Unreal Gets Mod Competition Finalists, Unreal Expo

Thanks to UnrealTournament.com for its announcement of the finalists for the "FPS Mods" section of the $1,000,000 Make Something Unreal competition. These include popular mods such as "World War II multiplayer experience" Red Orchestra, as well as more unique adaptions such as "first-person survival horror total conversion" Infection. Elsewhere, the Unreal Expo LAN party has just been announced, "officially endorsed by Epic Games", and to be held July 9th, 10th and 11th 2004 in Columbus, Ohio.

Those darn Soccer fans

[ObviousGuy]

The Best Mod winner of Phase 1 was a European Football adaptation of Unreal.

The extent to which UT seems to be malleable is amazing. I wonder what hard limits these mod creators are running into.

Re:Those darn Soccer fans

[Kelerain]

It is pretty amazing. More and more engines are becoming that way, and more and more developers are trying to sell licences as a source of income. The unreal engine is very flexible, and generic. The games they make on it now, (ut2003, ut2004 etc) are made entirely of scripts. There is nothing hard coded into the engine that is 'unreal'.

Re:Those darn Soccer fans

[BlueCodeWarrior]

That'd probably be the way I'd do it, too.

First of all, I bet they make more money off of liscensing the engine than they do off of 2k4 or whatever, so therefore, it'd be much better for them to keep as much of their game out of the engine as possible.

Also, scripts are much easier to change, and I bet the time savings of not having to recompile a script compared to compiling a hard-coded event are pretty good, too.

Re:Those darn Soccer fans

[MachDelta]

AFAIK, an UT engine license runs around $350,000 with you paying royalties, or 750,000 for a no-strings-attatched copy. So yes, Epic can make VERY good money by selling the engine. Especially considering its so darn popular.


Oh, and about Uscript... you actually have to compile it too. Luckilly, the compiler (UCC) and everything else you need is all included in the box, and compiling individual scripts usually doesn't take very long.
The thing to understand is that UScript is basically a language (C++/Java-ish, OOP) of its own. Practically all of the game content is handled through UScript and then run by a virtual machine created by the game. Most of the actual C++ native stuff that's hidden away (the VM, renderer, sound, networking, etc) isn't something most modders need to touch anyways, since all the real meat of the "game" is totally exposed. Anyone can just dive in and start mucking away with the scripts, its kinda cool. I'm not very good at it, but I know its there :)

If you're still curious (or my non-programmer explanation just sucks), you can head on over to a nice little Wiki page [beyondunreal.com] with an article written by Epics lead programmer (Tim Sweeny) that gives a good intro to the language. Ok, so 9 pages isn't exactly little. But it is pretty cool if you ever wanted to know where UScript came from and how she works. :)

Re:Those darn Soccer fans

[Deraj DeZine]

I'd say the real advantage of using a virtual machine for scripts has little to do with recompile times and more to do with the fact that they can be executed on any architecture since the virtual machine is written in C or C++.

Of course, Quake's had this ability since, well, Quake 1.

Re:Those darn Soccer fans

[Snaller]

Luckilly, the compiler (UCC) and everything else you need is all included in the box

Except the documentation...

Re:Those darn Soccer fans

[MachDelta]

Then might I refer you to AirBuccaneers [ludocraft.oulu.fi]?
Its kind of like a pirate game, except that combat is largely done through large airships (dirigibles) with cannons.
Though surely the same concepts used in airships could be applied to conventional watercraft? (But hey, i'm no UScript expert)

Re:Those darn Soccer fans

[WWWWolf]

The Best Mod winner of Phase 1 was a European Football adaptation of Unreal.

Really??? I was thinking of starting a "First Person Soccer" mod for Quake 3, but it never got anywhere (not even the drawing board) due to lack of skill and time.

And now that this fine idea has been implemented, it's on the wrong engine! Arrrrrgh!

Now I'm just praying for a three gigahertz computer to fall from the skies, or something. Can't run UT2kWhatever on my trusty ol' P3-600.

Infection

[sirmikester]

I think infection has alot of potential, but its still rough around the edges. If they combine fps with elements from games like resident evil, and up the production values, the mod would sure be a winner. It reminds me alittle of the mod "they hunger" for Half-life.

Unreal Annihilation

[Recoil_42]

This is a good opportunity to mention that Unreal Annihilation [tauniverse.com] will be officially released on April 20th.

Unreal Annihilation is a mod based on Total Annihilation, a game which i'm sure many people here are highly familiar with. It actually takes the Unreal Engine and converts it to a real-time strategy game, no small feat. go check out their site, the screenshots look fantastic:

http://ua.tauniverse.com/ [tauniverse.com]

They are planning to enter the mod in the make something unreal competition once it gets to a certain stage, so yes mods, this is on-topic.

Re:Unreal Annihilation

[irokitt]

Wow, I didn't think Unreal could be that flexible. The game looks good too.

Re:Unreal Annihilation

[Snaller]

Probably followed by a lawsuit the day after.

Just played deathball

[snakattak]

Its like real soccer. You run up and down the field with little scoring. And instead of killing-spree's you can go on "Passing Sprees". You can kill the other team members if they are inside your goal area, or if they have the ball. Everyone has the same weapon, its like a hammer weapon for killing that also passes/shoots your ball. It was kinda fun, no one was playing on the servers, but their beta release for ut2004 lasted at least a whole game in single player. About 30 minutes. I just couldn't get over