Forums | MacLife

Probably Friday...

I hope so.

Probably Friday...

I hope so.

Me too.

Me too, but I doubt it.

I seriouslt doubt it'll be out soon.  Must raise grades before it comes out

I have no good feelings toward MacSoft. The Mac fans of NWN are getting treated badly. (That's another big controversy.) At the Your Mac Life website, Al Schilling of MacSoft said that MacSoft was doing performance testing. WHAT!!?? I thought that was what WE and Epic were suposed to be doing. Anyway, he said that the system 10.2.5 update fixed some problems with OpenGL rendering and that it is neccessary to update your system to 10.2.5 .

Apparently you'll have a bad frame rate without it. The date of release of the demo isn't known. We're just told "soon". Yeah. Riiiight. The game came out last year for PC in Sept. It apparently had good frame rates. The PC video cards seem to be doing all right, but the Mac video cards can't really handle it. Huh? I have a hard time believing that story. Epic said that their programming team said the update fixed things. If it fixed the problems, why is MacSoft supposedly doing "performance testing"?
Heck. I'm getting all confused with the conflicting reports.
(head spins in circles)

The PC video cards seem to be doing all right, but the Mac video cards can't really handle it. Huh? I have a hard time believing that story. Epic said that their programming team said the update fixed things. If it fixed the problems, why is MacSoft supposedly doing "performance testing"?
Heck. I'm getting all confused with the conflicting reports.
(head spins in circles)

One, the PC version uses Direct3D.  The Linux and Mac version use OpenGL.  How do you know that there weren't issues with the Mac video card drivers that affected UT2K3?  Do you develop OpenGL apps?  Do you frequent the public Mac dev boards?  UT2K3 on the PC uses Direct3D features which are just getting equivalent features in Mac OS X's OpenGL implemented.  We just got decent texture compression in December (but there were/are still some bugs with it).  10.2.5 apparently fixed some features which were in dire need of tuning.  There are other OpenGL extensions that still have performance issues.

I don't see how hard it is to think that MacSoft isn't doing performance testing.  Yes, 10.2.5 fixed some things, but I don't think Epic and MacSoft want to release even a tech demo riddled with bugs.  There's always a chance that the new update may have introduced a new bug or two (look at NWN, 10.2.3 complete broke rendering according to their status report).  They still need to do regression testing.   Even if the demo is meant to be used to gather feedback, the developer and the publisher still want to give us something that will give us a positive outlook of the game.  If they released the demo and all of a sudden it only worked on half the computers, that would make Epic and MacSoft look pretty bad.  Some may say "that's what it's there for, for us to report bugs", but wouldn't you rather be able to play the game rather than watch it crash?  The fewer known issues they fix now, the better off the game will be.

Indeed. At this rate EF 2 will be out and I will get that.

Wouldn't it be funny if Halo beat it?

I really hate that; MacSoft is notorious in my book for making shoddy software, too.

MacSoft doesn't make the software.  The programmers who code the ports make the software.  MacSoft just publishes it.  Maybe MacSoft's QA in the past hasn't been great, but a terrible product is a terrible product, regardless of who produces it.

The long FC-GM time on Dungeon Siege, and the fact that they found bugs in UT2003 and sent it back to Epic to be fixed seem like good signs of a higher level of QA for MacSoft.

Did anyone read the interview with the MacPlay guy in current issue of MA?  I don;t have it with me, but UT2k3 was like 3rd or 4th on the timeline he said after MoOIII and a few others.

I dunno if that helps.

I was wondering when this would be bumped...

So they're basically saying that using a 64-bit CPU not only increases performance somewhat, but it also expands development potential by a large degree.
/me wishes for PPC 970 CPU upgrade

jeez its taken sooo long. I'm lost any real interest in it. I'll probqbly get it just so all this waiting will be worthwhile.  It'd better be an awsoem game with even better preformance.

All my Win friends have already played i and moved on or got boerd with it and went back to CS

Correct that to Sep. 30, Valve's official release date.

Where will it end?.."Digital Extremes and Epic have released a new patch for Unreal Tournament 2003, bringing the Win32 edition of their multiplayer first-person shooter to version 2225. This release includes a huge number of changes in the gameplay, weapons, AI, engine, networking, spectator, mod support, WebAdmin, D3D/OpenGL and sound/music departments, including the removal of the CD check and the addition of the UTClassic mutator, and there is also a new bright skins mod to make the game look and play more like the original Unreal Tournament."

The Mac retail version should be pretty polished when it arrives. Changes since 2199 (you should see the whole patch history):

'Unreal Tournament 2003 by Digital Extremes and Epic Games - retail v2225 patch
for Win32

This patch is completely compatible with the retail version and previous
patches - servers and clients of any flavor can connect with each other.  This
patch will not overwrite your ut2003.ini and user.ini files, except to update
settings as necessary.

To use it with windows dedicated servers, rename it to ut2003-winpatch2225.zip,
open and extract it to a temporary location with winzip, and copy the system
directory (subdirectory of UT2003patch) into the system subdirectory of your
server installation.


CHANGE LIST in v2225:

GamePlay:
- allow several different default characters. Change the default character by
adding the following line to the [xGame.xPawn] section of your user.ini file:
PlacedCharacterName="aname" where aname can be "Gorge" (the default),
"Sapphire", "Malcolm". "Mokara", "Rapier", "Brutalis", or "Roc"
- fixed no instigator bug with goop and grenades if killer was blown up before
making kill.
- added new mutator "DelayedSpawn". This mutator delays the initial spawning of
superweapons and super powerups (like UDamage, superhealth, and supershield)
- fixed sporadic problem with giving assist credit to players not involved in
flag capture in CTF
- fixed sporadic problem with pawns not animating on clients
- Fix adding in an extra bot when you've chosen custom bots and are spectating.
- custom bots stay on the teams they were put on, and ignore team balancing in
standalone games.
- The player who changes the color of the DDOM point scores the 5 points, not
the last player.
- fixed bug where could sometimes translocate into static meshes
- spectators can only chat with spectators if bPartitionSpectators config
option is true. This option is false by default, and can be made true by adding
bPartitionSpectators=true to the [Engine.BroadCastHandler] section of your
UT2003.ini file.
- support for new brighter teamskins (set by bright skins option in the Game
Rules tab). You must have BrightSkins patch downloaded for this to work.
(brightskins is client-side only)
- fixed displaying name of player who returned flag in flag return message
- announce name of scorer in bombing run
- "use map bot count" always adds at least 3 bots for team games
- no time limits in LMS or Invasion
- fixed joining LMS server as spectator after match has started not limited to
only spectator slots
- added configurable GameInfo property LateEntryLives. Defaults to 1. This is
how many lives another player can have lost and you can still join, for a
maxlives game like LastManStanding.
- fixed IronDeity shield spawning
- fixed CTF-DoubleDammage camouflage mesh
- fixed weapon throwing on listen server clients
- projectiles can affect dead bodies in net games
- improved scoreboard support for long names
- server side control for turning off weapon viewshake by adding the following
line to the [engine.gameinfo] section of your UT2003.ini file:

bWeaponShouldViewShake=false

- new configurable property to prevent shield stacking of small shields. To
disable shieldstacking, add the following line to the [UnrealGame.DeathMatch]
section of your UT2003.ini file:

bNeverShieldStack=true

- zoom supershockrifle firing through multiple people now configurable (true by
default). To change, add the following lines to your UT2003.ini (server side):

[XWeapons.ZoomSuperShockBeamFire] bAllowMultiHit=false

- no superweapons in mutant
- fixed auto-slope. Since this wasn't functioning before, you may have it
turned on accidentally.
- added configurable property to control screen flash brightness, with values
between 0 and 1 (1 is the default). To modify this property, add the following
line to the [Engine.PlayerController] section of your user.ini file.

ScreenFlashScaling=+1.0

- added new mutator "UTClassic", with its own server browser icon. Modifies the
weapons to feel more like the original UT's weapons:

All weapons do more damage. Slower weapon switching. Shieldgun charges faster,
slightly longer range, less self damage for impact jumping Minigun firing modes
switched, no lockdown effect Shockrifle regular fire slower, does more damage.
Combos take less ammo. Slowed down rocket firing rate. Sniper rifle faster
firing, no secondary hit damage. Bio charged up damage relatively lower
(countered general weapon damage increase). Flak alt fires up a little more.
Translauncher more ammo, recharges faster, transbeacon fired up more FOV and
eyeheight adjusted

- added configurable properties to UTClassic to control double jumping.  These
are all enabled by default. To disable, add the following section to your
UT2003.ini file:

[UTClassic.MutUTClassic] bCanDoubleJump=true
bCanWallDodge=true bCanDodgeDoubleJump=true

Setting bCanDoubleJump to false turns off all double jumping. Setting
bCanWallDodge=false turns off wall dodging. Setting bCanDodgeDoubleJump=false
turns off doublejumping after dodging.

Weapons
- added option for visible centered weapons.
- added option to have smaller first person weapons. Off by default. This
option is found in the Settings|Player menu, or can be changed in the user.ini
by adding bSmallWeapons=true to the [Engine.PlayerController] section.
- fixed inaccurate replication of remaining translocator charge, causing
players not to be able to fire when they seemed to still have charge
- all projectiles and shock beam centered with hidden weapons
- fixed shieldgun autofire misfires
- added more weapon not firing debugging. If your weapon stops firing, type
getweaponstats at the console. Then, continue trying to fire your weapon, so
more stats can be gotten. Both client and server must be upgraded to this
patch.
- fixed shield gun fire effect when weapon hidden.
- fixed transbeacon leaving flare behind when crushed by mover.
- telefragging always gibs.
- ion painter warms up a little faster
- added configurable property to have translocator aim up more like original
UT. This client-side option can be enabled by adding the following line to the
[xGame.xPlayer] section of your user.ini file:

bClassicTrans=true

- fixed lightning gun muzzleflash positioning in third person
- improved redeemer guiding
- sniper rifle zoomed visible area expanded
- custom weapon crosshairs: You can specify custom crosshairs and crosshair
colors for each weapon. To do this, add the following lines to the appropriate
weapon section in your User.ini file:

CustomCrosshair=7
CustomCrosshairColor=(R=255,G=255,B=255,A=255)
CustomCrosshairScale=1.0

where CustomCrosshair can have any value between 0 and 13, and the Crosshair
color is in 8 bit RGBA format. You can also use your own custom textures (after
importing them into a utx) by adding
CustomCrosshairTextureName="package.texture" (where package is the name of the
UTX package, and texture is the name of the texture in the package.

HUD/Scoreboard:
- 4 digit fph

AI:
- fixed bot auto skill adjustment
- added custom bot AI configuration menu
- bots don't try to link with you if you are linking with them
- only use bots with upl menu strings "SP", "DUP", or "UNLOCK"
- performance improvement when trying to find path to dropped flags or bombs.
Also added NotReachableBy() event to Decoration, so flags and other game
objects can be notified if they aren't reachable.
- improved bot AI for mutant game
- fixed low-skill AI problems in DOM-Junkyard
- fixed bots don't change weapon at end of match, and always play victory anim
if winner

Performance/ Engine fixes:
- fixed xEmitter memory leak
- Improved bPreloadAllSkins for team games.
- set bShouldPreload (in [Engine.LevelInfo] section of UT2003.ini) to true on
initial configuration for systems with over 512 MB of memory. This makes these
systems preload all skins, reducing hitches in network play.
- no CD check!
- fix for name table corruption crash (which caused the reproduceable crash
reported when AccessControlClass=XAdmin.AccessControlIni in ut2003.ini, as well
as other intermittent crashes)

Networking/Servers:
- fixed occasional crash when switching levels for servers with bots
- vampire mutator shows up in server settings
- dynamic netspeed adjust to deal with connections with variable effective
bandwidth. Can be turned off in the settings|network menu.
- fixed distance fog based network relevancy culling.
- fixed addnamedbot exec function. This is used by web admin, so adding bots
through web admin now works correctly as well.
- fixed client upstream bandwidth not always capped properly by server
- added -nocheat parameter to commandline to disable cheat prevention
- added ability to disable the security fix in networking (for testing
purposes)

[IpDrv.TcpNetDriver] DisableKSecFix=True

- only allow netspeed changes from console once every 15 seconds
- server version displayed in server browser and ingame server info (F2).
- fixed ghost players on server
- fixed Invasion not ending if server side demo recording
- fixed redirected download file size and percentage indicator
- fix for players falling of ledges client-side only (so the client thought
they were in a different place than they actually were
- New Mutator function OverrideDownload giving servers the chance to override a
redirect URL on a per-user basis, eg to give priority redirect access to your
clanmates.
- To customize bots without using the custom bot config menu, add a
[UnrealGame.CustomBotConfig] section to your UT2003.ini. Then add lines like
this one to the section:

ConfigArray=(CharacterName="Gorge",PlayerName="The_Reaper",FavoriteWeapon="x
Weapons.RocketLauncher",
Aggressiveness=0.400000,Accuracy=0.000000,CombatStyle=0.400000,StrafingAbility=0.765789,
Tactics=0.000000,ReactionTime=0.000000,bJumpy=True)

where CharacterName = the bot character you are modifying, PlayerName = the
name to override the character name with All the AI settings range from 0 to 1,
with 0.5 as the default value.

- fixed server browser having hidden filtering options still enabled when
filters looked cleared.
- fixed disconnected/kicked players taking a long time to have their connection
closed
- more networking improvements, particularly for higher ping clients

Spectating:
- moved "now viewing" in spectator mode to right side of HUD
- show proper HUD color in first person view when spectating in network games
- fixed link gun alt-fire obscuring view in spectate behindview 0
- show proper score in DM network games in top left hand corner of HUD
/behindview 0
- fixed spectator showing up on scoreboard on server with no players
- show flag messages in first person view when spectating another player
- fixed invasion spectating when join as spectator

Mod support:
- fixed adding multiple CustonKeyBinding bug
- Exposed many internal karma simulation constants for mod developers to tweak:

Gamma (Relaxation Rate), Epsilon (Constraint Compliance), Penetration Offset
and Scale, Contact Softness, Max Contact Penetration, Max Karma Timestep, Max
Karma Speed and Max Ragdoll Speed. Use KSet/GetSimParams inside Actor to modify
them.
NOTE: Changes to these take affect until you quit the game!

- use %20 in URL redirects for files with spaces
- umod installer AddIni fix
- added bNeverSever property for DamageType
- added PreventSever() to gamerules
- weapon config menu uses actor skin if different from default weapon skin
- User logs now save to \UserLogs
- Added force feedback support for devices other than mice (thanks Jason
Fleming of Immersion).

* Gamepads, sticks, wheels and mice usable as force feedback devices
* Wheels (1-axis) devices can play 2-axis effects, rather than failing
(IFC23.DLL)
* Feedback device not initialized if all feedback settings disabled at startup
* Shutdown feedback system by unchecking all feedback settings in menu
* Start feedback system when first feedback setting checked in menu

- added unique sunlight actor icon (for editor)
- The Loading Map screen is now configurable for mods (GameEngine.LoadingClass)
- added -USERLOGO=, .BMP must be in \Help
- added ReplicationViewer and ReplicationViewTarget to LevelInfo. These are
valid during replication, showing for what viewer replication is currently
occuring. Useful for creating more complex replication conditions.
- fixed not being able to do same taunt or othe AnimAction twice in a row
- fixed invisibility on pawns with more than 2 skins on their mesh (up to 4
skins now supported - they must all be referenced in the skins array).
- Added PokeTerrain function to TerrainInfo.

PokeTerrain( vector WorldLocation, int Radius, int MaxDepth ) All values are in
world units. It pushes a squashed sphere into the terrain at the location
specified. Negative MaxDepth values will raise the terrain at the specified
location.

Note that you should perform a trace first and ensure a TerrainInfo is
returned. Call the function at the trace's hit location. Static projectors such
as tree shadows have their data precomputed and the shadow will not move if you
dig a hole in terrain beneath them. Sorry!

WebAdmin:
- Added check to prevent webserver from being spawned on client
- Addressed some cleanup issues with QueryHandlers
- Fixed bug with special characters in game settings (&, , etc.)
- Added reverse sorting to player listing
- Fixed bug with sorted lists that caused new items that were added to be
dropped under certain circumstances
- Fixed bug that only allowed a managed group to be removed from a user if the
user was a member of that group
- Fixed bug with IP Policies not reflecting whether policy was "Accept" or
"Deny" policy
- Fixed bug with webadmin not allowing IP addresses containing wildcards to be
added to the banned IP list
- Fixed bug that allowed IP addresses with more than 4 octets to be added to
the banned IP list
- Fixed links in webadmin remaining active if admin does not have any
privileges applicable to that Query Handler
- Addressed webadmin textboxes not allowing values longer than the width of the
textbox
- Added support for custom skins for webadmin (documentation coming soon)
- Added fix to prevent admin privileges from "leaking" across threads (very
very rare)
- Added support for creating outgoing connections from within webadmin (to
easily include remote content in webadmin)
- Fixed bug with giving users privilege to change bot skill level
- Updated bot page so that you can add bots with stats enabled if there are
still bots in the game
- Implemented "Kick Bots", "Change WebAdmin Skin", and "Game Status" privileges
- Added Game Status readout to Current Game page

D3D/OpenGL:
- Fixed fallback materials for DM-Rustatorium and DOM-Junkyard
- fixed OpenGL bug causing degrading performance after level changes with the
NV_VAR/ APPLE_VAR codepath (thanks to Thomas Fortier @ ATI for pointing it out)*
- fixed gamma for Editor if running on DX9 system
- fixed bug in D3DDrv which caused it to never release the D3D device
- added "nogamma" commandline option
- fixed "firstcoloredmips X" for DXT textures

Sound/Music:
- updated DefOpenAL32.dll
- Add MusicSkip console command to skip tracks in OGGPlayer
- Fixed possible problems with OGGPlayer
- Add "Play List" button to player setup
- fixed audio spatialization (thanks to Daniel Peacock @ Creative for the fix)
- fixed sound precaching bug'

Got all that?  :!: 

(And speaking of optimizations...)

"IMG: Some benchmarks in newer games look "flat" or seem similar to earlier cards, seemingly because of CPU/bus bottlenecks. Short of just "faster processors," is there anything you'd like to see from Apple to improve performance?

Chris Bentley: I don't think so. We worked a lot with them on supporting the Vertex Array Range rendering path. This is the newest and highest performing path to the hardware. In the optimum case it lets the hardware suck down the user's data with no CPU, OpenGL, or driver touching of the data. Newer games, like UT2003, are getting a huge boost from using this path. So really, I think Apple is doing a great job making it possible for apps to run fast. And, yes, faster processors would be nice :-) "

This would account for the recent gains with ATi cards...happy now?    (From p.2 of IMG's preview of the Radeon 9700 Pro)

Whatever.