Reviving UT Movement

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Feralidragon
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Reviving UT Movement

Post by Feralidragon »

http://www.ut99.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2403

These lists will be updated everyday.

So if you want to help, post here or at the community you were informed at telling so, and please propose here what should be in the "to do" list, in which order and who is willing to do what.


Who's going to help



UT99.org: http://www.ut99.org/forum/index.php

Myth
Feralidragon
Shadow


UT-SLV.com: http://www.ut-slv.com/forum/index.php

[DID]Madis
NinjaNali
DeadlySin
Crossy


House of Hermskii {HOH} http://hermskii.com/Forum/index.php

EA_Elemental


So far 3 Communities/Clans involved and 8 people. Let's see how this goes.



To do List


1 - Choose a support for the general community: before all, we need to choose if we are going either to create a new or use an existing active community as our community base/central (need everyone's opinions and support, from all the communities, as this is the most difficult part and it needs to please ideally everyone)

2 - Choose the content support and host: after the step 1, we need a solid source of all maps, mods, etc, be it from another community or from a normal host (I consider this the next step, since there are already some huge hosts full of these files existing, and more than one having the same ones)

3 - Then we need to organize the community, and a sugestion would be this:
* Releases
* Development
* Reviews
* <Add some weekly discussion here, like a map or the week, or mod, or player or developer>
* General Section - Really general regarding UT
* GameTypes
* Communities Section - Each community participating may have its own section, with its "subsections", with its own mods and admins, links and everything
* Clans Section - Actually, this one can still be divided in clans types (Sniper, RX, SLV, MH, BT, etc)
* OffTopic Section

As you might have noticed, this style is already somewhat adopted in beyondunreal and unrealsp, and it works. Once anything in any community is released, it can go to a news page (both in UT is Epic says yes and in community's front page).

4 - Decide which admins will take this along: obviouslly, any community this big needs a good set of admins and mods.
And so, each Community has full control of his own section and will decide who's going to be a mod or admin there, and the same thing regarding the Clans. Regarding the OffTopic and General sections, that should be decided by everyone, by equal, and ideally, it could be some of the same guys that take care of their clans or communities, and it has to be a good number of them, since they also may have already their communities to manage. This should have enough people so no one has to do a "big" job around here.
Also, a few top admins or "big bosses" must exist, but those depend a lot on the decisions regarding the steps 1 and 2.

5 - After all this, we must give it a time of around 1 month, so it can have proper activity and a solid community, plus enhance it so people can get what they want and feel integrated in the community.

6 - If everything goes along, then it's time to write a little "letter" to Epic to make the big request.


Now, this is a general "to do list", so you can get the idea, and give your sugestions and points of view. However, I personally consider step 1 the most difficult one to achieve, since it has to be done by everyone and it will need a level of organization and willing from several admins around there to be achieved.
Also, I built this list as a SUGESTION on what to do, so if you see something really stupid above, don't have any problems in saying it.

In a last note, as you see, the list sugests the full joinage of all the communities in a single one without loosing any of them, so we can revive the community up and do the request to Epic with all the community as backup.

Now if you are willing to help, please report in the community you saw this or here (none of you need to register here to make a reply, just reply in the threads I created in your communities or let one of any currently registered users say it).

If we get enough people and communities in this, then you have a little chance of making UT what it was some years ago, in activity, but if not, well, you can't blame anyone at all but yourselves.
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by rohitggarg »

An initial todo would help i guess.. If somebody is gonna be helping, he would atleast know what is expected.
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by EA_Elemental »

Well i will help in ANY way i can at all, i certainly dont want UT To die, However; You have got to remember that one day Unreal WILL die, Everything in this universe have a life cycle, and at the end of the cycle there is nothing more for it to do, I Have been in this cycle now for almost 17 years, and UT about 9-10 years, I Guess we have just got to accept that UT Can only be customised to an extent, though we have so many great coders, map designers, texture makers, music composers, we must accept these people move on, and each loss to UT Is another gunshot to the chest to UT, Eventually UT Is gonna be customised so much that its no longer UT, that will more likely the death bed to UT.

All we will be doing here is putting some more juice in Unreal's Life Support machine but its definately worth a try to get it to stay around a little longer.

But Count me in! i will do all i can to find these new "battery's" for the "Life Support Machine"

thanx ya'll EA
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by smeerkat »

Since Nali City has become Hourences' private blog, the most important thing is to get a new map portal. This should be the HQ for the UT community, since it has an easy URL to remember.

Next, contact Beyond Unreal for permission to link to all the UT maps that already reside on their server. No need to move all those maps to another server.
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by NinjaNali »

Would the other current members of this be happy if we can shorten the first point to be asking ourselves whether everyone wants an updated UT99.org or if they want a new website for this? I can't see any reason why anyone would want to move to a different website that wasn't specially made for this, if something like that is going to happen.

I'm with what smeercat said too, having UT99.org as the resource centre for UT99 just makes so much sense. I assume with it already being a website it's going to be somewhat easier to get everything on here rather then starting something new up as well.
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by [did]Madis »

NinjaNali wrote:Would the other current members of this be happy if we can shorten the first point to be asking ourselves whether everyone wants an updated UT99.org or if they want a new website for this? I can't see any reason why anyone would want to move to a different website that wasn't specially made for this, if something like that is going to happen.

I'm with what smeercat said too, having UT99.org as the resource centre for UT99 just makes so much sense. I assume with it already being a website it's going to be somewhat easier to get everything on here rather then starting something new up as well.
4 - Decide which admins will take this along

Also, a few top admins or "big bosses" must exist, but those depend a lot on the decisions regarding the steps 1 and 2.


I agree that the site should be ut99.org, but I have a concern regarding that. With all due respect towards Feralidragon and others running this site, all of us are basically nobodies in the general Unreal community (at least nobody of any particular importance). If we want to get anywhere with #6, then we also need a bunch of administrators that are respected and trusted amongst the members of the UT community and amongst Epic. What I'm trying to say is that there should be some sort of power sharing or general neutrality amongst the admins to avoid all kinds of possible feuds. For example, the content host or the website host shouldn't have any sort of higher decisive power in any community related issues. Every major decision should be made with the consensus of the majority of administrators, of which the majority should be people with a keen interest in keeping UT afloat and who have garnered some amount of respect amongst the UT community (of which the majority can be found amongst the mappers and modders in unrealsp, beyondunreal and unrealadmin).



I have tons of other things I want to say, and have wanted to for a couple of days right now, but the ideas are still somewhat mixed up in my head. I'll post them once I can comprehensively regulate them into a wall of text.
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Feralidragon
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by Feralidragon »

Well, in that case, and if everyone agrees, then this forum can be that center, and as NinjaNali said, then this forum must be severally updated indeed.

About "people of great importance" being part of the high admin ranks here, I completelly agree.
The only problem is how we spread it to some of those people, since at least in BU there are some of those people, but I didn't post anything there due to the same exact situation in RB (so in BU and RB they don't know a thing about all this).

And other people are either inactive or won't give a sh*t to this, so we really need to think carefully about that.

The ideal thing would be some admins from other communities (good ones of course) to be part of it. Personally, if people really want this forum to be that center, we need to pick some good admins by hand, not only in our eyes, but in the eyes of community in general, so from this point on, although I am already a mod in this forum, I will only to continue to be one only if general community agrees (although I don't know if the rest mods around here agree with this perception regarding them), the only real admin here now is Shade, since he's the one hosting this forum.

I will now try to know exactly the whole situation of this forum, to see if this forum is really able to run that "center" or not. Until I give some more news, please continue with all the sugestions and changes you have in mind :tu:
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by [did]Madis »

Key of approaching people in BU is trough UnrealSP imo. If they're interested, they'll hopefully take more people along from BU themselves. At least that's how I see it. Approach someone like Proph, zYnthetic and other UnrealSP regulars who have a presence on BU too.
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by gopostal »

I have posted (mostly privately) to several of the UnrealSP guys over the years about importing maps into MH and I have always found them to be very good to deal with.

You know, another thought is to work from the bottom up and create an academy for UT development. If I google "UT map packs" I'll get 66 million hits. If I google "unrealscript help" I get 440,000 hits, with a quick scan of the first hundred being requests for help in doing something. Losing developers is a serious issue, but there is still a large pool of interest. Myself I'm a grade "C" coder (on my best day) but I still get bombarded by script help requests EVERY single time my messenger shows me alive. There is a massive hole there for developing the developers (think 3D buzz for UT) and I'm betting the heavy hitters of UT coding would be very much for something like that.

You create a forum, drama-free, where people can all come together and ask and learn from each other without the constraints of leadership and direction and group bullshit, that will be a huge asset to the community and keeping the game alive. To wit: I used to run the Invasion Vault, a spot where 2004 Invasion monsters and mods could be downloaded freely, without registration. My biggest download (by a factor of three)? A group of video tutorials that explained mapping, server setup, and light recoding. Not the monsters, not the mods. People wanted to learn.

Having a group of admins from various clans and sects will fail, and I'm sorry for that. History has borne this out again and again. Best put effort into something new and fresh. That being said, kudos to you for what you are doing, and add me agutgopostal(at)live(dot)com to your messenger if I can assist.
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by TheDane »

I've teamed up with gopostal before, together we can do wonders when it comes to development in UT. The things I can't do he can do and vice versa. However, I know most of you guys from your work in UT so you don't come short on that. But, yes there is a but .... everything these days in taking actions are based on either an individual having a great idea or a small group. They fade out quite fast compared to the time of build, like the things i initiate ... i get told the demand is this ... then i try deliver this .. but then the demand has chaged to that .... and when i deliver that it's changed once again. What I try to say is that where it all fails is when it comes to the players and server admins. The majority of the players simply doesn't care about what goes on behind, and most of the server admins are stubborn ego's who couldn't care less about what's going on outside their own part of the community. Now this is no cliam, open your eyes and you will agree. The UT community is devided into small subcommunities based on their gamestyle. A zark sniper couldn't care less about a new mod for BunnySux .. ehm ... BunnyTrack and vice versa.

I started out as a "zark sniper" in a "camper clan" .... a narrow community these days, but still got a few busy servers so still alive. I used to play Igib DOM, but that community is long gone with 0 servers active. I've also played a lot of MH which now IMO is totaly ruined by bad server admins placing petyfull unplayable maps on their servers just because they think "the more the better". I'm a proud mapper, I hate to just run in a cube through another cube and into another cube, I like good environments when i play and therefore i stopped playing MH again, because the players didn't care about that, they actualy vote for maps like Godz v564534fix543x2beta7_update3 over and over again.

No, I want to help with a revival of the UT community, but i find it impossible. If you cant present to me a plan where you get the players attention, then I'll jump onboard.
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by Fuzz_Ball »

This is a good idea at least.

I'm still in the game but it's taking me a long time to get up to speed on development. I have no intention of leaving the game anytime soon.

I'm generally lazy, non-committed and somewhat detached.
Aside from that, I play online almost daily, stay active in various forums and talk UT to non-beleivers often.

Here's an idea, make a copy of UT for your friends, print some basic instructions for them to get setup, updated, bonus-packed, patched and online.

The best thing I like about UT99 is the portability of it. There is hardly a machine alive today that can't run it. It takes up little harddrive space compared to today's resource hogs. Due to the different game types, there's plenty of variety. Most of all IT's STILL DAMN FUN!

We still have a community of good people and I'm making friends around the world. Sure there are a few rotten apples, but isn't that daily life? Spread the word and keep active.
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by Myth »

I fear that the whole thing will collapse because of the lack of organization and over-complication. :|
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by MSuLL »

Myth wrote:I fear that the whole thing will collapse because of the lack of organization and over-complication. :|
You are right, but here's some thoughts on how to prevent that:

Start small, guys, and build it up. This idea of having the project finished in one month is unrealistic. Your primary goal should be to get the forum organized a little differently and then to setup a portal (front page) to the forum. After that, you should only have one worry: stuffing the site with content. Note I said site, not forum. The forum is *not* the place to post such things. What you'll want is some sort of script that shows all files in pretty little categories, perhaps sorting options like "most recent", "most popular", etc. Players can anonymously comment on files and let people know what they think.

After all of this - 6 months minimum - perhaps comes the time to ask Epic. While I appreciate you want to write a nice formal "letter" to Epic, I can assure you it will go straight to the trash. You want connections in order to get something like that done. I know a few people who've had interaction with Epic, and I'm a player in good standing myself. For something like this, you don't want to write. Call by phone, then follow up with an e-mail. You'll want personal connections in order to get these things worked out.

- MSuLL
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Feralidragon
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by Feralidragon »

Agreed. I already saw that type of layout doing very well in several sites (not UT ones), so I guess that would be the best solution.

I'm still waiting for Shade's opinion in all this (since he's the admin of all this), going to PM him, so expect some news as soon as Shade answers.
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Re: Reviving UT Movement

Post by LiquidSith »

Hello world!

Just like you, I also want to bring back the UT community. If you want ANYTHING, let me know.
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