Make Something Unreal Announces First Winners

Thanks to PlanetUnreal for their news that the first-round winners of Epic/Atari's 'Make Something Unreal' FPS modding competition have been announced, with "the winners of the first-of-four contest rounds taking home a share of $50,000 in cash and high-end PC equipment." According to the linked press release: "The winning [Unreal-specific] mods include Deathball (the first place winner), which is a futuristic soccer/lacrosse/football-like sport, and fourth-place winner Jupiter Effect: Influx, which was created as an art school project and is an anime inspired battle between giant robots." The Make Something Unreal official page also has details and links to the winners, also noting that "the contest is one year long and set to conclude in the fall of 2004."

deathball sounds like...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

BOMBING RUN?!

Re:deathball sounds like...

[schapman]

it does seem like they extended the bombing run game type... When we were doing out projects in school... we were doing Total Conversions... there were: Jupiter Effect: 3rd person mech Asylum: ( - i worked on this one) a fps/horror game And some sort of dream one.. had some AMAZING lev design. (3rd person platformer) And another called Chronicles of Cythera that i worked on... 3rd person fantasy/platformer

Re:deathball sounds like...

[MachDelta]

Originally, Cliffy B (one of the designers at Epic) wanted to name their new gameplay mode Deathball - but he was veto'd, and we now know that gametype as bombing run. So yeah, thats where they got the name from.

As for Deathball itself, its basically soccer (Football to the rest of the world). You've got a (goal)keeper, and a bunch of players that chase a ball around, trying to score. Except in deathball you can carry the ball around instead of having to dribble it. You can also "tackle" other players by running into them and using your weapon (basically a glorified shieldgun). Its also got a bunch of other crazy things, like quad jumping (!), boosting (punting other players with your weapon), and whatnot. Its actually pretty fun. Unfortunatly, it takes a while to get used to things, so the learning curve can be pretty steep. The sole problem with Deathball IMO is the community itself. Its overflowing with egotistical assholes who have no time for new players, or anyone they deem to be below themselves. Funny - its rather a lot like a real sport in that aspect.
So while its a good game, i'd advise most people to stay the hell away from it unless they're prepared to dive in and turn into a hardcore fanatic. If you make a mistake, the community will make it well known to you that casual players are not wanted.

Re:deathball sounds like...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Actually

Death ball sounds really friggin' cool. Now to install UT2k3 now...

...except that it's not

[waaka!]

Here's their about page [deathball.net]. Players are more specialized (there's a goalie, for example), and it doesn't use the standard UT2K3 weapon configuration, as the linked page says. I can see how would be a superficial resemblance, though.

Re:...except that it's not

[waaka!]

Whoops...I meant for my post to be a reply to this post [slashdot.org]

jupiter effect

[schapman]

I went to school (and finished) with the guys who did jupiter effect... probably one of the coolest mods ive ever seen. They put many.. many ... mnay hours into getting that one finished and looking awsome.

Deathball

[Dreadlord]

I'm actually quite happy with the results, t34m v0rt3x [planetunreal.com], the creators of Deathball, deserve it, I really liked their previous mod for UT (not 2k3), it was called Operation Na Pali [planetunreal.com], it felt like the original Unreal, and was better IMO than the official mission pack, later they released Deathball [deathball.net], another great mod for UT2k3 this time, and it added a lot of value to the game for me.
t34m v0rt3x, keep up the great work!

Spectator sports

[SamSim]

Most deathmatches are pretty difficult to follow, even for the players - and team-based games like CS only really make sense from the point of view of one of the players. From a spectator's point of view these games are lacking. What I'd really like to see is a mod of some sort which is DESIGNED to turn Unreal into a spectator sport, designed to be interesting and comprehensible to newcomers and veteran players alike. This would stand a better chance of bringing televised gaming to the public than current t