Backward Compatibilty

[T2K]dARK_g · Dec 21, 2001

I know it's a long shot, but will there be any form of backward compatibility with UT?
So mod and map authors aren't wasting their time on ambitious projects for a soon to be overshadowed game.
I dont expect the Unreal to UT type of 'open it and run it' but perhaps the chance of a converter of some sort. I don't want to bother signing myself up to work on any mods if they will wont be seen with all the hype of U2.

I personally think UT will continue to be the best Unreal franchise online game for a while to come. No homing leech guns for me!

Will you play UT online and U2 offline? will these mean a split between the community

/me gets out big stick and starts stirring

ravenus · Dec 21, 2001

Originally posted by Danz
I know it's a long shot, but will there be any form of backward compatibility with UT?
Will you play UT online and U2 offline? will these mean a split between the community

I really doubt that since the U2 engine especially its renderer promises to be very different from previous avatars of the engine. Besides, once people see the features of the new engine, like massive environments and high poly models, they may not want to just plain convert UT maps to work in the new form, it'd be far preferred to bang out brand new content that makes use of the Warfare engine Goodies including the editor's terrain modifying capabilities.
As for MP UT it's had its day in the sun. Of course there will still be a dedicated fanbase atleast until the hi-quality mods/maps for U2 start rolling in sufficient quantity.

NeoNite · Dec 22, 2001

Re: Re: Backward Compatibilty

Originally posted by ravenus

As for MP UT it's had its day in the sun. Of course there will still be a dedicated fanbase atleast until the hi-quality mods/maps for U2 start rolling in sufficient quantity.

No offence ravenus but..

I've read stuff like this on other forums, and every time I do, It makes me wanna puke, puke and puke cause it sounds so damn stupid. but that's the way most gamers think I guess.. in with the new.. out with the old, doesn't matter If I had so much fun playing that game...

ravenus · Dec 22, 2001

Originally posted by N3oN1t3|Buf

No offence ravenus but..

I've read stuff like this on other forums, and every time I do, It makes me wanna puke, puke and puke cause it sounds so damn stupid. but that's the way most gamers think I guess.. in with the new.. out with the old, doesn't matter If I had so much fun playing that game...

Big Deal Neo, it happens with every franchise. The fact is things which are fun do remain, only on a smaller scale. People still play classic doom and quake1 MP and its not like there's going to be collective offical movement to fling UT out of the window. And why do you assume that U2 will be any less fun before playing it?
Stuff which is largely liked will return in a refurbished and (who knows) refined form. For eg think playing Chaos/U4E/Overkill on huge landscapes with brand-new particle effects and boffo player models.

[T2K]dARK_g · Dec 22, 2001

If you are easily provoked look away now:

Thing is myself and most of the competitive gamers who play UT (ie Clanbase, OGL, people who went to WCG) dont want spammy excessive weapons and huge rolling hills. They would rather see a more refined and less spam prone game which requires more skill. One that is better suited to tournament play. Unreal 2 looks to me like it is made as much for games journalists as hardcore gamers.

However I'm sure if you went to a site such as www.xsreality.com www.clanbase.com or www.cached.net you would see my concerns reflected. These are the people who I feel the developers ignore at their peril, Quake 3 has taken the limelight because of it's ability to be played as a serious professional medium. At the WCG people rightly took the piss because of its poor multiplayer code and options

I am no doubt barking up the wrong tree talking about "professionalism" and "Legend" in one sentence, though there might be the option to tune down the crap for server admins, if there is only ridiculous scenarios to begin with they won't bother. It isn't a side of UT you see much in these forums but there are a sizeable minority who no longer play UT just because they like the game, it's more for the sake of the people they know through it and the community.

This is probably the worst place to post such an opinion as you all like UT as a nice and pretty looking computer game and not much else

hal · Dec 22, 2001

Different games for different folks, I guess. Not everyone is going to be 100% pleased with any game no matter what.

Legend is trying to make Unreal 2, not Unreal Tournament 2 or Quake4. The focus is on the singleplayer game with a few fun multiplayer options.

I know there are a contingency of people that take Deathmatching so seriously that they prefer maze-like maps and cookie-cutter hitscan weapons, and nothing but. But jeebus, not everyone cares for that sort of thing, and I think that UT's sales speak for themselves.

If you want to see an engrossing, beautifully detailed singleplayer game, U2 is for you. If you want serious built-in multiplaying...wait for Epic's next game. If you want sterile world competition.... see the previous paragraph. :hmm:

[T2K]dARK_g · Dec 22, 2001

Yes I understand that hal, but for most Unreal means mulitplayer and the series will suffer if this isn't the type that lasts. I think games with decent mulitplayer outlast singleplayer titles by a long way in any case, I think UT proves that multiplayer has the equal capacity to sell.

Great make UT look fab for the mags so it is the fatest selling software in the history of PC gaming, but perhaps they could acheive UT like lastability by making it more friendly to competitive play, who really wants to keep playing a game and buying addons, merchandising when they can finish and refund it and refund in a wee. I work at EB and see at least 60% of single player titles returned within the 10 day policy, compared to very few versions of UT. It still sells.

Hopefully Legend realise that class based mp is saturated right now, eSports at this time really needs a kick up the backside from somewhere and U2 is the first title to be released after the imminent death of UT and Q3 that can offer 1v1 play. They would be stupid to ignore that.

If you read Xsreality you can see people are bored but don't have an alternative, no one wants to succomb to the evils of CS if they don't have to. Also the CPL has said they will not be featuring anymore id games, hence the perfect opening for Unreal 2, it's proven that many top fps players and their legion of followers are prepared to be mercenary about what title they play.

I would hardly call the WCG sterile, in fact competition provides some of the funniest and most astounding moments. As has often been said, it's not the game. it's the opponents that matter.

Stryker8 · Dec 22, 2001

sorry to disappoint you guys, it is possible but takes to much time and is not rewarding
referring to the compatibility question

ravenus · Dec 23, 2001

I don't fully understand Danz's POV here. If a game is perfect for a set of people, then they will play it regardless of the advent of other games. Why then be glum over the fact that the next game in a series will not be tailored according to your specifications? The fact is even developers are creative artists and cannot be expected to just make the same game over with just a namesake engine upgrade. Epic has supported UT enough with its Bonus pack maps and goodies. Surely they and U2 developers Legend have the right to want to make something different.
You like UT then play UT. Why should you worry over how U2 is not going to be UT (and why should it be anyway)?
It really disappoints me somehow to see how purists diss a game for trying to evolve/be different.

NeoNite · Dec 23, 2001

Sure Ut looks nice, and I pity the fools who turn off all the "pretty stuff" such as the coronas, dynamic lighting etc... why buy a game like ut then? I've read the same thing on the Quake fos though, beginning of this year.

yeah when most people hear the name unreal they probably think of ut and deathmatch and that's it...
Most people=the mass
the mass= poor opinion and stupid

thank you for your time.

Tetris L · Dec 26, 2001

Former {G}Danz? Hey, m8!

This is what Matthias Worch had to say about backward compatibility:
http://ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=147549

Unreal and UT use a very similar version of the rendering engine, so loading old maps wasn't a big problem. Loading UT maps in U2 is not going to happen, even if we wanted to - too much underlying code changed. The texture format has changed, I doubt it's even possible to load a UT .utx in U2 (you'll probably get a serialization error). The way the engine stores texture coordinates has changed. The mesh/animation system is new. The sound system has been rewritten. The way the engine does occlusion has changed (in fact, it's a completely new renderer). Dynamic lights are done is differently. The music format has changed. A lot of the actors for game logic (Triggers, SpecialEvents etc.) have changed. And of course all assets (weapons, enemies etc.) are new and things like the player height have changed.

Level designers will be able to import .t3d files of their old levels and rebuild those, but even then they should be prepared to spend significant time on rescaling rooms, realigning textures, tweaking sound radii etc. Would it be possible to write a converter for old UT maps? Probably, but it wouldn't create satisfying results, so we won't do it (we don't have the time, anyway, it's not a trivial task).

Sorry, that's just the way it is, and no email to Infogrames, Legend or Epic will change that You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, and if you want a new game that pushes the technical boundaries you can't keep all the old code, you have to rewrite stuff. U2 would not look half as good as today if we'd kept all the old code. The same happened with Quake, Quake2 and Quake3, btw, you couldn't simply load a map from the previous title and expect it to run. And I doubt it hurt any of those games

I think he is right. Live with it.

ravenus · Dec 26, 2001

Amen to that.
People forget that UT was conceived as a counter to all the negative backlash that the developers received from the MP community. It is pretty much the old engine with netcode optimizations, better animation code and of course D3D patches.
With U2 it's a whole new ballgame.

LP · Jan 7, 2002

even if you could convert a UT map to Unreal2/UT2/UC, or whatever, you will have to deal with the changes in the scale. everything in Unreal 2 is 1.5 times bigger than in UT , so u would be very cramped in a lil ol' UT level. And it aint always easy to scale a whole level up, cos everything usually ends up all over the place :hmm:

dinwitty · Jan 7, 2002

ok, a resized map can be trouble with textures.
Perhaps some modder can some out
and make an accurate resizer for a map,
perhaps it would exist in UT, not U2.
Then it could be exported with the correct resizing.
Too bad the resizing tool doesnt have
an accurate numbering system to go by when you resize.
One of my editing buggers is theres no
referencing numbers to check on the size of a brush or maybe just one leg of a brush.

Also when I export and import a map,
when importing, I usually load up all the textures otherwise they get replaced
with the bubble texture, which is a pain to go in and re- place textures.
Why I would like to see the same textures (or named textures to represent a similar texture in U2)

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Backward Compatibilty

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