Why? I want it to look good, not like a floating turd. There are lots of features to the engine in UE3 that will make the game look much better than it ever could on UE2, no matter what "tricks" you used.
I am not disputing that it's easier to make UE3 games look better. I am disputing the cost to the potential playerbase. But because you don't seem to care if only a few hundred people ever see or try your work, you don't think it's relevant.
Good gameplay is more important than cutting edge graphics. And while UT3's core gameplay is better than UT2004's, the bugs, lack of polish and cost of entry to the latter were enough to prevent success. I'm asking you to port gameplay to a more viable engine.
And ultimately, while it may make sense for Epic to make cutting edge games (they get money from hardware sponsors like nvidia who's graphics cards sales Epic supports by releasing new titles) it doesn't make much sense for you to do the same (you get no such reward for choosing an engine that has the deck stacked against it).
You've been around long enough to spot trends in gaming. I'm asking you to use your head, man. For that last 10 years, no "next-gen engine" FPS shooter has been able to build a successful online playerbase. Doom III? Failtrain. Quake4? Failtrain. And it's not just because the gameplay sucks. Even COD4, which was built "in-house" by IW is really only a "middle-gen engine"; wisely, it has minimum specs that will run on those rigs that were built to run UT2004 at high settings. Smart developers release a single player game based on next gen engines, and then the folks who license the engine complete online games based on the engine a few years later, giving the users ample time to upgrade.
You should look at CS 1.6 and Warsow. Both are games that, for the age of their engines (10 plus years old) look pretty amazing. Thought neither would be confused with a modern game's graphics to be sure, what those artists have done with older technology is impressive. One would suppose that comparable visual gains (with good coders and artists) could be wrung from UT 2004's engine as well.
Sorry, upgrade and get newer games, then. I don't have a responsibility to you to support your prehistoric gaming interests.
UT2003 players said the same thing to UT99 players. Turns out that having next gen specs is less important than providing good gameplay to more people.
I'm not going to remake Unreal for UT either, but the performance benefits and audience increase would be incredible, right?
There is a point of diminishing returns when going back to previous generations of engines. I'd argue that UE2's scalability would allow roughly the same potential userbase (i.e. it makes sense supporting 5 year old hardware, supporting 10 year old hardware won't net you that many more potential players).
I'm not misguided, but what you're saying amounts to "why don't you make games with a max resolution of 640x480? There are a lot more of 'us' (people with crappy monitors and computers) than 'them' (people with not crappy monitors and computers)".
That's just flat hyperbole.
There are plenty of people who can play UE2 games with 70-100 FPS at 1280 x 1024 who get sub 30 framerates at UT3 at 800 x 600. By using UE2 as a base, suddenly, all of those rigs built the UT2004 generation of games would become viable. The folks at Infinity Ward realized this (by supporting the rigs that were built for UE2 games) and were rewarded with more players outside of any FPS this side of CS.
If you think only a few hundred people legally own UT3, I can draw two conclusions: 1) You don't follow UT very closely, and 2) you think even more people are pirates than EA does.
I said Online Player Counts. There are a few hundred people who PLAY UT3, not own. While the game sold many times that; only the tiniest fraction of those users play it. Furthermore, only a portion of those users play online.
I think you are well intended but your reasoning is questionable.
