Unreal Tournament Turns 10!

Fond memories of the last decade

I've never played a game so much, or spent more time with any other community. Viva Nalicity! Viva Beyond Unreal!

Thank you Epic, especially Tim Sweeny for the tasty editor, Shane Caudle for most excellent art, and CliffyB for rockin levels.

For me, UT defined fps multiplayer - a benchmark that other games had to compete with yet never seemed to quite match the formula of fun that UT delivered. The unique combination of solid gameplay and fantasy/sci-fi elements was a formula made in heaven.

Thanks to the guys at Epic for making such a positive impact in all our lives through the fun we had with the entire series for players and modders. Something you guys should be proud of. Don't ever loose sight of how you defined the formula of 'fun' with this game!

UT changed my life in so many ways.

Hell, I didn't miss a day of playing for near 4 years straight. The Fraggalonia Sniper Arena servers were my happy home. They cut my teeth on server administration, which I still enjoy doing today.

Half the people who played every day on Fraggalonia (dutch servers) were in the US and there were rare complaints of lag. We adjusted. I made friends I met in real life, and have many online friends I speak with regularly. What a wonderful community and I love it dearly. I have friends who met through UT and are happily married with kids.

It was more than just a game for so many of us.

The UT demo was timed as I was enjoying my first foray into 3d accelleration, I got hyped with the build up to demo release and spent who knows how long downloading the demo release night on 56k...then my free time was gone.

Hooked on DOM and playing too many hours, I was top 5 in the demo stats for DOM and fought like hell to stay there.

Straight to Game on release day and once installed....well, it changed not only my life, but that of my friends, who all started buying PCs and getting in on the action.

UT led to the Tactical Ops mod, which I helped out with as a beta tester and from there my main PC activity has become modding. I can honestly say that no software title has had such an affect on my life or free time.

Ahhh the good old days, what fun they were!

Wow, I can't believe it's that old. I remember how me and my brother used to fight over who gets to play so we ended up both playing it at the same time, one on the mouse the other on the keyboard. I must've been 9 or 10 at the time.
UT rocks!

UT wasn't my first foray into PC gaming, but in many ways it felt like a completely new experience in gaming, never had I felt so immersed into an interactive computer based universe. My first experience with UT was sometime in 2000, I heard about Unreal most likely through a friend who was into all the different FPS games. I downloaded the demo and my first memory of UT is playing Coret in software rendering mode. It was choppy as hell due to my poor onboard graphics as well as the net speed, but it was still fun and a rush. Later that year, I bought a GF MX420, and a friend had some kind of promotional copy of the full version, he gave it to me and I was really excited to finally be able to play the full game, with proper graphics.

In 2001 I got into Zark and sniper gameplay primarily, I didn't even touch normal weapons again for about a year. I remember thinking, this is really cool that even now after playing this game for a year I can find something that is still "new" to get into in UT, and really I had only scratched the surface. The other striking thing about UT that molded a lot of my creative ideas, were the environments. As some have stated already, I spent so much time exploring them and even making up scenarios as I played, that it felt almost like part of me has lived another life.

But I've also formed a lot of valuable real world connections and met great people through it, formed ideas of my own based on those experiences, and UT is still in some way a part of my reality on a day to day basis even though I don't play the game a whole lot these days. Meaning, the technology is enabling me to do certain things creatively I might have otherwise been unable to do, particularily now that UDK is here. I'm very happy that all that time that I spent with it early on can be useful, because in principle I am not the type of person that just randomly plays games for long stretches. UT is the only game series with this kind of impact on me, and I suspect I will never have that kind of experience again.

I was however, happy when I fired up UT for the first time in probably a year or more last month, and was able to find enjoyable servers to play on, with some old classic favorite maps, and feeling the old instincts coming back. I hadn't been able to really enjoy classic UT since about 2005, so that felt good. Nowadays I think UT is best enjoyed in spread out doses.

I won't say too much about my opinion now, since it'll be forthcoming very shortly (and I'm not the only staffer who's put thoughts down - it should be in an article coming soon) but I will say I've met some awesome people, and lost a few, too.

Bersy and I, for example, even though he'd probably be loathe to admit it, were clanmates in that Zark clan he mentioned. And so we kept in touch. It's possible UTR might've never got made without the contacts we both met and knew, as we both brought additional people onboard to the project and worked hard enough to get an alpha out (but sadly, nothing else.)

I'm very grateful for most of the people I've met. UT was the gateway to a lot of things.

*rubs chin* did I mention a clan?

I remember the first clan I joined, (although the name itself escapes me atm) I was like yeah! I'm in a clan now... this is serious business. And they were so crappy I'm pretty sure I was their most serious player, the clan leader was just concerned with impressing his girlfriend. So I left. Then I started playing on CBGB's sniper servers, I fell in love with the maps they played like Zeitkind, Dogtown, etc. I joined their boards and they seemed like quite fun, easy going people. They were a very respected clan too, and maan I wanted to join them. lol. Then I started seeing these guys with {BL} tags, Hawkwind, Sponge, Morpheus etc playing there. I decided to join them instead, turned out to be a good choice because I ended up being good friends with a bunch of those guys, and yes even DP Eventually since we were so close with the CBGB clan we ended up becoming honorary members after a couple of years, or the clans temporarily merged or something. So I got my original wish. Those were pretty much my fondest memories of UT ever and the "glory days". ONS in 2k4 comes a fairly close second, and I was part of other clans, but nothing comes truly close to that original era. I gave up trying to "recapture" that feeling long ago.

UTR to me, was a representation of that desire as it existed among many for a long time, to recapture the feeling of magic the original UT gave, while also giving it a needed makeover and performance updates. Even if we didn't get to take it all the way to where we wanted it, it served a purpose and gave all of us some experience. Maybe it also taught us that some things are better left as they were, so we can cherish those memories.

Since first hearing about UDK, I have developed more concrete plans for a game that I think will capture well in spirit at least some of the things I enjoyed about UT, while being entirely from the ground up storywise. So that is my way of giving hails to UT 10 years on, hoping to evolve and keep alive its legacy.

Batthwap, Monsterhunt, bufpack mod, Oldskool mod, U4ET, ChaosUT, neocairo, rocket arena, airfight, tactical ops, infiltration, frenzy assault, eavy mods, Jailbreak, Xidia, Operation Napali, Zephon, USP deja-vu,UTLNP, UT-Illhaven, Real tournament, Spatial fear, scavenger hunt, one flag, psi weapon dreams, fartmatch, badlands, bunnybomber, Corpsemania, TWT zombiemod, excessive unreal and Exu, Sin2UT, TTR etc.etc.

Clanless mappack, jewel mappack, remorseless, Flags of time, Frags of time,forst of time, CTC mappacks, star wars mappack, X-mas mappack, dm-theFreezepack, fusion of time pack, dm-1on1 orm mappack...

So many maps, voicepacks, skins, models for spicing up a game. It was truly a beyond unreal experience.

alien8 said:

Oh yeah, and I'm still waiting on those UT jerseys promised to us admins so long ago...

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Wait what? I don't recall such a thing.

I did receive a copy of UT GOTY from infrogrames back then. But I don't recall anything about a jersey (sadly I lost the initial years of the utservers mailing archive, everything before 2002 is lost :/ ).

NeoNite said:

Infiltration

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the best mod for UT.

ever.

Tac Ops for me. Inf was too serious

I remember the q3 v UT flame wars and debates plus both games being converted to run on the other's engine. I remember playing UT's stock maps on q3

beautiful times

Odd that Epic just let this memorable anniversary just pass by, tbh.

Yeah I have a beta of that quake3 mod. Pity it was halted by ID. Unreal arena.

Some of the Q3 stock maps have also been converted to UT. Some are good, others are terrible. Eh...

...and the texture conflicts were born.

Unreal Tournament has always been the best game for me. It changed me completely and I don't regret a second playing it.

Happy birthday Unreal Tournament.

who remembers the egomaniac known as DavidM (also known as somebody, nobody etc).

damn the mems. Got a say one of the funner moments of my life. Making maps for UT was a pleasure to be hold I fell in love with the editor day one. Used other editors before like the doom, half life, and others... and still the one that leans to pure ease of use is the Unreal ones which makes it loads easier to make what you actually want to make.

Sometimes I forget how much stuff I pumped out those days with maps, mods, and etc it was loads of fun. The people I met the people I remember and will never forget... Some of the people that I never had the pleasure to meet in person.

Long live the UT world... Or at least the unreal engine games.