Epic Allows Internet Archive to Distribute Unreal and Unreal Tournament Forever | Hacker News Reader

Epic Allows Internet Archive to Distribute Unreal and Unreal Tournament Forever

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I wish they would GPL it like Quake. Even if it was missing some proprietary dependencies I bet the community could replace them.

I recently helped port ioquake3 to the web, complete with UDP multiplayer, and set up an online demo using the internet archive's copy of the Quake III demo: https://thelongestyard.link It would be cool to be able to do the same with Unreal Tournament.

Ioquake was helpful for the open Jedi project get an open source version of jk3 working.

https://github.com/OpenJediProject/OJP

I'm sure there is some small group of UT people that would gladly keep it alive in a similar fashion.

Im willing to bet the code for UT is being used for Fortnite.

My first introduction to Unreal was via the "Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition" right around the year 2000. I fondly remember some of those maps (Facing Worlds for one) but to think that lineage ends up at Fornite is crazy to me.

Oh man, I loved that game as a kid. I did not have internet back then, but I didn’t care - I spent hours playing against bots. I still remember the voice taunts and callouts (“I slaughtered that guy!”) and creative maps like ctf_face. Then there were the built in gameplay mods like insta-gib and low gravity, fun guns like Redeemer - kept me glued to the screen for hours. I did not understand why people are playing CS at the computer clubs - UT was a much better and bigger game! Thanks for a trip down the memory lane. Good, simple times.

"I did not understand why people are playing CS at the computer clubs..."

I was the same. UT was so much fun - bouncing flak cannon shrapnel round corners! But my LAN group all wanted to play CS or that UT mod that was similar (Tactical Ops?).

I don't think I knew too much about computers or gaming at that age to figure all that out. I just played the base mode.

My introduction to programming was thru a different game (Subspace VIE, a MMO on dialup back in the 90s later community-remade as Continuum) when squad had a login page at a domain. I really wondered how example.com/?login worked and that led me to where I am today.

The base game was fantastic. Never could say no to a game on dm-morpheus. But what really made it great for me were the total conversion mods.

I spent probably thousands of hours playing Infiltration back in the day. I can't imagine how much time and energy must have been poured into completely re-doing a game like that.

That’s a name that brings back memories. Infiltration was so far ahead of its time, and it’s interesting to look at how many of its features are now standard on even run-and-gun FPS these days.

Indeed. It's a shame that Sentry Studios never transitioned into a "proper" game development studio. They were at least 10 years ahead of the curve.

But it's good that the games industry caught up so the infiltration-itch can be scratched in other ways.

Facing worlds liquid drum and bass soundtrack (and the rest of the games) was the basis for my music interest!

That shouldn’t have any impact on its ability to be relicensed and open sourced though— any secret sauce in Fortnite is elsewhere, and arguably none of it is code, but rather in asset-level stuff like game/map/character design and monetization/progression strategy.

It doesn't make a lot of intuitive sense, but code can be released under multiple different licenses. A 1:1 relationship between code and its terms is not required.

It's a 25 year old game engine. There is not going to be anything in it which they consider a trade secret today.

Even the current Unreal Engine doesn't have much in the way of trade secrets, its entire source code is available on GitHub for anyone to look at (aside from the console-specific parts bound by NDAs).

Fortnite uses Unreal Engine 5, the most advanced Game Engine in existens which sourcecode is freely available for a few years now.

Open sourcing old stuff is a lot of effort. You need to find all people involved or know the legal status of the copyright. You need to go through all the code in case you had some properitary stuff in there which you might have paid for. And you need to do all of this next to what you normally do without a direct benefit.

When I was a kid, I had so much fun playing open-source games based on Quake engines. Tremulous stands out as especially delightful at the little LAN parties we threw at my house on birthdays and New Years' Eve.

The state of things here is that Unreal Engine 1 may be open sourced one day but would need cleaning up first. And they just never got around doing it:

https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/unreal-engine-1/14084/6

Why clean up first? Could be devs pushing back because they're ashamed (unnecessarily) of their code?

We saw with Winamp how badly it can go (lots of license violations on vendored dependencies):

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/winamp-really-whips-...

Cleaning up in this context means figuring out what parts of the code they actually own and removing/replacing the parts they don't.

> to the web

you mean like to browser? If yes, how did you achieve UDP connections? To my best knowledge, browsers allow TCP only

WebSockets are TCP-only.

WebRTC can run over UDP, but it's not raw UDP. I think that's what they meant.

I don't have time to look into the code right now, but it might also be WebTransport:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebTranspor...

EDIT: actually I can't find the code, shouldn't it be linked as per GPL's license?

WebSockets also initiate a normal Http request first, further complicating things anyway.

Yes, it's WebRTC. It uses real unreliable and unordered UDP packets, peer-to-peer. But WebRTC requires a connection establishment step to happen first, so it can't send traffic to arbitrary UDP services, only cooperating WebRTC peers. Which is fine for multiplayer games.

I can't find a link to your port's code. I think you have to include it as per GPL's license (and also because it's awesome and I want to see the code!)

It is here: https://github.com/jdarpinian/ioq3

Unreal Tournament multiplayer with mutators[1] was awesome fun, like the one that made the player avatar grow bigger when the player scored a kill, and vice versa.

It's a shame later multiplayer games didn't pick up on the mutator concept. Being able to easily tweak the gameplay mixed it up and added extra challenge or fun.

[1]: https://unreal.fandom.com/wiki/Mutator

> It's a shame later multiplayer games didn't pick up on the mutator concept.

The terminology didn't catch on, but the idea is out there. Compare "game modes" in Overwatch, for example:

https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/22938941/introduci...

overwatch is essentially the anti-UT. there’s no simplicity, just complexity and toxicity.

Just hide quickchat and don't join voice, its a fine game.

The workshop is really cool though, tons of cool modes. Only downside is you can't do any map modifications or anything like that.

Not saying it's a good game (or otherwise), just saying the idea's out there.

Let's just call mutators as 'mixins' :)

Skulls in halo are probably a good example too

One game i recall using that mechanic (edit: changing size of body parts) is "Morphies Law" on Nintendo Switch:

https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/morphies-law-swit...

Was there a bighead mutator? I seem to recall players with huge heads.

Yes there was

https://unreal.fandom.com/wiki/BigHead

In a LAN party, we hacked a mutator together from code scraps of other mutators. It replaced all weapons with the green one, modified to replace the bullet stream of little plasma balls with a stream of redeemer rockets.

Turns out, if a redeemer rocket flys over, sound frequency goes slightly lower. If a few 100s of these fly over, sound frequency goes rock bottom, making the announcer say stuff like: Monsterkiiiiiiiuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuooorrgglllll. And then the whole level explodes because hundreds of redeemers tend to set each other off in a chain reaction

Fun times.

Rocket league has mutators

Fingers crossed UT2004 will end up in the Archive eventually. I still boot it up to play occasionally because nothing else has scratched the arena shooter itch that well.

With the vehicles? That game was nuts.

Pancake !

why not just buy it?

Why do you assume they didn't?

> I still boot it up to play occasionally

You can't anymore besides used physical copies. Epic delisted all the Unreal games.

Yes, I recently found that out. I bought Unreal on GOG a few years back and was wanting to get Unreal Tournament 2004 recently (I played a bit of the demo back in 2005 or 2006) but currently no digital options.

Sure, give me a link.

i would buy instantly if it works on linux on 64 bit machines. all of them.

UT2004 is on archive.org already, fully patched with some modern additions.

I'm very hopeful this will get Epic's blessing too.

What is strange is that they approve of the archive.org download, instead of say, OldUnreal hosting it themselves. The archive.org uploader could update it with malware. It would be nice if they allow OldUnreal to host.

UT2004 shipped with its Linux binaries in the 3rd disc. I remember playing it a ton until migrating to 64bit system.

Wish they GPL that one, too, so we can build a 64bit version of that.

There's a Flatpak package for UT2k4 on Flathub that launches on modern 64 bit systems. You just need to provide game assets and enter CD key.

Another UT2004 fan signing in. I haven't played it that much recently, but I still have it installed.

I spent so much of the early year 2000 playing Unreal Tournament instagib mode on Facing Worlds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facing_Worlds

those were truly the golden years of online gaming

do you remember the monster hunter mod ?

huge random monsters would spawn and it would take multiple people to take them down

Facing Worlds is still one of those maps that I wish every game had.

The concept is so simple. Two towers with a bridge between them. Have fun.

It would be fun in any game. GTA, Overwatch, Halo, anything.

Funny seeing it have its own wiki page. I didn't know my childhood would be archived like this. :D

I used to get so many MONSTER KILLS on that map it was nuts.

Its a crime that Halo 1 had Boarding Action and it never resurfaced (outside of Forge recreations) in later titles such as Reach with movement options like jetpacks.

I'll be honest I was never a huge Halo buff at least until Multiplayer.

Maybe you can help me. My earlies memories of Halo2 multiplayer involved a map with two bases on opposite sides in a canyon. I bring it up only to talk about it, I know I could look up the name...

It was the first online pvp game I had played. Having 1v1s with people with voice chat was so addicting.

I remember it used to use an ELO calculation for rank so I would calculate my buddies matches when I was at his house telling him how much he would gain or lose in the current match.

Good times.

I think you mean Coagulation[1]. I remember playing this map with a bunch of friends and two split screen TVs. Hearing somebody swear at you from the neighbouring room is a wonderful experience.

[1] https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/Coagulation

Yes that was it! Thank you. Good times.

I used to play it all the time on CTF mode in Sauerbraten. I remember it being very difficult to score since you could be sniped from basically anywhere on the map.

I never really got into UT, but from the screenshot, it's giving me The Longest Yard Q3 Demo vibes... instagib railgun... those were the days...

I would agree that the two maps have a very similar feel. And both are great maps to practice sniping versus bots.

I can play The Longest Yard nonstop for days. Yes, I’m more of a Quake fan more than Unreal.

Man. Facing Worlds, low gravity, instagib CTF - might be my favourite map/mode combination in any shooter ever. That was so much fun.

Instagib was a fantastic mode to work on aim! Mine improved dramatically across FPS games after playing for a while with instagib turned on.

No link to the actual downloads?

Update, found it: https://www.oldunreal.com/downloads/unreal/full-game-install...

https://archive.org/details/ut-goty

This is where the installer you linked to downloads the iso's from. The iso's have been on IA for quite a while already.

UT2004 in Onslaught mode on well-administrated private servers is still the best team-based arena FPS I've ever played.

Here's hoping it can make a revival someday akin to City of Heroes https://www.polygon.com/gaming/471719/city-of-heroes-homecom... .

Man this game changed my life. I always preferred it to quake 3 mainly because of the brighter color palette and the assault mode. Also facing worlds was the most amazing maps I had ever seen.

Me too, there was a real “wow” moment for me when I went into the computer store at like age 14 and saw it running, it really started to show what computers were capable of to me

heck yeah. UT was one of those absolutely-essential LAN games, to be sure. I remember taking my computer and heavy CRT monitor to my buddy's place to play -- good memories :D

That's nice of them (esp given their track record of shittiness). It's always seemed absurd to me how companies refuse to just make old games that they no longer sell available for free, or just leave them available for cheap purchase. I just don't understand "we refuse to make this available, even for money" just because something is old.

I can kind of understand the behavior in the case of non-game software, e.g if a company makes a tool to do X, and someone wants to do X, you want them to buy the new profitable version not the old one for cheap/free. But I just don't think that applies to games - even a "remake" that is literally just a graphics update (no gameplay, UI, or anything changes, just increased asset resolution) people prefer the updated graphics so will generally buy that when it becomes available, but in the absence of such an update the old game is not competing for new ones.

I think part of the problem is if they provide a game, even for free, then they are responsible for the security of that game. Even if not legally, they don't want an article saying "unreal hacked by Ransomware people infecting anyone who joined a public server, people could download the game on the Epic store for free"

At least if a third party provides it then it's not really an official copy of the game.

A recent engine recreation : https://github.com/dpjudas/SurrealEngine

Quick start instructions also pull UT from the archive https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/337069

I remember my freshman year of college playing Unreal.

I had worked all summer to be able to buy myself a computer for college (and made sure it had a decent video card).

I recall, some weeks into my Freshman year, one Saturday night getting a call from a friend of mine who lived down the hall, "Hey I'm at this party, and my friend (Jenny or some other common lady name) wants to talk to you". So he puts this girl on the phone.

Her: "What are you doing?"

Me: "Playing Unreal."

Her: "So, you're going to be doing that all night?"

Me: "Yes."

Her: "OK... I guess I'll talk to you later"

All these years later, I still think I made the right decision.

I will never forgive Epic for not trying to finish their alpha of the latest Unreal Tournament. I had so much fun on that alpha. Unfortunately the dev team got put to fortnite when that started printing money. Logical, but still sad.

Is there a working 64 bit linux version for Unreal/ut 2004? :(

We should make a petition that they opensource the code at least for these two ones. i still have the CDRoms.

i even would buy it again, if that would make this more likely.

That being said, xonotic is a bit like it (and opensource) and there are maps like Facing Worlds available, but sadly no good npc / npc-way-mapping for it.

There's a working flatpak package on Flathub. You just need to provide assets and CD key

I made a UT level (DM-Charge) and it got onto the PC Gamer CD as part of a competition. An UT designer reviewed it but was pretty critical which as a teenager made me feel like I didn't have what it took to go further. Shame. These days I look back and think I did pretty damn well to teach myself without any help at all what it took to build a level, one that was good enough to get onto PC Gamer's CD and that I would occasionally see people playing online, even if it wasn't perfect, and wish i had had the confidence to take the criticism on the chin. Something to bear in mind - a lot of talented kids and people out there just need a bit of encouragement and may take criticism harder than you intend it to be.

I wish they'd go further and offer maintained versions on their store, ideally free or very low cost as GOG.com and Steam have done.

That said, it's appreciated.

From what I gather Epic delisted various of their Unreal Tournament games across all stores a couple years ago due to them not supporting their modern online services (including chat). This was within days of being fined $500m for, among other things, allowing on-by-default text chat in one of their other games that is available for children/teens to play, so some believe they'd rather delist than update some of their older games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_0G6WPuss4

Did you know the soundtrack was composed in a module tracker? Someone recently recorded the full soundtrack playing back in Milkytracker. Pretty neat since you can see how the composers wrote the songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iONsjiiqeKg

And you could use a utility called umr (unreal media reaper) to extract the songs. It was mind blowing to then understand how the game switched patterns to suit the pace, a very clever use of this technology.

I listen to Foregone Destruction so much that when I play the actual map that uses it I always think I left my music player running in the background.

Ah, another jungle music example.[1]

[1]: https://pikuma.com/blog/jungle-music-video-game-drum-bass

I don't really understand where the dividing line is between Jungle and Drum and Bass, but I'm pretty sure Foregone Destruction is on the DnB side of it.

Epic also retracted my purchase of UT2004 on the Epic games store so I can no longer download it.

I bought UT2004 (Editor's Choice Edition) in 2022 on Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/app/13230/Unreal_Tournament_2...). It seems like I can still download it, phew.

Yeah I should have bought it on Steam. It's only the Epic games store that I can't access it on anymore. The strategy with that store is all over the place.

I just want to make a top level comment noting how many people (myself included) have mentioned the Facing Worlds map. I think everyone here agrees it's a fond memory.

Love both games spending countless hours, Unreal single player story was great (for its time). Are there any servers still online for UT?

Used to love Unreal and UT. Too bad all the bots ruined the game. Low gravity sniper servers were my favorite mod. Used to be on the NTHZ team.

Would love it if Epic made the source to UE actually public so that LLMs could be trained on it and provide better help when learning the engine. The source code is semi-public already, you can see it if you register an account, seems like a small step to have it be much more accessible as a learning resource through LLMs.

Or, "How To Get Some Public Appreciation With Minimal Effort: An Attempt".

If they actually cared they'd host (and more importantly, supported since they probably don't run on modern systems without some fiddling) those games themselves.

Not like they don't have a store with games or anything.

I have not much love for Epic and they can always do it better. Still, it’s a step in the right direction and I wish other game developers would do that.

Also, another argument for proper funding of the Internet Archive.

You mean like government/international body level funding?

That's not unreasonable.

More international body than government. I don't think this should belong to a single nation.

? Internet Archive is sure to outlast Epic. Putting all your eggs in the same basket is worse than allowing the archive to do what they were created for

Given the continued mismanagement of the IA I would put decent money on that not happening actually.

Can you elaborate or link to more on the mismanagement aspect? I’m not up to speed on IA drama.

Shitting on people when they do something good for not going further is a surefire way of stopping them from doing anything else.

Slightly related thread, Unreal Engine 5 runs in WebGPU now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42190897

Does it? It’s not an officially supported platform and this link (which was posted by you) has no information.

Yes, it does. We're a third party that built our own WebGPU backend. Feel free to try this demo here:

https://play.spacelancers.com/

Does it work on MacOS? Or do we still need to do some Wine thing?

It does. Check OldUnreal on github. There's even a Metal renderer.

Imagine if they added something like this to UE5 licensing:

If your game has not been updated in N years... 1) Internet Archive can distribute it for free 2) Let people distribute modified versions that does not need license key or whatever copy protection.

Harder but extra cool: To get a UE royalty discount, put source code in escrow set to release it if game not updated in N years.

> If your game has not been updated in N years...

This would impact indie developers and small publishers more than large ones.

Why not just release to the public domain?

And why not pay for a few devs to keep it up to date?

The nostalgia is so strong I think the community is would happily take stewardship of it.

Forever?

The Golden era of PC gaming ..,

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