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Epic Allows Internet Archive to Distribute Unreal and Unreal Tournament Forever
- uslic001 2y agoUsed 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.
- Physkal 2y agoMan 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.
- malux85 2y agoMe 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
- amatecha 2y agoheck 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
- paulryanrogers 2y agoI 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.
- chocmake 2y agoFrom 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gadtfly 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_0G6WPuss4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_0G6WPuss4
- bittwiddle 2y agoDid 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iONsjiiqeKg
- bobim 2y agoAnd 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.
- _gotb 2y agoI 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.
- imiric 2y agoAh, another jungle music example.[1] [1]: https://pikuma.com/blog/jungle-music-video-game-drum-bass https://pikuma.com/blog/jungle-music-video-game-drum-bass
- gadtfly 2y agoI 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.
- notamy 2y agoFingers 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.
- hackernewds 2y agowhy not just buy it?
- flakes 2y agoWhy do you assume they didn't? > I still boot it up to play occasionally
- goosedragons 2y agoYou can't anymore besides used physical copies. Epic delisted all the Unreal games.
- jamesfinlayson 2y agoYes, 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.
- Woshiwuja 2y agoSure, give me a link.
- deknos 2y agoi would buy instantly if it works on linux on 64 bit machines. all of them.
- all2 2y agoWith the vehicles? That game was nuts.
- 2y ago
- calmbonsai 2y agoUT2004 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-homecoming-fan-reboot https://www.polygon.com/gaming/471719/city-of-heroes-homecom... .
- pavelstoev 2y agoLove both games spending countless hours, Unreal single player story was great (for its time). Are there any servers still online for UT?
- simonw 2y agoI spent so much of the early year 2000 playing Unreal Tournament instagib mode on Facing Worlds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facing_Worlds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facing_Worlds
- pajeetz 2y agothose 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
- pests 2y agoFacing 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.
- Arrath 2y agoIts 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.
- pests 2y agoI'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.
- ashdnazg 2y ago
- jonny_eh 2y agoNo link to the actual downloads? Update, found it: https://www.oldunreal.com/downloads/unreal/full-game-installers/ https://www.oldunreal.com/downloads/unreal/full-game-install...
- Crosseye_Jack 2y agohttps://archive.org/details/ut-goty 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.
- magicalhippo 2y agoUnreal 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 https://unreal.fandom.com/wiki/Mutator
- duskwuff 2y ago> 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/introducing-the-overwatch-workshop/ https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/22938941/introduci...
- astlouis44 2y agoSlightly related thread, Unreal Engine 5 runs in WebGPU now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42190897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42190897
- bathtub365 2y agoDoes it? It’s not an officially supported platform and this link (which was posted by you) has no information.
- astlouis44 2y agoYes, it does. We're a third party that built our own WebGPU backend. Feel free to try this demo here: https://play.spacelancers.com/ https://play.spacelancers.com/
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoWhy not just release to the public domain?
- renewiltord 2y agoAnd why not pay for a few devs to keep it up to date?
- rounce 2y agoThe nostalgia is so strong I think the community is would happily take stewardship of it.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoThe Golden era of PC gaming ..,
- anotherhue 2y agoA recent engine recreation : https://github.com/dpjudas/SurrealEngine https://github.com/dpjudas/SurrealEngine Quick start instructions also pull UT from the archive https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/337069 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/337069
- modeless 2y agoI 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 https://thelongestyard.link It would be cool to be able to do the same with Unreal Tournament.
- kaoD 2y agoI 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!)
- modeless 2y agoIt is here: https://github.com/jdarpinian/ioq3 https://github.com/jdarpinian/ioq3
- dmead 2y agoIoquake was helpful for the open Jedi project get an open source version of jk3 working. https://github.com/OpenJediProject/OJP 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.
- deafpolygon 2y agoIm willing to bet the code for UT is being used for Fortnite.
- mikepurvis 2y agoThat 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.
- pests 2y ago
- DerSaidin 2y agoImagine 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.
- radlad 2y ago> If your game has not been updated in N years... This would impact indie developers and small publishers more than large ones.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y agoWould 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.
- pests 2y agoI 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.
- Woshiwuja 2y ago[dead]
- yakshaving_jgt 2y agoDoes it work on MacOS? Or do we still need to do some Wine thing?
- RulerOf 2y agoIt does. Check OldUnreal on github. There's even a Metal renderer.
- saithir 2y agoOr, "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.
- kergonath 2y agoI 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.
- kristopolous 2y agoYou mean like government/international body level funding? That's not unreasonable.
- kergonath 2y agoMore international body than government. I don't think this should belong to a single nation.
- sebstefan 2y ago? 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
- deknos 2y agoIs 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.
- KETHERCORTEX 2y agoThere's a working flatpak package on Flathub. You just need to provide assets and CD key
- Andrew_nenakhov 2y agoForever?
- tosmatos 2y agoI 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.
- olliej 2y agoThat'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.
- TravisPeacock 2y agoI 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.
- nanna 2y agoI 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.
- danpalmer 2y agoEpic also retracted my purchase of UT2004 on the Epic games store so I can no longer download it.
- aktau 2y agoI bought UT2004 (Editor's Choice Edition) in 2022 on Steam (https://store.steampowered.com/app/13230/Unreal_Tournament_2004_Editors_Choice_Edition/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/13230/Unreal_Tournament_2...). It seems like I can still download it, phew.
- danpalmer 2y agoYeah 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- flexedpabu2018 2y ago[dead]
- RajT88 2y agoI 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.