Unreal Tournament comeback

More information coming next week...

So... how about that?? They announced back in March that they weren't working on any UT-related stuff, and then they post this. Personally, I'm very excited.

I am all for a return of UT. As long as it remains UT and not COD in space. Give us back the ability to carry every wepon.

If they make the gameplay like UT 2004, I'll be very happy. I still say that was the best UT game to date. Dodge + double jump is so much fun. And yeah, let's hope they don't succumb to modern FPS trends.

Not sure if I trust them. UT 3 was a total let-down and it seemed to me like they weren't aware of what made U T2k 4 so remarkable.

Gameplay changes are one thing, but the fact that the graphics were so needlessly complex was the real issue for me. Arena shooters are designed to be extremely fast-paced and twitchy - you DON'T want players blending into the textures unless it's some kind of powerup (like the Invisibility adrenaline boost, or a cloaking powerup.)

Players should be clearly visible against the backgrounds at all times, or else it's going to cause problems. You WANT people to be able to blend into the background in tactical shooters like Counter-Strike, or even faster-paced games like Halo. You DON'T want them blending in with a twitch shooter like Quake or UT.

As far as gameplay mechanics went, UT 3 was a lot closer to UT 99 than U T2k 4. Since I preferred U T2k 4, I wasn't a fan of them, but it wasn't a big deal.

I just hope they focus on clarity rather than trying to pump more shiny pixels into the game :-/

I agree. The amount of fun and time I put into the game...suffice to say, I would enjoy it a lot.

The next Unreal Tournament has been announced.

It's free. Not free-to-play— just free. Epic is starting development from scratch today, and they're collaborating with UT fans and UE4 developers to create it. More info in the link above.

edited 8th May '14 11:37:08 AM by SonicWind

whaaaaaa

Is this going to be an open source UT? People are gonna go frakkin' nuts!

Well, it's open-ish. They say they're gonna be receptive to fan input.

I had one UT game on the original Xbox. I forget which one it was. There was no real campaign (you just made a team and went through a whole bunch of game modes and it ended with you killing the rest of your team in a series of one-on-one fights) but I remember having fun with it.

I'm not so sure how much really good would be a community-driven Unreal game. Up to (an including) Unreal Tournament III, I liked every game of the saga.

I can foresee some of the bad things which may happen because of this approach:

• Every server with an own gameplay because of "excess of freedom" (no unifying vision, leading to an even more broken base). This decision about the core gameplay directly affects the level design and the map gameplay. At least with every UT you had official maps which accomodated the game's core gameplay.
• Too many remakes, or even worse, PORTS (!), of past UT maps (especially UT 99) wasting the potential of the UE 4 engine. The UT 99 versions of the Unreal maps didn't got a lot of play just for being 100% faithful remakes of their Unreal counterparts. Ditto with UT 2 K 4, sans CTF-Face Classic.
• Character design also wasting the capabilities of the engine in lieu of the gdamned "classic feeling".
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome at it's highest. Few maps, all of them of the competitive kind, when even UT and UT 2004 and the dreaded UT 3 had a lot of variety for everyone.

I hope to be wrong. In all of these cases.

#9 The Librarian, if it was on the Xbox, it could have been Unreal Championship or Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict or the port of Unreal II Theawakening.

edited 8th May '14 4:07:34 PM by AM_NK

There's two possible out comes of this whole thing:

1. New Unreal Tournament is a success though measured community input and shit.

2. New UT devolves into stupid ass Shock Rifles battles only with a bunch of stupid ass crossever skins or some shit. Nothing says UT like Miku vs Abraham Lincoln Shock Rifle battles on Facing Worlds and 18 other variations of Facing Worlds!

edited 8th May '14 4:18:12 PM by RoboZombie

Epic's probably going to put some ground rules in or something similar to keep these kinds of situations from happening.

It can't be Unreal II because, like Librarian said, the game he played didn't really have a single player campaign, whereas Unreal II did have one (a linear, scripted one at that), so it's more likely one of the Unreal Championship games.

Was Raiden from Mortal Kombat playable in the mystery Xbox UT?

I'm pretty sure that it's Unreal Championship. That was the one with the final fight against all your teammates.

As for the news, this sounds very cool. I'm looking forwards to seeing its development.

Yeah, on second read I figured out it was the first UC. So, I stand corrected. -.-!

Anyway, let's see how the development on this UT goes on. I hope to be wrong in my assumptions, though from my own experience as a GameDev, design by committee is hardly a good thing, and I really hope Epic doesn't screw this installment by letting DBC get out of hand.

What're you talking about? The UT 99 remakes were some of the most popular maps around, especially DM-Deck17 and as you already mentioned, CTF-Face Classic. DM-Rankin was probably the most popular (T)DM map, though.

Deck16 gets remade religiously with every single UT release, because it's practically a brand standard by now and is almost flawless. Rankin will probably get remade for the same reasons.

Why is remaking existing maps a problem? Maps get remade for a REASON, and it's not nostalgia.

Two of the original composers for UT99 are thinking of contributing music for UT 4.

Total Biscuit gives his take. It's very positive.

#17 dc 85, the remakes made by Epic themselves aren't the problem. Every official map done is done thinking on the game/engine themselves and their features, something which can't be said for at least 90% of the fanmade remakes, such as both of yournan's UT Classics Mappacks or any other direct port of a UT 99 map for UT 2004, UT 2004 to UT 3, UT 99 to UT 3 and viceversa.

The fanmade remakes tend to disregard the features of game/engine they're porting the map to, such as proper player scale and core gameplay (weapons/items/etc), in order to capture the "classic feel". This is wrong and bad, IMHO. Especially if Epic intends to use this new UT as a showcase of what the UE 4 engine can do, they shouldn't let the "old skool" ports to overtake the game. Most of the time, the "good graphics" aren't achieved by the Game Engine itself, but instead they're brought by what the artists (mappers/modellers) can do with it. Just porting stuff from other games should be a NO-NO.

edited 13th May '14 5:20:34 AM by AM_NK

Who cares? Plenty of people have made awful, shitty maps for TF 2 but the vast majority of servers just run official Valve maps because there's no reason to use unofficial ones. I know a lot of servers ran awful custom Bombing Run maps that were focused on sprinting to the goal through a series of complex translocator jumps rather than the "football with guns" theme BR usually has.

I'm sure the server search will have filters for "official maps only" or something of that nature.

The community will make 90% (if not 100%) of the maps for this new UT, and that won't be escapable as those are going to be the official maps.

Epic should implement controls regarding Official Fan-Submitted Content, otherwise things will really get out of hand and "the new UT" would end being a huge mess.

edited 14th May '14 4:39:41 AM by AM_NK

Yeah, hopefully they'll also learn from Valve's current issues with Steam turning into a landfill due to lack of quality control on what's allowed in or not.

Epic's already said how it's going to work:

So when you get UT, you get a downloader (it's not going to be on Steam because Epic want's to run it's own store and that's a no-no to Gaben.) Firstly, you download the Core Content, which is the base game + a selection of Epic approved maps (more will be added as time goes on, but you get the idea.) Base game modes (at least right now) are going to be Deathmatch (+Duel and TDM), CTF (+VCTF,) Domination, either Onslaught or Warfare (they're only going to keep 1, not both,) and Assault (+V Assault.)

Extra stuff (Maps, Mutators, etc.) will be put on the UT market, presumably with a Top Played list plus Featured lists from Epic and prominent UT community members (like Hourences or any of the UT pro players should this game take of in Esports or the FGC.)

None of the core content maps are going to be straight ports. Returning maps will be remade and new maps will be there. The current consensus is that the graphic style of the game should be clean, functional, and try to get away from the very messy look of UT 3 (which looked cool but a lot of the times was kinda hard to see.)

Honestly, I feel the development is actually going along fairly good atm. I don't feel the fears the UT 4 is just going to devolve into Homura vs Dale moon-gravity Sniper duels on a ultrashit quality version of Facing Worlds are warranted tbh.

Has anyone nabbed any of the pre-alpha builds? I've only been watching You Tube videos myself, but the new UT looks pretty amazing for a pre-alpha game, especially the new version of DM-Hyper Blast.