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Unreal Tournament 2004 is back

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474 pointskeithoffer202 comments

One thing I missed from Unreal Tournament, which too few other games adopted IMHO, was the concept of mutators. Effectively server-level mods which, as the name implied, mutated the gameplay in some way.

There were silly ones like the one making your characters head larger for each kill, and those which made it just different like low gravity, and so on.

It was also relatively easy to make your own, thanks to UnrealScript.

Really wish more multiplayer games embraced this concept, it really increased replayability by changing things up.

My favorite game of all time was Quake, similarly extended with QuakeC, into the QuakeWorld CTF game. I still dream about those maps.

Same, same. E4M3 Elder God Shrine forever.

Same. My favorite mutator was the exploding ammo cases. So much fun to see an enemy run to pick up an ammo box and just shoot it with a pistol blowing it up in his face. That was apretty revolutionary game mechanic 20 years ago. Do any modern games have such a thing?

That volatile ammo mutator was made even more awesome because it actually spawned "shots" of that type, so a plasma pile wouldn't just explode but rather spread various plasma shots around it. The granade one would have the granades bouncing around a bit before exploding. It was so easy for things to go wrong and backfire on you :)

Those are in TF2 and Minecraft, perhaps one reason they’re still popular

Mutators are about the only thing keeping Starcraft 2 Co-Op players going in 2025 (and by extension, the community).

Earliest memory I have in the multiplayer FPS context was probably the 'cheat' menu unlocks for Goldeneye on the N64 in 1997.

Me and my friend are somehow still playing co-op without mutators. My friend is max level, I'm like 100 away

This reminds me of Quake with the DeFrag mode "sub-game", but also gameplay available in Quake Live in which you could have a Railgun only match, but they could also behave like Rocket Launchers for rocket jumps.

Also allowing players to change the configuration of their game through the dev console was cool. My favorite visual change was to configure the railgun trails to persist for multiple seconds.

We modified Action Quake II (somehow, I forget how) to change gravity (I think it was in the map itself) and we would bounce around Cheyenne in a completely different playstyle - and everything would send you flying.

sv_gravity console command.

Railgun trail to match the reload time, always!

> also gameplay available in Quake Live in which you could have a Railgun only match, but they could also behave like Rocket Launchers for rocket jumps

That used to be my jam in Q3A, Instaunlagged. Nothing is quite like railgun jumping with no splash damage. Dusk's crossbow jumping comes close, but isn't hitscan..

Red Eclipse has mutators: https://github.com/redeclipse/base

Luckily it seems modern games (e.g. TF2, Overwatch) make this even more accessible with so called "workshops".

Eh... it was arguably more accessible back in the day, because it was (a) server side & (b) fully decentralized, so each server admin could run whatever they wanted.

Some games come close now, but I'm not aware of any multiplayer games that afford that level of control to their playerbase.

My favorite was the one that spawned monsters, so you could have enemies that would attack either side during vehicle CTF or Onslaught game modes

UnrealScript was the bomb, it was what got me started coding. Specifically replicating the gravity gun from Half Life 2.

I remember the one where you got physically bigger every time you killed someone, until you couldn't fit through doorways etc. And smaller and smaller every time you died. It was pretty hilarious.

Instagib with ASMD shock rifles.

Man after my own heart <3

There was a number of games that allowed similar things in these days. My favourite was San Andreas Multiplayer. All you needed was a copy of GTA: San Andreas and download the client, the server was community scripted. This gave birth to a number of unique servers: racing, deathmatch, role play, etc.

Multi Theft Auto (another GTA multiplayer mod, still alive today) allowed for similar things. And so did the source games (Counter Strike, HL2: DM, Day of Defeat, etc.).

While most seemed to prefer Counter-strike, my childhood gaming was dominated by an Unreal Tournament mod called Tac Ops. While the games looked similar, the mechanics felt very different than Counter-strike. It was a much faster-paced game.

There were a ton of servers with wacky mods. I spent a ton of time on the low-grav servers. There were also some that made the top-scoring player huge. Those odd game modes were a blast.

EDIT: Also looks like people are still playing!

https://www.gog.com/dreamlist/game/tactical-ops-assault-on-t...

https://tactical-ops.eu/

This is brilliant, I had complete forgotten about this one!! Thank you very much.

I love Tac Ops! Was one of the most realistic mods out there (it was sooo easy to die).

I seem to remember there was some behind-the-scenes political / financial shenanigans with Counter Strike and the Game of the Year edition bundle that kind of killed it.

Haha realistic... reminds me that one of my favorite mods back in the day was Action Quake which was more action movie styled and less realistic. Last second sideways jumps in and out of the way were its claim to fame, imo.

> which was more action movie styled and less realistic

Another HL mod I remember fondly in similar veins is "The Specialists". If I remember correctly, it came out around the same time as The Matrix, and had all the fun moves like running on walls in slowmo, jumping forward/sideways and shooting in slowmo, and lots of other stuff. I think I recall it being possible to play both in 1st and 3rd person too, something that was kind of new at that point, unless I misremember.

I think at that I point I probably spent as much time with The Specialists as with Counter-Strike itself (and a cracked copy of 3DS Max 8 for making my own models of course).

That mod was awesome. They somehow managed to make slow motion powerups work in a multiplayer action game without forcing it on every player in the map!

Also had a strange RPG community entirely separate from the main game… funny how these random subcultures evolve in unexpected places.

There was also the opera mod which was pretty cool.

Wow thats a name I haven't heard in a long time! I really miss the way tacops 2.2 felt, never did get along with 3.x versions. Was definitely a formative gaming experience for me as well

I lost so many hours to this game. Thank you for the walk down memory lane.

These were my favorite part of Starsiege: Tribes. There was a modpack called Ultra Renegades that totally changed the gameplay and made it so twitchy and fun.

Loved Tribes! I mostly played Paintball mod from 2000-2004!

It was such a fun game! My friend group got really into the Shifter mod, you could build defenses for your base like walls and turrets. It was a blast!

Everything about Tribes was awesome.

Such a shame the way the post-Dynamix/T2 development studios completely failed to understand what made 1 & 2 great.

Can't happen anymore because every multiplayer game is chasing esports.

I have always hated esports conceptually, from jump.

those ant-sized man in house maps were the best. i dont think ive ever seen anything like it since.

The game Grounded almost has that feel, but it's open world.

There's another game called Hypercharge:Unboxed that is definitely giving me the feeling of those old UT maps, but I haven't actually played it.

Sniping people in the bathtub from the sink was so fun...

Having a match grind to a halt because literally everyone on the server was standing in the livingroom staring at the tv...

de_rats and similar in CS1.6

Mutators were amazing at the peak of unreal tournament, but towards the end of life they made it die that much quicker. I remember feeling a little nostalgic and wanting to play unreal tournament, but the only service I could find had a huge amount of mutators and mods installed where it was very much unlike the normal gameplay experience that I was looking for

Warcraft 3 had some of the greatest mods that kept the player base alive for decades

I've never been a fan of Warcraft, but I did play the custom Warcraft 3 TD maps at lan parties. Some were just so epic.

Counter-Strike 1.6 (and other Goldsrc based games) greatly benefited from AMX Mod X's scripting capabilities. I miss the days where people were playing modded servers.

Obscuring server browser and/or not allowing self-hosting dedicated servers killed modding in modern games. A real shame.

https://www.amxmodx.org/

Not only killed modding, but also killed the way those unique communities developed. I suppose it's possible you can find people on community Discord servers nowadays for pick up games, but not in the same way as just seeing and talking to the same people all the time on your favorite modded server.

For four great years in my career I ran game servers for an Australian ISP. I really enjoyed tossing up servers for new HL2 / UT / Quakeworld mods and seeing what picked up a community, chipping in on a cyberpunk HL2 mod in the same period.

I have such rose coloured glasses of that time.

Looking back, most of the dedicated server software felt like it was just tossed over the wall. Some of the stuff we used to have to do to get things running happily on headless linux servers was very hacky. Others simply HAD to run on windows hosts.

I feel like the entire industry died as games became "live" services.

Nearly 2 decades later when my kids got into Minecraft, I stumbled into the hosted MC server world and was just amazed by the size of the industry around it.

It was a real "arrrh this is where that same spirit ended up" moment.

And now of course there's huge servers funded by getting kids into gambling and pay to win.... Gross.

My favorite server which I think is dead by now, Dead Man Standing was a low gravity CS 1.6 server, no footstep noises, but there was a hook you could use to maneuver the low gravity, and the hook made noise, it was really something with those CS mouse maps. That was peak CS for me, I never saw anyone come close to the quality of that server. DMS I will always miss you.

I liked zombie mods

And it was literally just so they could skinnerbox people and sell skins. I still remember when if you wanted a skin you just downloaded it and could put it on your server and anyone who joined would download and use it. People running their own stuff makes DLC/lootcrate/cosmetics unviable and I do think a huge part of the "server" finding stuff is to algorithmically put you in situations you are likely to win/lose at certain rates to keep you playing. Anything other than community servers as the primary avenue is a dark pattern. You also lose out the path to getting into modding/3d modeling/programming/running servers that those modded servers were for lots of people including me.

If you have fun instagib servers that might detract from how many lootcrates people buy since they might just get curb stomped in it + it's just harder to track and measure the impact of changes when you are minmaxxing for monetary extraction when you have high variety of mods/servers. If you want to track and evaluate player behavior to manipulate it you need to control for as many variables as possible. These game companies are straight up evil.

On the other hand, during the anarchy years of bring-your-own-skins (and sprays), there was a lot of horrible shit out there — goatse was only the tip of the iceberg.

I don't buy the 'people need to be protected from things' argument.

I lived both eras.

Independent servers and self-modding were hands-down superior in terms of creativity and fun.

The current locked-box 'as the developers intended' version sucks in comparison.

And as referenced, its primary purpose is absolutely to enforce scarcity so that can be monetized.

Goatse in exchange for true ownership? Any day of the fucking week. My eyelids work, and I can close them myself.

You ran your own server within your group of (probably Internet-) friends and policed and banned players doing that kind of crap. A lot of the potential offense was limited by the low resolution of sprays anyway.

Game companies doing everything possible to turn every person into a gambling addict seems way more destructive than someone seeing a shock site.

Few games today can put me in the heightened frenzy of an Unreal Tournament instagib match. Pure, unadulterated adrenaline.

For a few years Sauerbraten scratched that itch.

i am such a slow old boomer now but i absolutely loved the sauerbraten TOSOK (Team One Shot One Kill) venice servers. also assault cube TOSOK/OSOK (dm variant). also UrbanTerror jump maps. ut_swim will always be in my heart.

I don’t know/remember TOSOK, is that a new mode? We used to play daily circa 2007-2010, my group of friends was in a well-known European clan. Haven’t played it since, sadly.

i think im mixing things up - that term might be unique to assault cube. in sauerbraten i remember a map called venice, everyone had snipers and its one shot to kill anyone, very satisfying if youre good and very frustrating if someones better than you.

I went to look for some videos of the game and damn… I guess it’s time to reinstall.

(Never played Assault Cube, always meant to but Sauerbraten was just so good)

UT1 was basically instagib by default: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm3m1sszTEs&t=6s

So many sounds that will forever live in my head.

I think I actually beat UT99 on a laptop trackpad a couple years later. (School device)

The entire extensibility story in Unreal series has been amazing from the get go. Where QuakeC was really more of a scripting language "on the side", with UT it felt more like the entire game is written in UnrealScript, with some native bits here and there for performance. The language was interesting too, incorporating things such as first-class support for various states (you could define different implementations for a function depending on which state the object is, and derived classes could extend that).

No wonder the mutator scene in UT was crazy. My favorite mod for the original UT99 was Dr Strangelove, which modded the Redeemer gun (the one that shoots huge nuclear missiles) to allow you to ride them.

Sounds a lot like emacs, there's a core written in C etc but the overwhelming majority of the bits that make it an editor are in a scripting layer that you can change at runtime (and indeed there's hardly any reason to use emacs if you're not doing so)

That entire realm of "Run your own game servers and do whatever you want with it" is dead. Not because of cheating either.

It's dead because if you can play on a server that lets you equip a skin you didn't pay for, that's bad for Epic's quarterly statements.

Your fun is not profitable enough. Sorry.

Battlefield 6 are trying to bring something like this back with Portal (https://portal.battlefield.com).

You can write "experiences" in TypeScript then host your own server that people can join without having to download/install a mod themselves.

I have a special place in my heart for UT2004 because it was one of the very few games that had an official native Linux version at the time. I think I enjoyed the fact that it was running on Linux more than I enjoyed the game itself.

I'll never forget installing ut2k4 on my linux box and having it Just Work. Magical.

Not just working, but it actually ran better in Linux for me -- my university-mandated laptop could only run it at 1280x800 in Windows if you wanted to hit 60fps, but the Linux client was able to run at the panel's native 1920x1200.

I had it working without issues from Steam (I bought UT 99 and 2004 before Epic de-listed from Steam)

Yes! I remember at the time I had just gotten linux to reliably work on my dual Opteron workstation so that I could migrate away from Win2K64. UT2K3 and UT2K4 were just about the only games I could run because Wine didn't work very well back then.

In retrospect, I have a much greater appreciation for Windows 2000. User experience was really front and center in a way that we seem to have gotten away from since Web 2.0. It basically never blue screened. Games ran well. Personal computing seems to have taken some steps backwards since then.

There are big companies, that are actively doing harmful things to undermine personal computing, in order to farm engagement, attention and show us ads. Phones become more and more locked down, except for very niche products. Many people don't even have a PC any longer, and only have phones, with none of the freedom of personal computing that we enjoy(ed). Only people in the know are able to and willing to put in the effort to run an OS that includes freedom. Trying to help a friend or family member with a computer or phone problem, one will quickly notice the efforts that big tech makes to undermine freedom respecting solutions.

i remember playing it on linux on my dell inspiron 8k which was a beautiful machine.

Yes! I had both a Linux (main) and a Windows box in my office back in the day, and a friend came over frequently and we would "kill things!" for hours :-)

IIRC, I bought the metal case for UT3, but the linux binaries never appeared ...

A standing applause for those undertaking this effort as I look forward to losing even more of my future time given how much I lost to it in the past.

Many moons ago I worked with an individual whose wife was employed in marketing by a large well known video game company involved around UT. One day he came into the office and brought a load of leftover UT swag and it was a feeding frenzy. I still have and wear my long sleeve black UT embroidered tee and as a point of fact I just wore it again last week. Looking forward to the progress on this effort as an old head UT fan still.

I'm still playing ut99 GOTY with my son (yeah, I'm that old)... and nothing else matterrrrrrrrrrrr

Still an amazing FPS, your son is lucky. So many great memories playing CTF at lan parties.

Facing Worlds was absolutely peak.

Hell yeah! So many runs on that map. It’s so funny how it was basically a strategy-less map since there wasn’t much you could do other than trying your best avoid incoming fire while running like a madman up the slope in the middle of the map.

It's a terrible map by almost every metric...

... except fun.

But guess what metric matters most?

I was going to say this. It's not a well-balanced map gameplay-wise, but the grand scale of it back in the day was very awe-inspiring.

I think most UT99 maps were balanced for chaos. Different types of chaos depending on the mode and the map. But they were genuinely all great. I don't remember hating any map in particular.

That’s kind of what I miss about classic shooters. No rankings, no matchmaking — just random jank in service of pure pubbie fun. Don’t like the map? No worries, we’ll cycle to a new one in a few minutes. (Or hop on over to a different server.) Versus CS just being endless rounds of perfectly balanced de_dust2 these days. “Competitive,” sure, but freakin’ boring!

It really was all geared towards having fun. And the fact that all the weapons were available on the maps rather than being pre selected made the game so easy to play.

There was no wasting time figuring out what style of play you wanted to go for. You just picked a game mode and went for it.

And as you said, maps were changing very quickly depending on how the game mode was set up.

Plus, so many exploding bodies

Fun… and with a killer soundtrack: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eEcPakW42JU

Enjoy the memories.

Camp out in the upper chamber, wait for Redeemer to spawn, grab it and nuke 'em all. Great for taking out snipers posted on the opposing tower who are preventing your guys from crossing.

Fuck, CTF-Face was a vibe.

UT99 was the first real FPS experience I had. My friend invited me to a LAN party (also first time), and the whole thing was mind blowing.

People all over the house shouting and laughing.

I have a distinct memory of someone attempting what you just described, but my friend just happened to be ready and he sniped the redeemer right as it was shot. Big explosion and nothing left of the player but a scorch mark on the building. I laughed myself to tears. Good times.

I'd be so down to set up a lan again to play UT99. I still have a copy ready to go I bought on GOG ages ago.

Once you do get past it, though, there are some options. Including climbing the tower from the outside with the translocator.

Oh yes totally. But getting to the enemy side was the fun part. Also, how cool was that the translocator could be used as a weapon.

I liked getting to the other side of that map by telepunting - drop the translocator disk at your feet, smack it with the impact hammer just right, and you could send it flying ridiculous distances. You could easily send it the opposite tower in Facing Worlds if your aim was good.

I didn’t even know that’s a thing you could do! Might have to reinstall the game and give this a try.

> a strategy-less map

I only really played ut2k4 not 99, but in the 2k4 Face map there was a "ledge" (I don't know the term, like a stray polygon edge or something) out of sight on one side where you could fake like you had fallen off, land on the ledge, wait a couple seconds and then crouch or do whatever it was that made you drop the flag.

The game would show the message "so and so dropped the flag" which IIRC was the same message it shows when you die while holding the flag, and to most people it seems like you fell into the void and died, but you're actually just hanging out on the ledge.

There wasn't a way back up from the ledge, so you can't do this to shake people chasing you and then go score, but if you do this while you're ahead, the other team can't score until they get their flag back...

okay that's not really "strategy", it's super cheap.

I found the CD earlier this year while I was packing for a move. Couldn't help myself and played a few DM-Morpheus bot matches. The graphics look dated but the fun was all still there. Few games ever since managed to hook me like this one did.

Is that the low-gravity one? Such a fun map.

I remember modding the homing missile gun (forgot its name) to be more agile around corners and building obstacles courses in Unreal Editor for DM-Morpheus to shoot the missiles through. Modding Unreal games was always a great time considering the technology back then.

> played a few DM-Morpheus bot matches

This part is one of the features that doesn't seem to get mentioned enough. Unreal Tournament was one of the first franchises to have bot behavior that was well thought out, relatively realistic and challenging, and most importantly worked for every single one of the game types included (including multi-player team objectives).

In addition to just being able to play single player in what would have normally required a functioning online environment and WWW connection for other franchises, you could also fill out large teams with bot players if you could not find enough actual humans to log in and join your game.

Gametypes like Team Deathmatch and Assault were then viable for single or small groups even when you didn't have a great (or completed lacked) WWW connection.

Still my favorite FPS of all time. Low gravity sniper rifle CTF was my favorite. Was in the NTHZ clan.

With the best gaming OST of all time.

Still the FPS I play the most! We organize LAN parties at some of the vintage computer events.

Tell me more! Are you in the Bay Area?

After a particularly shitty day on the helpdesk there was nothing quite like loading up Facing Worlds, jimmying team balancing so it was 8v1 and then holding off the ensuing rush of bots for a half hour with a sniper rifle.

Facing Worlds was really something. Getting absurd streaks mowing down bots wasn't particularly challenging but it sure felt good.

And wine made it playable on FreeBSD which was quite something to behold.

Especially when my friend launched it on the 256 color, literal X term I had at home. Solid 0.2 FPS over the network.

Used to copy the binaries to other computers in the high school journalism room and have impromptu LAN parties during school.

I honestly can't understand why Epic Games refuses to open-source Unreal 1 and UT99. They insist on licensing individual developers, instead of opening up the source so community forks can thrive. Look at the id tech community, with all the Doom and Quake forks, and all the amazing projects that spawned off of them.

The topic of "middleware" often comes up, as an excuse for them not being able to open the source. Well, just remove any third-party libraries and middleware, even EA did it with their C&C open-source releases. The C&C release did not even compile, but that did not stop the community from porting to Linux and other platforms, as well as modernizing the source and creating replacement libraries.

One explanation that was brought up before about this was licensing. A lot of the source code has been touched by other entities like Digital Extremes who may feel differently about releasing the source. That's even more true for UT2k4 which was worked on by many more companies behind the scenes, some of which are now defunct.

> may feel differently about releasing the source

Still sounds like something someone would change their mind about if enough money was involved, if only Epic had enough profits.

I found somebody on Youtube a few years back that remade Nyleve Falls in 3DS Max and all I could think was how cool it would be to reboot Unreal 1 with modern graphics.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP4ufZKSkio

Are there are any FPS shooters on the genre of UT (or even Quake3) but modern, not remasters?

I've been missing a lot the frenetic gameplay of those, used to play a lot of UT at a decent level but nowadays I only see tactical FPSs or the likes of Counter-Strike/Battlefield with a high player count.

there are but they are pretty niche, so mostly you play against bots or against friends.

This one is the last one I heard of but I also haven't followed the scene much lately: https://store.steampowered.com/app/324810/TOXIKK/

TOXIKK was awesome. But very hard to find matches with players.

Isn't that what Overwatch/Valorant/Apex/Fortnite etc are?

Overwatch is a objective-based game, and like Valorant is a "hero shooter". Apex and Fortnite are battle royales.

I think the closest I got was The Finals but still class-based, so reminds me more of Team Fortress.

I loved playing 1v1 on Quake 2/3 and UT, also team deathmatch, from the list you commented it feels like each game got one of those aspects but none that makes the genre of UT what it is: knowing where weapons/ammo/armor spawn, map knowledge to navigate around, emergent movement mechanics (rocket jumps, strafe-jumping, etc.).

Interesting to see this genre mostly died out, and remnants of it have been scattered across other genres.

No, these are class based team FPS, core of UT and Quake is (team) deathmatch

The Unreal Tournament series are arena shooters[1] which has sadly died a death, partially due to Epic Games negligence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_shooter

https://www.reddit.com/r/boomershooters/

Not that I can really think of - there's the adjacent Sauerbraten, but that's a similar vintage!

maybe Splitgate if that's still alive?

Splitgate 2 is scheduled to launch later this month.

Dusk is more Quakeish than UTish, but well worth a look. The graphics are deliberately low fidelity 90s retro, but the gameplay is tight.

https://www.warsow.net/ is good and runs on pretty much everything. Plays like a mix between UT and Quake3.

I love Warsow but am I right that it's very hard to find an opponent these days? I just checked https://arena.sh/wa/ and there are 4 non-empty servers, but most (maybe all) of the players seem to be bots.

I haven't played a while so I cannot comment. When I last played I spun up a server for my friend group to play on. This is the beauty of old school games like these, no need to rely on a company to keep servers running. In a way Warsow is the perfect LAN game: everyone can run it and it's easy to host a server.

Open-source one: Xonotic

https://xonotic.org/

This is the one that I still fire up with my friends once in awhile. The only problem is it sort of lacks the charm and nostalgia, and it's a bit rough around the edges in parts (the gun selection is fairly abysmal and don't feel right IMO).

Outing myself as a parent of young kids here, but I have been genuinely surprised how good Hypershot on Roblox is. It reminds me of Unreal Tournament a lot and is really easy to play, I've been hooked for a few weeks. It cuts everything down to the basics like UT without all the bells and whistles modern AAA games have. Oh and it's totally free (but with all the monetization attempts Roblox games tend to have, though they aren't necessary to play even at a high level).

Diabotical was heavily inspired by Quakeworld/Quake3/UT arena shooter FPS.

https://www.diabotical.com

Quake Champions?

Please point me to the nearest meat grinder. I'm jonesing for breakneck speed mayhem!

Arena shooters have been relegated to side modes in other, bigger games. Probably the last big shooter with that as its focus was Halo: Infinite, but that struggled to stay relevant and its next big update will be its last.

Splitgate captures the feel nicely. Simple, fast, and last I checked free. Very recommended.

Shootmania was supposed to be it.

Not really unfortunately. This video goes a bit into why (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-t37idOfvk), but the short version is the skill floor (or ceiling?) was too high, making it unwelcoming for people to just pick up, unlike a COD-like shooter.

Halo 3 multiplayer had this solved by maintaining a dynamic rating of the players so that it could match skill levels when random matches were made.

Tribes 3: Rivals is a load of fun. Flying around on jetpacks helps raise the skill ceiling.

If you like 1v1/2v2 gamemodes, Straftat is pretty amazing: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2386720/STRAFTAT/

If you want something wild and frenetic check out Chivalry 2. It's an FPSlasher

Epic Games have been surprisingly generous with their older library. Refreshing to see.

that's probably thanks to how well Fortnite has done/is doing. Would likely be cagier on their old stuff if the company wasnt doing well

The most interesting part of UT2k4 to me is the software renderer. It actually worked on period hardware and many would argue it looks better. You should definitely give it a try if you've got the game on a modern machine.

You may be thinking of UT99 or even the first Unreal. UT2k4 required a GPU and didn't have a software renderer.

UT2k4 had software rending support via the Pixomatic software renderer from RAD Game Tools:

https://www.radgametools.com/pixo/PixoWithUnreal2004.txt

Further discussion about it here:

https://forums.beyondunreal.com/threads/software-rendering-i...

I was surprised when I realized, that a game from year 2004 still had a software renderer. But I thought it was just old leftover from the first Unreal game.

Hoo boy. I lost waaaaay too many hours to the Monster Hunt mod back in the day. The RPG style PvE one. All those leeches link gunning the one brave player at the front shooting the boss... Crazy fun

I'm not sure if this release is a good thing or bad thing for me haha

Oh man, I'd forgotten about Monster Hunt. That's the one with the gates right, which spawned a boss when you destroyed them all?

I had a heavily modded version of the game that I ran with bunch of other most, including ChaosUT (Loved the explosive cross bow), some Infiltration weapons and other random bits. Genuinely some of the funnest gaming I remember having as a kid.

They taught a summer class at Stanford where the capstone was putting your 3D model into Ut4 as a new character. Classroom of networked commuters with all kinds of popular games on them…it was hard to get work done some times.

This is great. I remember playing this for the first time at a Wizards of the Coast in the mall. They had 8 or so PCs on a LAN in the back of the store. My first true LAN party I guess.

Same, one of my very first gaming experiences. Nothing but great nostalgia!

Plaay >>

In the mystique female voice!

I bought it in steam before they removed it. So I can still install and play this game from time to time. Capture the flag is something else in this game!

Still holding out for UT1 code to be officially released.

It's not the original source, but https://github.com/dpjudas/SurrealEngine is an active reimplementation of UE1.

For those who loved UT99, there is still a fairly large community of players online, particularly in the gametype known as BunnyTrack.

It's focused on movement-based challenges and is extremely fun and unique.

I host a few BT servers myself. Please feel free to join and check it out. See: https://www.bunnytrack.net/about

This is cool, but reminds me of what we don't have. 99% of the content for Unreal Tournament was made by the community. Why can't the community make an open-source game? There are probably even attempts to make an open-source UT04. But I wish open-source could just make more standalone games. We have so few... Tuxracer, Chromium BSU, Battle for Wesnoth, Warsaw, etc.

Speaking of shooters of roughly that era, the Timesplitters Rewind fan project also just put out their first release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzWSrgQ3eMI

It's basically a modernized anthology of the three Timesplitters games that were quite popular on consoles of the PS2 era.

I'm still sad that Epic Games axed UT4 (2014).

I liked UT3 too, but I guess UT2004 was the peak, with all its different game modes. UT3 felt a little bit like a console thing, with fewer modes. Overall I had much more fun with UT2004, playing it with friends in LAN. UT3 simply didn't pack as much fun gameplay.

UT3 felt sluggish at the time. Both in gameplay and graphics performance. Still much faster than most games today of course.

Ah, for me that would have been UT aka UT99. But chances are, I'm simply 3 - 6 years older than you ;-) Though I definitely I was not the intended age group upon release.

UT4 would have been pretty nice. I remember building the alpha from source when they put it GitHub.... .... Which is now closer to the release of UT 2004 than today. sigh

Fortnite is it's spiritual successor.

Don’t you blaspheme in here.

It hurt reading that.

A while back I kinda got Unreal Tournament running inside Unreal Engine, okay, more like a VM running UT inside Unreal Engine, but still...

For those looking for silliness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVO2VDPnI0Y

Played this a few months back. In terms of value, it felt right up there with the Orange Box.

The one glaring problem the game has is double-tapping movement keys to dodge. Kills your fingers and you can’t ignore it because dodging seems to be the primary mode of skill expression beside weapon choice and aim.

UT99>

Yeah, I couldn't really get into UT2004. Not sure what it was that bugged me since it was so long ago. But I played a lot of UT99 and I was doing it on a 28.8 modem.

I think the tone of of UT2004 was slightly sillier than UT99 and the guns felt .. fatter? I'm definitely looking at this with some nostalgia but UT99 will always be my favorite shooter

I don't always play UT2K4, but when I do, it's usually with Ballistic Weapons mod + Sergeant Kelly's weapon packs. I agree that the UT2K4 weapons just don't quite do it like UT99.

That skyscraper map is etched in my mind I played it so much

Wow this is really exciting, especially the Mac support. UT was kinda my gateway to programming. They made it really easy to build and play your own maps.

Instagib Face Classic Quad Jumps in 2026?

Sign me the f up!

UT2k4 was a LAN party favorite of mine. One of the last good multiplayer FPS games before Epic lost its way.

UT2004 (and its Xbox counterpart Unreal Championship 2) were great experiences. UT3 tried to set itself apart by tuning its pace significantly higher, and it lost its audience, and UT2016 was never going to be a significant title given its development history.

Such a good game- very ahead of its time, great look and feel. Weird that it was allowed to wither and die.

> Weird that it was allowed to wither and die.

It was allowed to wither and then murdered in 2022. You can't even buy it now, not even on GOG (you could buy it on GOG previously, but it was removed).

What happened if you bought it when it was available? Hopefully no Amazon Swindle 1984...

AFAIK those who have it, can still play it (but no official multiplayer servers anymore).

They released UT 3 in 2007 but I think around that time the company shifted more towards their engine, which by then was already the most used game engine for high profile games (don't quote me on that one, it's a gut feeling).

They started working on a new title, but it was meandering for a long time; it seemed that they would do some of the ground work but relied on the community a lot to design and build maps and weapons. Then the Fortnite team released a Battle Royale mode and made it free to play and it completely dominated the market. The UT team was transitioned to Fortnite in 2017, and Fortnite became their money printer earning them hundreds of millions per month.

While I love Unreal Tournament and would love for them or some other party to fill the gap of a no-nonsense arena shooter, the reality is that it wouldn't be as popular or lucrative as Fortnite. It'd be competing with FPS games like CoD and Battlefield, which have more going for them - including an uneven playing field, depending on players' progression and paid-for unlocks.

UT3 was a dismal failure both critically and commercially, while Gears of War was a huge success. Epic rode that for a while as they worked on Fortnite, and then they put out the battle royale mode in 2017 and the thing took off.

Wow, this is great! I wonder if there is support for ray tracing and other modern tech, but even as it is I would not mind playing this again. Been a long time. Plus, moved to Mac recently and expecting the new fangled Mac support this brings will work well.

Amazing, more companies need to do this.

Separately it's a shame most modern games have removed LAN gaming.

I discovered "secret level" on prime recently where there is an episode on UT2004 (with the original sound effects like "killing spree !!!" ). With this additional news, I now want to run it again...

UT2003 was the first online multiplayer game I ever played, and I played it a lot, mostly at the office with coworkers; we then moved to UT2004. So, so many fond memories of both. Glad is back.

do you remember the map called Phobos II? for some reason they didn't include it with 2004, it was my favorite map

This is already on Steam and has been there for years. Or at least, its in my library and it doesn't say its "retired". So what's new?

So happy to play facing worlds instagib CTF. Godlike!

Still can't forgive what epic did to UT4...

I loved Instagib.

It's the only way I ever played.

I hope they fix the terrible SP campaign. The bot skill became too difficult too fast (if I remember correctly they after several stages also began to dodge your CROSSHAIR), you could not change base difficulty mid-run and the money system was punishing when you lost a match

Do they have access to the source code then?

The code was floating around the Internet some years back, and was probably privately shared much sooner.

I just wish these groups making fan-made builds would share at least patches, so they don't become gatekeepers and others could build on their work.

some of us do e.g.

https://github.com/aldehir/ut2004-patches/releases

That is great news! I hope we will have a few public servers left to play this online.

This is kind of cool, and with GNU/Linux native binaries.

Hopefully they can compile it to web as well.

Surely epic will shut this down. The installer downloads a copy of the original game, well that is my reading of it.

They clearly state so. But also say they have epic's blessing. Then this will stay up.

This is being done by OldUnreal with written permission from Epic. They've been doing the same thing for Unreal 1 and Unreal Tournament '99 under NDA and all.

To be fair, I did read that, but didn't state why I was sceptical: I've been playing UT since UT99, it's one of my favourite games. I wasted hours of my life in unreal ed 1. Anyway Epic removed UT from all online stores, I still have access to my gog version but in general as far as I know it's impossible to buy a legit copy these days. They also shut down it's master servers. To be fair I haven't tried playing a few years so maybe that is fixed and maybe they have restored it to gog or the epic store. I don't know I haven't checked.

A random post on Reddit "with epics blessing" looked pretty much throw away to me. But hey, I'm wrong :)

Did you read the part where they say “With Epic’s blessing”?

Bold to assume a poster on the internet can actually read.

Then why are you reading these posts ;)

UT99 was a peak in gaming

Amazing, can’t wait to play

… oh wait I have a 60 hour a week job

… oh wait I have a wife with PPD and 2 young kids and I have to hire a babysitter just to put up Christmas lights

… oh wait I have RSIs in my dominant hand

I think I’ll just make do with my memories of this game. I imagine much of my opinion was colored by being a teenager when it was released.

Hey buddy, congratulations on your family. It's the most important thing. And remember... in a few years you can play Unreal Tournament with your kids!

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