According to UU, Clannexus has an interview with Cliff Bleszinski who is supposedly working on some game called Unreal Tournament. Never heard of it.

The Unreal Tournament demo bugs page has been getting a pretty good share of updates. The latest bit being that they plan on fixing up the netcode some more (good!) and some more bits on the Linux server. According to the page Epic is planning on a server-only DLL release in the near future.

3DSpotlight has another new guide for you guys. Check out their Unreal Tournament tweak guide. Here's a tip, run the Glide version instead of OpenGL.

A CliffyB interview has surfaced over at RPOV which should interest you. Cliffy doesnt reveal his secret for that silky smooth skin though.

The lunchtime Mac news is here. MacGamer has what can only be called an unusually large preview of the Mac port of Unreal Tournament. Also while on the Mac kick, some dude named Jack Mathews at Ritual has a .plan update which talks about the developer support from Mac and the possibilities of a port of their Quake3 engine based FAKK2 game.

If you didnt already have enough reason to show up at FRAG3 this coming weekend, CPL has announced that the designer and fashion consultant for Epic Games, CliffyB will be running a Unreal Tournament... tournament.

oh, did I mention the suckage has finally been updated?

If you guys haven't been keeping a close eye on the UT bugs page you might not have caught that Epic recommends upgrading to the latest TNT/TNT2 drivers to get rid of texture corruption problems. Also, they forgot to include the new .ini for bots with the release, oops. :)

It's just crazy game demo day today eh? Hot on the heels of that Tombraider4 demo release we have Nerf Arena. The latest game to be released to license the Unreal engine technology from Epic games. I've been pretty curious about this one for a while so it should be interesting to finally see. You can grab it from 3DFiles or WON.net and I'll add other mirrors as I dig them up if you guys need any or you guys post them in comments.

The Unreal Tournament bugs page has been updated with some more of the known issues to have slipped out in the latest release of UT. So before you go sending off that email check to be sure if they already know about the problem or not. TNT cards are still locking with 16-20 megs of physical memory, and A3D sound seems to be goofed up a bit.

Brandon Reinhart over at Epic Games has a lengthy .plan update talking about the Unreal Tournament Linux client as well as a little rant on what type of girls 'geeks' are attracted to. I have a simple answer for that one, hot chicks just like everyone else. Or of course we all wonder if we can find that perfect woman right?

Epic has just released their Linux Unreal Tournament client. You can grab it from this url over at FilePlanet. Here is the Epic page giving you some more details on the release.

Also, Epic had a slight problem in the original 348 release of UT that busted demo playback. It's not really needed for most people unless you like to playback demos. Grab the file here.

Carried over from yesterday: The new version 348 UT demo has been released. You can grab it from a few places. I'd recommend trying FilePlanet for the full demo or the patch, or also this SharkyExtreme mirror. You can also try Unreal Universe for the demo and the patch. If you guys are hosting the file anywhere else, please fell free to list it in the comments. The list of changes since the last demo is pretty damn big. Check it out.

Performance
- Networking bandwidth and server CPU use improved
- A.I. performance improvements and tweaks
- Replicate all player skins in use to clients when joining to avoid hitch when first see new player
- Performance improvements and cleanup of HUD, messaging, and console
- Precache left hand weapon meshes if using left hand.
- Improved dynamic detail dropping to maintain minframerate
- store list BSP nodes for decals to greatly improve decal clipping speed
- sort decals by texture to improve performance
- increased characters per font page for default font to increase performance

Direct3D
- Increased performance by use of vertex buffers
- Optimized for low memory computers

Servers
- Force Respawn option
- Added kickban administrator console command
- Server passwords now work
- Added webserver settings to Start Multiplayer Game
- Listen servers are back in the server list, but show that they are a listen server in Rules
- WWW remote server admin: friendly fire works correctly

Also check what CliffyB had to say about the new demo:

In addition to oodles of misc. improvements, (new pulse skin, menu changes, optimizations, etc...) Steve has also increased the player's drawscale slightly as well as their ambient brightness.

Notice how much easier players are to see now.

PlanetUnreal did a quick Q&A with Jack Porter about the new released 348 UT demo.

GreenMarin from over at Epic made a .plan update right here on Jack's old finger shack thing. He has (among other things) the news that the Linux port of Unreal Tournament will ship on the retail CD, along with a nice installer.

I've adapted the Loki Entertainment installer to UT. I changed some features I didn't like and added a couple others. I don't know gtk+ very well, so I'm not straying very far. It only took me about five minutes to get the basic installer up and running. MegaHuge dittos to Loki for sharing this cool bit o' software with the rest of us.

I've also done lots and lots of fixes to the Linux client. And guess what? Are you guessing? UT for Linux will be on the retail CD. The installer will be on the first CD's root directory with a nice fat README on how to get it working.

ModCentral Unreal has a bunch of new UT mutators for you to check out.

Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart updated his .plan late last night, with some news on the Linux Unreal Tournament client:

A few people have emailed me asking about the status of the Linux client. Its ready for release any time, but isn't compatible with the current demo. We have plans to release a patch for the demo at some point. When that is done, the Linux client will be synchronized with the demo and I can release it.

He also has a little todo list and some other work stuff that you might wanna look at.

Just because it's downright strange. The Nerf guys have licensed the Unreal engine and are making a game out of it. You can check out the new interview with the creative director on the project even. Not 100% sure this interview is new or not, but I still would like to see comments on it so what the hell. :) Does he think it will be a challenge? Dig it:

Not really. We think that the Nerf brand has a great, broad fan base. You know, everyone from a 10-year-old kid to a 30-year-old "kid" with a blaster in his office digs Nerf. We know the core Nerf age group will definitely love it and from what we've seen, the hard core gamers are digging it too. And that has been our goal all along. Not to make a game for kids, but to make a game for people who like Nerf, which is a broad age group.

There's a short Q&A with Epic's Mark Rein on Gamesmania on of course, Unreal Tournament. It looks to be going gold by the end of this month.

NGNetwork has a quick Q&A with Tim Sweeney of Epic Games asking about mod making for Unreal Tournament. Tim says you'll be able to port some of the Unreal mods over with only some small amount of upgrading and modification. Thanks Blue

The Unreal Mod Central has a list of all the Unreal Tournament mutators that have come out.