Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament [UT4]

[Swanky]

yeah but that could have been any number of reasons. UT4 is still in very early WIP and I guess they did take a lot of stuff from UT3 just to test things out. The hectic combat in the first vid didn't show much other than that they already seem to have decent map ideas, but that one was a little crowded. I liked the deck movement test vid which seemed just like UT classic setting, a little slower than UT Hardcore setting so the general gameplay direction seems fine to me. It seems they also cut back on dodge movement. Smart decision. As for the specs, there is no optimization being done yet so that could have been the impact on your machine, even without all the fancy u4-engine tricks played out.

[Hellkeeper]

They cut back on dodge movement, but this weird dodge move which reminds me of warsow seems interesting. I like the movement we see right now, it's quite UT-ish.

[Wises]

they imported UT3 weapons just so there was something to test.. everything from movement to looks to weapons to models is being discussed on their forums and they consider all sides of the series.

so best way to get point a cross would be to comment there on their forums under said thread

personally I like where this is going and simple aesthetic changes can easily be made on this engine. also changing movement adding other moves and stuff through the use of blueprints system should be a sinch.

just imaging the maps you guys could make in this engine will be awesome.

[Hellkeeper]

That's the problem, I can't imagine making a map for it.
It looks awesome yes, but how much time and effort do you have to invest to make something look good? And what kind of computer do you need? My comp is 7 years old, probably won't support the game and Even UT3 was already so much more demanding in terms of work to make a full map...

On the other hand, those who can will are going to make awesome stuff given how great this engine seems.

[Torax]

Nice videos, but... as said Hellkeeper - who will be agree to throw a pack of money for PC upgrade to be able to play this game?

In my opinion Unreal Tournament and Unreal 1 are still alive in 2 very simple causes:

1st - ability to customize the game
Everybody of us know that there are dozens of mods around whole internet. Some are good, some are weird, some are totally insane - no matter. Thanks to relatively easy scripting syntax and map editor. As for me i'd never saw a player who played ALL mods EVER designed for UT.

2nd - Unpretentiousness to the system requirements.
I'm easilly running UT at 486 processor.
Nearly without any problems:ironic:

What will be if i wish make some mod for dat UT4? I will need to buy license for UEngine 4? Spent years to understand it's syntax? I still don't completely understand synthax of UT2004. I say nothing about how stuff made in UDK - i have no ability even look at it, UDK wont launch at my enough powerful home PC.

I faster understood how to write scripts in Unity. It's a good engine in good hands and can provide even more fantastic picture and visual effects than 4th generation of UEngine can provide. And i dont need to spend not less then 1000-2000$ to upgrade my PC - i tried to run Unity even on my old PC with 486 CPU.
And it worked. And nearly all eyecandies worked. Except maybe some specific ones, which need Shader versions 3.0 and higher (if they exist).

They will fail with that UT4 as Epic failed with UT3.
I thought once about idea to make a kind of UT using Unity. But i'm sure that Epic company will apply an EPIC sanctions to my person..

[Wises]

I understand that it seems daunting to have to relearn or learn this new engine indeed.
we are all struggling to grasp/understand it with little to no experience in using it.

also our computers are maybe a little dated and perhaps hardware/money is hard to come by to upgrade in these times.
I myself still run an AMD dual core P.O.S with about 4Gb ram and a HD radeon series 3 graphics card which I got for $80 bout a year ago.

my system pretty much plays everything I need it to.. including games from this year.

in short what I like about this new UT is basically they are trying to bring back the UNREAL aspect with all the bells and whistles.
for myself aesthetics (looks) are just as important as game play and usability.

there is one game my computer has never been able to play properly and that's UT99 the only game I actually want to play is... actually unplayable on my system.

have installed / backed / cracked /patched everything to get it to run UT .. but nope , speed ups / slow downs / jittery - screen tearing experience for the last 5-6 years has been character building to say the least.

and watching it die a slide painful death has been hard as well.

the only way I can foresee any future for this game is unfortunately in the new Engine IMO and therefore my aspirations have moved there.

so if/when I can upgrade the system to something a little more modern that's where I'm personally headding.

cheers

[Hellkeeper]

Some of your problems seem to be ones that can be solved.. The slow down/speed up thing at least sounds like the usual dual core problem which is resolved with correctly set OpenGl rendering...

[_naruto_999]

That's the problem, I can't imagine making a map for it.
It looks awesome yes, but how much time and effort do you have to invest to make something look good? And what kind of computer do you need? My comp is 7 years old, probably won't support the game and Even UT3 was already so much more demanding in terms of work to make a full map...

On the other hand, those who can will are going to make awesome stuff given how great this engine seems.

Mapping is the same thing as modelling now. You just block out with BSP and rest is pure modelling in the same way artists model for movies.

[papercoffee]

On the other hand, those who can will are going to make awesome stuff given how great this engine seems.

I try to imagine what Creavion could do in this engine ... oh boy ...

[Hellkeeper]

Mapping is the same thing as modelling now. You just block out with BSP and rest is pure modelling in the same way artists model for movies.

Indeed. The problem is they used to be very different. Case in point: I can map, but I can't model. So I'm stuck in the pre-2007 world.

[Wises]

the dual core issues stem from AMD Speed stepping as well.. as other things.
by default HP Disallowed changing this setting through the BIOS which I had to flash with a non standard firmware to enable switching this on/off.

not sure what the OpenGL settings are but vaguely remember having to set a fixed frame rate or something to help.

never found a fix for screen tearing ... and WIFI related connection issues.

we are only limited by the boundaries we ourselves set...

incognito

latest update some models , translocators & CTF Face Classic.

Unreal Tournament: Project Update - CTF, Transloc…:

[UT99.org]

have installed / backed / cracked /patched everything to get it to run UT .. but nope , speed ups / slow downs / jittery - screen tearing experience for the last 5-6 years has been character building to say the least.

The engine's old and content developers know of a bunch of limitations. However, I don't know how you could have this much trouble. Yes a few things require work-arounds. But this stuff is well documented.

I myself still run an AMD dual core P.O.S with about 4Gb ram and a HD radeon series 3 graphics card which I got for $80 bout a year ago.

OK so you talk of screen tearing but you don't get that in modern games? Yeah there's a little screen tearing that you might have to live with mostly occurring with bad internet and self-boosting (see newnet fixes). This sounds more likely related to you playing on wireless as per what you said here

never found a fix for screen tearing ... and WIFI related connection issues.

I'd propose the following: try offline until you get it working right, if possible show us what it looks like. I know I've had mouse not moving correctly when direct input is on (Failed drivers) in which case could be mistaken for screen tear? note this setting needs game restart to take effect when switched on or off

I'll add to that... If determined to be fine offline, try low netspeed setting, shouldn't need higher than 7000, and the minimum is like 2600. Or ditch the wireless, odds are it's sending data too randomly as you would expect, and other games can handle this better than UT which is not necessarily a bad thing, it IS your favorite game there's probably a reason for it. If it is still 'tearing' offline, please upload an example to more clearly articulate your point

The speedstep/AMD thing is like this: older AMD cpus, mine was 64bit, was like playing in low gravity. I still see players occasionally who have this, and there is a launcher that fixes it. The other thing you see sometimes is players warping when they swear they are not downloading and nobody on their network is, note not talking about wireless. This is the speedstep that you can fix through the bios or use UT's commandline -cpuspeed. I'm sure this timing issue is documented somewhere. note that this is related to cpu cores changing their value dynamicly like you pointed to in your BIOS. Thirdly since the game was designed before dynamic core changing it's said that it doesn't support multiple cores properly either. Luckily anything after XP will allocate it to the first core automatically, any core would work but not multiples. Older operating systems require a command-prompt script that will do this which I can look up for you if you are still using an old OS. For now, manually go to task manager and set affinity.

Hope all this helps someone, prefer if you used actual proof instead of burying your head in the sand and complaining without real specifics

About THIS
[youtube]Pt8DcK-Hhf0[/youtube]

It actually looks a huge improvement over UT3/UT200x

Of note:

CTF has a half-time where the teams have a couple of minutes to discuss strategy, even up teams, have a break. The map is then reversed so you are playing in the opposite direction

As part of NW CTF naturally they are working on the translocator this week. My thoughts are telefragging needs to be the focus, click click snap just like shock. As well as moving around the map. Don't focus on helping them find places to camp where they can only get there with the translocator. Don't add a charge time. If they don't want people batting around the beacon like a hockey puck add a range/damage limit, the beacon dies when it gets hit with too much force

Personally, wish they'd kept focus on DM and BT and then got the weapon models all together. What pisses me off is the lack of weapon interactions in later UTs. You can almost draw up a chart for UT99 of weapons along the top, weapons down the side. Then do percentage of which weapon is more likely to win the fight, taking skill into account. This makes a much better game for casters and spectators as well, can actually say things like 'player has weapon X he needs to use it in this way if he wants to win this fight' and then 'ohh wow this guys really good, he played it perfectly'. Not some raging spam-fest to see who can get the luckiest. I like the weapon for weapon counters, but not 100% of the time either. the good thing with UT is when new players finally figure out every weapon is good and depending on the situation some are even better. Or in other words, those first time players in LMS who use 48 rockets then go to the flak and so forth it's only because they are new and actually the enforcer and bio rifle, hell, even the impact hammer and translocator are just as powerful if not more. Anyway, my 2 cents on what I'm seeing and no I haven't played it yet!

[Hellkeeper]

It actually looks a huge improvement over UT3/UT200x

Of note:

CTF has a half-time where the teams have a couple of minutes to discuss strategy, even up teams, have a break. The map is then reversed so you are playing in the opposite direction

I don't see an "improvement" over UT200X. Is it just the fact they're using the UT99 Face? The UT2 one was cool too. This half-time thing however I don't like at all. It might be very good in asymetrical CTF maps to switch positions, but 1) most maps are symetrical, 2) a pause in the middle of the game just breaks the flow. I can't imagine people on public servers discussing any meaningful strategy before just clicking like maniacs on the "ready" button (if provided), while pickup teams and clans will have a strategy already set or will be discussing over a teamspeak of some sort. Anyway, I'm not convinced about the half-time. I'd rather have map designers set a bAsymetrical=True parameter to their map which switches the positions at about 50% of the timelimit OR scorelimit (depending on the first to be reached) and normal maps remain normal.

This might be the UT200X old fart talking but I'd like to see BR make its return. It was a great mode which suffered from too little maps, very bad passing in UT2003 and never had its chance to shine. It was awesome though.

[UT99.org]

They mentioned adding dodge-keys. I don't think anyone really considers binds like this cheating any more. I don't think they'd be used very often. Like the example they give if you are on the edge of a cliff and you want to dodge but that first time you press it you fall off.

But I'm a huge fan of the walk key, why would I want my view to go down every time I want to walk. Are they saying the player model crouches but the view won't go to crouch position when you crouch. That seriously wouldn't make any sense. I guess this stems from the boots system of later UTs, I don't exactly want to double jump to use boots I would rather have a separate key doing a normal jump or hold a walk button to not use the boots. This isn't even about boots though it's about movement, ask anyone who's ever played BT whether they should add walk it's always going to be a yes. I even hit it and hold it mid-dodge all the time out of habbit.

Another thing, I doubt this is permanent but it would be so Counter Strikey, when a flag is captured everyone is restarted at spawn points. Probably a mutator. I can imagine it helping sort out the flow of maps and the weapons while they'r still in progess. In fact I always wanted to do something like this in a big DeathMatch map with rooms where two players would spawn in a room both always having full health, as a test of who can win a one frag duel each time when their health is the same. I look forward to their streams even more now that we're seeing something! Already got a wall poster on the way of that Liandri map from last stream haha

Edit: I'll prob register at their forums when I get time just to post this (since they working on xlocator at the moment). What do you guys think of the idea:

if you drop your translocator beacon on top of somebody elses, and they translocate to their beacon, it auto-disrupts and telefrags them? I always thought if they left it in an obvious place and you are not really intending to use the translocator that you should be able to do this. Why spend 20 seconds shooting rockets at it to disrupt it? There would be complication, and obviously like I stated earlier I'm very anti laming. Which in lay terms is camping like they were encouraging new players to do on their official stream. Find some place that is hard to get to and then camp there, then find yourself on the bottom of the scoreboard. Or worse, win the game by pissing everyone else off, not timing powerups/pickups or controlling the map, shooting peoples back or groups of people from a distance should not be rewarded IMO. But wait, as I was saying, there would be stacks of translocator beacons, so who gets the frag? Would it be the person who's xlocator is at the top? or the one that is on top of the victim? It's a new concept and it wouldn't work well if two xlocators fit neatly on top of one, so they'd have to pancake, which means it would take skill and maybe time to have it 'drop' or bounce and land on top of the pile. Maybe I'll make a UT99 variant since I always wanted to disrupt easily at the cost of my being able to xloc, (not wanting to be too overpowered). They can always recall it back too which could be interesting when the hunter has decided to give up his arms for potentially nothing

[Wises]

the fix is actually quite simple really.. just need to build up a cheap computer and done.
just no time for it atm.. in saying that the boys are still about (playing now)..

I guess its just too much hassle to get my rig UT friendly and Tbh it ain't worth it.

thanks for the feedback.. and yup I know all of that already (pretty much)

best fix buy cheap ass pentium4 with xp and 1/2 gig ram.

done.

Re:UT4 .. yup looking good and the system which is used to mod/map is supposed to be simple compared to the broken UEd