UT2003 Gone Gold, Ships with Linux Support

SiW writes "This announcement should be music to a Linux gamer's ears: Unreal Tournament 2003 has just gone gold, and supports Linux (client and server) out of the box!" It's not often that I get to play a new game without rebooting. I'm really looking forward to this.

Maybe you should try the demo first?

[Phosphor3k]

Instead of just buying it because it supports linux? The linux and windows demos can be found here [unrealtournament2003.com].

Linux support..

[Manes]

is great and all, especially since they bundle it with the game. (unlike q3, which required getting a different box, which was impossible to get here in norway)

Too bad the game feels like a UT expansion pack though - after 10 minutes you forget the fancy new graphichs and physics models, and you realize that not only are almost all the weapons exactly the same, you still got the same voice taunts, the same feel, the same sounds and the same game.

Re:Linux support..

[Darren Winsper]

Eh? If you read the UT2003 forums, the biggest complaint is that it doesn't feel like UT anymore. Just because there are skin deep similarities doesn't mean it's not a very different beast.

Re:No gaming on Linux here

[Anonymous Coward]

For me giving up Civ3, EQ or Warcraft3 isn't worth making the switch (yet).

You don't have to give up Civ3 or Warcraft 3 under Linux. (I've never played EQ, so I don't know about that.) I've got a dual athlon workstation with lots of ram, but no Windows. Both Civ3 and War3 run under Wine.

Quake 3 is native, UT2k3 is native, NWN will be native :), and I just can't think of another game I'd like to run.

Without me noticing as it was happening, Linux got game. :)

Re:UT2003 gone boring

[Anonymous Coward]

Try America's Army.

The fans of cartoon shooters ala quake clone don't like it because it's a little to real realistic.

But if you want something actually fun but still realistic and requiring real team work then it's awesome.

Ya ya it's american propoganda bladiblahbla...

The DoD has a mighty big budget and has produced some kick ass tech in the past so when they put their effort towards a game, well it comes out pretty damn good.

Sorry kids, there is no quad damage, lightning gun, rail gun, rocket jumping, magical health packs that somehow heal gunshot wounds or other nonesensical cartoon shit that makes games blow.

Trying to be rambo and run around like a jumping spaz will just get you dead, quickly.

Re:Linux support???

[Anonymous Coward]

Look carefully on the Linux driver. The DRM kernel module is only responsible for the proper communication with the kernel, not the OpenGL support.

The OpenGL library, on the other hand, which contains the S3TC code is delivered as object file. You cannot call THAT open source, can you?

Re:I wonder if user bitching caused this?

[jvmatthe]

It's my impression that user bitching didn't have much to do with it. Epic has one person, Daniel Vogel, that is interested in seeing some Linux support and he contacted a notable Linux game coder, Ryan Gordon, about getting the client work done on Linux. My experience has been that Epic isn't nearly so pro-free-software as say Carmack but they do have a view of the world that isn't completely Windows-centric. Mostly Windows-centric? Of course...that's where a good portion of their profit sits, along with console ports, like the Xbox Unreal game slated for this winter and Unreal Tournament for PS2 at the launch of that console. But the recent comment by Mark Rein of Epic saying, in effect, "if we have a server port, we should also do a client port" is probably indicative of the positive attitude that Epic currently has about ports for other systems. And they haven't forgotten the Mac, and a port will be coming along for that platform as well. Epic wants everyone to buy the game and they've taken steps to make sure that every major platform has a port for people to buy.

The community helping out and being supportive is probably more likely to get things to happen, rather than bitching.

You can read a little more about how the UT2003 client came to be at LinuxGames [linuxgames.com].

Re:I wonder if user bitching caused this?

[whovian]

...when I heard that they were not going to do Linux support right off the bat.

I thought I had read that they weren't even planning Linux support at all, but seeing as how they needed OpenGL support en route to a Mac version, they decided it was convenient to produce a Linux version. After searching for the "official" statement, I found this post from the man himself Mark Rein:

Here are the answers to some questions I've been asked:

"Why did Epic waste time supporting Linux?" - it is NOT a waste of time. It is absolutely crucial to have Linux support for the server and seeing as we found a very competent programmer (Ryan C. Gordon) to take on the client side job we decided to go full steam ahead with the client as well. We were already going to have to do OpenGL support for the Mac version so it made sense. Linux support has not impacted the development of the core game in any way. There was never any specific plan to release a Linux client at the same time as the Windows client ships but the timing just worked out that way. I wish we had known earlier because I would have liked to indicate the game is Linux-compatible on the box like we did with the original UT. But at least we'll have the support in the game and that's what really counts.

"I'm a Windows XP user - why should I care about whether there are Linux versions or not?" You should care because we estimate that about half the servers for UT are currently run under Linux. This is why I said it was "crucial" to have Linux support for UT2003 on the server side and personally I think that if we're taking advantage of an OS for the server then we should have a client implementation as well. I played UT2003 on a Linux system the other day and it rocked. It feels the same as the Windows version in terms of performance and robustness. Linux users will enjoy the game and all users (Windows/Mac/Linux) will enjoy having more servers to play on. Linux support in UT2003 is a win-win for everyone.

Source: Infogrames Forums

Re:Just what I want...

[fault0]

I think the best thing about ut2k3 is the better physics than UT. Quaker's, like myself, have always felt restricted by UT's lack of strafe jumping. ut2k3 doesn't include strafe jumping, but it's dodge jumping is a bit more pronounced than the dodge jumping in UT. Also, it has a Quake2-like double jumping system. Also, wall jumps and lift jumps (which were found in UT), also seem more pronounced, especially with a faster than default game speed (110%), and a higher fov than normal (around 100 is best, imho).

Re:But what about dependencies ?

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't any direct dependency on nvidia in UT2003. UT2003 requires texture compression and currently only nvidia's binary drivers provide that in Linux. Blame manufacturer of your laptop video card for not providing decent Linux drivers.

Re:UnrealEd...fixed? Better?

[ab0b]

UnrealEd has not been ported to linux, and as of now there is no plan to do so. There was some discussion on the mailing list [icculus.org] of a community developed port of the Editor, however this was more or less ruled out. Basically they are concerned about releasing documentation on the engine libraries, which change often and would "open up a ton of cheats we couldn't detect" (Ryan C Gordon).

Re:Ogg Vorbis in UT

[ArsonPerBuilding]

This is new. UT2k3 has had support for ogg vorbis sound; and only ogg vorbis sound for a while.

Re:Under linux only if you have a Nvidia card..

[Time Doctor]

ATi is patching their newer radeon drivers [ati.com], and will support S3TC some time in the future!

Re:nVidia-only-Linux-support

[Time Doctor]

It's up to the vendors to support the Savage Texture Compression. ATi will probably be fixing their radeon drivers themselves.

Re:No one is going to get this, methinks

[Planesdragon]

Now, don't get me wrong. I bought Quake 3, Alpha Centauri, and Jagged Alliance II for Linux. But those *run* reasonably on computers not built for gaming. UT2003? Riiight...

I have a Duron 700 with 128 MB of RAM and a Geforce 2MX. By all accounts, I'm actually below the required stats for the game. But the demo runs just as well as the original Unreal...

If you're running Q3 at an average rate, you can probably run UT2003.

They didn't know in time.

[therealmoose]

If you would read the announcement, or any of the posts, you would know that they didn't know whether it would support linux when they sent the box design off. You can't reprint thousands upon thousands of boxes, delaying game release, to announce linux support.

Stop being so paranoid!

Re:Unreal...

[Traser]

FreeBSD supports full linux binary emulation - and any X driver for any video card (just ask my RIVA TNT2) works under FreeBSD ( I can't speak for the other BSD's, but I suspect something similar occurs.).