Unreal Tournament - Status

[ncman071]

UT aint happening. thankfully we have a ton of great games already back online

[Xiden]

So in case worse comes to worse and we never hear back from our contacts, how much of an effort has been made so far reversing the game?

Wish I could help out with that, but my assembly skills are currently elementary at best, so it'll likely be at least a year or two before I can be of much use.

People have been able to get the UT PC server to list games on the Dreamcast, but when you attempt to connect it bombs out. I think Shu may have got a little bit further in the connection process but not sure how far. The error received I believe has to do with it looking for PC assets that obviously don't exist on the dreamcast version. I'm sure you could go in and swap all the pc assets with dc assets to fix it but I'd assume that would require the source code to the pc version.

I could be wrong on how that error is being interpreted but that's all I could find out.

[Mechanic]

just made a comparison of 1 of the ut maps called oblivion dc vs pc and it looks exactly the same except for resolution. Makes no sense why the dc will not connect. I'm thinking it was made this way so you have to pay seganet to play ut online. If the pc version was compatable like q3 seganet would lose out. It's all about money and thats why the source code was never givin out

[Mechanic]

I also remeber Hal9000 he used to post on gamefaq q3 boards back then. If knew then what i know now i would have kept in touch lol

[Anthony817]

A couple of weeks ago I was looking into hacking the settings forcing the game to run in lower resolution textures, with some of the missing effects like coronas enabled again trying to hit a steady 60fps. I still have the edited .ini file if anybody wants to check it out. I didn't get the iso to work after I edited it though, it froze after the Sega license screen. I did borrow some code from the PS2 release trying to enable some missing effects on it, so perhaps that is the issue?

However, Digital Foundry did a very good performance comparison video of the DC vs PS2 versions, and it was really awesome if anybody wants to check it out.

[Nico0020]

just made a comparison of 1 of the ut maps called oblivion dc vs pc and it looks exactly the same except for resolution. Makes no sense why the dc will not connect. I'm thinking it was made this way so you have to pay seganet to play ut online. If the pc version was compatable like q3 seganet would lose out. It's all about money and thats why the source code was never givin out

that doesn't make any sense, as no game specifically required seganet to be played online. Heck Unreal Tournament is one of the few games that supports the BBA, and sega had no official service for broadband.

[Mechanic]

The game was only able to be played online through seganet servers. In fact all dc games except for q3 required seganet server software to play online .Unless im wrong then i truly appologise.

[nototacon]

Hello,

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on anything.

To my understanding, UTDC used a gamespy master server to generate the server list.

If the server list via DNS tricks or similar can be obtained and the maps are not loading, it's probably related the server version *or* the map mismatch.

Some maps are indeed different but I am not sure if the changes are in the maps themselves or just how DC version rendered some things visually. The teleporters do look different on all maps for Dreamcast. However, this might not have anything to do with the individual map files. Where as other differences between the maps may be changes in the map files themselves.

For few examples:

CTF-Niven PC version at both bases, there are two blades spinning outside of the enemy base door. On the DC version, this is just a wall but you can still use your translocator to hide inside these walls, only on the DC version.

CTF-Face DC version red base let's you walk behind a certain wall on the main floor.

To confirm where the changes are, the map files would need to be ripped from the Dreamcast ISO and opened in UnrealED.exe comparing to the official PC versions (such as CTF-Face, Niven, etc)

The DC version did include a few addon/bonus maps like CTF-Face[] (Face2) but there are also a couple of exclusive maps I think I have only seen on the dreamcast version. (My memory isn't 100%)


On a side note, the music is also slightly different. While the maps run their music off CDDA tracks, some maps music themes are shorter compressed versions than the PC versions as can be heard by playing the UT DC disc in any Audio CD player.


The DC differences only apply on the Dreamcast version. The PlayStation 2 version mimics the PC version.

I hope this helps anyone because it would be a great treat one day to play the old UT online maps on Dreamcast with the Dreamcast keyboard and all

[Bob Dobbs]

RIP, UT!

[Nico0020]

I'd assume a map mismatch would cause a crash. It used to in PSO.

Back years and years ago there was a map mismatch bug between PSOv2 and PSO PC in Challenge mode. On the final map of Challenge mode IIRC there were some rocks that loaded in PC version of the quest but not in the Dreamcast version of the quest. This had the quest assign different values to items it loaded. So eventually you could try to activate a switch which the other client would see as a rock. If a DC user hit the switch, the PC user would crash and visa versa.