New Unreal Tournament Revealed, Is Free, Community Driven

[sujith]

The development team at Epic Games has revealed the future of the long running Unreal Tournament first person shooter and the company says that it plans to deliver an entirely free game for fans that is mainly driven by the desires of the community.

The official announcement states that, "We know that fans of the game are as passionate about Unreal Tournament as we are. We know that you have great ideas and strong opinions about where the game should go and what it should be. So let’s do something radical and make this game together, in the open, and for all of us."

Epic says that it has put together a solid but small team of veterans of the series in order to start working on Unreal Tournament right now and that they are mandated to work with the core Unreal Engine 4 team and the fan community in order to create the best possible experience.

They will use forums of discussions and Twitch to stream the results of their work and all code that's created will be shared with other developers using GitHub.

Unreal Tournament will remain a competitive shooter at its core and will first be created for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Epic Games says that it will not offer the title under a free-to-play system but that all code created will be entirely free.

It adds, "We’ll eventually create a marketplace where developers, modders, artists and gamers can give away, buy and sell mods and content. Earnings from the marketplace will be split between the mod/content developer, and Epic. That’s how we plan to pay for the game."

The company acknowledges that not all core decisions linked to the new Unreal Tournament have been made yet and that it can make mistakes along the way but it also makes it clear that they are trying to create a title that satisfies the fans first and foremost.

The announcement will probably surprise a lot of long term fans of Unreal Tournament, who thought the series to be entirely abandoned, and it will be interesting to see whether the collaborative development process can actually work.

Probably more resources for the title will be delivered after Epic Games launched Fortnite at some point in the fall.

It's unclear whether Unreal Tournament is the big franchise that the leader's of the studio were previously talking about or if another big title is still kept secret from fans.

Source

Official Announcement

My old favourite game is coming back,that too its free. :showoff: :rockon:

Cant wait.Many thanks to Epic Games. :)

[948bennett]

great news :)

[wiz4rd]

Great news...one of my fav FPS these dayz :)

[Unreal Man]

OMG that just awesome i always loved this game from the first one till the last one. the best one though was Unreal tournament 2004, i hope this new one would live up to that or even better. Rock On

[Casper]

Awesome! Can't wait.

[OG1502]

The game that gave the engine it's name!

It was interesting to me how lay people know these guys because of Gears of War, but it was really Unreal Tournament 2004 that debuted the engine that Gears, and countless other games, now run.

Can't wait for the game.

Edited May 10, 2014 by OG1502

[sujith]

Free Unreal Tournament Might Get Soundtrack from Original Composers

The newly announced Unreal Tournament from the team at Epic Games might not be playable for a while yet, but it seems that the final product might benefit from a soundtrack that’s created by the composers that have long been associated with the series.

On the official forums of the title, Michiel van den Bos introduces himself to the community and expresses his willingness to work on the coming experience and he is quickly joined by Alexander Brandon.

He states, “I’m writing here because I was getting messages and e-mails telling me I should, due to the announcement of the new UT. I was wondering if there is any interest in me getting involved and I’m sure I can get Alex to join in too.”

The pair makes it clear that this was not a joke and that they were actively working with Epic Games to see how they could collaborate on the new Unreal Tournament.

The reaction from fans was very positive.

Senior Programmer Steven Polge adds, “Of course we would be thrilled to have you and Alex involved in this project! The music you guys made always invokes tremendous nostalgia for me – I’m always instantly transported back to playing UT.”

It’s unclear exactly how the composers and the smaller Unreal Tournament development team will work together or whether the first version of the shooter will have any kind of sound and music or will only be used to show the core mechanics.

Source

[sujith]

Linux Community Dev Ports Unreal Editor Before Epic Games

It seems that the Unreal Editor has been ported by someone before Epic got a chance to.

One of the most important pieces of software for the Unreal Engine 4 that will be used in the recently announced Unreal Tournament game is the Unreal Editor. Up until now, developers had to use the Windows version and compile games for Linux on that platform.

Epic Games, the developers of both the Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Tournament, have said for a few weeks now that Linux is a platform of interest for them and that the engine has been built to take advantage of it.

Everyone else interested in using the new Unreal engine can purchase the rights to use it from the official website for a measly price (which is actually a monthly subscription). In doing so, the developers will get everything they need because the Unreal Editor and level building tools are built into UE4.

The latest Unreal Engine update report said that developers would be able to package the games and deploy to SteamOS and Linux, but with a single problem – deploying projects to Linux requires compiling source from GitHub using a Windows computer.

One of the developers who did buy the Unreal Engine 4 tools also received the editor, which obviously only works on Windows. With some clever porting work, he got it to work on Linux, although it's still in the early stages.

Epic Games has already announced that they plan to release a Linux Editor sometime in the future, but the Linux community got ahead of them. The developer sent an image of the working Unreal Editor running Linux and the guys from Epic went to Twitter and acknowledged the fact that someone from the community had beat them to the punch.

There is still a lot of work to be done and it's unclear whether Epic Games will continue to make the Editor or if the studio will just adopt the work that is already being done. Either way, it seems that the Linux developers will probably get their editor sooner than expected.

The new Unreal Tournament is expected to be the first game built with Unreal Engine 4 that will also have Linux support, although it's possible that another studio could release something before then.