Or, "How To Get Some Public Appreciation With Minimal Effort: An Attempt".
If they actually cared they'd host (and more importantly, supported since they probably don't run on modern systems without some fiddling) those games themselves.
Not like they don't have a store with games or anything.
I have not much love for Epic and they can always do it better. Still, it’s a step in the right direction and I wish other game developers would do that.
Also, another argument for proper funding of the Internet Archive.
I wish they would GPL it like Quake. Even if it was missing some proprietary dependencies I bet the community could replace them.
I recently helped port ioquake3 to the web, complete with UDP multiplayer, and set up an online demo using the internet archive's copy of the Quake III demo: https://thelongestyard.link It would be cool to be able to do the same with Unreal Tournament.
Im willing to bet the code for UT is being used for Fortnite.
My first introduction to Unreal was via the "Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition" right around the year 2000. I fondly remember some of those maps (Facing Worlds for one) but to think that lineage ends up at Fornite is crazy to me.
That shouldn’t have any impact on its ability to be relicensed and open sourced though— any secret sauce in Fortnite is elsewhere, and arguably none of it is code, but rather in asset-level stuff like game/map/character design and monetization/progression strategy.
Ioquake was helpful for the open Jedi project get an open source version of jk3 working.
https://github.com/OpenJediProject/OJP
I'm sure there is some small group of UT people that would gladly keep it alive in a similar fashion.
Unreal Tournament multiplayer with mutators[1] was awesome fun, like the one that made the player avatar grow bigger when the player scored a kill, and vice versa.
It's a shame later multiplayer games didn't pick up on the mutator concept. Being able to easily tweak the gameplay mixed it up and added extra challenge or fun.
> It's a shame later multiplayer games didn't pick up on the mutator concept.
The terminology didn't catch on, but the idea is out there. Compare "game modes" in Overwatch, for example:
https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/22938941/introduci...
overwatch is essentially the anti-UT. there’s no simplicity, just complexity and toxicity.
Just hide quickchat and don't join voice, its a fine game.
The workshop is really cool though, tons of cool modes. Only downside is you can't do any map modifications or anything like that.
One game i recall using that mechanic (edit: changing size of body parts) is "Morphies Law" on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/morphies-law-swit...
Fingers crossed UT2004 will end up in the Archive eventually. I still boot it up to play occasionally because nothing else has scratched the arena shooter itch that well.
UT2004 is on archive.org already, fully patched with some modern additions.
I'm very hopeful this will get Epic's blessing too.
What is strange is that they approve of the archive.org download, instead of say, OldUnreal hosting it themselves. The archive.org uploader could update it with malware. It would be nice if they allow OldUnreal to host.
UT2004 shipped with its Linux binaries in the 3rd disc. I remember playing it a ton until migrating to 64bit system.
Wish they GPL that one, too, so we can build a 64bit version of that.
Another UT2004 fan signing in. I haven't played it that much recently, but I still have it installed.
With the vehicles? That game was nuts.
Pancake !
why not just buy it?
Why do you assume they didn't?
> I still boot it up to play occasionally
You can't anymore besides used physical copies. Epic delisted all the Unreal games.
I spent so much of the early year 2000 playing Unreal Tournament instagib mode on Facing Worlds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facing_Worlds
Facing Worlds is still one of those maps that I wish every game had.
The concept is so simple. Two towers with a bridge between them. Have fun.
It would be fun in any game. GTA, Overwatch, Halo, anything.
Funny seeing it have its own wiki page. I didn't know my childhood would be archived like this. :D
I used to get so many MONSTER KILLS on that map it was nuts.
I never really got into UT, but from the screenshot, it's giving me The Longest Yard Q3 Demo vibes... instagib railgun... those were the days...
those were truly the golden years of online gaming
do you remember the monster hunter mod ?
huge random monsters would spawn and it would take multiple people to take them down
UT2004 in Onslaught mode on well-administrated private servers is still the best team-based arena FPS I've ever played.
Here's hoping it can make a revival someday akin to City of Heroes https://www.polygon.com/gaming/471719/city-of-heroes-homecom... .
Man this game changed my life. I always preferred it to quake 3 mainly because of the brighter color palette and the assault mode. Also facing worlds was the most amazing maps I had ever seen.
heck yeah. UT was one of those absolutely-essential LAN games, to be sure. I remember taking my computer and heavy CRT monitor to my buddy's place to play -- good memories :D
Me too, there was a real “wow” moment for me when I went into the computer store at like age 14 and saw it running, it really started to show what computers were capable of to me
No link to the actual downloads?
Update, found it: https://www.oldunreal.com/downloads/unreal/full-game-install...
Would love it if Epic made the source to UE actually public so that LLMs could be trained on it and provide better help when learning the engine. The source code is semi-public already, you can see it if you register an account, seems like a small step to have it be much more accessible as a learning resource through LLMs.
I just want to make a top level comment noting how many people (myself included) have mentioned the Facing Worlds map. I think everyone here agrees it's a fond memory.
Did you know the soundtrack was composed in a module tracker? Someone recently recorded the full soundtrack playing back in Milkytracker. Pretty neat since you can see how the composers wrote the songs.
And you could use a utility called umr (unreal media reaper) to extract the songs. It was mind blowing to then understand how the game switched patterns to suit the pace, a very clever use of this technology.
I listen to Foregone Destruction so much that when I play the actual map that uses it I always think I left my music player running in the background.
I wish they'd go further and offer maintained versions on their store, ideally free or very low cost as GOG.com and Steam have done.
That said, it's appreciated.
From what I gather Epic delisted various of their Unreal Tournament games across all stores a couple years ago due to them not supporting their modern online services (including chat). This was within days of being fined $500m for, among other things, allowing on-by-default text chat in one of their other games that is available for children/teens to play, so some believe they'd rather delist than update some of their older games.
A recent engine recreation : https://github.com/dpjudas/SurrealEngine
Quick start instructions also pull UT from the archive https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/337069
Love both games spending countless hours, Unreal single player story was great (for its time). Are there any servers still online for UT?
Slightly related thread, Unreal Engine 5 runs in WebGPU now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42190897
Does it? It’s not an officially supported platform and this link (which was posted by you) has no information.
Yes, it does. We're a third party that built our own WebGPU backend. Feel free to try this demo here:
Does it work on MacOS? Or do we still need to do some Wine thing?
Imagine if they added something like this to UE5 licensing:
If your game has not been updated in N years... 1) Internet Archive can distribute it for free 2) Let people distribute modified versions that does not need license key or whatever copy protection.
Harder but extra cool: To get a UE royalty discount, put source code in escrow set to release it if game not updated in N years.
> If your game has not been updated in N years...
This would impact indie developers and small publishers more than large ones.
Why not just release to the public domain?
And why not pay for a few devs to keep it up to date?
The Golden era of PC gaming ..,