здравствулте!

I hope that says “hello” in Russian.  Babel fish can be a little random at times.

There is an excellent Russian UT site that posts  news covering all of the Unreal flavours.  They also translate a lot of the English Unreal news so if your mother tongue is Russian why not give them a visit.  I’ve added a link in the links page as well.   Big respect to Miguelon (admin of unreal.by) for being so reasonable and friendly.

They also translated a review of mine “CTF-Eurus“.

All the best

Перевод Babelfish

Я надеюсь который говорит ” hello” в русском. Babelfish может быть немногой случайным временами.

Превосходное место русского UT те новости столбов покрывая все нереальные флейворы. Они также переводят много английские нереальные новости так если ваш родной язык русск почему не дать им посещение. I’ ve добавил соединение в странице соединений также. Большое уважение к Miguelon (admin unreal.by для быть настолько разумна и содружественна.

Они также перевели просмотрение ” шахты; CTF-Eurus”.

Все самое лучшее

😀

Extreme Mapping Competition

This thread over at the Beyond Unreal forums lays out the rules for a good competition.  Focusing on originality but based around 1 on 1 style of play.  Check it out if you fancy a challenge.

At the time of writing this two maps have been subbed.  I’ve finished one review but I’ll wait until I’ve done the other before I post them.  That should be tomorrow or the day after.  I want to spend the rest of today working on quatro.

Again big thanks to hal over at Beyond Unreal for pimping this site.  I sent the news to Planet but nothing as of yet.  The stats for this site show that the community is still around.  Communities build communities not single people.  It will become as strong as you make it.

More big thanks to the people who have given me feed back.  So vital in this community.  Not from an ego point of view but simply if no-one gives feedback then you guys don’t get the sites and maps you want.  Epic may have missed the mark but that doesn’t mean we, as a community, will.  UT3 is a great engine that’s capable of some amazing stuff.

Till Then

Non-UT related link.  Be a hired hitman in stickman world.

Mod DB and UTU News

UT Unlimited now has a front page of sorts, just a temporary one at the moment.  Hunter is doing sterling work and much praise and thanks must go to him.

In addition to my last two posts I want to introduce a site, Mod DB.  This lists lots of mods released and in development for a number of games.  UT3, as well as the rest of the unreal series, being included of course.

If you still think the UT3 scene is lacking then have a look through that site.  There’s more than you think.  Plus, you’ll find that something to interest you.

Till then

Servers Are Back

Well most are.

The exploit was a memory call within the unreal server code (I know nothing about programming by the way :D). The guy has now released two unofficial patches for server admins. One for 2k4 (Windows only at the moment) and for UT3 (both Linux and Windows).  Those files are posted at the guy’s site.  He seems to find these exploits, have his fun for a day or so then release patches plugging the holes.  I wonder if he realises or cares about the damage he does?  I doubt it.

More finalists of the Make Something Unreal Contest have been announced.  This list has been posted here originally over at Beyond Unreal.  I’ve C&P’ed for those to lazy to go there :D.
The Best Game Type finalists:

• Battle Team/ Freezetag Arena by Nico “BattleMode” de Vries
• Cubes of Serenity by Anna Beck-Thomsen, Lawrence Johnson, Jens Hammerhøj, André Johansen, Martin Larsen, Janusch Häring
• UT3DOM by Team Domination
• Domination Reloaded by spl0k
• Galtanor’s Invasion by Michael “Galtanor” Wells
• Proelium by Martin “Pfhoenix” Actor
• The Ball: Pehua by The Ball Team
• Unreal Demolition 2 by Dan Weiss
• UT2D by Team Joe Bates (and various mappers)
• Written Off by David Jenkinson and Ben Moser

The Best Game Type honorable mentions:

• Attrition by “OlympusMons”
• CTF++ by Shee Labs Game Development
• Endless Falling by Yuan Shen, Kai Song Liu, Chen Huang and Tao Cui
• Fleet Wars Alpha by Martin “Pfhoenix” Actor
• Mini-Golf Tournament by Rob Howland
• UT Race by Matthew Fawcett
• Zombie Invasion by Eric Blade

The Best Tool finalists:

• Blender_export by John “Darknet”
• HMCS by David “DGUnreal” Green
• Mark4U by Andreas
• skUT3 by Nicolas “SkorpSSS” Imbert
• Ultimate Console by Matthew Fawcett
• uMax by Christian Herzog
• Unreal Visualization Toolkit by Alastair Hebson
• UnrealPackage by Sam Harwell
• UnrealRSC by Alan
• UT3 Tweaker by Brad G.
• UWindow2 by James Tan

Best Tool honorable mention:

• rK DemoWatcher by Ulrich Scheller
• UnrealScript Editor Alpha 1 by Aurélien Reeves
• UT3 Cache Converter by Brad G.

The Best Use of Physics finalists:

• Ash Gravity Gun by Aaron “Charybdis” Ash
• Cubes of Serenity by Anna Beck-Thomsen, Lawrence Johnson, Jens Hammerhøj, André Johansen, Martin Larsen and Janusch Häring
• DM-Blockland by Simeon “Lord_Simeon” Spargo
• DM-Nowhere by Remus Brailoiu
• JetPack by Martin “Pfhoenix” Actor
• Mini-Golf Tournament by Rob Howland
• Raggy Weapons by Martin “Pfhoenix” Actor
• The Ball: Pehua by The Ball Team
• Unreal Demolition 2 by Dan Weiss

Best Mutator honorable mentions (Best Mutator finalists were announced earlier this week):

• The Mutator Weeks by Shee Labs Game Development
• Gibalicious by Miles Asvachin
• VAS Volatile Ammo by Dion “KalCorp” Rentos
• Raggy Weapons by Martin “Pfhoenix” Actor
• Defector by Jeremiah Ellison
• BattleMOD by Nico “BattleMode” de Vries
• VAS Auto-Shields by Dion “KalCorp” Rentos
• Coda Sword by Denrei
• Portable Spawners by Antone Franich
• BattleTrans by Nico “BattleMode” de Vries
• Circus Mutator by James
• JukeBox by Jason Yu

Who says the UT3  scene’s dead 😀

Remember the Mapping Competitions?

(originally posted at my old blog)

I remember one where the map had to be kept inside a 1024 cubed box. There was another where only a certain number of textures were used. I’ve been thinking of running some competitions. The prize wouldn’t be much. Pimpage all around the community which is still fairly wide by the way. I’ve checked my referrals. Several news sites have passed the news that I’m trying to restart UTU. My point is, the community is still alive and in several different languages :D.

I’m finding that Blogger, though good, is a bit limited. Soon I’ll be moving to WordPress. It can handle separate pages and is Digg friendly. Blogger is a bit tricky when it comes to stuff like that. This will make it feel more like a site rather than a blog. I’m hoping that I will be able to start posting reviews. The WordPress dashboard is not the clearest in the world but beatable :D. It’s more versatile generally. Untill everything is ready though I’ll stick here. Plans for a main UTU site are still very much on.

Progress on the map is still happening. Nothing worth taking screenshots of yet. I’ll probably wait until I’ve started the lighting.

I’ve found some new Custom models for UT3. Warhammer 40K + Warfare, oh yeah. Now if only someone would mod the vehicles to match. 😀

One Small Step Closer

(originally posted at my old blog)

I’ve had an offer of help to re-start UT Unlimited. Big thanks to you :D. This is obviously encouraging and I will, of course, tell you more as it develops. If you think you can help then please get in touch.

When we get a rough beta of the site I’ll preview it as soon as possible. My head’s full of ideas but I need to get them on screen.

DM–Quatro ’08 is growing. I’m at the mesh stage. Adding these things takes longer than it should because I’m still learning where things are. But progress is progress and that’s always good.

I want to say a big thanks to all those who remember UT Unlimited. It seems you guys have long memories. Thanks also to hal at Beyond Unreal and RaptoR over at Planet Unreal for the pimpage. I’ve also noticed that other sites carried the news as well. Thanks to them also.

Might have some screens tomorrow if all goes well.

More Screens

(originally posted at my old blog)

First off I’d like to thank all those who have visited and posted comments here and at the Beyond Unreal forums. It really makes it feel worthwhile when I check the stats for this blog.
Thanks. 😀

There is an ambitious project posted at those forums. The idea is to re-do almost every part of UT3. Sir_Brizz started this thread airing the idea. If you want to help get this idea off the ground then why not visit and see if you can help. It’s all good news for the UT community. Lets beat Epic at their own game (pun not intended). It’s nice to see the majority of the UT community trying to pull together.

Speaking of Net based projects, I’m also involved in one of a musical variety. You may have heard of Discogs.com. In March this year Discogs version 4 was rolled out much to the anger of a lot of the long time moderators, submitters and users. Discogs used to be heavily moderated for accuracy. V4 allowed anyone to submit or change anything and it would show immediately in the database. A lot of people’s hard work started to unravel before their eyes. Some people have been working on that database for years.

We broke away and formed DiscographyDB or DdB for short. The aim is to have an accurate database of as many audio releases as possible. If you can help coding, ideas or anything please go to DdB. It’s just a forum at the moment but this is a great chance to get in to a project from the start and make a bit of history.

Two new screens for you tonight. The lighting is more functional than final. Also there’s no post processing in place yet. That’s why it looks a little plain.

Thanks for visiting. 😀

Up and Running

(originally posted at my old blog)

This blog is up and running now. Didn’t get much of the map done though. The UT3 scene has been stagnating of late but there are hopeful signs. A classic mod Jail Break is being developed for UT3 as is Tac Ops. The community also needs new custom stuff like meshes and textures. Hourence has created a texture pack for UT3 over at his site. There are other teams and mappers that are producing custom content.

These are all good signs but it’s still moving slowly. UT3 has great potential but it takes a long time to do anything because of the new technologies involved. It seems to be a common misconception that you need to know Maya or 3DMax, this isn’t true from a mapping point of view. It does make things a bit easier though. I don’t know how to use any other 3D software other than UED. I know I should but it takes time. One day eh 🙂

Another problem is that there aren’t many sites that review maps and skins. In the days of the original UT there were almost too many sites. This made for a great community and a very encouraging environment. The big review sites such as Nalicity are no longer around for whatever reason. I really hope this changes. If I could code I probably would run a review site.

Here’s hoping.

I might have some new screens tomorrow so I’ll post them if I can.