Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament, UT, (sometimes referred to as UT99, UT Classic, UT1, or UT:GOTY to differentiate from Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Unreal Tournament 3) is a popular first-person shooter video game. It is Epic Games's 1999 follow-up title to Unreal and focuses mainly on multiplayer action. It was launched in direct competition to id Software's Quake III Arena which was released 10 days later. Although Quake III Arena was considered to have better graphics, streamlined gameplay and a widely adopted engine, UT had superior bot AI, "alternate fire" for weapons which introduced a further element of strategy, and a larger variety of multiplayer capabilities.
As with the original Unreal, the ease with which players can create and release mods to the core game is a key factor contributing to UT's longevity. UT improved upon the mod-friendly nature of its predecessor with support for mutators such as Sniper Arena, Instagib, BunnyTracks, MonsterHunt, Jailbreak and more. Further, UT "Clan", or gaming teams, and a score of UT dedicated clan and fan community sites continue to sustain Unreal Tournament's popularity years after its initial release.
Bot AI
See computer gaming bot.
UT is known and widely praised for its A.I.. The player can choose a skill level (anywhere from "Novice" to "Godlike") for the bots to use in both single player and multiplayer games. In the multiplayer game type, bots can be further customized by changing names, appearance, accuracy, weapon preferences, awareness, and so forth. Furthermore, UT also implements an "auto-adjust skill" option that, when toggled, automatically adjusts the bot's A.I. skill level to the player's current performance. UT programmer Steve Polge had earlier risen to fame by designing the Reaper Bot for the original Quake, the first computer-controlled deathmatch opponent of any kind.
Game Types
Although many mods have been released as game types for Unreal Tournament such as Monster Hunt, Frag Ball, UT Soccer and more, these are the original multiplayer game types released with the game.
DeathMatch
A classic every-man-for-himself player vs. player combat. The objective is to finish the map with the most kills or frags.
Team Deathmatch
Teams competing together to out-frag the opponent team.
Capture The Flag
Classic Capture the Flag. Players compete to capture the other team's flag and return it to their base. Competitive teams must use a great deal of teamplay. Teams must both defend the base from incoming attackers and get into the other team's base, take their flag and return to base unharmed. This requires that the team protect their flag carrier very well from enemies in order to complete their objective.
Domination
Teams compete to control various control points to earn points and win the map. Standard maps contain three control points. Control of these points can be accomplished either through occupation (physically occupying the space) or from a distance.
Last Man Standing
Similar to deathmatch, the objective here is to remain alive longer than your opponents, putting an emphasis on number of deaths rather than kills. Players have a set number of lives and once they run out of lives they lose and have to wait as spectators till match end.
Assault
This game type is played with two opposing teams, one assaulting a "base" and the other defending it. The map is set up with a number of objectives which the attacking team must complete (usually in sequence) such as destroying something, entering an area, triggering a button, et cetera. The team who first attacks then defends, and attempts to defend for the entire time they attacked. If they can accomplish this, they win the map. If the team defending first assaults the base faster than the other team, they win the map. If both teams defend for the maximum amount of time the map is a tie.
Weapons
Unreal Tournament has a fairly large selection of weapons, and many more are seen in custom maps or inserted through custom mutators. Unreal Tournament differs from other First-Person Shooter of its class, with its secondary fire mode for nearly all of the weapons, a feature which was not present in its close competitor, Quake III Arena. Typically, weapons range from melee, chainsaws, pistols, machine guns, plasma guns, missile launchers and hitscan weapons. Unreal Tournament also features a nuclear weapon, called the Redeemer, a missile that causes a gigantic explosion and the shockwave of which vaporizes players instantly. Presumably this weapon is the most powerful of all.
Assuming no mutators are in use, the player always spawns with two weapons, one a melee weapon, which is essentially a large pneumatic piston and the other, a semi-automatic pistol, The enforcer, which is essentially the default non-melee weapon. As the player moves through the map, he can gather other weapons/ammunition that are scattered over various places around the map. A short list of weapons that are found in the UT ordnance are,
- Impact Hammer
- Translocator, A personal teleporting device, see translocator section below.
- Enforcer, The same weapon which the player spawns with by default. The player can pick up another enforcer and use it simultaneously for dual wield.
- Bio-Rifle, A weapon that shoots biological toxic greenish goo.
- Shock Rifle, One of Unreal Tournament's most distinctive instant hit weapons.
- Pulse Gun, The classic fictional weapon that produces a stream of plasma bolts.
- Ripper, A weapon that fires disc-shaped razor blades.
- Minigun, A classic machine gun, that adds tracer fire.
- Flak Cannon, A classic UT weapon that's functionally similar to a shotgun.
- Rocket Launcher.
- Sniper Rifle, A high-power, semi-automatic, instant hit rifle, the secondary fire of which activates the sniper scope which zooms up to 8.3x magnification allowing the player to see enemies from a long way.
- Redeemer: A miniaturized nuclear warhead and launcher. The Redeemer's missile causes a gigantic explosion, the shockwave of which vaporizes players instantly.
Special Features in Unreal Tournament
Publisher
The publisher is ubisof, they started out creating UN a few years ago which started of with Un real tournament.
Launching
The term "launching" refers to the ability to 'launch' another player on your team to a desired location within a certain distance using the rocket launcher or impact hammer when there is 0% friendly fire. Although there is some dispute as to whether or not Epic meant to include this feature or not, it is widely accepted as something which is quite good for the game.
Stomping
Stomping involves jumping onto an opponent from a high enough ledge to deal damage. Though it inflicts little damage, however, if one 'stomps' an opponent with little health, a frag will be accumulated and is registered on the HUD as a kill with whatever weapon the 'stompee' happens to be holding.
Community
As of February 2007, there remains an active but dwindling UT online community with a couple of thousand UT dedicated players online in multiplayer combat at any one time across approximately 2,000 servers located on almost every continent of the world.
Also dwindling are the leagues that once existed for competitive play. One such league, the Proving Grounds, was arguably the longest lasting and most respected gaming league for UT that ever existed. Unfortunately, the Proving Grounds closed its doors in 2004 to the dismay of many online clans who actively played in the United States based league.There are also grass-roots gaming communities, which frown upon using the term "clan".
UT is an aging game, and many new players come and go. This may be due to several factors. First, a high skill level is needed to compete in many of the existing servers. Many of those who still play UT are or were at one time dedicated to the game much as a professional athlete would dedicate himself to his sport. Many of these players are very skilled, know the maps in and out, know the location and use of all secrets and power-ups, and use weapons in ways that newer players would probably never discover. Second, many modern servers are heavily modified and require downloading the altered files, a task which can be very time consuming for players with slower connections. Third, because of the prevalent cheating in the game, the game engine has been modified multiple times to versions 436 and 451. This latest release came about by the joint efforts of the game's "modding" scene, united as UTPG.org, wanting to keep UT up-to-date after Epic Games stopped supporting the title. Clients can but do not have to apply this patch, as they can still connect to 451 servers while running version 436. It is often recommended that clients DO NOT install the 451 patch, as it has brought about several problems. A public beta of UTPG for the Mac platform has not been released, but is in development by developer Ryan Gordon, also known as Icculus, who is also responsible for the Linux port. Internal betas have been released to his testing group, Mac Ninjas, and Gordon has stated publicly that the project will be completed some day, although not by any fixed deadline as it is a volunteer effort. However, as of October 2006, it appears that the UTPG project is dead. The UTPG website's last posting is dated from November of 2004..
UT has also been kept alive thanks to its dedicated CTF community, consisting of a number of devoted players who have resisted both changes to the Unreal Tournament series and modern FPS titles. However, the game shows no signs of slowing down just yet. Due to the age and status of the game, it has proven to pose a steep learning curve for new players to the online community. Now thanks to new game types such as the "SpamCup" mod or "Potluck Tournaments" new clans and players are encouraged to take part alongside seasoned veterans and regular players alike.
World Cyber Games
Unreal Tournament was played at the World Cyber Games in the years of 2001 and 2002. Where the title was contended for in a deathmatch 1 vs 1 environment. This is where UT was played on an international scale, where players from all around the world went head to head to see who would be crowned world champion.
| Place | WCG 2001 | WCG 2002 |
|---|---|---|
| 1st |  GitzZz
|
GitzZz
|
| 2nd |  XS|Pain
|
 Shaggy
|
| 3rd |  Xan
|
 eVeNfLoW
|
The results of the two years saw GitzZz win both years and found himself entered into the WCG Hall of Fame.
UTAssault
One active Assault league called UTAssault is European-based and provides a great community in which the best assaulters from around the world compete for the title of best assault clan. Although this is a European-based league, many people from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, China, Israel, Australia and New Zealand participate. Some of these non-European players have slightly more difficulty than others due to the great distance in location between them and the server which causes their ping to be much higher. This however does not play a significant effect on North American or Israeli players but makes it very difficult for people in the southern hemisphere.
During the IAC (International Assault Cup) set up by the UTAssault.net league, countries are given the option of home servers and some North American servers are set up for the North American teams to play on. The IAC features teams from almost every country with 6 players to make a team (Assault is played 6v6) and is an extremely popular event among the Assault community.
MLUT
The Unreal Tournament community of Capture The Flag and Team Deathmatch began a league of their own. The site which was designed by UT players is a drafting league like the major leagues such as the NFL and NBA. In MLUT there are player sign ups and captain sign ups that are announced in the mainly used IRC by the UT community. After the sign-ups each person is given a ranking based on salary. After salaries are posted, the picking begins. Each captain has a certain salary cap that they cannot go over during the rounds of picking so one team cannot be "stacked" and have an unfair advantage. There have currently been 13 successful Capture the Flag seasons, the most recent season having just recently ended.
PUG Matches
Many members of the Capture-the-Flag and Assault communities enjoy playing pick-up game (aka PUG) matches. Normally, 10 people (or 12 for Assault) on an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server channel change their nicknames, placing a designated letter in front of their names or typing the command .join to join, depending on the pugbot program that is in use. (If the letter is y, then a guy named Bigfoot would change his alias to y-Bigfoot). A program called the pugbot (such as Rival or ABot) monitors the channel and when a certain designated number of people (usually 10 or 12) have signed up, two people become captains by typing in a designated command and then draft the other players. The drafts normally proceed in a 1-2-2-2-2-1 order, with the first captain picking the first player and the second captain picking the next two players. The players then join a Teamspeak voice communications server and join the PUG game server where they play a 5-on-5 best of three maps CTF match or, in Assault, a 6-on-6 best of seven maps match. Like a clan match, players have assigned positions and in capture-the-flag, they try to cover their flag carriers. For example, in Assault people might play as back man defenders at an objective, snipers, and defenders against the offense. Common Capture-the-Flag positions are flag defense, offense, middle, and front door defense. Some of the IRC servers that offer pug activity are:
- irc.GameRadius.net -- home to the North American CTF community.
- irc.Quakenet.org -- home to the European UT community.
- irc.UTAssault.net -- home to the UTAssault.net community
For North American PUGs (and also, to meet the North American UT99 CTF community), come to irc.GameRadius.net and investigate channels #MLUT (moderate activity), #SpeedPug (125% game speed, high activity), and #CML (aka "Custom Map League", new with some activity). Other channels exist for other game types such as Instagib and Sniper, and some channels are passworded. New North American players are advised to first try #speedpug where they are more likely to be welcomed by the other players. In Europe the IRC server is irc.Quakenet.org and you might try channels #CTFPug and #UT994FunPug as well as #naat for Assault.
Several PUGs are set up every night. Although the pug matches are open to the general public, players do need to have some minimum amount of skill and experience in order to play and to be welcome in addition to the voice comm program TeamSpeak, which means that you also need a headset--a pair of headphones with a boom microphone. Additionally, for all intents and purposes, you also need a high-speed, broadband Internet connection.
A public PUG is available on the irc.UTAssault.net server at channel #UTAPug.
Frag Friday
Frag Friday is an event that often occurs on Friday nights in the North American UT CTF community. It was founded in response to the dwindling population of players who enjoy playing regular weapons CTF on custom (user-made) maps on public servers. The idea is that if everyone who enjoyed playing would come to a single server at a certain time, then they could play on a full server. So far it has proven to be a resounding success. Although it was originally founded by the Unreal Playground community, it has more or less migrated to the young raggers Pub community. Frag Friday has a festive atmosphere and many of the players enjoy chatting on Teamspeak voice comm, which is like a large group phone call. Server information is available at the Fraggers Pub webpage and discussion forum. Generally, people start coming to the server around 10-11 PM EST.
1/2 EO / 1/2 Excessive Overkill
Server setups, while varried, usually consist of a good quantity of the full "Excessive Overkill" mod weapons, but with health varying from 100 through 150, with the average server being 125. Self-damage is typically enabled in 1/2 EO, resulting in people randomly flying about custom-made maps by the means of what is referred to as "self boosting" or "team boosting" with the excessive ripper. While this mod is usually found running on CTF servers, it has been seen on more than a few DM servers in its time.
System requirements
- Intel Pentium 200 MHz or AMD K6 200 MHz or better processor
- 32MB RAM
- DirectX 7.0 or higher
- PCI Local Bus Video Card with 4MB VRAM
- 300MB HDD
- 4x or faster CD-ROM or 4x or faster DVD-ROM Drive
- Windows 95
- 200 MHz 603-based processor
- 64MB RAM
- 120MB HDD
- Mac OS 7.6
- G3 processor
- 128MB RAM
- 120MB HDD
- Mac OS X 10.1.x
- Pentium II with 3D accelerator card
- 64MB RAM
- XFree86 3.3.5 or newer at 16bpp
- Video Card capable of 640x480 resolution
- 550MB HDD
- OSS compatible sound card
- Linux kernel version 2.2.x
Loki Games distributed shell script installers for the port of Unreal Tournament for Linux, which enables the original Windows Unreal Tournament CD to be used to install the game on Linux systems. Although Loki Games ceased operating in 2002, it can still be found on the Internet.
Modifications
As Unreal Tournament is a popular game, many fans have taken the liberty of creating mods for the game. These range from slight changes on some aspects of gameplay (such as map voting) or to total conversions.
Selected mods and mutators for UT:
- Map Vote - Lets the players vote on which map is to be played next.
- UT Pure - An ongoing server side cheat project. Pure aims at eliminating illegal cheats such as a common rendering hook that can be used to create exploitations such as aimbots and radars. The latest version Pure7G has unfortunately been hacked by hackers, however the hack is not widely known and can be stopped when used in conjunction with UTDC v1.6, another hack protection.
- Infiltration - tactical shooter modification, features very realistic gameplay in respect to modern warfare as a soldier on foot both in open areas and indoors
- Strike Force - tactical shooter modification, featuring Special Forces versus Terrorists. Official maps are noted for meticulously detailed recreations of banks, condos, and offices.
- Tactical Ops considered Unreal Tournament's equivalent of Half-Life's popular Counter-strike. Tactial Ops was later bundled and spun off into its own retail product which featured additional maps not found in the free download version.
- Thievery UT - A mod based on the Thief game, but with a multiplayer game type featuring a Guard team and a Thief team. These teams have different equipment and abilities. The Thief team sneak around and tries to achieve objectives (generally involving stealing) while the Guard team must stop them. Thieves become translucent in shadow, to the point of being completely invisible in the dark. Since the style of play is vastly different to most other mods for Unreal Tournament and map knowledge is crucial, Thievery has a steep learning curve.
- Action Realism - Players are realistically crippled depending on where they are shot. They also lose energy if they have open wounds, and must stop to apply bandages.
- LeagueAssault - Mod created by the UTassault community to enhance the game of assault. This mod is easily downloaded off any server running it without hassle and provides spawn protection, cheat protection, bug fixes, an extended HUD which displays the location and status of teammates as well as the support of custom messages and text colors. Many Assault players find LeagueAS to be such a good UT mod that they are disappointed when they join servers that lack it.
- Monster Hunt - These are maps prefixed with "MH" . This is where you team up against varying sizes of monsters, ranging from small Pupae to Warlords & Titans. By killing these monsters you progress through the map. The hunt is ended by reaching the "Hunt Complete" area, in which the winner is chosen by the person with the most kills (or "frags" as they are known). One of the sites to visit the community of players is at Planet Monster Hunt. Monster Hunt is one of the most active gametypes in UT, with many new maps/mutators still being created. A popular mutator that a lot of servers run with MH is UTJMH, which regenerates player's ammo/health making maps a lot easier to get through.
- Strangelove - This mod gives you a nuclear missile launcher which can be fired two ways. First, you can fire it at your enemies like a standard weapon. Alternatively, you can ride a launched rocket around maps and control the direction and speed. Pilots can arm or disarm the nuclear warhead and jump off before crashing. An updated version also used is called RocketX. It is just like the Strangelove but the skin is much more different when flying. When flying you can also shoot with the primary shoot button.
- BunnyTrack - These maps start with CTF-BT- or BT-, a movement game where you must jump on blocks, shoot targets, dodge up ramps, dodge crushers, press switches, etc., if you fail once you usually fall in lava/slime and go back to the start, you must get to the end and capture the flags. Typically, maps feature a series of creative obstacles that test the player’s dexterity, skill, and thought process. Surviving obstacles sometimes requires problem solving; others involve precise aim combined with quickness and direction. Obstacles range in difficulty, as do the Bunny Track maps themselves.
- Instagib - All players have high-powered Shock Rifles that can blow an opponent apart with a single hit and have unlimited ammo. This is the mod most played in online gaming, as it requires an extremely precise aiming skill. (Shock rifles are very slow on reload, thus one missed shot gives the enemy several seconds to aim.)
- Excessive Overkill - High powered weapons, no Self Damage and the ability to self boost around the maps with varying weapons. Originally tested by CFH (Calibrated for Harm, originally Clan of the Flaming Hair), the oldest Excessive Overkill UT clan in existence.
- Unreal4Ever - A mod that adds lots of new fun weapons and monsters. This is perhaps the biggest mod for the game. http://planetunreal.com/u4e/. More recent versions for Unreal Tournament 2004 can be found here http://u4e.beyondunreal.com/
- ChaosUT - A weapon mod based on destructive, chaotic weapons such as gravity vortexes and flamethrowers. One of the most famous ChaosUT weapons are the Proxy Mines which are mines, shaped like a ball with a smiley face on it, which jump all over the map targeting enemy players and detonating themselves. http://chaotic.beyondunreal.com/
- UT Soccer - A fairly new mod (2006). It is based on various SCR- maps, on which the players struggle to get the ball into opponents goal (like real soccer). The game is weapon-free, so the most important factor while playing are speed and agility. The community is small but nice, accepting new players with open hands (the mod was very popular during WC2006). Official ladder system can be found on ClanBase.
- Oldskool - A mod that allows the Original Unreal, and the majority of its custom single player content, to be played in UT. As well as provided Single Player mapping functions in UT.
External links
- Unreal Tournament official website
- Planet Unreal
- Unreal Wiki - Unreal engine Documentation
- World Cyber Games Hosts of the only Unreal Tournament world tournament.