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Epic Allows Internet Archive to Distribute Unreal and Unreal Tournament Forever

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Re: Epic Allows Internet Archive to Distribute Unreal and Unreal Tournament Forever

#31

Post by dmead »

modeless wrote: post #27

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.

Ioquake was helpful for the open Jedi project get an open source version of jk3 working.

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.

Re: Epic Allows Internet Archive to Distribute Unreal and Unreal Tournament Forever

#32

Post by bayindirh »

snarfy wrote: post #28
notamy wrote: post #5

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.

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.

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.

Re: Epic Allows Internet Archive to Distribute Unreal and Unreal Tournament Forever

#33

Post by DerSaidin »

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.

Re: Epic Allows Internet Archive to Distribute Unreal and Unreal Tournament Forever

#35

Post by bobim »

bittwiddle wrote: post #9
gadtfly wrote: post #4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_0G6WPuss4

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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iONsjiiqeKg

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.

Re: Epic Allows Internet Archive to Distribute Unreal and Unreal Tournament Forever

#36

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

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.

Re: Epic Allows Internet Archive to Distribute Unreal and Unreal Tournament Forever

#37

Post by deafpolygon »

modeless wrote: post #27

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.

Im willing to bet the code for UT is being used for Fortnite.

Re: Epic Allows Internet Archive to Distribute Unreal and Unreal Tournament Forever

#38

Post by mylons »

duskwuff wrote: post #20
magicalhippo wrote: post #15

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. [1]: https://unreal.fandom.com/wiki/Mutator

> It's a shame later multiplayer games didn't pick up on the mutator concept. 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...

overwatch is essentially the anti-UT. there’s no simplicity, just complexity and toxicity.

Re: Epic Allows Internet Archive to Distribute Unreal and Unreal Tournament Forever

#39

Post by pests »

deafpolygon wrote: post #37
modeless wrote: post #27

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.

Im willing to bet the code for UT is being used for Fortnite.

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.

Re: Epic Allows Internet Archive to Distribute Unreal and Unreal Tournament Forever

#40

Post by pests »

mylons wrote: post #38
duskwuff wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a shame later multiplayer games didn't pick up on the mutator concept. 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...

overwatch is essentially the anti-UT. there’s no simplicity, just complexity and toxicity.

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.

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