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Unreal Tournament 2004 is back
- ghaering 11mo agoThat is great news! I hope we will have a few public servers left to play this online.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- wesammikhail 11mo agoInstagib Face Classic Quad Jumps in 2026? Sign me the f up!
- IshKebab 11mo agoDo they have access to the source code then?
- dvdkon 11mo agoThe 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.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- snarfy 11mo agosome of us do e.g. https://github.com/aldehir/ut2004-patches/releases https://github.com/aldehir/ut2004-patches/releases
- magicalhippo 11mo agoOne 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.
- themafia 11mo agoMy favorite game of all time was Quake, similarly extended with QuakeC, into the QuakeWorld CTF game. I still dream about those maps.
- silisili 11mo agoSame, same. E4M3 Elder God Shrine forever.
- jack_tripper 11mo agoSame. 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?
- amlib 11mo agoThat 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 :)
- armchairhacker 11mo agoThose are in TF2 and Minecraft, perhaps one reason they’re still popular
- piva00 11mo agoAre 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.
- belst 11mo agothere 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/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/324810/TOXIKK/
- OccamsMirror 11mo agoTOXIKK was awesome. But very hard to find matches with players.
- pjc50 11mo agoIsn't that what Overwatch/Valorant/Apex/Fortnite etc are?
- piva00 11mo agoOverwatch 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.
- loa_in_ 11mo agoNo, these are class based team FPS, core of UT and Quake is (team) deathmatch
- CommanderData 11mo agoAmazing, more companies need to do this. Separately it's a shame most modern games have removed LAN gaming.
- grubbs 11mo agoThis 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.
- x2tyfi 11mo agoSame, one of my very first gaming experiences. Nothing but great nostalgia!
- GaryBluto 11mo agoEpic Games have been surprisingly generous with their older library. Refreshing to see.
- jeron 11mo agothat'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
- basisword 11mo agoWow 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.
- davikr 11mo agoStill holding out for UT1 code to be officially released.
- aktau 11mo agoIt's not the original source, but https://github.com/dpjudas/SurrealEngine https://github.com/dpjudas/SurrealEngine is an active reimplementation of UE1.
- fergie 11mo agoSuch a good game- very ahead of its time, great look and feel. Weird that it was allowed to wither and die.
- yetihehe 11mo ago> 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).
- zelphirkalt 11mo agoWhat happened if you bought it when it was available? Hopefully no Amazon Swindle 1984...
- yetihehe 11mo agoAFAIK those who have it, can still play it (but no official multiplayer servers anymore).
- Cthulhu_ 11mo agoThey 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.
- unsungNovelty 11mo agoPlaay >> 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!
- xyzal 11mo agoI 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
- heystefan 11mo agoUT99>
- deltoidmaximus 11mo agoYeah, 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.
- alexchantavy 11mo agoI 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
- systems_glitch 11mo agoI 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.
- RankingMember 11mo agoThat skyscraper map is etched in my mind I played it so much
- craftkiller 11mo agoI 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.
- phrotoma 11mo agoI'll never forget installing ut2k4 on my linux box and having it Just Work. Magical.
- ascagnel_ 11mo agoNot 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.
- Zardoz84 11mo agoI had it working without issues from Steam (I bought UT 99 and 2004 before Epic de-listed from Steam)
- ghc 11mo agoYes! 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.
- zelphirkalt 11mo agoThere 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.
- kobbs 11mo agoI'm still sad that Epic Games axed UT4 (2014).
- zelphirkalt 11mo agoI 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.
- jval43 11mo agoUT3 felt sluggish at the time. Both in gameplay and graphics performance. Still much faster than most games today of course.
- archi42 11mo agoAh, 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
- pantalaimon 11mo agoFortnite is it's spiritual successor.
- sph 11mo agoDon’t you blaspheme in here.
- InexSquirrel 11mo agoIt hurt reading that.
- klaussilveira 11mo agoI 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.
- 0xC0ncord 11mo agoOne 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.
- embedding-shape 11mo ago> 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.
- y-c-o-m-b 11mo agoI 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP4ufZKSkio
- davexunit 11mo agoUT2k4 was a LAN party favorite of mine. One of the last good multiplayer FPS games before Epic lost its way.
- ascagnel_ 11mo agoUT2004 (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.
- QuiCasseRien 11mo agoI'm still playing ut99 GOTY with my son (yeah, I'm that old)... and nothing else matterrrrrrrrrrrr
- manuelmoreale 11mo agoStill an amazing FPS, your son is lucky. So many great memories playing CTF at lan parties.
- joefarish 11mo agoFacing Worlds was absolutely peak.
- manuelmoreale 11mo agoHell 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.
- jerf 11mo agoIt's a terrible map by almost every metric... ... except fun. But guess what metric matters most?
- some-guy 11mo agoI 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.
- manuelmoreale 11mo agoI 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.
- pipes 11mo agoSurely epic will shut this down. The installer downloads a copy of the original game, well that is my reading of it.
- onli 11mo agoThey clearly state so. But also say they have epic's blessing. Then this will stay up.
- 0xC0ncord 11mo agoThis 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.
- pipes 11mo agoTo 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 :)
- culopatin 11mo agoDid you read the part where they say “With Epic’s blessing”?
- saubeidl 11mo agoSpeaking 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 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.
- aiexplorations 11mo agoWow, 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.
- dankobgd 11mo agoStill can't forgive what epic did to UT4...
- bokohut 11mo agoA 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.
- bob1029 11mo agoThe 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.
- Narishma 11mo agoYou may be thinking of UT99 or even the first Unreal. UT2k4 required a GPU and didn't have a software renderer.
- Teslazar 11mo agoUT2k4 had software rending support via the Pixomatic software renderer from RAD Game Tools: https://www.radgametools.com/pixo/PixoWithUnreal2004.txt https://www.radgametools.com/pixo/PixoWithUnreal2004.txt Further discussion about it here: https://forums.beyondunreal.com/threads/software-rendering-in-ut2k4.125912 https://forums.beyondunreal.com/threads/software-rendering-i...
- Panzerschrek 11mo agoI 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.
- Contax 11mo agoUT2003 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.
- treeshateorcs 11mo agodo you remember the map called Phobos II? for some reason they didn't include it with 2004, it was my favorite map
- meroes 11mo agoThey 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.
- nemo136 11mo agoI 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...
- DustinBrett 11mo agoHopefully they can compile it to web as well.
- dirkderkdurk 11mo agoA 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVO2VDPnI0Y
- deafpolygon 11mo agoI loved Instagib.
- orthecreedence 11mo agoIt's the only way I ever played.
- georgeburdell 11mo agoAmazing, 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.
- DrPimienta 11mo agoHey 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!
- bunnytrack 11mo agoFor 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 https://www.bunnytrack.net/about
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Rooster61 11mo agoHoo 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
- InexSquirrel 11mo agoOh 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.
- phendrenad2 11mo agoThis 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.
- newsclues 11mo agoSo happy to play facing worlds instagib CTF. Godlike!
- jimbob45 11mo agoPlayed 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.
- trashface 11mo agoThis 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?
- N_Lens 11mo agoUT99 was a peak in gaming
- pjmlp 11mo agoThis is kind of cool, and with GNU/Linux native binaries.