Original Unreal Tournament: Great game! Lousy program.

[Todd]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament (More info?)

Seriously. It's my favorite game for playing against my family (since
WinXP broke Q2). But's it's a horribly flawed program.

They first time I tried to run the game on our LAN, I couldn't get a
server running because the game would see these serverpackages lines
for files I had moved, and the game would crash out to the desktop.
What the hell's with that? If the programmers had half a brain
between them they would have kept this from being a problem.

And I've dumped several amateur made maps in the trash because of an
invisible wall. Or floors with holes. With a good editing program,
you wouldn't get these by accident.

And how about maps that cause the whole system to lock up? I've
discovered that this happens with maps with an extra period in the
file name (which has sometimes been my fault; two versions of the same
map, so I added a .x to differentiate), but it also happens with a
handful of other maps.

And let's not forget the occassional lockup and crash with DirectX.
But this might be Microsoft's fault. Although I've never heard of any
other game having this problem.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament (More info?)

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 22:08:07 -0800, Todd <noone@nowhere.com> wrote:

>I tried OpenGL. It was too dark. Someone said there's a fixed dll or
>something, but again, I don't trust the code.

Get a decent OGL renderer here:

>http://cwdohnal.home.mindspring.com/utglr/

What's not to trust? I've been using various versions of this one for
over two years now.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament (More info?)

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 20:14:37 -0500, "~:$$:~DreamDemon"
<incubusdreamdemon@yahoo.com> wrote:

>You may want to go check http://www.utpg.org They have the LICENSE to
>continue programming on the UT source.

Which is sad. Given their prodigious output (practically nothing over
three years) and their stellar track record (virtually everything they
have done has broken something else), we would have been better off if
Epic had handed over the code to the Three Stooges.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament (More info?)

Folk Spewed:
> Which is sad. Given their prodigious output (practically nothing over
> three years) and their stellar track record (virtually everything they
> have done has broken something else), we would have been better off if
> Epic had handed over the code to the Three Stooges.

Tell me about it. It hasnt all been bad tho. I know they have patched a
few netywork vulneribilities. I recently sent them an email about making
the code smp aware .. lol .. somehow I dont think I'll get a response even
tho it would not be that difficult to expand the threading that the core
program does.


~:$$:~DreamDemon

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament (More info?)

"~:$$:~DreamDemon" <incubusdreamdemon@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:10s677vhqq4kpd2@corp.supernews.com...
|
| Folk Spewed:
| > Which is sad. Given their prodigious output (practically nothing
over
| > three years) and their stellar track record (virtually everything
they
| > have done has broken something else), we would have been better
off if
| > Epic had handed over the code to the Three Stooges.
|
| Tell me about it. It hasnt all been bad tho. I know they have
patched a
| few netywork vulneribilities. I recently sent them an email about
making
| the code smp aware .. lol .. somehow I dont think I'll get a
response even
| tho it would not be that difficult to expand the threading that the
core
| program does.
|
|
| ~:$$:~DreamDemon
|
|

I've sent more than 1 email to the utpg team noting problems with
their revisions to the code, and received no response, nada.
--
Best regards,
Kyle

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament (More info?)

Todd wrote:
> And I've dumped several amateur made maps in the trash because of an
> invisible wall. Or floors with holes. With a good editing program,
> you wouldn't get these by accident.

That's a bit of an odd criticism. It's like saying it's microsofts
fault if someone did their tax return in excel and got the amount of tax
to be paid incorrect.

> And how about maps that cause the whole system to lock up? I've
> discovered that this happens with maps with an extra period in the
> file name (which has sometimes been my fault; two versions of the same
> map, so I added a .x to differentiate), but it also happens with a
> handful of other maps.

Does this happen with any official Epic map releases? No.

 

[Todd]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament (More info?)

"~:$$:~DreamDemon" <incubusdreamdemon@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Tell me about it. It hasnt all been bad tho. I know they have patched a
>few netywork vulneribilities. I recently sent them an email about making
>the code smp aware .. lol .. somehow I dont think I'll get a response even
>tho it would not be that difficult to expand the threading that the core
>program does.


Smp is two or more processors running the same program, right? Seems
to me, all online multiplayer games should support dual processors at
least for listen servers. One processor to run the game world, and
one to put the player in the game world.

 

[Todd]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament (More info?)

I wrote:

>> And I've dumped several amateur made maps in the trash because of an
>> invisible wall. Or floors with holes. With a good editing program,
>> you wouldn't get these by accident.

Ian Manning <manning.NOSPAMian@ntlworld.com> wrote:

>That's a bit of an odd criticism. It's like saying it's microsofts
>fault if someone did their tax return in excel and got the amount of tax
>to be paid incorrect.

It's more like saying its the program makers fault if someone using
Tax Cut gets the amount of tax to be paid incorrect. Even though all
information input was correct.

Let me repeat: An invisible wall. Or a hole in what was clearly
intended to be a solid object. Both are clearly a flaw in the editing
program.

>> And how about maps that cause the whole system to lock up? I've
>> discovered that this happens with maps with an extra period in the
>> file name (which has sometimes been my fault; two versions of the same
>> map, so I added a .x to differentiate), but it also happens with a
>> handful of other maps.
>
>Does this happen with any official Epic map releases? No.

I've edited maps (Quake in QuArK; can't use UnrealEd), but haven't
programmed since Apple II BASIC in high school. The maps may be
calling on conflicting code from more than one mod/mutator. That
would be my fault for running a conflicting mutator. Or outdated code
in a mutator.

I don't remember if I included this in my original list:

Some mods (including skins) are installed by umod; they writer a line
into the .ini file about server packages. If I later move the files
out of system directory, then try to run a server, the game will crash
to the desktop because it can't find the file. Yeah, that's good
programming.

 

[Flash]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament (More info?)

Todd wrote:

> Let me repeat: An invisible wall. Or a hole in what was clearly
> intended to be a solid object. Both are clearly a flaw in the editing
> program.

And you can bet your life that if a map-creation tool tried to be
"smart" and guess what the mapper wanted to do, people would get royally
pissed off with it.

Clippy, anyone? A ut version? Mappy?

"You seem to be designing a wall, do you want help with that?"

--
Flash

 

[Todd]

Archived from groups: alt.games.unreal.tournament (More info?)

Todd wrote:

>> Let me repeat: An invisible wall. Or a hole in what was clearly
>> intended to be a solid object. Both are clearly a flaw in the editing
>> program.

Flash <NOSPAM@digdilem.org> wrote:

>And you can bet your life that if a map-creation tool tried to be
>"smart" and guess what the mapper wanted to do, people would get royally
>pissed off with it.


You seem to be missing the point. There is something where there
shouldn't be anything, and you can't see it.

I've made Q2 maps, and created little bits to put weapons on (failure
of Q2: weapons fall down), and they're always obvious.

I've also had artifacts left over from trimming brushes, but if they
block my movement, I can see them. Or I get an error telling me there
are faces which do not form a brush.

And the other is solid objects which look like they're comprised of a
single brush, but part of the brush isn't there and you fall into a
hole in the map.