That oddly colored marine Brandon Reinhart who works for Epic Games has returned from ECTS and has the mega .plan update to prove it over at fingershack.com. Along with the standard wrap-up of the fun he had there Brandon talks about a few changes they are making to UT after some user feedback. Here's a bit:

Most of the negative comments surrounded three issues. First, that the pickup radius for items was too small. (Consider it changed.) Second, that walking was more or less pointless because footsteps still made sound. (Consider it changed.) Third, that ping was too high. I explained that UT's ping calculation is equal to network ping plus the average frame time of the server, but the perception that a higher ping is always inferior was still there. We'll be changing ping so that it reflects network latency. (What most people think of when they say ping.)

A few more screenshots of Unreal Tournament for those of you who havent finished putting together your slide show for the animated movie.

A post by CliffyB of Epic Games to the GT messageboard talks about the impressive sounding bots that we'll be getting to play with in Unreal Tournament. Can't say I was ever an Unreal DM player but I did miss around with the original bots in Unreal long enough to know that they were pretty darn cool. My all time favorite Unreal weapon is still that cum gun. (I dunno what the real name was.. it's the cum gun damn it!)

Bots will usually group together and enter a base attacking as a group, instead of one at a time. It is possible to just defend and have your bots do all the dirty work, but depending on the skills of the competition that could take a long time.  In Assault, I often tell the bots to cover me, and get ready to enter a heavily guarded room and then tell them all to ATTACK. I watch them go into the room and mayhem ensues and they manage to take out a wad of foes, which makes my job easier.

UnrealUniverse has slapped up even more screenshots of UT in action, as well as Qamex Games Centre with shots from ECTS.

CliffyB of Epic games made a short post to the UT messageboards stating UT is just about done and talking about some finalization stuff. Thanks G-Monet

Anyways, today we fixed a bit of bot funkiness in DM-Barricade and DM-Conveyor, and reduced the amount of "A" bugs to only a few. We'll be building a new version Thursday night and firing it off to the remote testers in Utah while we test with remote people the net play some more.
Oooooh and demo recording/playback is smooth as silk now. Mek has banged on it so it is Worthy. I like making demos of one on one Godlike bot stomping in my levels, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Almost there.

The MacGamer's Ledge has posted part 2 of thier preview of Unreal Tournament. This one talks about Game Types, Levels and a few other general things. In case you missed it, here's part 1. Here's a quote:

This is one of the best games ever released for the Mac. It is a must have product for every Mac gamer. The preview beta had us drooling - we can't wait to see what makes it into the final edition.

I suspect these guys are a bit gung ho on the game, but hey, they are on Mac's and don't have a lot of choice in games :)

Remember that Notre Dame cathedral Unreal project that got so many panties in a wad when the first screenshots came out? Well it looks like the guys have finished the project now and are even releasing it on the net for us to play with. Apparently you don't need Unreal installed to check out the demo. However as loony points out the download link seems busted, I'm assuming it will be fixed shortly though. Someone post a comment when the thing starts working?

The Unreal Community has been stirring it up with the Avault Unreal chat that went on recently: First up we have PU's Q&Aish version of the chat, then an edited and reformatted chat log from Chris P., and finally Cache has caught a few of the spicy tidbits and posted them.

Unreality.org has posted a quick Q&A with CliffyB of Epic Games. It's one of those whole "what inspires you?" kinda deals. Kinda interesting.

Shane Caudle, the multi-talented artist/level designer/modeler working for Epic Games on Unreal Tournament (he also worked on Unreal) is interviewed over at this page.

Speaking of UT, here are some screenshots of the Mac port in action: Codex1 Galleon Gothic Metaldreams over at Inside Mac Games. Thanks Blue

The boys over at Mod Central Unreal have whipped up an interview with Epic's Jack Porter which talks about "mutators". What's a mutator? Good question, it had me stumped:

Mutators are mini-mods. They are simple code classes which can be used to add and remove items, from the map, change item or level properties. They work with any gametype, so you can apply your mutator to DM, CTF, Domination, Assault, Last Man Standing. This allows mod-makers to develop simple and fun gameplay changes without having to create a new gametype.

The Unreal Tournament post I made yesterday seemed to spawn some interesting (110+) comments, so here we go again. Greenmarine has posted another few Linux bits in the GT Forum in thread titled "Epic really seems to be getting it together".

Making good progress on the UT linux server and client.

On the server front, only two bugs that I know of:
- Sometimes it tries to send UDP sockets to an invalid address?
- Race condition in my threading code for resolving domain names sometimes results in a crash.

On the client front, I've got all the input issues fixed and am ready to either do a first pass on the installer or work on the sound code. As far as the installer goes, the first pass will be a simple command line installer. The second pass (after the sound code) will add a GUI and hardware detection.

A bunch of Epic guys are playing the latest build of UT (300) on my linux server right now trying to find bugs or crash it or something. Last night I played on a win32 server with the Linux client and I chatted on IRC using the Linux client's built in IRC system. (IRC is in the windows version also.)

Here's a little edited bit by yours truly for ease of reading in a Q&A format:

Q: Are you gunna let the linux client hold the game's release? Or will you release it like it is and patch it later?
A: No, the Linux client is a side project. It has nothing to do with UT's release.

Q: thought it was gonna be on the second CD, or has that changed?
A: As I said in my tech page update, it'll be on the second CD if its ready when UT is done. At this point that seems unlikely.

There's a post on the GT Forums from Epic's Brandon "PikaMarine" Reinhart regarding the 1% left to go in Unreal Tournament's developement. Simple math indicates that UT should be 99% (approx) done. Thanks Krag.

Actually that 1% is just nailing the last stuff down. Netcode has been really great for a couple weeks now.
<snip>
Tim is expanding the installer to handle a second CD (which we will need). Steve has been fixing misc bugs, I've been working on misc bugs and the Linux port, and Jack has been working with Yang to implement a HTML based server administration system.

There isn't any one thing in particular holding us back, just a bunch of minor issues.

Couple of those online chat deals for you guys to mess around with. AVault sends word of an Unreal Tournament development chat to go down on August 19th, and if that isnt enough Blue got word that the  TalkSpot guys are having a TRIBES2 chat tomorrow with the developers of Dynamix.

One of the first legit Unreal Tournament reviews to hit the net is courtesy of FutureGamer. It's not the absolute final version of UT but apparently a few Euro guys have preview releases. Speaking of that stuff the Unreal Tech page has a blurb on pirates from Tim Sweeney.

The PlanetUnreal guys have word of a post by Steven Polge of Epic Games to the GT boards talking about the FOV settings as well as everyone's favorite air control topic. Not quite sure what "awesome air control" means but I'm guessing the level of control offered in the original Quake...

In UT, you can set your FOV to any value greater than or equal to 80 - which covers the range of reasonable you might want to play in, but doesn't allow zooming cheats. BTW, we have awesome air control in UT, and you can adjust it in the menus when setting up a game.

The Unreal Tech page has a bit of info about DirectX7 support and Unreal Tournament. Also while on the topic of Unreal, here is word from the PU guys via Mark Rein on the cross-gaming use of Unreal and UT maps:

UT will run most Unreal DM maps but probably not run single player maps.

For multiplayer UT can serve most Unreal DM maps (provided you have the texture sets etc.) with any problems but only UT users can play on a UT server even if it's playing an Unreal map. I.e. you can't connect to a UT server with Unreal or an Unreal server with UT.

Beauty of Madness features an interesting interview with Mark Rein of Epic Games talking about some of the issues with pirated software and other topics they deal with over there.

The Unrealism guys send word of some new Unreal Tournament shots that they have scored. Also some shots at GameFan.