With the blessing of Epic Games, the team at OldUnreal continue maintaining the classic Unreal Tournament and they have a big new release out.
To this day the original Unreal Tournament still stands up exceptionally well, because Epic really had the feel of the gunplay and the level design nailed down quite nicely. On modern platforms though, the original is a bit — uh, well it has issues. The OldUnreal team thankfully continue pushing out upgrades. And if you weren't aware, the original did have a Linux build available too.
OldUnreal release 469 is out now with tons of bug fixes for this classic. It's a long list, with plenty of attention given to the Linux version too. Here's some Linux fixes:
- Fixed an issue where the mouse would get stuck in the middle of the game window on Linux and Mac.
- Fixed several issues that caused network connections to be terminated unexpectedly on Linux and Mac.
- Fixed a bug that caused the game viewport to have the wrong dimensions after resizing the game window on Linux or Mac.
- The ucc make commandlet now works on Linux and Mac.
- S3TC/DXT1 texture compression should now be available in the ucc tools for Linux and Mac (though obviously not in UnrealEd).
- The Linux and Mac clients now have clipboard support.
- The Linux and Mac clients finally support unicode! The most visible consequence is that player names with non-ascii characters in them will now display correctly when playing on Linux servers (provided that you use font textures with the proper unicode glyphs).
- Added selectedcursor support to the Linux and Mac clients.
- Added the -SETHOMEDIR= command line option. Normally, the game looks for the UnrealTournament.ini and User.ini files in ~/.utpg/System (on Linux), ~/Library/Application Support/Unreal Tournament/System (on Mac), or in UnrealTournament\System (on Windows). With this option, you can override the preferences path (e.g., ./ut-bin-x86 -sethomedir=~/.loki/ut/System).
For those curious, the OldUnreal patches also add in numerous other enhancements including a more modern OpenGL rendering system, SDL2 for Linux which should make the experience so much nicer, PNG support for screenshots, faster server downloads, raw input support and much more. You can pretty much considering it the ultimate version of Unreal Tournament.
The great news is that the 469 release is network compatible with "all previous public releases of UT (down to 432)". See more on it here.
It does need the original data files of course, which you can buy easily on GOG.com or Steam. You need to add the OldUnreal 469 release on top of an existing install. If you need help installing the original first, Lutris has a few installer scripts available.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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This is great to see, but does anyone know of anything similar for the original Unreal or UT2004?
4 Likes, Who?
UT is (mainly?) multiplayer, is it? The GOG page says it also has a single user mode. Any comment on the quality of that one?
Single player is the multi-player against bots.
2 Likes, Who?
Single player is the multi-player against bots.
To elaborate more: Single player is a tournament where you play against pre-specified bots on pre-specified levels, going up the ladder until you win the tournament.
It's good and fun, but it's not a single player campaign like the original unreal.
2 Likes, Who?
This is great to see, but does anyone know of anything similar for the original Unreal or UT2004?
Unreal 1 is definitely getting the same treatment. OldUnreal has been maintaining that game for over 10 years now. The next major update will include many of the Linux improvements we made for UT99. Afaik, noone is working on UT2004, though. Could be our next project. Who knows :)
10 Likes, Who?
This is great! 
Have to ask though, Why is the advanced tab no longer available on the Linux version
Have to ask though, Why is the advanced tab no longer available on the Linux version
0 Likes
This is great!
Have to ask though, Why is the advanced tab no longer available on the Linux version
We added that advanced tab just so we could tell players where their ini files are. The Windows client doesn't have this tab since you can edit the entire ini in-game using the preferences command. This command opens a window that shows you a property tree. The underlying code was never ported to Linux or Mac because it contains thousands of lines of Win32 MFC code. I have begun porting the preferences window to wxWidgets so we can add this feature to the other clients, but I do not expect to finish the port any time soon.
1 Likes, Who?
linuxjacques Sep 23, 2020
Why does the Steam page say only "single player?"
I assume multiplayer / LAN is supported with this updated version?
I assume multiplayer / LAN is supported with this updated version?
0 Likes
Why does the Steam page say only "single player?"The game seems to have no problem finding servers with active players.
I assume multiplayer / LAN is supported with this updated version?
(Of course I was too afraid to actually join any of those in case the players should turn out to be poor ghosts from 1999. Forever worrying about the upcoming Y2K... their only solace listening to When You Say Nothing At All by Ronan Keating over and over again...)
2 Likes, Who?
Excellent work. I have updated my old article from back in February:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/02/the-sad-case-of-unreal-engine-1-on-mesa-and-linux-in-2020
Now we just need an updated release of Rune. One can dream.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/02/the-sad-case-of-unreal-engine-1-on-mesa-and-linux-in-2020
Now we just need an updated release of Rune. One can dream.
2 Likes, Who?
Now we just need an updated release ofRune, Deus Ex, and Undying
One can dream.
2 Likes, Who?
This is great to see, but does anyone know of anything similar for the original Unreal or UT2004?the update for Unreal 1 from the same guys has been around for ages - the 227 patch
it's just that for all these years Epic CBA to give them similar NDA access to the UT source
0 Likes
UT 2004 is already in a playable state, just link some system libraries and you're set. The original UT port was so broken lately, I just uninstalled it recently. I didn't expect UT 469 to release so soon, what an amazing job! I'll have to test it as soon as possible.
2 Likes, Who?
This is great!
Have to ask though, Why is the advanced tab no longer available on the Linux version
We added that advanced tab just so we could tell players where their ini files are. The Windows client doesn't have this tab since you can edit the entire ini in-game using the preferences command. This command opens a window that shows you a property tree. The underlying code was never ported to Linux or Mac because it contains thousands of lines of Win32 MFC code. I have begun porting the preferences window to wxWidgets so we can add this feature to the other clients, but I do not expect to finish the port any time soon.
I see, guess I got mixed up with the preferences tab or whatever, the reason I had noticed as I was looking for the option to double the GUI size when changing res to 1440p.
Thanks for the explanation.
Did epic open up 2004 ? UT and UT2004 are my personal favourite. Many, Many hours lost bavk in the day with those.
(Of course I was too afraid to actually join any of those in case the players should turn out to be poor ghosts from 1999. Forever worrying about the upcoming Y2K... their only solace listening to When You Say Nothing At All by Ronan Keating over and over again...)
That made me chuckle
0 Likes
Wow. Just WOW! This patch is awesome! Thank you so much OldUnreal, once more you nailed it. I'm having some happy fragfest tonight!
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Instead of putting OldUnreal 469 on top of an installation, I did it the other way around. I copied the directories Maps, Textures, Sounds and Music to OldUnreal.
First time I ever played the original UT on 4K. Works great, except the menu is hard to read (so small :)). I was wondering why I wasted so many days in my youth playing UT, but ended up playing two hours of CTF and understood again. :X
Last edited by Oet_ on 24 September 2020 at 6:50 pm UTC
First time I ever played the original UT on 4K. Works great, except the menu is hard to read (so small :)). I was wondering why I wasted so many days in my youth playing UT, but ended up playing two hours of CTF and understood again. :X
Last edited by Oet_ on 24 September 2020 at 6:50 pm UTC
1 Likes, Who?
legluondunet Sep 25, 2020
Works great, except the menu is hard to read (so small :)).
Did you try "Override GUI scaling" + "GUI scaling factor" in "Video" preferences ?
"Override Font scaling" + "Font scaling factor" could help too.
0 Likes
Avehicle7887 Sep 25, 2020
I've launched the game again after so long to try out this update, unfortunately some weapons don't play well with ultrawide resolutions, even after fixing the fov.
Regardless, it's good to see this game being maintained after all these years, I played it a lot in my teens and still somewhat prefer it over Quake 3.
Regardless, it's good to see this game being maintained after all these years, I played it a lot in my teens and still somewhat prefer it over Quake 3.
0 Likes
I missed the 'node' modes from UT2004 with vehicles called "Onslaught". As many here, I spent so many hours on UT99 (mostly capture the flag), UT2004 (Onslaught) and UT3 (warfare with titan mod) with friends and unknowns on the net. It nicely mixed FPS with team strategy & tactics. I find this mix of FPS, strategy and tactic recently in APEX:legend and titanfall2, but the idea of controlling multiple nodes are still poorly exploited in the current multiplayer FPS.
The current Unreal Tournament misses those kinds of game. Capture the flag is too frontal, it doesn't allow bypassing, splitting, organizing fast strike-back, pincer attacks, etc.
The current Unreal Tournament misses those kinds of game. Capture the flag is too frontal, it doesn't allow bypassing, splitting, organizing fast strike-back, pincer attacks, etc.
0 Likes
legluondunet Sep 25, 2020
what is the best graphical version? Windows or Linux one?
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what is the best graphical version? Windows or Linux one?For this game in particular, the 'best' is to have the S3TC 'high res' textures, though some skyboxes render wrong in both D3D and OpenGL. Performance wise, OpenGL was better with 'beefy' graphics cards, while D3D used to make the game playable with less powerful graphics cards. To my eyes, though, neither D3D nor OpenGL were visually as "clean" as the Glide renderer for 3dfx Voodoo cards**... actually UT99 was one of the few games that actually had the Glide renderer available on Linux, and ut performed just as well as on Windows, back in the day. Damn the memories!!
*Especially noticeable in the foggy areas, such as the initial flyby in both UT and Unreal. I did not notice any banding, while the nostalgia lens may distort reality.
Last edited by Thetargos on 25 September 2020 at 12:12 pm UTC
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