UT2003 / UT2004 Network Compatability To Be Broken

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RaptoR

been here far too long
May 7, 2000
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Sir_Brizz sends this news from the UT2003Mods mailing list. Epic's Tim Sweeney has revealed that, in fact, UT2003 and UT2004 will not be network compatible. That means that UT2004 players won't be able to play on UT2003 servers as originally planned.

Networking won't work between UT2003 and UT2004. We had initially plannedto support that, but the network code has changed so much in order to
reduce bandwidth, support vehicles, and increase performance, that we couldn't
keep
the two games network-compatible.

-Tim
 

Loibisch

The Odd Member
Jan 3, 2000
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and before all the bitching starts:
Were any of you planning to play on UT2003 servers with UT2004?
Please keep in mind that a lot of things have been changed (weapon balance, boostdodge, way itemspawn works, etc.)
This isn't even the same game anymore so if you wanna play it I suggest you just leave your old UT2003 copy installed...
 

master_newbie

2D Mod Fan
Sep 6, 2003
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yes, when ut2004 arrives I want to play all that new ut2004 stuff

and I guess within a month 90% of all ut2003 servers have upgraded to 2004
 

[V3]Optimal

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Nov 5, 2003
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In other words ut2k4 is going to kill ut2k3. I really don't care about the compatability between the two. I didn't plan on playing in 2k3 servers anyway.
 

JaFO

bugs are features too ...
Nov 5, 2000
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*eh* they won't be compatible on the network-level ... there's still a chance the mods work with both games (that is if the developers worked with the engine instead of against it).

ie : you can't play UT'03 & RO on a server running UT'04 & RO or vice versa.
Then again I doubt few teams will be able to maintain 2 versions just to please a minority. And given that most mods are planning to add vehicles anyway logic would suggest that they all eventually move to UT'04.
 

Loric

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Oct 11, 2003
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Obviously the explaination Tim Sweeney gives is utter bullcrap.
All the optimisations made for UT2004 could profit UT2003 as well, couldn't they?

To me they are breaking compatibility either to force people switching to UT2004 (by droppiong support ot UT2003) or because they want to make sure the UT2003 hacks can't be used by cheaters in UT2004.
 

WebSlinger

bNotNegative != False
Feb 29, 2000
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Loric, do you have a copy of both engine's source code and minutes from the Epic marketing meetings to back up your claims? Or did you just make all of that up?
 

W0RF

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Apr 19, 2002
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Kowalski.44 said:
What everyone seems to be missing is that Ut2004 players won't be compatible with UT2003 mods now which will get very ****ing annoying when some mods might move to the newer engine. This means me and a alot of people will have to buy a ****ty game just to play some mods. (Ut2003 was a bad game but I bought it just for Red Orchestra)
This is my only beef with it. I was hoping 2K4 would bring the market together, not split it a fourth way (if you count XMP, which has in fact pulled me off 2k3 for the moment). In truth, I'm so picky about my servers (sub-200 or even sub-100 ping, no LG/IG/whatever crap, etc), I probably would pass over the 2K3 servers anyway once I got used to 2K4 play. And I'll probably be playing ONS and AS more than anything so it may double-not-matter to me. But being able to port the mods over to 2K4 with no hassles would have been nice. A lot of mod teams are probably spewing their coffee right now as they read this notice.

Loric raises an interesting question, though (not about the money-grubbing conspiracy). Would it be possible to patch 2K3 to restore network compatibility from 2K4? You know what I'm saying? It's kind of hard to phrase that question correctly but I know in my head what I'm asking...
 

JaFO

bugs are features too ...
Nov 5, 2000
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If they really had wanted to pull a fast one then they'd claim that UT'04 would be an expansionpack.

They didn't ...
They almost immediately said it would be a full game.
So a network-compatibility break was to be expected ...
They even said that they were going to break it at some point (IIRC something was said that they were delaying several fixes so they would only break compatibility once or something to that effect).

I think the only thing they didn't guess was the fact that the gap could prove a bit too big to fix.
Perhaps they needed to fix the original UT'03 levels as well ?
Given the comments that the pickups have been resized in UT'04 there might have been no easy way to fix that in UT'03.
It definitely could mean that a 100% network-compatible 'patch' would have meant releasing almost the entire game as a patch.
 

RegularX

Master of Dagoth Lies
Feb 2, 2000
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Tim's post seems to suggest that they've made enough changes that a simple patch isn't possible. That doesn't sound like some BS PR statement to me, that sounds like what happens in coding.

From the sounds of it, few mods are going to want to stay with UT2003 in the face of new GUI code, new vehicle code, new weapon code, new gameplay code, better networking, etc.

And for the MSUC Phase 3, mods have to UT2k4 compatible. So your existing projects will probably be making the switch around March.
 

Alhanalem

Teammember on UT3JB Bangaa Bishop
Feb 21, 2002
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its netcode thats breaking compatibility, not anything else. mods should work as they did before.
 

Loibisch

The Odd Member
Jan 3, 2000
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@Bazzi:
Nope, but I won't even go into that.


People seem to be missing that almost every patch for UT2003 broke mod-compatibility and mods had to be re-released to work with the new patch. Now you expect that UT2003 mods just work for UT2004 without any tweaking? :lol:
UT2004 will be just another patch for modmakers.