Unreal Tornament is Great!

[Mac n' Steve]

I think Unreal Tornament is great...What do you think and like or hate about it?

[howard]

yes, UT is an amazing game...i like it cause it runs well on my relatively slow machines...i don't like it cause i was having trouble getting it to work for os x. Its so fun if you want to take a break from homeworks and just mutilate some bots!. I like games you can just start and play and quit just as easily. While i do like games that you get into deeply its kinda a waste of time to be playing a game for that long of a time.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by howard
yes, UT is an amazing game...i like it cause it runs well on my relatively slow machines...i don't like it cause i was having trouble getting it to work for os x. Its so fun if you want to take a break from homeworks and just mutilate some bots!. I like games you can just start and play and quit just as easily. While i do like games that you get into deeply its kinda a waste of time to be playing a game for that long of a time.

Actually Unreal Tournament barely runs on any mac due to a poor port. Check out the frame rates they are very slow no matter what your settings on any mac. Quake Arena is a much better port and runs very well on almost any mac.

I have both and I really like Unreal but I would have to say since I'm using X now Quake is the one to have.

[Draft]

Originally posted by MacBandit


Actually Unreal Tournament barely runs on any mac due to a poor port. Check out the frame rates they are very slow no matter what your settings on any mac. Quake Arena is a much better port and runs very well on almost any mac.

I have both and I really like Unreal but I would have to say since I'm using X now Quake is the one to have.

I agree, but only recently. Ever since 10.2 came out, it has rendered UTX unplayable. Q3 is great because they are still developing it, where as UT is kind of a dead project, especially for OS X. Glenda Adams keeps saying that she's going to finish it but she can't find the time. That was a LONG time ago. If she ever finishes it, that would be great, but don't expect that to happen anytime soon.

Draft

[FattyMembrane]

i could fill a book with my complaints about utx. i get about 30 fps in os9 (imac 500 rage128/16meg, 640x480 high quality textures) and about 25 fps in 10.2. not the kind of performance i'd expect from a 4 year old game. i really like it, but the poor quality of the osx port makes it unusable. does anyone else have fps counts from similar mahcines or from comparable pcs? i'm sure a pII 233 with a 4meg card gets about twice as many frames as my computer does (i hate crappy ports)

is quake3arena that much more playable? i would have bought that one instead, but it's still $30 (although ut is still $20, and nolf is $40, and...)

[Draft]

Originally posted by FattyMembrane
i could fill a book with my complaints about utx. i get about 30 fps in os9 (imac 500 rage128/16meg, 640x480 high quality textures) and about 25 fps in 10.2. not the kind of performance i'd expect from a 4 year old game. i really like it, but the poor quality of the osx port makes it unusable. does anyone else have fps counts from similar mahcines or from comparable pcs? i'm sure a pII 233 with a 4meg card gets about twice as many frames as my computer does (i hate crappy ports)

is quake3arena that much more playable? i would have bought that one instead, but it's still $30 (although ut is still $20, and nolf is $40, and...)

Q3A's OS X port runs perfectly on my machine. At 1024x768 and everything on high, I get about 90 fps, where as UTX under 10.1.5 got about 30-45 fps. Also, Amazon sells Q3 Gold for $25. Hope this helps.

Draft

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by howard
yes, UT is an amazing game...i like it cause it runs well on my relatively slow machines...i don't like it cause i was having trouble getting it to work for os x. Its so fun if you want to take a break from homeworks and just mutilate some bots!. I like games you can just start and play and quit just as easily. While i do like games that you get into deeply its kinda a waste of time to be playing a game for that long of a time.

Yeah exactly. I play a practice game for 20-30 minutes and go back to real life.

I still don't see a problem with how it runs on either the G3/400 or the dual G4/800. It's somewhat faster on Mac OS 9.x but smoother on Mac OS X. Quake III is much faster because they took time to do it right, esp. on the dual processor machines.

[FattyMembrane]

hmmm... i may have to download the quake 3 demo and try it out. alice ran rather slowly in 10.2 and 9.2 and the rtcw multiplayer demo was "playable" for me under 10.1 only with all of it's settings on the absolute lowest they would go, but i'm guessing that both of those games added things to the engine that slowed it down. wasn't there some tip on xlr8yourmac a while ago about setting a "chunk size" or something like that to improve fps in quake3? if anyone knows what i'm talking about (i'm not sure i do :D ) please let me know.

[bousozoku]

FattyMembrane:

I noticed that the Aspyr/Raven version of the Quake III engine does not run as well as the id version, for whatever reason. This is why I don't like the performance of Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force or Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast as much as the id games coming out about the same time. Alice is from Aspyr and I bet it's using the Raven version of the engine.

[Jimong5]

UT for me is different.
in 9 i get 70-80 FPS on 1024x768
in X i get 60-75 FPS on 1280x1024
this with a Dual 867/ Rad 9k

[job]

Originally posted by bousozoku
I noticed that the Aspyr/Raven version of the Quake III engine does not run as well as the id version, for whatever reason.

Remeber the RtCW MP Test for X?

It was written in Cocoa by iD.

Why, oh why wan't the final release a X-only Cocoa port?

Just think of the performance increases!

Damn you Aspyr!

;) :p

[Draft]

Originally posted by Jimong5
UT for me is different.
in 9 i get 70-80 FPS on 1024x768
in X i get 60-75 FPS on 1280x1024
this with a Dual 867/ Rad 9k

It seems to me that UT runs better on ATI cards then on nVidia cards. Anyone who is currently able to play UTX in 10.2 has an ATI card. For the rest of the people with nVidia cards, it renders UTX unplayable with tons of dropped frames and incredibly skippy play.

Draft

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by hitman


Remeber the RtCW MP Test for X?

It was written in Cocoa by iD.

Why, oh why wan't the final release a X-only Cocoa port?

Just think of the performance increases!

Damn you Aspyr!

;) :p

Well, it doesn't have to be using the Cocoa framework to be fast. Carbon is working quite nicely but both need tuning still.

As for ports, I think most will still be Carbon as most Windows-based games are written in C++, not Objective-C. (None are likely to be written in Objective-C. :D) Apple's willingness to create the Objective-C++ hack has helped, but there's a lot of mess trying to mix languages.

[FattyMembrane]

Originally posted by bousozoku
Well, it doesn't have to be using the Cocoa framework to be fast. Carbon is working quite nicely but both need tuning still.
excellent point. it is possible, in some instances, for carbon to be faster than cocoa, but mr. welch from ambrosia said it best when he noted that you can make a fast or slow carbon app and a fast or slow cocoa app. sadly, most carbon ports are horribly slow and this is especially true for games. i think the only carbon game that has actually had an increase in speed in osx is sixtyforce (which has been dormant for months) and other than that, i've yet to see a game that runs in both 9 and x and at least gets the same fps. so when games are ported over you have a crappy job on the port to the mac (which means a speed hit) and a crappy job on the port to carbon (which means a speed hit). it's no wonder mac gamers need the fastest powermacs available to run 4 year old pc games. but enough of my rant...

[bousozoku]

If you use the Carbon event model, Mac OS X is happier and every application goes a little bit smoother. You ask for notification of a certain event and go to sleep basically. Once the even happens for that application, the system notifies Carbon and Carbon notifies the application...everyone's happy.

Old Mac OS apps. use an event loop which drains processor usage because it keeps asking over-and-over..."are we there yet?" This does not work well in Mac OS X (or other pre-emptive multi-tasking systems.

Also, the old performance tweaks work against the application in Mac OS X, further degrading the experience.

Cocoa really is a slower application framework, due to its dynamic nature. It's just that since it's so much tried-and-true NeXTStep code, it doesn't need as much tuning. Carbon should be particularly fast, since it's lightweight. Perhaps, those applications using PowerPlant from MetroWerks are part of the issue because PowerPlant needs tuning too.

[Haberdasher]

Originally posted by MacBandit


Actually Unreal Tournament barely runs on any mac due to a poor port. Check out the frame rates they are very slow no matter what your settings on any mac. Quake Arena is a much better port and runs very well on almost any mac.

I have both and I really like Unreal but I would have to say since I'm using X now Quake is the one to have.

It has nothing to do with a poor port. UT is incredibly CPU intensive, whereas Quake 3 relies more on your GPU. PC framerates cap out far lower on UT than on Quake 3 just like on your Macs. Sometimes I think you guys just pull "facts" out of nowhere. :rolleyes:

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by Haberdasher


It has nothing to do with a poor port. UT is incredibly CPU intensive, whereas Quake 3 relies more on your GPU. PC framerates cap out far lower on UT than on Quake 3 just like on your Macs. Sometimes I think you guys just pull "facts" out of nowhere. :rolleyes:

I believe you about the PC. I initially thought that it was a bad port until I saw it running on a PC at CompUSA. The PC was far stronger than my PowerMac but the initial fly-by was just as rough as it was on my machine. Would they have picked a poor machine to showcase that software? Not at all.

[howard]

i'm having trouble running ut on os x, i keep getting this error

Class Actor Member Owner problem:
Script=48 C++=52:

thats it...it works fine in os 9, and the frame rates are great. quake 3 in os x has given me really really bad frame rates. anyway, does anyone know where i can get an updated patch for ut? has anyone else had this problem?

[FattyMembrane]

Originally posted by howard
i'm having trouble running ut on os x, i keep getting this error

Class Actor Member Owner problem:
Script=48 C++=52:

thats it...it works fine in os 9, and the frame rates are great. quake 3 in os x has given me really really bad frame rates. anyway, does anyone know where i can get an updated patch for ut? has anyone else had this problem?
make sure that you've upgraded to the 4.33 version and are using the UnrealTournament.ini and User.ini files that came with the osx version, not the classic version.

[Jaykay]

unreal tournament was an excellent game, too bad i lost the CD, that brings me on to a good point, anybody want to give UT...?

[mattmack]

Originally posted by Draft
It seems to me that UT runs better on ATI cards then on nVidia cards. Anyone who is currently able to play UTX in 10.2 has an ATI card. For the rest of the people with nVidia cards, it renders UTX unplayable with tons of dropped frames and incredibly skippy play.

Draft Yeah I have no probs with UTX (except for the occaisional crash) and I have an ATI 8500 on a Dual 450 with 512mB. While the framerates are better in Quake. I still enjoy UT. I also agree that it makes a difference if the game can be played in 9 and X or just X

[mattmack]

Originally posted by FattyMembrane
make sure that you've upgraded to the 4.33 version and are using the UnrealTournament.ini and User.ini files that came with the osx version, not the classic version. I think its the 4.36 version

[PC Clone]

Is this thread about Unreal Tournament or UT 2003?

[mattmack]

Originally posted by PC Clone
Is this thread about Unreal Tournament or UT 2003? UT Since U2k3 isn't out for mac yet

[FattyMembrane]

http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/view.php?ID=218&Page=2

i somehow overlooked this little tidbit until tonight.

Tuncer: Everytime we do these One on One's, I always forget to ask you about the Mac OS X version of Unreal Tournament. I usually get angry emails from people asking me why I didn't ask you that. So, before someone kills me again, what's the latest on the UT X?

Glenda: I get asked about that a lot too. Sometimes I'm not sure what to answer, because I'm just not sure what is going to happen to it. I'll be honest, I haven't looked at the code for it in several months. I've been under a huge time crunch on EverQuest for the last few months, and when I do have some free time I tend to want to get away from the computer and do something else, after spending countless hours every day programming. Having said all of that, there is definitely no official "death" for UT X. I haven't said I'll never get another version released, or won't ever work on it. But I just can't promise anything about when there will be another preview. I know it has to be very frustrating for gamers, but legacy games like this are a huge issue for Mac development companies.

The best answer I tell people is there are still plans to return to UT X in the future, but no definite schedule.

[Freg3000]

Sorry if this is a really simple/stupid question, but how do you find out the FPS number in a game?

[mattmack]

Thanks for the info

[mattmack]

Originally posted by Freg3000
Sorry if this is a really simple/stupid question, but how do you find out the FPS number in a game? In UT open the console and type timedemo 0 or timedemo 1. One turns it off and the other turns it on
:)

[FattyMembrane]

Originally posted by mattmack
In UT open the console and type timedemo 0 or timedemo 1. One turns it off and the other turns it on
:)
there's also a menu option that allows you to select whether timedemo stats are on or off. i think it's the "option" menu, but i'm not sure.

[mangoman]

Been a UT fanatic for a long time, but I've got a mystery goin' on:

When I fire up UT (AND Rune, for that matter) and toggle Full Screen, my cursor keeps drifting to the right. I can't stop it...

VERY frustrating. Did a complete reinstall, then turned off a ton of extensions, etc. No luck.

HELP!

[bousozoku]

I had this happen from time to time but not for quite a while.

Make sure that your other pointing devices (mice, trackpads, graphics tablets) are secured.