Welcome Back, Unreal Tournament 2004!

Announcement:

With Epic's blessing and with the help of some new team members, the OldUnreal team is bringing Unreal Tournament 2004 (UT2004) back. This means that we are going to publish an installer that downloads the original disc image for UT2004, installs the game, and applies patches to it. We are also going to start publishing patches that modernize the game, make it compatible with Windows Vista or later, Linux x86-64 and aarch64 (Raspberry Pi and similar), and Mac OS 10.9 or later, fix bugs, and implement quality-of-life changes.

Yes, you read that right. **UT2004 will soon be available to download once again. Free of charge.**

This is a community-run effort but we’re excited to make the game easier to access and play again.

We have been working on this for quite some time now and have made enough progress to start inviting the first batch of testers.

Highlights so far include:

• We now natively support modern Linux and macOS systems with 64-bit Intel and ARM/Apple CPUs
• You can now play the game or run a server on a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5, albeit at a lower frame rate than on a PC!
• The Linux and macOS distributions of the patch now include a fully functional UCC with an UnrealScript compiler (UCC make) and texture compression support
• The Linux and macOS distributions now use SDL3 instead of SDL1
• D3D9Drv and fullscreen support are fully functional in the Windows 64-bit client
• We dealt our first (minor) blow to the editor goblin! We fixed several crash bugs, restored some broken functionality, and, most importantly, the editor will no longer freeze for several seconds when you click a viewport

Stability Improvements:

Unreal Editor

• We fixed a bug that crashed Unreal Editor when converting meshes to brushes
• We fixed a bug that crashed Unreal Editor when you opened a map while the 3D viewport was in realtime mode
• We fixed a bug that could crash Unreal Editor when selecting something in a 3D viewport that uses D3D9Drv

Networking and Netcode

• We fixed a networking bug that allowed players to perform illegal combo moves and to crash servers

Audio and 3D Rendering

• We fixed a bug that could crash the game when rendering skeletal meshes with invalid hierarchies

UnrealScript

• The game should no longer crash if you click a tab in an in-game menu whose content is still being rendered

Miscellaneous

• We fixed a bug that made the game crash when reading an Unreal package with an unexpected GUID
• We fixed a garbage collection bug that made the game crash upon shutdown
• We fixed a bug that made the game randomly crash when it tried to write to the log file during shutdown

Bug Fixes

Unreal Editor and UCC

• The procedural sound context menus should now be fully functional
• The display checkbox for placeables actors in the actor browser should now work as expected
• We fixed a bug that made Unreal Editor create dummy packages when converting static meshes to or from brushes
• Unreal Editor now saves viewport sizes correctly even when viewports are minimized
• Large .int files are now saved correctly without truncation (#12)
• The UnrealScript compiler now parses and compiles scripts in the correct order after it processes dependson directives
• The editor no longer moves left and down when clicking on a viewport, when used on a multi-monitor setup
• Viewport selection no longer takes a century, instead acting instantly
• We fixed bugs that made Unreal Editor incorrectly import and export DDS files
• We fixed a bug that made the Unreal Editor tooltips disappear on some systems
• We fixed a bug that made materials used by static meshes not appear in the texture browser's "in use" tab
• The static mesh to brush converter now works as expected when converting a mesh with a negative draw scale
• We fixed a bug that made Unreal Editor freeze when closing a modal dialog using the X button
• We fixed a bug that crashed the editor when opening a non-existing file
• We fixed a bug that made coronas block mouse selection in editor viewports

Networking and Netcode

• The game now reports the correct progress percentage when downloading files from a game server
• The game client will no longer call PostNetBeginPlay twice for certain actors

Audio and 3D Rendering

• We fixed a bug that made ambient sounds restart whenever the player camera switches to a different view target
• Music fadeouts should now work as expected

Physics

• We fixed a bug that triggered a "moved without proper hashing" warning when a player disconnected while possessing a live pawn

Webadmin

• We fixed a bug that made the webadmin fail intermittently on some platforms

UnrealScript

• We fixed a plethora of accessed nones and UnrealScript-based exploits, crash bugs, and denial-of-service attacks (Thank you Wormbo and Shambler!)
• We fixed a bug that could make the SPMA camera explosion loop without stopping (#24)
• The PlayerController.AskForPawn function now jumps to the Spectating.Begin state correctly (#10)
• The PlayerController.ToggleScreenShotMode function no longer discards user preferences such as the weapon handedness, crosshair visibility, HUD visibility, and the TeamBeaconMaxDist and bHideVehicleNoEntryIndicator settings (#11)
• The DeathMatch.InitTeamSymbols function can no longer give multiple teams the same symbol (#16)
• We fixed a bug where gibbed players or monsters can be gibbed multiple times by sources of constant damage
• We fixed several bugs that made Engine.Canvas incorrectly process newline characters and color codes
• We fixed a bug that made the Linux and macOS clients crash when loading font textures with remapped fonts
• We fixed a bug that could make the game crash after calling LinkMesh on a new skeletal mesh that uses dynamic hitboxes
• We fixed a bug that could make the game crash when you called TerrainInfo.PokeTerrain
• Mortar shells should now work correctly on low-grav maps
• We fixed a bug that could unexpectedly prevent you from exiting raptor vehicles

Miscellaneous

• We now support command lines longer than 1024 characters

Enhancements

Unreal Editor

• The Unreal Editor window no longer minimizes when testing a map
• The properties window now supports mouse wheel scrolling
• You can now expand and collapse items in the properties window using keyboard arrows
• The music browser now supports ogg files
• You can now import ASE and OBJ models as static meshes
• We overhauled the texture compression code and switched to a new texture compression support library (AMD Compressonator). The new code works on all platforms so you can now import compressed textures using UCC make
• You can now launch UCC from different folders on Linux and macOS
• The mesh browser now has a package combo box and a button to open the mesh properties window
• Unreal Editor now embeds the full name of exported textures in the names of the exported files
• The sound and material browsers now have a menu option allowing you to export all in-use sounds/materials
• The map export dialog now uses the correct map name as the default name of the exported file
• You can now use the CTRL+Space hotkey to align the camera to the selected actor
• Viewports now refresh when you jump to an actor using the search actor dialog
• The editor can now import and export convex volumes

Networking and Netcode

• Download messages now include information about the number of packages to download and the percentage of total download completed
• The game client now downloads and collates game server information from multiple master servers
• Game servers can now connect to multiple community master servers
• You can now configure the UCC server query port number for admins. See here for an example of how this can be used on a Windows based UCC server
• Demos recorded in offline games will now work with mods that add packages to the package map using Actor.AddToPackageMap

Audio and 3D Rendering

• Full screen support is now available in the 64-bit Windows client
• You can now cap your frame rate for menus and for offline games using the MaxMenuFrameRate and MaxOfflineFrameRate settings (see Default.ini)
• The main menu now renders more appropriately to your screen resolution. (Thank you Risel for help with the images)
• The player model now renders in mirror reflections
• Vertex models now render in OverlayMaterial
• You can now crossfade between two music tracks using MusicEvents
• Text-to-speech is now available in the 64-bit Windows client
• OpenGLDrv now supports gamma correction even when the game runs in windowed mode

Input and Windowing

• The log and terminal windows can now be minimized and maximized
• The Unreal Editor log window position now persists through restarts
• You can now set the WinDrv.WindowsClient.DirectEnhancedPointerPrecision option to true to enable enhanced pointer precision when using DirectInput-based mouse input

UnrealScript

• The game now plays a "drowning" sound rather than "hit underwater" sound when the player is under water and starts losing health (#18)
• We added a new console command, stat fpos, that configures the placement of the stat fps output relative to the top-right corner of the screen. See Default.ini: FPSPosX and FPSPosY
• We added a new console command is_pi, which returns 1 when running on a Raspberry Pi
• We have added more default screen resolutions to the Display menu
• We added a new native function, Actor.KRagdollExists, to check if a named ragdoll exists for the actor
• Dying players now play their death animation if they do not have a ragdoll
• We improved several of the error messages the game logs when encountering errors in UnrealScript code
• You can now set the MaxWarnPerFunc option in the [Core.System] section of the ini file to limit how many errors individual UnrealScript functions can log before the game silences them
• You can now add asset files (ogg/ka) to the package map using the Actor.AddToPackageMap function
• Several HUD and menu elements are now widescreen-aware and will scale correctly at 21:9, 16:9, and 16:10 resolutions
• The in-game console's command history now persists across game launches
• You can now configure the inactivity time and the effect spawned by weapon lockers
• Engine.Actor.GetHumanReadableName() now returns the plain class name rather than the instance name (which sometimes contains a number)
• Several Engine.PlayerController functions can now be called from static contexts

Webadmin

• The webadmin map list page now shows a sequence number for the maps in the map cycle

Miscellaneous

• The game will no longer truncate log files when it crashes
• We added a KarmaPath setting to the [Core.System] section of the ini file
• The game now reads and writes human-readable text color codes from and to the ini file
• The Linux binaries now perform a case-insensitive file search when they cannot open required localization files
• The game will now save screenshots in PNG format

Testing Preview 1

A small group of testers was invited to try preview 1.

Testing Preview 2

Changes since preview 1 include:

• Fixed several issues in the macOS client that were caused by outdated .u files in the app bundle
• Added a test installer for macOS (delete your ~/Library/Application Support/UT2004 folder before testing, then double-click UT2004-Installer-macOS.command)
• Added UnrealScript call stack tracking + made the game show the call stack when it logs an accessed none error
• Made UDebugger work on 64 bit again
• Reorganized tick rate limits and frame rate limits
• Fixed a collision issue in SVehicleWheel (OldUnreal/UT2004Patches#37)
• Made frame rate limits configurable in the in-game menu
• Made failed voice channel checks non-fatal
• Fixed crashes while closing the game
• Fixed app relaunching
• Fixed empty process name in the macOS activity monitor
• Removed dependency on DirectXTex.dll
• Lowered the macOS system requirement to 10.15

Testing Preview 3

Changes since preview 2 include:

• We fixed an issue that made the macOS and Linux clients hang while reporting a crash (#6)
• We fixed an issue that made shadows, decals, and projected textures flicker with OpenGLDrv (#4)
• We backported UT 469's log window, which should give us some nice performance improvements
• We tweaked the wide-screen scaling for menu images
• We fixed several problems in how UCC dealt with GModPath
• We fixed an issue that made certain meshes pitch black with OpenGLDrv
• We fixed an issue that made Intel GPUs render only the bottom layer of certain materials
• We fixed an issue that corrupted deco layers with OpenGLDrv
• We fixed an issue that made the server browser not update information/pings when the netspeed is above 20000 (OldUnreal/UT2004Patches#72)
• We fixed an issue that made loading .upl packages from mod paths fail (#13)
• We fixed another selection issue in UnrealEd (#1)
• We removed some unused music browser buttons and menu options (#17)
• We made the Linux/macOS clients report the actually supported resolutions in the in-game menu
• We fixed an issue that made music volume changes reset the currently playing song (OldUnreal/UT2004Patches#102)
• We backported UT 469's enhanced file channel implementations. This implementation massively speeds up direct downloads from the game server (OldUnreal/UT2004Patches#106)
• We fixed a problem that made the game receive mouse and joystick input even while its window is not in focus
• We made the map voter load the map list much more quickly (OldUnreal/UT2004Patches#89)
• We increased the default cache size
• We added an "All" game type to the server browser
• We fixed a problem that made the game window pop up automatically after alttabbing out of it on Linux and macOS
• GetPropertyText should now, once again, work as expected
• We fixed a bug that made the game window lose mouse focus after alttabbing out and back in on Windows
• We fixed a bug that made UnrealEd crash when importing certain skeletal meshes (OldUnreal/UT2004Patches#115)
• We fixed a bug that broke the LAN tab in the server browser (#16)
• We backported UT 469's FMemCache implementation. This should also give us some nice performance improvements
• You can now search classes in the actor browser
• Double clicking a package name in the actor browser now opens all of that package's classes in the code editor

Testing Preview 4

Changes since preview 3 include:

Rendering & Graphics

• Linux/macOS fixes:
  • Fixed window resizing issues when switching between windowed and fullscreen modes
  • Renderers are no longer deleted when switching display modes (modern renderers support both modes)
  • Deferred window size changes until fullscreen transitions complete to prevent glitches
  • Fixed black screen bugs on AMD+Linux+wayland
  • Fixed hardware cursor becoming visible after mode switching
  • Switched to software rendering for the splash screen
• Fixed mouse cursor sticking to screen edges in fullscreen mode
• Forced 32-bit color depth and 24-bit z-buffer depth in OpenGLDrv
• Added new aspect ratio scaled image style (ISTY_AspectRatioScaled) with alignment options for widescreen support (https://github.com/OldUnreal/UT2004-testing/issues/27)
• Added widescreen main menu images for aspect ratios between 1.7 and ultra-widescreen

Master Server & Networking

• Major rework of multi-master server support
  • Improved reliability when connecting to multiple master servers
  • Better failover handling when servers are unavailable
  • Master server index tracking improvements
• Added Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) support for server favorites
• Fixed server favorites being overwritten with stale data on exit (https://github.com/OldUnreal/UT2004-testing/issues/28)

Memory & Performance

• Fixed multiple memory leaks:
  • Fixed leak of ONSShockTankMuzzleFlash emitter
  • Fixed leak of SVehicleWheel inside SVehicle
• Fixed memory errors in the networking and onslaught code (https://github.com/OldUnreal/UT2004-testing/issues/26)
• Optimized memory allocation when moving actors (reduced constant reallocation)
• Speed up INI file saving
• Don't iterate over non-existent zones during pathfinding

Editor Improvements

• Editor responsiveness improvements:
  • Editor now remains responsive during long operations with progress bar
  • Progress dialog only updates when necessary to reduce CPU usage
  • Added audio beep notification for long operations (configurable via UnrealEd.ini - Options.NotifyActionEndAfterSeconds)
• Terrain Editor fixes:
  • Fixed crashes when TerrainMap is null (https://github.com/OldUnreal/UT2004Patches/issues/120)
  • Fixed crash when terrain has zero scale (https://github.com/OldUnreal/UT2004Patches/issues/139)
  • Fixed wrong UI sizes in terrain editor
  • Fixed lighting build problems when level model lacks rendering data (https://github.com/OldUnreal/UT2004-testing/issues/53)
• Path building improvements:
  • Optimized reachspecs generation
  • Added build time logging for reachspecs
  • Reduced issues log flooding when path nodes are too closev
  • Stopped flooding logs during reachspecs generation
• Fixed sorting skeletal mesh faces on import
• Reduced unnecessary autogenerated names in header export

Platform Support

• Linux improvements:
  • Fixed game exit when browser is not found upon opening a URL (https://github.com/OldUnreal/UT2004Patches/issues/132)
• GOG version support:
  • Automatic GOG CD key detection and replacement (https://github.com/stijn-volckaert/ut2004new/pull/58)
  • Works on both Windows and Linux

User Interface

• Added colored output to console window
• Improved log output for UCC Make
• Command history now prevents storing duplicate consecutive commands
• Fixed log file sharing when opening log window
• "Join Game" menu now remembers the last selected tab (https://github.com/OldUnreal/UT2004Patches/issues/126)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed pawn class selection issue where Jakob model was used by default due to incorrect timestamp check (https://github.com/OldUnreal/UT2004-testing/issues/23)

Testing Preview 5

We are currently working on an updated OpenGL renderer, but it is not yet in a state where we can release it for testing.

In the meantime, we've fixed a bunch of bugs and made some improvements:

Enhancements

Unreal Editor

• We implemented several optimizations that should speed up undo/redo operations (#63)
• We made UCC and Unreal Editor output additional information when they warn about invalid materials in skeletal meshes

UnrealScript

• The SkaarjPack.Invasion.ReduceDamage function now calls the super function to handle damage reduction for victims that do not belong to the same species as the damage instigators
• The bonus pack 2 maps are now in the lists of alternative ladder maps (OldUnreal/UT2004Patches#136)

Rendering and GUI

• We restored the original game menu and reimplemented the widescreen-friendly version of the menu in a new menu subclass. This should fix the mod incompatibility problems reported in the first previews (#25).
• Players who wish to use the widescreen-friendly menu should change the MainMenuClass setting in the [Engine.GameEngine] section of UT2004.ini to MainMenuClass=GUI2K4.UT2K4MainMenuWS
• The onslaught ladder should now appear in the single player menu (OldUnreal/UT2004Patches#136)
• The tutorial maps in the single player campaign now have a thumbnail
• We moved PNG screenshot encoding to a background thread. Consequently, taking screenshots should no longer (briefly) freeze the game (#75)

Bug Fixes

Unreal Editor

• We fixed a bug that made the editor crash when deleting a shader texture and selecting another shader afterwards (#74)
• We fixed a bug that made the 'None' group list show all sounds from other groups (#62)
• We fixed a bug that made surface properties update slowly when unselecting a surface (#64)

UnrealScript

• We fixed a bug that could make the game crash when calling Engine.Controller.PickTarget while the pawn, level, or game is invalid
• The game should now display item pickup messages when playing with the vehicle pickups mutator (OldUnreal/UT2004Patches#154)
• We fixed a bug that made UCC make reject certain well-formed statements

Sound & Music

• The game now performs a case-insensitive file lookup when it can't find the music file it's supposed to play. This should fix issues with music not playing on Linux systems
• We fixed a bug that could make the game crash when an emitted particle collides with an actor

Rendering and GUI

• We fixed a bug that could crash the game when rendering particles emitted by invalid skeletal mesh actors
• We fixed a bug that made the player model in the player selection menu appear upside down (OldUnreal/UT2004Patches#146)
• The domination tutorial should now work as expected
• We fixed a typo in the particle emitter velocity scaling code that made particle emitters ignore Z-scaling
• We fixed a bug that made it possible to receive bloodrites challenges for non-existent team members (OldUnreal/UT2004Patches#136 (comment))

Miscellaneous

• We fixed a bug that made UCC generate invalid command-line messages while shutting down
• We fixed a bug that made the Linux version of UCC spam the screen with (identical) log messages (#66)

Q&A

Some questions might have popped into your head as you read this news. Let us try to answer some of them.

We would also like to thank Epic for making this possible.