Welcome Back, Unreal Tournament 2004!

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

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.