UT 2004 Demo: What Went Right?

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hal

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The response for the Unreal Tournament 2004 demo has been overwhelmingly positive so far. UT2k3.net's Scuzzbuster turns in one of his usual fine articles as he ponders the burning question... "What went right?".
Replay Value: This is something that held a lot of the community down with UT2003. It's something the original Unreal Tournament (we'll refer to it as UT99 from here on out) had and 2k3 didn't seem to. My feeling with 2k3, along with others that liked it is that it was difficult to play long stretches. I'm finding myself losing sleep over the 2k4 demo for the first time over a game since the early days of UT and Q3A. Ten days into release and playing the same maps over and over again is still holding mine--and thousands of other players--interest.
 

MachDelta

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I think we can cautiously say that UT is back
Hells yeah! :D:tup:



Just to touch on a few things he mentioned though...


Shield Stacking
I love the change back to old school style too... except for one thing. Theres no way to keep your 50 and 100 straight! In UT you had body armour and pads. You picked up body armour (aka: 100) to replenish your body armour, and leg pads (aka: 50) to replenish your pads. But there isn't any body armour or leg pads in UT2004, just shields. So I can see players (never mind new players - some old players as well) getting confused with the way the shields stack. As in... If you have 30 shields and pick up a 100... what does it go to? 100? Or 130?
Seems like something that could be cleaned up.

Translocator
Excuse me while I get flamed for this... but has anyone ever thought about dropping the TLs charges back down to 5, but keeping the same recharge rate? Don't get me wrong, i'm a TL spammer with the rest of yas... but I think limited TLs really do add to the game, and that even 6 might be a little bit much. You can get a loooong way on 6+ charges, even using them carelessly.

BOTS Showing in the Server Browser
Still hate it. Even the compromise (bots only shown if there are players too) pisses me off. All I want to see is players. If theres a bot or three filling out the ranks, thats fine, yay, UT bots are the best, rah rah and all that. Just gimmy my players-only view back, goddamnit. :mad:



Anyways, enough of my bitching. Just wanted to say that it was a great article too. :):tup:
 
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spineblaZe

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Biggest thing for me is the new Shield/Health system. No longer can you have 150 shield and 10 health and expect to live. On the same note, it is much easier to get a kill, and that to me is a very good thing. It makes the veterans work harder, and it makes it easier for the new players. :tup:

*edit* Just read the article, Scuzz already said that.:shy:
 
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Beelzebud (Satanas)

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I just hope the game at least maintains its current popularity after it goes retail.

Getting people to play a free game is easy.

Gettng them to pay for one is tricky.
 

AMmayhem

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MachDelta said:
BOTS Showing in the Server Browser
Still hate it. Even the compromise (bots only shown if there are players too) pisses me off. All I want to see is players. If theres a bot or three filling out the ranks, thats fine, yay, UT bots are the best, rah rah and all that. Just gimmy my players-only view back, goddamnit. :mad:

If they want a true compromise, they would add that as a filter option. "Show bots in player count" or whatever.
 

isocryd

Final steps of evolution
Something i noticed abut 2k4 (and perhaps that nobody cares about) is that the player models are (in perspective) smaller than the 2k3 ones... just about '99 sized ones.

Yet, something that bothers me is the fact that (Hopefully only in the demo) Damage indicators are extremely subtle... a groan here... a whine there (No more "owchie"?) ... but no real way to tell how much damage did you receive... I found myself several times raiding an enemy position with 10 health and no shields... just because I didn't hear damage and didn't see the (lack of) visual damage indicator.
 

Houdini-GG

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its vehicles are fun and useful
its runs well
its more like UT than 2k3
theres no competition out there for it (no direct genre competition)
the weapons are fun
it looks nice
vehicles -vs- foot soldiers is a decent battle
ONS/AS/CTF/TDM/BR require good teamplay, when u get a good team, its very rewarding.

i too though wish the bots werent ever counted. even if they are smart
 

Shrimp

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isocryd said:
Yet, something that bothers me is the fact that (Hopefully only in the demo) Damage indicators are extremely subtle... a groan here... a whine there (No more "owchie"?) ... but no real way to tell how much damage did you receive... I found myself several times raiding an enemy position with 10 health and no shields... just because I didn't hear damage and didn't see the (lack of) visual damage indicator.

This is probably the only thing that's been bothering me about UT2004 so far, I'm used to the 'View flash' option when taking damage, so now when there's someone directly in front of me shooting at me, I often don't see the damage indicators because I assume they are only supposed to show you damage by enemies outside of your view range.

It's especially hard when someone is shooting at you from the other site of a really large map or long passage. I find myself having to look at the health counter more than the actual game now, whereas in the past I had a much better idea of how much health I've been losing by the amount of flashing going on.

Perhaps they should add an option to the full game to have 'classic' or 'directional' damage indicators, or a combination of both would be perfect.


Otherwise I've been playing the demo since the download finished and still haven't got tired of it :). I've probably played the demo more than I played UT2003 over the past year :D.
 

isocryd

Final steps of evolution
How about getting shoved away by missiles/shock blasts? I cannot tell anymore if they are friendly of hostile anymore. Until I get killed, that is.

[edit]Forgot to add... when you have friendly fire disabled and run over a teammate with a vehicle, you'll hear a chain of *squish* sounds... that bothers me quite a lot[/edit]
 
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SirYawnalot

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In Jedi Academy (please don't stop reading!) there are different pain sounds depending on how much damage you take, in increments of 25. Might be an idea to include something like that in UT2004; or perhaps make the damage indicators bigger and brighter depending on how much HP you have left.

Also, veering off the conversation a bit here, it'd be nice if warheads (redeemer & avril missiles) had a team colour band somewhere along it, because now they're so easy to shoot down it's sometimes hard to tell whether you should actually be shooting it down or not.