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.
dmead 164 days ago [-]
Ioquake was helpful for the open Jedi project get an open source version of jk3 working.
I'm sure there is some small group of UT people that would gladly keep it alive in a similar fashion.
Ralfp 164 days ago [-]
The state of things here is that Unreal Engine 1 may be open sourced one day but would need cleaning up first. And they just never got around doing it:
Cleaning up in this context means figuring out what parts of the code they actually own and removing/replacing the parts they don't.
pxc 164 days ago [-]
When I was a kid, I had so much fun playing open-source games based on Quake engines. Tremulous stands out as especially delightful at the little LAN parties we threw at my house on birthdays and New Years' Eve.
kaoD 164 days ago [-]
I can't find a link to your port's code. I think you have to include it as per GPL's license (and also because it's awesome and I want to see the code!)
Im willing to bet the code for UT is being used for Fortnite.
Melonotromo 164 days ago [-]
Fortnite uses Unreal Engine 5, the most advanced Game Engine in existens which sourcecode is freely available for a few years now.
Open sourcing old stuff is a lot of effort. You need to find all people involved or know the legal status of the copyright. You need to go through all the code in case you had some properitary stuff in there which you might have paid for. And you need to do all of this next to what you normally do without a direct benefit.
numpad0 164 days ago [-]
It doesn't make a lot of intuitive sense, but code can be released under multiple different licenses. A 1:1 relationship between code and its terms is not required.
pests 164 days ago [-]
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.
iakov 164 days ago [-]
Oh man, I loved that game as a kid. I did not have internet back then, but I didn’t care - I spent hours playing against bots. I still remember the voice taunts and callouts (“I slaughtered that guy!”) and creative maps like ctf_face. Then there were the built in gameplay mods like insta-gib and low gravity, fun guns like Redeemer - kept me glued to the screen for hours. I did not understand why people are playing CS at the computer clubs - UT was a much better and bigger game!
Thanks for a trip down the memory lane. Good, simple times.
zelos 164 days ago [-]
"I did not understand why people are playing CS at the computer clubs..."
I was the same. UT was so much fun - bouncing flak cannon shrapnel round corners! But my LAN group all wanted to play CS or that UT mod that was similar (Tactical Ops?).
pests 164 days ago [-]
I don't think I knew too much about computers or gaming at that age to figure all that out. I just played the base mode.
My introduction to programming was thru a different game (Subspace VIE, a MMO on dialup back in the 90s later community-remade as Continuum) when squad had a login page at a domain. I really wondered how example.com/?login worked and that led me to where I am today.
ZaoLahma 164 days ago [-]
The base game was fantastic. Never could say no to a game on dm-morpheus. But what really made it great for me were the total conversion mods.
I spent probably thousands of hours playing Infiltration back in the day. I can't imagine how much time and energy must have been poured into completely re-doing a game like that.
rounce 164 days ago [-]
That’s a name that brings back memories. Infiltration was so far ahead of its time, and it’s interesting to look at how many of its features are now standard on even run-and-gun FPS these days.
ZaoLahma 164 days ago [-]
Indeed. It's a shame that Sentry Studios never transitioned into a "proper" game development studio. They were at least 10 years ahead of the curve.
But it's good that the games industry caught up so the infiltration-itch can be scratched in other ways.
bloqs 164 days ago [-]
Facing worlds liquid drum and bass soundtrack (and the rest of the games) was the basis for my music interest!
mikepurvis 164 days ago [-]
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.
jsiepkes 164 days ago [-]
It's a 25 year old game engine. There is not going to be anything in it which they consider a trade secret today.
jsheard 164 days ago [-]
Even the current Unreal Engine doesn't have much in the way of trade secrets, its entire source code is available on GitHub for anyone to look at (aside from the console-specific parts bound by NDAs).
looshch 164 days ago [-]
> to the web
you mean like to browser? If yes, how did you achieve UDP connections? To my best knowledge, browsers allow TCP only
desdenova 164 days ago [-]
WebSockets are TCP-only.
WebRTC can run over UDP, but it's not raw UDP. I think that's what they meant.
modeless 164 days ago [-]
Yes, it's WebRTC. It uses real unreliable and unordered UDP packets, peer-to-peer. But WebRTC requires a connection establishment step to happen first, so it can't send traffic to arbitrary UDP services, only cooperating WebRTC peers. Which is fine for multiplayer games.
kaoD 164 days ago [-]
I don't have time to look into the code right now, but it might also be WebTransport:
EDIT: actually I can't find the code, shouldn't it be linked as per GPL's license?
junon 164 days ago [-]
WebSockets also initiate a normal Http request first, further complicating things anyway.
magicalhippo 164 days ago [-]
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.
overwatch is essentially the anti-UT. there’s no simplicity, just complexity and toxicity.
pests 164 days ago [-]
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.
duskwuff 164 days ago [-]
Not saying it's a good game (or otherwise), just saying the idea's out there.
hyperman1 164 days ago [-]
In a LAN party, we hacked a mutator together from code scraps of other mutators. It replaced all weapons with the green one, modified to replace the bullet stream of little plasma balls with a stream of redeemer rockets.
Turns out, if a redeemer rocket flys over, sound frequency goes slightly lower. If a few 100s of these fly over, sound frequency goes rock bottom, making the announcer say stuff like: Monsterkiiiiiiiuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuooorrgglllll. And then the whole level explodes because hundreds of redeemers tend to set each other off in a chain reaction
Fun times.
moepstar 164 days ago [-]
One game i recall using that mechanic (edit: changing size of body parts) is "Morphies Law" on Nintendo Switch:
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.
snarfy 164 days ago [-]
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.
bayindirh 164 days ago [-]
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.
KETHERCORTEX 162 days ago [-]
There's a Flatpak package for UT2k4 on Flathub that launches on modern 64 bit systems. You just need to provide game assets and enter CD key.
all2 164 days ago [-]
With the vehicles? That game was nuts.
pandemic_region 164 days ago [-]
Pancake !
elbear 164 days ago [-]
Another UT2004 fan signing in. I haven't played it that much recently, but I still have it installed.
hackernewds 164 days ago [-]
why not just buy it?
goosedragons 164 days ago [-]
You can't anymore besides used physical copies. Epic delisted all the Unreal games.
jamesfinlayson 164 days ago [-]
Yes, I recently found that out. I bought Unreal on GOG a few years back and was wanting to get Unreal Tournament 2004 recently (I played a bit of the demo back in 2005 or 2006) but currently no digital options.
flakes 164 days ago [-]
Why do you assume they didn't?
> I still boot it up to play occasionally
deknos 164 days ago [-]
i would buy instantly if it works on linux on 64 bit machines. all of them.
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.
Arrath 164 days ago [-]
Its a crime that Halo 1 had Boarding Action and it never resurfaced (outside of Forge recreations) in later titles such as Reach with movement options like jetpacks.
pests 164 days ago [-]
I'll be honest I was never a huge Halo buff at least until Multiplayer.
Maybe you can help me. My earlies memories of Halo2 multiplayer involved a map with two bases on opposite sides in a canyon. I bring it up only to talk about it, I know I could look up the name...
It was the first online pvp game I had played. Having 1v1s with people with voice chat was so addicting.
I remember it used to use an ELO calculation for rank so I would calculate my buddies matches when I was at his house telling him how much he would gain or lose in the current match.
Good times.
ashdnazg 164 days ago [-]
I think you mean Coagulation[1]. I remember playing this map with a bunch of friends and two split screen TVs. Hearing somebody swear at you from the neighbouring room is a wonderful experience.
I used to play it all the time on CTF mode in Sauerbraten. I remember it being very difficult to score since you could be sniped from basically anywhere on the map.
kombookcha 164 days ago [-]
Man. Facing Worlds, low gravity, instagib CTF - might be my favourite map/mode combination in any shooter ever. That was so much fun.
disillusioned 164 days ago [-]
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...
bigstrat2003 164 days ago [-]
I would agree that the two maps have a very similar feel. And both are great maps to practice sniping versus bots.
bayindirh 164 days ago [-]
I can play The Longest Yard nonstop for days. Yes, I’m more of a Quake fan more than Unreal.
navbaker 164 days ago [-]
Instagib was a fantastic mode to work on aim! Mine improved dramatically across FPS games after playing for a while with instagib turned on.
pajeetz 164 days ago [-]
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
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.
malux85 164 days ago [-]
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
amatecha 164 days ago [-]
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
olliej 164 days ago [-]
That's nice of them (esp given their track record of shittiness). It's always seemed absurd to me how companies refuse to just make old games that they no longer sell available for free, or just leave them available for cheap purchase. I just don't understand "we refuse to make this available, even for money" just because something is old.
I can kind of understand the behavior in the case of non-game software, e.g if a company makes a tool to do X, and someone wants to do X, you want them to buy the new profitable version not the old one for cheap/free. But I just don't think that applies to games - even a "remake" that is literally just a graphics update (no gameplay, UI, or anything changes, just increased asset resolution) people prefer the updated graphics so will generally buy that when it becomes available, but in the absence of such an update the old game is not competing for new ones.
TravisPeacock 154 days ago [-]
I think part of the problem is if they provide a game, even for free, then they are responsible for the security of that game. Even if not legally, they don't want an article saying "unreal hacked by Ransomware people infecting anyone who joined a public server, people could download the game on the Epic store for free"
At least if a third party provides it then it's not really an official copy of the game.
I remember my freshman year of college playing Unreal.
I had worked all summer to be able to buy myself a computer for college (and made sure it had a decent video card).
I recall, some weeks into my Freshman year, one Saturday night getting a call from a friend of mine who lived down the hall, "Hey I'm at this party, and my friend (Jenny or some other common lady name) wants to talk to you". So he puts this girl on the phone.
Her: "What are you doing?"
Me: "Playing Unreal."
Her: "So, you're going to be doing that all night?"
Me: "Yes."
Her: "OK... I guess I'll talk to you later"
All these years later, I still think I made the right decision.
tosmatos 164 days ago [-]
I will never forgive Epic for not trying to finish their alpha of the latest Unreal Tournament. I had so much fun on that alpha. Unfortunately the dev team got put to fortnite when that started printing money. Logical, but still sad.
deknos 164 days ago [-]
Is there a working 64 bit linux version for Unreal/ut 2004? :(
We should make a petition that they opensource the code at least for these two ones. i still have the CDRoms.
i even would buy it again, if that would make this more likely.
That being said, xonotic is a bit like it (and opensource) and there are maps like Facing Worlds available, but sadly no good npc / npc-way-mapping for it.
KETHERCORTEX 162 days ago [-]
There's a working flatpak package on Flathub. You just need to provide assets and CD key
nanna 164 days ago [-]
I made a UT level (DM-Charge) and it got onto the PC Gamer CD as part of a competition. An UT designer reviewed it but was pretty critical which as a teenager made me feel like I didn't have what it took to go further. Shame. These days I look back and think I did pretty damn well to teach myself without any help at all what it took to build a level, one that was good enough to get onto PC Gamer's CD and that I would occasionally see people playing online, even if it wasn't perfect, and wish i had had the confidence to take the criticism on the chin. Something to bear in mind - a lot of talented kids and people out there just need a bit of encouragement and may take criticism harder than you intend it to be.
paulryanrogers 164 days ago [-]
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.
chocmake 164 days ago [-]
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.
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.
_gotb 164 days ago [-]
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 don't really understand where the dividing line is between Jungle and Drum and Bass, but I'm pretty sure Foregone Destruction is on the DnB side of it.
danpalmer 164 days ago [-]
Epic also retracted my purchase of UT2004 on the Epic games store so I can no longer download it.
Yeah I should have bought it on Steam. It's only the Epic games store that I can't access it on anymore. The strategy with that store is all over the place.
pests 164 days ago [-]
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.
pavelstoev 164 days ago [-]
Love both games spending countless hours, Unreal single player story was great (for its time). Are there any servers still online for UT?
uslic001 158 days ago [-]
Used to love Unreal and UT. Too bad all the bots ruined the game. Low gravity sniper servers were my favorite mod. Used to be on the NTHZ team.
8f2ab37a-ed6c 164 days ago [-]
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.
saithir 164 days ago [-]
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.
kergonath 164 days ago [-]
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.
kristopolous 164 days ago [-]
You mean like government/international body level funding?
That's not unreasonable.
kergonath 163 days ago [-]
More international body than government. I don't think this should belong to a single nation.
stavros 164 days ago [-]
Shitting on people when they do something good for not going further is a surefire way of stopping them from doing anything else.
sebstefan 164 days ago [-]
? Internet Archive is sure to outlast Epic. Putting all your eggs in the same basket is worse than allowing the archive to do what they were created for
Mindwipe 164 days ago [-]
Given the continued mismanagement of the IA I would put decent money on that not happening actually.
rounce 164 days ago [-]
Can you elaborate or link to more on the mismanagement aspect? I’m not up to speed on IA drama.
Does it work on MacOS? Or do we still need to do some Wine thing?
RulerOf 164 days ago [-]
It does. Check OldUnreal on github. There's even a Metal renderer.
DerSaidin 164 days ago [-]
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.
johnmaguire 164 days ago [-]
> If your game has not been updated in N years...
This would impact indie developers and small publishers more than large ones.
PittleyDunkin 164 days ago [-]
Why not just release to the public domain?
renewiltord 164 days ago [-]
And why not pay for a few devs to keep it up to date?
rounce 164 days ago [-]
The nostalgia is so strong I think the community is would happily take stewardship of it.
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.
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.
https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/unreal-engine-1/14084/6
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/winamp-really-whips-...
Open sourcing old stuff is a lot of effort. You need to find all people involved or know the legal status of the copyright. You need to go through all the code in case you had some properitary stuff in there which you might have paid for. And you need to do all of this next to what you normally do without a direct benefit.
I was the same. UT was so much fun - bouncing flak cannon shrapnel round corners! But my LAN group all wanted to play CS or that UT mod that was similar (Tactical Ops?).
My introduction to programming was thru a different game (Subspace VIE, a MMO on dialup back in the 90s later community-remade as Continuum) when squad had a login page at a domain. I really wondered how example.com/?login worked and that led me to where I am today.
I spent probably thousands of hours playing Infiltration back in the day. I can't imagine how much time and energy must have been poured into completely re-doing a game like that.
But it's good that the games industry caught up so the infiltration-itch can be scratched in other ways.
you mean like to browser? If yes, how did you achieve UDP connections? To my best knowledge, browsers allow TCP only
WebRTC can run over UDP, but it's not raw UDP. I think that's what they meant.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebTranspor...
EDIT: actually I can't find the code, shouldn't it be linked as per GPL's license?
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.
[1]: https://unreal.fandom.com/wiki/Mutator
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...
The workshop is really cool though, tons of cool modes. Only downside is you can't do any map modifications or anything like that.
Turns out, if a redeemer rocket flys over, sound frequency goes slightly lower. If a few 100s of these fly over, sound frequency goes rock bottom, making the announcer say stuff like: Monsterkiiiiiiiuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuooorrgglllll. And then the whole level explodes because hundreds of redeemers tend to set each other off in a chain reaction
Fun times.
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/morphies-law-swit...
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.
Wish they GPL that one, too, so we can build a 64bit version of that.
> I still boot it up to play occasionally
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.
Maybe you can help me. My earlies memories of Halo2 multiplayer involved a map with two bases on opposite sides in a canyon. I bring it up only to talk about it, I know I could look up the name...
It was the first online pvp game I had played. Having 1v1s with people with voice chat was so addicting.
I remember it used to use an ELO calculation for rank so I would calculate my buddies matches when I was at his house telling him how much he would gain or lose in the current match.
Good times.
[1] https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/Coagulation
do you remember the monster hunter mod ?
huge random monsters would spawn and it would take multiple people to take them down
Update, found it: https://www.oldunreal.com/downloads/unreal/full-game-install...
This is where the installer you linked to downloads the iso's from. The iso's have been on IA for quite a while already.
Here's hoping it can make a revival someday akin to City of Heroes https://www.polygon.com/gaming/471719/city-of-heroes-homecom... .
I can kind of understand the behavior in the case of non-game software, e.g if a company makes a tool to do X, and someone wants to do X, you want them to buy the new profitable version not the old one for cheap/free. But I just don't think that applies to games - even a "remake" that is literally just a graphics update (no gameplay, UI, or anything changes, just increased asset resolution) people prefer the updated graphics so will generally buy that when it becomes available, but in the absence of such an update the old game is not competing for new ones.
At least if a third party provides it then it's not really an official copy of the game.
Quick start instructions also pull UT from the archive https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/337069
I had worked all summer to be able to buy myself a computer for college (and made sure it had a decent video card).
I recall, some weeks into my Freshman year, one Saturday night getting a call from a friend of mine who lived down the hall, "Hey I'm at this party, and my friend (Jenny or some other common lady name) wants to talk to you". So he puts this girl on the phone.
Her: "What are you doing?"
Me: "Playing Unreal."
Her: "So, you're going to be doing that all night?"
Me: "Yes."
Her: "OK... I guess I'll talk to you later"
All these years later, I still think I made the right decision.
We should make a petition that they opensource the code at least for these two ones. i still have the CDRoms.
i even would buy it again, if that would make this more likely.
That being said, xonotic is a bit like it (and opensource) and there are maps like Facing Worlds available, but sadly no good npc / npc-way-mapping for it.
That said, it's appreciated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iONsjiiqeKg
[1]: https://pikuma.com/blog/jungle-music-video-game-drum-bass
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.
Also, another argument for proper funding of the Internet Archive.
That's not unreasonable.
https://play.spacelancers.com/
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.
This would impact indie developers and small publishers more than large ones.