One Year Later There's No UT3 Client For Linux

[deanjo]

Petitions are not the way to get companies attention. Direct contact is more effective. Besides, Epid does know what to expect from the Linux croud, they have had UT2004 collect satistics about OS and have a pretty good idea of how the game did on Linux. Plus from the looks of it, UT3 isn't worth the effort.

Ya petitions never work. Besides IIRC there has been a few of them on this subject already anyways.

[Thetargos]

Hell, if the chaos mod for UT3 was canceled, then there really isn't a large enough player base to make the game worthwhile. And if there isn't a player base, then the game must really suck.
Know what would be awesome on Epic's part? If they released a high def expansion for UT99 with high res textures and everything.

Indeed, but that would pretty much require a re-building of the game (textures, models, levels, renderer, etc)

[deanjo]

Indeed, but that would pretty much require a re-building of the game (textures, models, levels, renderer, etc)

Hmmmm, this gets me thinking of doing a UT99 redux using ioquake............

[Thetargos]

What would be sweet is if Sweeney and Reign would finally Open Source UE1 (highly unlikely seeing how are there projects still based on that engine [not games, though] ). And I do believe trying to adapt Unreal models/textures to the quake engine would require some major work (not to mention the violation of copyrigted material being made available for another engine)

[deanjo]

What would be sweet is if Sweeney and Reign would finally Open Source UE1 (highly unlikely seeing how are there projects still based on that engine [not games, though] ). And I do believe trying to adapt Unreal models/textures to the quake engine would require some major work (not to mention the violation of copyrigted material being made available for another engine)

Well you would have to re-create new models and textures anyways since we are going for better graphics or upgraded alternative graphic sets could be used that are in the community and not part of epics originals, so that copywrite would be hard to enforce as original resources are not used. The hard part would be the temptation to use the sound effects over. "God-like" and "Multi-kill" just wouldn't have the same effect with another voice.

Even a mod pack for UT2004 to convert it to UT99 would be a welcome change.

[Thetargos]

Suppose the models are indeed recreated, but the textures... The redone textures would have to keep at least some resemblance to those found in the game (suppose the textures used are the S3TC compressed ones, which could be taken as a basis [reference] for generating other, improved ones)... True, they wouldn't be the same as such, but one thing (besides music and sound effects) that would be really hard to not re-use (at least partially) are model skins. Simply put, Malcom wouldn't be the same with any other skin, and even so, it would be recognizable as such, hence the copyright might be enforced (as a derivative work? IANAL, but maybe some legal action could be enforced?)... And while looking at the so many ways to avoid being stung by the copyright bugs, the end result would certainly be something completely different than the original goal, i.e, not recreating Unreal Tournament 1.

[xav1r]

What would be sweet is if Sweeney and Reign would finally Open Source UE1 (highly unlikely seeing how are there projects still based on that engine [not games, though] ). And I do believe trying to adapt Unreal models/textures to the quake engine would require some major work (not to mention the violation of copyrigted material being made available for another engine)

Which projects are using UE1 right now?? I'd really like to know.

[Thetargos]

The only one I am aware of is an architecture program that utilizes the UE1 engine to create real-time fly-by presentations of actual architectural projects. AFAIK this program (of which I cannot remember the name, sorry) is still maintained and patched and supported (I know of this program due to an uncle of mine, and architect, who uses it). There are several versions of this program (there's even one using the UE3 in the works, AFAIK), but for the computer my uncle uses, the only one that would run "decently" is the UE1 based. Also these "professional" applications of the UE apparently make more use of features found on professional grade hardware like Quadros, etc. (and I know this from experience, as this program would run much fluid in a Quadro based GPU than a GeForce comparatively the same grade, dunno exactly what are the differences anymore). I'll try to dig out the name of this program for you, though I cannot promise much as I'm all out of contact with that side of the family

[deanjo]

There is still some pretty cool stuff that is available for UT99 like a DX9 and enhanced openGL renderers. http://cwdohnal.home.mindspring.com/utglr/ I'm not sure how picky Epic would get since the UT:GOTY edition came with all the textures on a separate disk to freely use at your own will.

By the way, the original UT99 source code was released by epic. You can download it here.

http://unrealtournament2004.filefront.com/file/Unreal_Tournament_Source_Code;50393

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Now if only we could get Ryan to release the linux blob as opensource.

[Thetargos]

There is still some pretty cool stuff that is available for UT99 like a DX9 and enhanced openGL renderers. http://cwdohnal.home.mindspring.com/utglr/ I'm not sure how picky Epic would get since the UT:GOTY edition came with all the textures on a separate disk to freely use at your own will.

Interesting... indeed.

Now if only we could get Ryan to release the linux blob as opensource.

I don't think he is in the liberty to "share" those. If only... I sure hope an improved GL renderer (GLSL capable) could be done and released for Linux/Windows/Mac. I wonder how much of the code did he had to adapt/change (not to mention the major surgery he must have had to perform to the the make system. But being the code released under the same license as the retail version pretty much means that you can't share much of the binaries you produce with it, does it?