Unreal Tournament 469

[anth]

Hello everyone,

I know this has already been mentioned in two other topics, but I figured it would probably be best to make an official topic too. I'm working on a new UT patch (version 469). Since this is officially an OldUnreal project, the official announcement is on their forum:

https://www.oldunreal.com/cgi-bin/yabb2 ... 1569587267

This forum obviously has lots of UT99 players, modders, mappers, coders, etc., so if there is anything you would like to ask or suggest, then feel free to do it here. I will try my best to answer as much as I can.

Cheers,
anth

[darksonny]

Hi good news then!
As you are a very busy guy I have some several question about what possibilities could be or not be done in this patch i ask here:

- Will the U-Windows be updated in the sense of improving font scaling (I have some issues reading im 45 old year :/ )and screen scaling to get rid those black vertical screen bands?
- How can ut manage when you try to load more than 1000 maps per gametype? I tried this and sometimes it crash and close windows
- How will you manage the target pointer? I saw somewhere sniper gets a bit out of the center page when is scaled in nowadays bigger screens.
- Any upgrade or improvements about using maps from unreal 227 without using unreal's stock weapon to be using the ut goty ones instead? Not all unreal 227 maps supports weapon/tems switching inside ut goty to ut goty weapons
- Will (alike ut2k4) you get rid the strong dependancy of umx files tied to unr maps? Only left alone the u, int, uax and utx files? Not easy sometimes find that music what was appended to the map, so I sometimes got frustrated not to play x map

Thanks in advance for your contribution!

[Swanky]

Overall I'd say this is good news. I know of certain license agreements from other teams such as Caustic Creative with their Deus Ex Revision project (which is also Unreal Engine based - not sure whether you could shortcut a few engine related bugfixes by contacting them...) and this is certainly a good stable base to work from. Less fear of project getting shut down and such.
While I would like to see various engine related bugfixes such as the brightness bugfix and editor improvements (align to wall... sigh), I am more curious as to what you have specifically planned.

[Berserker]

Here is my report on scaling. I agree with darksonny, as UT99 definitely has huge scaling issues when it comes to higher resolutions on modern monitors.

The overall scaling with 1080p monitors is somewhat acceptable, but the most annoying issue of all is the crosshair scaling. ACE already has a feature to battle this issue with a crosshair scale command, but the downside to that is that you have to be connected to an ACE server, so when you play offline, the crosshair will be very big and unusable. Also I'm not sure if you guys noticed, but the sniper zoom crosshair scale is also affected in the same way as the main crosshair is - it gets bigger with higher resolutions. ACE does not have crosshair scale for sniper zoom as far as I know.

So I addressed some scaling issues on 1080p resolution. But when you try to play the game on a higher resolution like 2K, the overall scaling gets even worse. And the worst of all is the crosshair and the sniper crosshair. At this point it is pretty much unplayable. I can imagine how messed up the scaling can get on 4K monitors.

Overall, there should be no scaling applied to the crosshairs. They should remain the same size even on 4K monitors, yes it could look quite small on 4K, but if crosshair scaling is applied in any way, you would ALWAYS get jagged or blurry edges on the crosshair and the crosshair will not retain its crisp pixels on the edges.

[anth]

Scaling: I'm well aware of all of the scaling issues. I have 4K monitors myself. I've already added crosshair scaling to the standard hud and options to configure crosshair scaling to the standard in-game menu.

I'm currently working on making all applications (UCC, Setup, UT, UnrealEd) high-DPI aware so they don't look terrible on high-resolution monitors. This requires a lot of changes in the Window manager.

After this, we will have to do the same thing for UWindow (the in-game window manager).

High map counts: This is fixed in 469. Getting and sorting map names happens in C++ now. This solves all of the performance and stability issues.

Unreal maps: We have not looked into this yet. This is not a priority right now.

umx dependencies: I'm afraid I don't understand the question...

[darksonny]

umx dependencies: I'm afraid I don't understand the question...

Im referring to the ut2004 loading map mode, when the ogg files are not needed to load successfully the map but other files depends to utz, usx, int, u files which I could see this understandable. This does not happen in the same way for ut goty, I dint understand when ut2k4 went gold, music are not dependable to load the map you could load the map without any trouble.

You are forced to look for the umx file first over internet if this is needed to load the map, otherway go to the trash if not found in no where.

Is there any chance to un-tie that dependency for umx files like ut2k4 did without ogg files (they are optional you could load with ogg files or without it)? I think not, but I ask you as expert programmer in this area.

[Berserker]

Amazing news.
Another question, will UT be able to handle fps higher than 200? I know UT has some terrible timing issues with high fps values, are these timing issues going to be addressed in this project? The problem is that 240hz monitors are becoming very popular now days and currently ACE and XC_Engine client is always locked at 200fps.

[Barbie]

You are forced to look for the umx file first over internet if this is needed to load the map

AFAIK you can use any UMX file; just rename it to the one that is missing.

[darksonny]

You are forced to look for the umx file first over internet if this is needed to load the map

AFAIK you can use any UMX file; just rename it to the one that is missing.

Huh? Is thst possible? o.o I will test this weekend

[Feralidragon]

@anth: Thanks for posting this here, now everyone should be able to understand what's going on behind the scenes more clearly.

@papercoffee: I think this ought to be pinned.

You are forced to look for the umx file first over internet if this is needed to load the map

AFAIK you can use any UMX file; just rename it to the one that is missing.

Huh? Is thst possible? o.o I will test this weekend

For personal use, sure, it works.
But if you host that map in a server, and a player happens to have the right umx file, then that player won't be able to join since there will be a file mismatching error.

[Dizzy]

Great news.

Will there be an overhaul of the netcode as part of this? I have been trying to get rid of my stuttering issues for years.

[papercoffee]

@papercoffee: I think this ought to be pinned.

I didn't do it but it is already pinned/sticky.

[Insidious849]

Deleted.

[JimmyCognitti]

How about real controller support (XInput devices)? Please, don't kill me for asking this.

[Dr.Flay]

Fixes I would like to put forward for inclusion in a patch.

DecalStay Plus
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=12826

Monster/ScriptedPawn Tweak
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=12893

SpecStart
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11569

UT2U1
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4872

Lower priority but useful for server admin or mappers
Weapons Tweak
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=12853

Actor Count/Delete Utility
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=12808

There are also 2 addons that I feel make UT more complete and flexible for players and server admin.
They are XConsole and XBrowser. Them or their functionality would be very welcome.