OS X Unreal Tournament [Original - GOTY - UT99]

[Jethryn Freyman]

So, yeah. Unreal Tournament came out nearly 15 years ago. Mac version, OS 9 native, soon after. Worked well under the Classic Environment up to 10.4 Tiger. The "UT OS X Preview v3", PowerPC build, works OK for the most part, under 10.4-10.5, and under Rosetta on 10.6

But nothing ever happened after that... and that version was released around 2005... maybe even earlier. Would it be so hard for the OS X code for the port to be released? iD Software are already releasing the source course to iD Tech 4m the stuff behind Doom 3 and such.

It'd be cool if somebody [who is it, Westlake, MacGames, Infrogrames, icculus] release the OS X source code to the OS X UT v3 preview so it can be at least recompiled for Intel versions of OS X. I'd wager that somebody could made a decent pile of cash by fixing it up [the music, grenade smoke etc] and releasing it on the App Store], hell, even I'd have a go at it, if only I had the source code out there for me.

It's the game I grew up with. How much does Epic Games make off the original UT now? Just release the damn source code for the engine. Look at Quake, the graphic capability of a modern Quake [1996] engine more or less matches Doom 3 [~2003, ray-traced lighting-etc].

Just make us UT fans happy, K?

I may suck at coding, by I *should* be able to recode it for Intel OS X, possibly with music intact [VLC can play .ogg files fine] - I've emailed to no avail, but hey, I've got time on my hands, so yeah, great game, part of my childhood, I'm willing to give it a shot.

Thoughts?

 

[Solomani]

I second this!

An updated Unreal Tournament natively running on OSX is an insta-buy for me. I see no reason it cannot be done. There are already several iOS shooter games running the latest (modern) Unreal Engine.

Maybe I can dream that Feral or Aspyr will take up the challenge.

As for them releasing the source code to the legacy (circa 2004) Unreal Engine, I'm all for it, but when was the last time we heard Epic do anything? (other than get rich by licensing their current UT Engine to various 3rd parties).

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

As for them releasing the source code to the legacy (circa 2004) Unreal Engine, I'm all for it, but when was the last time we heard Epic do anything? (other than get rich by licensing their current UT Engine to various 3rd parties).

this... pretty much.

iD open-source their engines like clockwork, nobody is buying Unreal Tournament anymore, because they can't; they have to pirate it if they want to play it. Open-sourcing the engine at least is a no-brainer.

 

[saturnotaku]

Does the game play well/at all using Crossover or similar wrapper?

Not saying I wouldn't mind a proper OS X port, though. I'd definitely buy it. My friends and I played heck out of just the demo when we were in college. Plenty of late-night LAN-party fun was had there.

The OP should get a Kickstarter campaign going for this.

 

[Solomani]

Does the game play well/at all using Crossover or similar wrapper?

Which 'game' are you talking about exactly? The UT 2004 edition that was available for earlier PPC Macs? I already asked this question in another thread and I got the correct response. The UT 2004 Edition, published by MacSoft at that time, has an update that allows it to run on modern OSX.

A poster named MichalM.Mac answered my post, and he posted the link to the update files. It's below. Note, the update is a Universal Binary patch, and players say that it works fine on OSX 10.8.3

According to MichalM.Mac, both UT99 and UT2003 are PowerPC only, though.

http://www.macgamefiles.com/item/18155/Unreal-Tournament-2004/

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Not saying I wouldn't mind a proper OS X port, though. I'd definitely buy it. My friends and I played heck out of just the demo when we were in college. Plenty of late-night LAN-party fun was had there.

The OP should get a Kickstarter campaign going for this.

Back in the early 2000s, UT was the king of FPS games in most LAN parties. It was undeniably a favorite over Doom and Quake.

Heck, I'd support a Kickstarter as long as the "revised Mac Unreal" is a legit project (i.e. it's not a hack, and has legitimately obtained source code or got the support or blessing from the original devs)

Even better, I will support a Kickstarter for anyone trying to raise money (and development funding) to license the modern Unreal Engine (3 or 4) from Epic... and then make a native OSX port using that!

 

[saturnotaku]

Which 'game' are you talking about exactly?

UT99. Though I played my fair share of 2004 back in my Windows-only days, I never quite got into it as much as the original. I wouldn't expect 2004 to run well in a virtualized environment.

 

[dalstott]

If you are very eager to play UT then try Boot Camp on an Intel Mac. I recently played UT and UT II from the PC anthology available from Amazon. UT 2004 and UT GOTY tournaments are on the disk also.

http://www.amazon.com/Unreal-Anthology-Pc/dp/B000GPVUUS

The machine is a 2006 MacBook core duo with Windows XP/Boot Camp setup.

Right now I am playing the original Half Life series with add ons Blue Shift and Opposing Force.

 

[saturnotaku]

If you are very eager to play UT then try Boot Camp on an Intel Mac. I recently played UT and UT II from the PC anthology available from Amazon. UT 2004 and UT GOTY tournaments are on the disk also.

http://www.amazon.com/Unreal-Anthology-Pc/dp/B000GPVUUS

The machine is a 2006 MacBook core duo with Windows XP/Boot Camp setup.

Right now I am playing the original Half Life series with add ons Blue Shift and Opposing Force.

That's an option we're all well aware of and not the focus of this discussion.

 

[Poketmouse]

If you folks are looking for the original UT '99, i did stumble upon a site that made a superb port using Cider:

http://unrealosx.webs.com/downloads.htm

They also have Unreal Gold AND Deus Ex on there, all running perfectly!

 

[lostless]

Does the game play well/at all using Crossover or similar wrapper?

Not saying I wouldn't mind a proper OS X port, though. I'd definitely buy it. My friends and I played heck out of just the demo when we were in college. Plenty of late-night LAN-party fun was had there.

The OP should get a Kickstarter campaign going for this.

I got the GOTY edition running near perfect in crossover. When I say near perfect, the only issue is that single player runs too fast sometimes. But online multiplayer works perfectly.

 

[Kissaragi]

Could you not use wine to run ut99?

I loved that game, I was actually quite good at it unlike now where I get owned by 7 year olds in anything.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

There's an unofficial cider port of the Windows version called Unreal Tournament GOTY.app or something that runs perfectly on OS Intel, as far as I can tell. I've also got Unreal Gold running perfectly, again as far as I can tell, using Crossover 9.

I did email Ryan Gordon ["icculus"] a couple of years or so ago about this with a request for the source code... no reply. Dunno, might not have even been his email address. I'll try again.

Maybe someone give him a tweet and point out this we got going here.

https://twitter.com/icculus/

 

[stueee123]

I still play UT2004 in OSX and it still holds up. Also, it runs perfectly at full graphic settings and 2880*1800 even when i force it to only use HD 4000 graphics..

 

[ScottishCaptain]

There is a public source release for Unreal Tournament v432. You can find it if you Google it. I am unsure if this is the full source code for the entire game- I don't think it contains everything you need to rebuild UT99 (the artwork and audio assets are definitely missing, but you can get those from the retail game).

Then there's projects like this:

https://github.com/stephank/surreal

And a dozen others that have all been abandoned (that one being the most recent).

Of course, I don't think any of this stuff supports OS X natively. In fact, I'm not sure who did the OS 9 and OS X ports. I know that the Unreal engine never supported the Mac stuff natively, most of that code was written by folks outside of Epic (and only recently has Epic began to support OS X officially). So if you're trying to get this stuff open sourced, the PC version of the game may not be what you're looking for (you'd have to re-write all the Mac specific stuff yourself).

IMHO; if you just want to play the game- WINE and Wineskin have recently gained a Mac native backend. Which means they no longer rely on X11 (yuck) for I/O, so these experimental builds run quite a bit smoother under OS X. It would probably be easiest for you to just fire up the Windows build under that and be happy with it.

-SC

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

Well, I got a reply from Ryan C. Gordon, nice and timely :

Just wondering if there's ever a possibility of you or any of the guys
from Epic tossing the source code to the original Mac version of UT or
the OS X preview 3 (Power PC only) out into the public domain so it can
get it ported over to Intel by interested parties. There's definitely
people out there willing to work on this, it's a pretty classic game.

I would love to see that happen, but it would have to be Epic's decision, not mine.

--ryan.

 

[saturnotaku]

Since UT GOTY is available from GOG, it might be worth trying to contact those folks as well. Perhaps with the backing of GOG, it might get the folks from Epic to listen, rather than simply getting e-mails from one random person.

 

[Solomani]

Since UT GOTY is available from GOG, it might be worth trying to contact those folks as well. Perhaps with the backing of GOG, it might get the folks from Epic to listen, rather than simply getting e-mails from one random person.

Maybe GOG can simply "port" UT GOTY properly to modern OSX Lion/MtnLion. I see that the UT GOTY that they offer for sale at their webstore is the old Windows version (XP and Vista). I see no reason why EPIC would refuse, since they will make royalties/revenue for every game sold anyways.

I mean, GOG has done a great job porting all other old Mac/PC games to work with (current) OSX .... really really old games like Wing Commander and Starflight II and Star Control, and (1980s-vintage) Leisure Suit Larry, etc.

 

[Huntn]

I've got some great memories from that game... UT99 and UT2003.

 

[saturnotaku]

Maybe GOG can simply "port" UT GOTY properly to modern OSX Lion/MtnLion. I see that the UT GOTY that they offer for sale at their webstore is the old Windows version (XP and Vista). I see no reason why EPIC would refuse, since they will make royalties/revenue for every game sold anyways.

The original IP holders work in mysterious ways.

It would make my day if GOG were able to successfully port Shogo: Mobile Armor Division to OS X. Of course, the game is pretty buggy in Windows, so I don't hold out much hope that a decent Mac port could be done, but one can dream.

 

[ScottishCaptain]

Well, I got a reply from Ryan C. Gordon, nice and timely :

So forward it to Epic, and ask them.

They've already:

A) Released the source code for the UT'99 engine (v432) at one point in time
B) Released various chunks of UT2004's source code
C) Released various chunks of UT3's source code

Frankly, I think you'd have a better chance asking Epic to do something then you would asking another company like EA. It's not like we're talking about a recent game. This is analogous to id releasing the source for Q3A.

-SC

 

[robertosh]

I have it, i didn't remember where i get it. It's a simple .app file and runs without problems in OSX 10.8.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

I have it, i didn't remember where i get it. It's a simple .app file and runs without problems in OSX 10.8.

That'd be the Windows version running inside a Cider wrapper. If you look inside the .app package contents you'll see the c_drive and all the usual Windows "Program Files" suspects.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

OK, I'm following this up. I'll let you know what happens.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

No reply so far, I'll try to contact somebody at Epic directly.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

Things are still moving, question is, as my programming skills are very... backward... how many people would be open to helping recompile/tweak the code for current Intel 64-bit Macs? No earlier support is required, I figure, as if they aren't Intel-64, then they can still either run the PPC Preview v3 version, or Windows version without a hitch via WINE/Cider/Crossover.