), its vehicles are well-designed, well-balanced, and so much fun, it's kind of ridiculous.

Re:Vehicles

[hype7]

and what's more, Mac and Linux versions are following right behind.

The way all games should be developed. Kudos to Epic/Atari.

-- james

Re:Vehicles

[Anonymous Coward]

The beauty of the unreal engine is all 3 are developed in tangent because UT uses OGL in Linux and OGL.

Yes I know the pros of using DX as the windows based render (there are hooks in it to take advantage of DX9...but the game doesn't show it now) but with opengl having shader support, I think they should return to OGL.

Just one mans uninformed, uneducated opinion.

Re:Vehicles

[Sigma 7]

They took out assault, fucked with the weapons, and even yanked the sniper rifle.

A sniper rifle by any other name is still a sniper rifle - even if it shoots lightning.

The lightning gun is a simple case of overcompensation - it was extremely overpowered in the first Unreal Tournament. As proof, play CTF-FacingWorlds against Godlike bots - it is no problem to enter a killing spree with 25+ kills.

In UT2003, it's much harder to do so on the same map (although it can be debated that the central Pyrmaid cuts down on available targets.) Since the firing rate is cut down, the supporting enemies of the recently killed have a chance to return fire against the sniper using almost any weapon they choose - including superweapons.

Re:Vehicles

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

What is cooler still is that this philosophy goes all the way up the corporate tree. A while ago I wrote a letter to their support department asking about Mac ports, and I didn't get a friendly, personal letter confirming the Mac and Linux ports from some guy in the trenches, I got one from Mark Rein, Epics V.P.

A company whose big-wigs take the time to answer mail, and who understand the importance of supporting minor platforms is definitely a company I enjoy giving my money too.

Re:Vehicles

[Geccoman]

To add to your comment, I've found that the comeback is usually swift and painful for the other team. Every single time I'm able to take back those close nodes, we KILL the other team very quickly.

Re:Vehicles

[RickL]

I rather liked the ripper. It wasn't terribly useful, and as you say, just as easy to kill teammates: friendly-fire friendly. I thought it was funny. I like my weapons to be funny.

What I really miss from the original UT is the secondary fire from the rocket launcher. Rather than rockets, it would launch grenades. These were really handy for firing around a corner. As much as I liked the number of rockets you could fire in the original UT, I agree that it was too powerful.

I hated the pulse guns in the original and UT2K3 (well, they are called link guns now). In UT2K4 Onslaught, they are actually useful.

Now for the superweapons. The redeemer is, as always loads of fun. Portable nukes...fun for the entire family. In UT2K3, the Ion Painter was interesting, but wasn't on enough maps for me to really play with it. I would like to see a 3rd superweapon. Perhaps not an instakill. I think a fairly quick-acting biological or chemical weapon would be interesting. Fire a canister, and watch your enemies die as their health slowly drains away. It should take something like 20-30 seconds, and then dissolve to skeletons then to vapor.

It looks really nice...

[fidget42]

But I had a problem when I tried playing it at a resolution other than 1280x1024. I couldn't read some of the text (especially when trying to join an internet game). Another problem that UT2k3 had was the size of the maps. Even with a broadband connection, transferring a 10 MB map takes a looooooong time.

Re:It looks really nice...

[justMichael]

Unless they changed the server behavior they throttle map downloads.

Most places are urged to provide the maps on a standard web server.

Of course I haven't managed a UT2kx server so what do I know.

This is great! But not for the basic game

[ScottGant]

I can't wait now for Red Orchestra 2.0 using UT2004. Hopefully this will generate more intrest in this awesome mod.

But when I play it now, there's usually only one server with people playing on it. It's ashame because this is such a great game that tries to be more realistic. Like no floaty crosshairs, get shot with a bullet and you die...not 50 bullets while you jump around like a chicken.

It still needs work, but the guys making it are listening to the people playing it. And with ut2004 and all kinds of tanks sitting around, can't wait to see what they do with the new engine.

Re:This is great! But not for the basic game

[Jaysyn]

Bingo! Stuff like ChaosUT and Unreal4Ever are the reasons I *love* the UT franchise. The crazier the weapons the better. My absolute favorites are the proxy mines that talk smack to you while they hunt you down & the Quantum Singularity Generator (i.e. the Black Hole Gun).

Jaysyn

Mac

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

With a demo already out, it looks like MacSoft will have this out for OS X almost at the same time as the PC version. Sweet.

hope they fixed the audio cpu usage

[green pizza]

I've been playing the UT2K4 demo on both Windows and Mac (yay PowerBook) and the community chatter is right -- disabling audio results in framerates jumping anywhere from 50% - 200% faster. I hope it's a bug and not just the base requirement for UT2K4 audio!

Naming Conventions...

[ItMustBeEsoteric]

I must admit, while I love the various flavors of UT, I dislike the naming convention. The same problem sports games have: once a year, they will seem out of date. They're basically making themselves stay on a once a year schedule: let's be real, how many gaming companies can do that (HL2, Doom 3...deadlines go to hell). And, unless there's actual changes, I would rather not buy a new version every year just to keep up with the online play (though I know you can always play the old versions). That said, I want this game. The vehicles are great, as is the gameplay and graphics in the demo.

Including Linux?

[JustinXB]

Will this be including the Linux version of the game, like 2003 did? Maybe they'll be nice to us this time and put a notice on the box stating Linux version included.

everybody interested in having more games on Linux

[dmouritsendk]

..should rush out and buy this game and then send a mail to one of these people, letting them know that the fact that the game ran on Linux was one of the factors that made you deside to buy the game.

Bacially, thank them for their support of your favorite platform. And let them know you are always looking for quality game titles running linux to buy.

That won't hurt the chances of future ATARI distributed games being ported to Linux.

voice recognition

[berkut1337]

Voice recognition is the besst feauture for me, I'm surprized it's not being mentioned more. All that you have to do is download MS speech SDK, train it and then the fun begins:

ALPHA GET OUT! the bot will exit the vehicle, or
EVERYONE DANCE!, lol

http://www.beyondunreal.com/content/articles/74_ 1. php

Does anyone remember the original Unreal Tournment

[msimm]

The dual weapons (pistols? assault rifles?) were there but it was so much more dark. It was an extreme sport setting with somewhat realistic human (future) characters. I really miss that.

Great Game

[(eternal_software)]

This is an excellent game. I was never a big fan of FPS but the "onslaught" mode in UT2004 has me hooked. Excellent mix of combat and strategy, the controls feel right, and the vehicles are really fun.

I still haven't played the standard "deathmatch" and "capture the flag" modes (and I am not really in a hurry to try them).

There is much more to be had here then in previous Unreal titles.

Mouse-gesture aim

[eddy]

[...] but my favorite is the ability to carry dual assault rifles.

I'm guessing this is like in every other game, you still aim them together?

I was thinking that it would be interesting to experiment with individual aim for dual-weapons. You could have 'hold RMB and move mouse to aim second gun' (would subsume looking around) and 'hold RMB and press LMB' to fire.

But it guess it would be odd to controll one weapon as "an arm" and the other like usual (that is "where you look you fire"), so then you'd have to do the same but in reverse for the "left" gun, which I'm sure few gamers would like. Maybe for an option...

Just a thought.

"Biggest thing to ever hit multiplayer?"

[death00]

"...the biggest thing to ever hit multiplayer gaming...the granddaddy of all multiplayer competition...most exciting multiplayer title ever to grace the PC." Somehow I doubt these spurious claims. I remember playing Quake III Arena and the original UT (in fact I still enjoy playing both), and those were the biggest things ever to hit multiplayer gaming. The adrenaline rush from playing at breakneck speeds against human opponents was fantastic! Initially, I had to decide which one would get my $50, and went with UT because of the different gameplay modes. I was highly disappointed with UT2003, especially since the assault mode was dropped. I'm glad to see UT2004 has assault mode back in, but I'm still looking forward to Doom III and Half-Life 2 far more than this release. Carmack: Where's my Doom III? It's been nearly a year since I asked that last!

Why is it always idsoft and Unreal?

[Awptimus Prime]

The only two games that get much coverage on /. seem to be Quake, Doom3, and Unreal(x).

Meanwhile, BF1942 and others get little coverage -- even though other titles were the ones to pioneer 64 player servers and larger maps.

The only thing I can figure is the old school FPS game with a gun that fires the EXACT same while running at a scale speed of 38mph, jumping, etc.

I remember posting the same question about Counter-Strike getting no /. press when it had like 20x the number of online players than Q3 had, at the time, and getting modded as a troll.

Personally, being a seasoned player of FPS titles since Wolf3D, I prefer games that have some level of chance when it comes to firing a perfect shot. Getting 18 consecutive headshots in MP with a sniper rifle is just lame after a while.

I also play paintball a lot, which is fairly inconsistent when it comes to accuracy. I've also got a couple of scoped rifles I enjoy doing some target practice with sometimes. Even with the bipod extended and laying prone, I can't hit consistently within a foot at 100 yards. Mind you, I have some eyesight problems.

This just makes the running and shooting perfectly thing in Unreal and Q3 just too cartoony for it to be fun.

original UT

[luckyguesser]

...but my favorite is the ability to carry dual assault rifles.

That's one good reason why I like the original UT better than either 2k3 or 2k4. Others include the ability to boost the game speed up to... something like 200%, and older but much much less graphic-intensive graphics engine. My computer will theoretically run 2k3 and 4 just fine, but I still like the original's gameplay much better.

Re:everybody interested in having more games on Li

[TheCoop1984]

Do you know roughly what % of retail copies run on linux then?