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[ashecitism]

http://www.pcgamer.com/its-time-to-pay-attention-to-the-new-unreal-tournament/

Twenty eight months in, Unreal Tournament is the most openly unfinished game I’ve ever played. Epic announced its plans to revive the series and develop it openly with the community in May 2014, and for the past two years it’s been quietly doing just that. The team added weapons and worked on movement early on, giving players a chance to jump around in naked, unfinished maps. There are modes and features missing, regular tweaks to just about everything that makes a game tick.

Surprisingly, for a game that's so unfinished, Unreal Tournament is also immediately fun. It’s fast and relentless in that classic deathmatch way, with new dodges added to UT’s classic dance repertoire. This strikes me as a rare dichotomy in the days of polished alphas and marketing betas, and if you’ve ever wanted to know more about how games are made, here’s a good chance: Epic is building one right before your eyes.

“Now we’re getting pretty close to where we feel like we’ll be at alpha,” adds Steve Polge, the project lead on UT and a programmer on the series since, well, the very beginning, with 1998’s Unreal. He’s been called the Master of the Unreal Universe, Estep notes.

Polge and Estep are two members of a small team working on Unreal: about a dozen developers and another eight or so QA testers. Polge explains that even after two years they’re still a pre-production team, whose work on the game involves “answering all the questions we have to solve so we can go into full production. Once we have our path set, hopefully we can scale up and get the game done in a reasonable amount of time.”

Epic already has arena shooter staples like team deathmatch down—those aren’t going anywhere in the new UT. Over the past few months the team has been focused on what it hopes will be the defining mode of this new Unreal Tournament—something to set it apart from its own heritage and competing shooters like Overwatch.

“When you’re playing Counter-Strike, there’s a mode that’s the mode,” Polge says. “If you talk about Counter-Strike, people know what you’re talking about. That’s what we’re trying to build. Something that feels like UT in pace, has elements of deathmatch and capture the flag that we love, packaged in a way that’s really excited for players. It has a sense of progression in terms of team play and learning to play better together, lots of skill, and strategy to learn.”

That mode is currently called Flag Run. Attackers have a flag that they’re trying to shepherd to the defenders’ base, but there’s a deathmatch twist: defenders have a limited life pool, so attackers can win by scoring enough kills. The mode is balanced so that attackers tend to win more often, but there’s a twist there, too. They get 1-3 stars based on how quickly they score within the five minute match, so defenders can still succeed by holding out until the last possible second.

“Because it’s not binary win or lose, it helps the ebb and flow of combat a tremendous amount,” Estep says. “You get big peaks of amazing moments right before each of those tiers happen.”

In terms of modernizing Unreal Tournament or making it more competitive with hugely popular shooters like Overwatch and CS:GO, Polge made a distinction between in-the-moment depth and out-of-the-moment depth. “The problem is that in a game like UT that’s super fast-paced and intense, you can only have so much in-the-moment depth before it’s overwhelming,” he says. “We’re trying to add higher level strategic depth.”

At some point after Unreal Tournament hits alpha, Polge hopes to staff up and go into full production to finish the game more quickly. I don’t know if UT will be “finished” in 2017, but it’s hard to be impatient when the game is playable at this very moment, and already a great arena shooter, even half finished.

more at the link

 

[truth411]

Do people still play Unreal Tournament?
Serious question.

 

[LelouchZero]

I love this game! Wow I can't believe it's already been two years.

Do people still play Unreal Tournament?
Serious question.

Yeah, the servers are fairly populated.

 

[Stevey]

Sweet, been enjoying my time with it.

 

[OminoMichelin]

Do people still play Unreal Tournament?
Serious question.

Yes.

 

[Miker]

I think the core game is rock solid already, but they just need more content and polish.

 

[inpHilltr8r]

That's a small team. That's what we were running for mid-market PC games in the mid 90s.

 

[Teknopathetic]

As someone who loves CTF (primarily) and also Splash Damage's stopwatch style, I think I could get into Flag Run. Interesting that they want to position Flag Run as the "main" game mode, but I think it's necessary as most people just can't seem to get into dueling or CTF any more.

 

[Dictator93]

That's a small team. That's what we were running for mid-market PC games in the mid 90s.

Honestly that is kind of a good thing. Keeping the team core focused on not only focused on asset production (more 90s less late 2000s 2010s) seems alright me.

 

[nikos]

Do people still play Unreal Tournament?
Serious question.

Yes. I still play UT99. Instagib UT is some of the best gaming ever.

New mode sounds great. Been waiting for this game to upgrade my PC, but I may do so sooner so I can experience it in all of its development glory along the way.

 

[eyeball_kid]

I want them to do well. I was heavily involved in the Unreal and UT scene back in the day. But classic UT is UT99, and the last time I played the game was clearly an evolved version of UT2003. There has always been a split in opinion between these two play styles and probably never the twain shall meet, but it's disappointing that they didn't offer both styles as options.

 

[Bad_Boy]

sucks there's no ps4 version in sight

 

[KOHIPEET]

sucks there's no ps4 version in sight

I can't see why not.

Spoiler

If m+k is mandated

 

[Bad_Boy]

I can't see why not.

Spoiler

If m+k is mandated

I mean not announced

 

[tuxfool]

I mean not announced

Why would they announce it if they're not working on it?

 

[low-G]

F3 that link for "maps"...

What the game needs is more finished maps. I agree it's really solid, but the mapping scene output seems like a tiny tiny fraction of what it was with past UT games.

I don't blame them because you practically need a full AAA dev team to make good maps, but what is the game without enough maps?

 

[bounchfx]

Do people still play Unreal Tournament?
Serious question.

it's still fun, so yes

the gameplay imo is better than most shooters over the last 10 years, the only issue is its outdated. I'm super glad theyre developing the new one, which has also been fun.

 

[RedSparrows]

Bring it.

 

[Bad_Boy]

Why would they announce it if they're not working on it?

I never said they were working on it. I'm saying it sucks they arent

 

[Tye The Czar]

As someone who likes playing on an equal level with others, I seriously hope they have a solid matchmaking system.

As great as dedicated servers are and should still exist in modern FPS games, Overwatch and even early Quake Live have spoiled me in this respect.

 

[ashecitism]

I think the core game is rock solid already, but they just need more content and polish.

Yeah, for a pre-alpha it's in pretty good state already.

 

[potatohead]

The game is already really, really good.

So intense and fast, just like it should be. Great UT game already in Alpha state.

And it's FREE people, FREE. Go download it.