The Unreal Tournament D3D/OpenGL demo should be released pretty shortly. The guys at AVault have word that mirror sites are being set up at this very moment. You'll be able to grab the full download, or if you have the 3dfx demo version there will be a patch available which should be about 7megs or so. Any minute now... or something. Will get the mirror list up here as soon as possibel for you guys. Of course guys on the UT board are posting stuff already though, doh! What is new in this demo you ask? Epic has posted a changelog to answer just that.

update3: Um, we'll just act like this never happened or something. Take a look at the official release update.

While everyone is still waiting for the full demo, Greenmarine updated his .plan for you Linux guys who are having problems with the Linux server that was released last night. Dig it:

If you run the Linux server and get an immidiate segmentation fault, it probably means your machine is using libc5. The Linux server requires glibc. I have no plans to make a libc5 version. Upgrade!

GreenMarine has posted his .plan update at fingershack.com with word on the release of the UT Linux dedicated server. He also mentions the full D3D/OpenGL release scheduled for the morning. For the whole thing go to fingershack. Oh yeah, while on the UT subject you guys should check out this UT review I spotted on the Shack UT board. here is a bit of it though:

Okay, the UT full demo linux server will start showing up on various sites for you to download now. I'm spreading it to some various sites for distribution and I'm sure it'll find its way around the net.
In the morning we'll release the UT full demo.
Note: The full demo is not network compatible with previous versions. You _must_ upgrade. ngWorldStats will go online and only accept stats from updated servers. There will be a 7 meg patch available for people with the 3dfx demo.

update Jack - Unreal Universe has it (thanks Blue). Don't forget that wacky fingershack and wily ut messageboards for info and comments on it.
update2 Steve - Those "Steve Gibson" posts in the comments werent me, just a minor security oversight. I'm just gonna nuke the postings for now but if the same guy abuses the board again I'll ban his hostmask from the server.

For those of you sitting there hitting refresh just waiting, here is word from Tim Sweeney on the D3D / OpenGL Unreal Tournament releasefrom the Unreal Tournament page:

Our plans right now are to release the Linux Server-only version of the Unreal Tournament Demo tonight, do some exhaustive overnight testing (and potentially a bug fix if it's needed) and then give the demo to GT to release tomorrow morning if everything goes OK. There are still a few known issues (Tim Sweeney will post a list tonight on the Unreal Technology Site) that won't get addressed  in time for the demo release but otherwise we think it will be pretty solid and D3D users should be pleased. 

As well of course as the previous quote from Tim Sweney, which Billy got:

We've gone through 4 "release candidates" in the past 2 days and just started testing version version 338 internally now. If everything looks good, it's a go...but it's hard to tell whether it will be tonight or tomorrow.

Man, it doesnt get much slower for a Monday than today. Hopefully that UT demo with D3D & OpenGL support will be released today, check out this word from CliffyB posted to the comments earlier::

Keep your pants on. We're almost done with it, no visible bugs, looks spiffy on my TNT2.  *Should* be today! (Monday, fingers crossed)

In the mean time,  check out this news article I saw on /. which says back in the WW2 days some guys were working on a bomb that created tidal waves/tsunamis as a form of warfare. Crazy.

With the posting yesterday talking about gameplay between Q3Test and the Unreal Tournament demo, CliffyB of Epic made a post (#119) to the Shack board with a pretty interesting comment on the interface and ease of use they are shooting for with UT in an attempt to get more "main stream". Here are a few parts of it:

...So, we make the user interface similar to one they already know (windows,) we make the default skill slightly lower than normal, and we include tutorials that explain how to play. We don't give them the crutch of playing keyboard-exclusive; we say "here's your mouse, here's your keyboard, here's how most people control these kinds of games."
...
With UT we're trying to crack this genre open to more mainstream people while trying to avoid pissing off the hardcore guys. Having the AI stomp them makes them say "Well shit, this game is too hard. I guess I suck...I'll go back and play Minesweeper now." That's not a Good Thing when you're trying to expand a market.
...
Oh, and we're making Godlike harder.
Cliff
<snip>

Unreality has posted a Q&A with T. Elliot Cannon, former level designer for Epic Games.

PlanetUnreal has posted 6 new screenshots of the new DM map to be included in the UT D3D/OpenGL demo we're all hoping gets released today.

Qtracker v2.3 Beta 10 has been released. What is the coolest feature? Added support for Unreal Tournament in this release.

The Mutation Device is posting all kinds of nifty mods for the 3dfx Unreal Tournament demo. The latest mods being a hacked up rocket arena style mod.

Yo, whats up? Slow news day, I know..Steve's on his way back home, so he wont be showing his face for a few hours. Anyway, two Unreal Tournament threads on the GT Forums have some posts by Epic employees (Thanks Evol). Jack Porter is seeking help with a lock up bug where Win95 just locks when you double click a server in the Unreal Server Browser. Free copy of UT for those who can figure out what is causing this and how to fix it.

This other thread has a discussion on whether Listen servers should be broadcast on the master server or not. Mark Rein says "99% of them are inferior to dedicated servers" . Well, really some people just have a sweet system and internet connection and wanna play the game as well as host for others. Don't forget to hit the Shack UT board as well.

A late night post by Mark Rein to the GT boards gives a pretty good list of all of the improvements made from Unreal to Unreal Tournament for the curious. On top of that Mark has word that one of their contract workers who did the "fire engine" as well as many CPU optimizations for Unreal has made his way state side to work for Epic in house. Here are some of the planned improvements still to come:

For most of the past year he has been working on an incredibly powerful new animation system that will be integrated into to the Unreal Tournament Engine after UT goes final in a few weeks. In addition we're planning on a new particle system, some AI infrastructure improvements and hardware transform & lighting support. These things won't ship in the box (too close to finished to add major new features) with Unreal Tournament but are geared toward other projects we'll be working on after UT ships, including Unreal2. Tim has also been rewriting the editor in his spare time and that, along with an exciting new next-generation renderer, will take priority once UT ships.

UnrealUniverse has a full preview of the D3D/OpenGL Unreal Tournament. They have a UT weapons guide as well while you're there.

The other bit of news today is just a story on Steven Polge, the AI guy for Unreal Tournament talking about the bot intelligence that is featured in.. Unreal Tournament. Dig on the whole AVault article for the scoop. Check it:

Polge told us the eight AI levels are complemented with a continuous range of intermediate levels. Levels zero to three are called "novice" because bots move more slowly than players and their weapons do less damage. Bots between levels four and seven move at the same speed as players and their weapons do the same amount of damage. Lower level bots turn more slowly and are slower in acquiring an opponent. They also have worse peripheral vision. Higher level bots have better aim and are more effective in leading opponents. Furthermore, higher level bots are able to strafe or to move toward an objective while simultaneously firing at an enemy

A little bit of an update from GreenMarine over there at Epic for all you Linux users at fingershack.com. Seems that he got the Linux server port to run steady all night. The crazy marine is going to try and include a linux client port in one of the upcoming releases even.

I suppose after the final demo is released I'll make the final push to finish the client.  (Its a bunch of crappy little boring long painful things to get the performance up. Like  figure out why PGCC gives me an internal compiler error. Stuff that is great to procrastinate  about!!)

It looks like Tim Sweeney has made a post to the ModCentral board with word on mod makers hax0ring on the demo version of Unreal Tournament. Of course on that note, Mutation Device has a couple of more mods. Here is the quick blurb:

FYI, we had a big old argument about this topic here. That was the reason for the initial ambiguity. In the end we concluded that allowing mods for the demo is a good thing.

Got another update on the status of the Unreal Tournament D3D/OpenGL demo. It looks like that post by Mark Rein about a possible next-Monday release is the earliest we can expect the demo to be released. Here is the update that went up this morning. (Thanks Blue.)

Microsoft has released DirectX7.  You can read about it and download it from Microsoft's DirectX Page and download it on their Download Page. Now that DirectX7 is available, we're doing final testing and tweaking on the upcoming Unreal Tournament demo with Direct3D and OpenGL support. We don't expect it to be released any earlier than Monday because we want to do a little more internal testing of some additional improvements and fixes we're making over the weekend. The next version will not be network play compatible with the current 3DFX-only version but we do plan to offer both a full download and a patch to update the existing 3DFX-only demo to the new version.

An update to the Unreal Technology page has word on all of the changes being made to the UT demo post-3dfx demo release. Quite a few positive changes are being made, hell UT has air control, you know they listen to what players want. :) Here are a few of the changes. Also make sure and check out the UT Messageboard

- player no longer hear own footsteps walking
- reduce falling damage w/ jumpboots
- fixed problem with instant hit weapons at point blank range
- louder pain sounds
- translocator target no longer bounces off triggers and control points
- players drop flag if feign death

It looks like the Unreal Tournamentn D3D version of the demo isnt coming out just yet. Mark Rein made a post to the GT Unreal Tournament forum (Since he was lost and couldnt find the Shack UT forum) with this little bit:

We're probably looking at some time over the week or perhaps Monday. There are few little bugs (from the earlier demo) still left to fix and test.

Got another update on the Unreal Technology page following the release of DirectX7 yesterday. Looks like the D3D version of the demo is currently in final testing as we had all hoped/expected. Check it G:

Now that DirectX7 is available, we're doing final testing and tweaking on the upcoming Unreal Tournament demo with Direct3D and OpenGL support, coming in the next few days. One thing we've found on DirectX7 is that NVidia TNT2 performance is not fill-rate limited until you get to very high resolutions.  During testing, performance at 640x480 seemed a bit slow, but as we increased the resolution, the frame rate was hardly impacted at all.  So 1024x768 seems to yield the best overall experience on this card. I've enabled support for 32-bit color textures under Direct3D, which significantly improve the graphical quality, with a 10-15% frame rate impact.The Direct3D code now uses vertex buffers, which speeds up mesh and text drawing a bit