What makes Unreal Tournament 99 so great?

[UTX]

I want to know what makes Unreal Tournament 99 so great, why we keep coming back to it after so many years.
We all know it is different from the newer games and I have seen people say Unreal Tournament 4 is like a brother to the UT3 rather than UT99. I have not been able to play any of the newer games so I don't know first hand myself although I have seen a couple of videos from UT 2K3/2K4, UT3 and UT4 I can't say I know the differences.
So what is it? How can we make UT4 into a real successor of UT99? Is it really that good or just the nostalgia?
Share your thoughts.

[MrLoathsome]

Tentacles.


Also, Yay beer!

[SilverSound]

I'm not much of a fan of the newer games. I enjoy this game so much because it was the very first game I ever played. It got me into Music. It got me into shooters. It started a lot of things for me personally.

But because I've played the others I can definitely say that none of them are similar to UT99. The double jump and wall jumps make it different right off the bat. Map size and styles also. As well as feel. That also plays into the weapons.

So it's a lot of things. For some it's one thing. For others it's feels. For me It's what I listed. My first favorite sound track. My first shooter. I have a lot of memories.

[Renegade]

The simplicity of its design. Pure BSP, smooth movement, simple weapons. Because of its simplicity, It's much easier to create custom content for, too.
I've played UT2k4 and UT3 and the UT4 Beta, and they all feel so clunky compared to the original.

[MrLoathsome]

What those last 2 guys posted is the correct answer.

(Tentacles are what made Unreal so great. And they work in UT also.)

[ShaiHulud]

Firstly, because of the people that I know through the game. Second, I'm not much into games any more - but since UT has been with me for so long, if I'm going to play something, I'll stick with the familiar. And lastly because my PC isn't up to running anything much more recent anyway!

[sektor2111]

UT is just UT'99 as it is, being a cute race in getting busy with fixing and tuning (including tentacles).

A dude bought officially a new game (not shooter and no names for good reasons) and it was trying to install it correctly. Registering procedures were pathetic and crappy like never been in any things called games and it was not a cheap one. Finally he got it registered by hacky way and even sending an e-mail to owner company. They appologised and responded that will send next version for free because of troubles created.
And now: Why I should bother to play games putting on knees my PC since UT runs properly + has simple modding features. Anyone who wants new iterators, states in objects, access outside of UT from a mutator and all crap, feel free to do such things, the question is if anyone is willing to this make game a mess. People are playing UT for what it is not for what is pushed to be. This engine already clamped creativity ? I don't think so ? What creativity ? Pixels and colors ? That's all ? How about effects, A.I., some decos tweaking, etc... Some modders were busy to make game unwanted, when UT will look and move like other game, I'll bet UT players won't play it any longer.

[FXANBSS]

The nostalgia and quantity.

The engine is very well made, UT99 can survive even in Windows Ultra.
Unreal Engine is the most flexible engine, technically, it's not my opinion.

There are a lot of custom monsters, specially in EXU2, it has over 600 custom monsters by Lord Waffnuffly.
- Also, there are huge tentacles in the sky that fires projectiles at you,
- There are squids that shots lasers with his eyes. omg
- Ships that shots everything at you. Plasma, lasers, even blue balls of death.
- Flying legless titan that has 300000 HP.
- EXTREMELY HUGE Gasbag Boss.

[sektor2111]

UT99 can survive even in Windows Ultra.

Then checkout troubles toward Win10 - tweaks required which never existed in the past.
The rest of limits if are not known yet, perhaps I have to remember to modders:
- 4 touchers;
- CPU Cycles not CPU Timers - a logic deduction - this a PROBLEM after all because you are easily fooled;
- IpV4 usage - we have heard about V6 after all;
- No support for new CPU instructions;
- ect.

- Also, there are huge tentacles in the sky that fires projectiles at you,
- There are squids that shots lasers with his eyes. omg
- Ships that shots everything at you. Plasma, lasers, even blue balls of death.
- Flying legless titan that has 300000 HP.
- EXTREMELY HUGE Gasbag Boss.

This is a not big deal - you have been already fooled. A Pawn might hold 1000000 health even on PIII machines + Lasers + then rest of 0 power stuff, you haven't understood what is about anyway. The only enhancement might be 600 Monsters - That's the real load making even a QuadCore to go down when all those are Pawns going Path Seekers.
A single time I pushed in combat 400 creatures and framerate went in toillete + CPU usage has been boosted at maximum.
If you wanna test you machine and to find it wick I'll make a small tool (around 5 kb) and I'll tell you a MH map where you can force your CPU at limits, not with brushes, not with colors, not with textures or lights, but creatures will devastate your CPU resources in seconds.

[FXANBSS]

Hey, i frequently play at 1-8 fps.
The fps doesn't matter for me anyway.

Yeah, that is the framerate that i got while playing, there are over 1350 monsters in these maps i play.
It lags even more when you gib the monsters.

(I think we are going a bit off-topic.)

[papercoffee]

I can't talk for UT3 or UT4 both can't be handled by my old rig... UT3 just in 640x480 without any shader and effects (it looked like Doom... but I still owned the server with this settings ). UT4 is totally out of my reach.

But Ut2k3 and 2k4 are fun games ...but with an even more dead community than UT99. Hardly any server in my region where I can play without lags. On top of it everything feels slower and optimized for vehicle fights (yes even 2k3) ...It doesn't make sense to use a buggy if your character can run nearly as fast as it. So they had to slow the player down. To compensate the slow movements did they add double-jumps and wall-jumps ... great.

UT99 is fast with simple mechanics and has one of the most balanced weapons in game history.
Customizable bots, Mutator, and a shit load of content.
And you get the Editor to create your own stuff.
And² some insane coder freaks how enhance this old game till now... thanks to you guys.


tl;dr. I hate UT99. WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA just kidding!

[Hellkeeper]

Well I came to love this kind of hysterical arena shooters. Quake games never did it for me but I fell in love with the Unreal series. Now I'm more of a UT2004/2003 guy myself, but still I come back regularily to UT99.

Unreal has the greatest arsenal I've ever seen, every weapon is cool and fun.
The content is so diverse and creative, there's nothing that quite compares. Some of my best memories about gaming are of checking endless lists of mods, maps, skins, etc. and dowloading and testing tons of stuff. I was a bit young in the UT99 glory days but I took part in the greatest years of UT200X and I'll always be nostalgic of all the creativity and non-stop novelty we all had, it was incredible. There are games which had such a conjunction of talents, but I wasn't interested in them (looking at you, HL2 and Q3).
Bot support with bots competent enough to have fun all alone by myself.
General style and the atmosphere of the maps, the awesome music of all installments of the series, etc.

And UT99 shines in a special light because, when you compare it to the other Unreal Games:

- It's infinitely more polished than Unreal was. Point goes to UT99.
- All the weak points of UT200X are strong points of UT99. UT99 comes out on top.
- You understand what you're looking at in UT99. UT3 is a confusing mass of purple, blue and white which looks like ass. UT99 it is.

[SilverSound]

Huh. Is it normal for me to be able to spawn 600 bots into a CTF match? I can do it with out the game crashing or slowing down. Actually I did this in Siege....because I thought it was funny to have 500 bots with Impact hammers following me into battle. It twas a Blood fest. The game crashed at 950 I think. I add them in 50 at a time.

[Dr.Flay]

Modability and UEd.

[Chamberly]

I may only started playing UT99 since 2011 (5 yrs ago!) but the comparison to UT3/UT2k4 is just a big difference to me imo and it was just not my type of fan about those graphic and how it was set up (movement wise)..

But that isn't all. Playing, communicating, learning, some moderation, developing, and heck even some nice lesson for RL situation from all of this... I won't go into detail on that but yeah. <3