Welcome to the next installment of the History of Unreal Technology. This time we take a look at one of the most entertaining Multiplayer games of all time, Unreal Tournament. It is hard to believe that the game's 5th anniversary just passed us last month and the demo shortly before that. Speaking of the demo I remember that November afternoon in '99 taking a day off work to download and play it as soon as it would be ready. Little did I know that it would completely change the way I think about online gaming and pretty much alter the way I look at gaming forever .


Unreal Tournament actually wasn't so much revolutionary as it was more of the right game at the right time. As most people know that Unreal's Multiplayer, which had potential, was pretty much a disaster. This is one of the reason's I feel that most gamers that weren't into Unreal weren't going to try out UT. To get into a little more detail on what Epic and Digital Extremes did and didn't want from the original game. To explore this we fire off this question to Cliff Bleszinski of Epic.

How did the idea of UT come about?

Cedric "Inoxx" Fiorentino was one of the first folks around the office that was suggesting we do a "botpack" expansion for Unreal. It was going to be advanced bot play, a single player focused around this. We had no idea that the game/project would evolve into the Tournament splinter of the franchise. Polge (Steve Polge of Epic) wanted to attempt this crazy thing called 'Assault'. So we started cranking on it and found that what we had was quite enjoyable.

Besides the idea of Assault there were other ideas that were thrown around, better weapons, new maps and a new Mode called Domination. What a lot of people didn't know is that some of these things they originally wanted to put in Unreal. Here is another response from Cliff.

What ideas that didn't make it from Unreal (beside the TL) make it into UT?

A solid, working CTF. Many, many more maps built specifically for multiplayer goodness. More superweapons - i.e. the Redeemer.

Now the interesting thing about this is the fact that I wonder how much things would be different if the Translocator had made it into the first game. While the TL was a pretty unique idea for games at the time, it was often ridiculed by Quake players who were used to the idea of the Grappling Hook being the preferred mode of transportation. It was even poked fun at by the guys over at Penny Arcade with the following strip.



So while some of the games ideas were being made fun of the UT Team kept plugging away. Even those people who liked Unreal wondered if they could fix the Netcode issues that plagued the original. What most gamers didn't know is that they were not only working on the Netcode but tweaking the rest of the Graphics Engine itself. Once again Cliffy B.

What advances in the engine made certain things possible?

The engine wasn't advanced much from Unreal to UT. We simply had a better understanding of not only the engine but also the game play we were building on top of. Instead of struggling with working technology on a day to day basis we were able to rely on a stable development platform in which we could foster a great iteractive design pipeline.

One thing that I always wondered about was what was it like trying to work on the same game using two different companies. The original game started off with James Schmalz when he was still working at Epic [edit: Meridith from DE had the following information I didn't know of. James was never an Epic employee. James worked solo and started the Unreal idea here in Canada and Epic was his shareware publisher at the time. Epic wanted to work with James on his next game and that's how the collaboration on Unreal started.]and continued on after he had started Digital Extremes. I always wondered where Unreal ended and UT began as far as the companies where concerned.

Was this the first 'true' project with the separate companies (DE and Epic)?

We were always collaborating on this series since Unreal 1 and continuing through UT2004.

After the game was released one of the first things people noticed was that the team took one of the best assests, realistic skyboxes, and made them better. Combine this with the fact that the Unreal Engine had the best colors and most realistic textures of any game at the time and you just knew the maps would look great. We had a chance to fire off a couple of questions off to Digital Extreme's Lead Mapper, Pancho Eekels.

Where did you come up with the ideas for some of your levels?

Ideas for levels come from everywhere I go. The best thing for me is to go out into he 'real world' *gasp* and pay attention to everything around me. Because of the chaotic nature of nature, there is a wealth of inspiration out there that can fuel whatever art form you happen to practice. I slowly learned that I have a weak spot for large desolate areas, with only one little micro world as the focus. Lava Giant for instance is the only island in a sea of lava. Or Hall of Giants, it is being a huge artifact below many tons of rock.

The earlier levels in Unreal started to show this as well. For example the Sunspire map was, at that time, the largest level ever made. It went well outside the boundaries of UnrealEd's (the game's map editor) building area. Come to think of it, it had a phallic quality to it. Also, the game Riven was a HUGE inspiration for me. It managed to create an atmosphere I have never seen duplicated in a game after it. For that alone I am incredibly grateful to the Cyan team that worked on it and I strive to get to that level of world making.

Well one thing was for sure about Pancho's mapping is that it inspired many people to create many different types of maps.

From vast alien worlds:


To those that were inspired by cartoon animation:


With all of these wonderful places being possible to make now it made me wonder just how much could the engine do? Once again Pancho Eekels.

What limitations did you have when designing them for UT1?

Frame rate. I was always too afraid of making it run too slow. Back then I did not know that you could do a lot with even the simplest of shapes and lighting. I also had a hard time with making the landscape more natural looking. Inexperience was my limitation when it came to mapping.

But luckily it turned out to be good thanks to Tim Sweeney. He thought that my first attempt of the first outdoor level sucked and rightfully it did. So I had to start over again and i then made Nyleve Falls. Nyleve Falls in Unreal sparked so many discussions. It made a point that, yes even an fps shooter can have romantic overtones in where for just a moment you can be lost in a virtual world and stare at it in wonder. Then you can go blow everything up and kill the little Nalangaroos hopping around. Yes!

Once the maps and engine tweaking fell into place they started to see that they were creating something special. The demo proved to be a perfect tease as we all started out with that spammy map Coret and still wanted to taste more. After a couple of weeks of last minute fine tuning that game was released and the community took off like a rocket. Which brings me to the last question I had from back then.

What didn't make it into the game?

I had always joked about our own version of Capture the Cow. In hindsight I'm glad we didn't do it and allowed the community to come up with it. Undermining the seriousness of your franchise is not always a good thing. It's okay to have the occasional goofy "Pancake" and what not, but entire game modes designed around beef herding are probably not a good example of effort to outcome management.

Well I for one am glad that they didn't put that in and spent most of their time making what to this day is still one of the best online First Person Shooters of all time.

Once again many thanks for taking the time to stop by the site and reading our work,

Tycho
January 2, 2005