3DBuzz Tour Hits San Francisco

Site Admin Joined: 17 May 2003 Posts: 0

Just got back from the 3D Buzz Tour here in San Francisco, where I was able to play a little UT2004 and talk with other developers and gamers! 2k4 is definitely starting to take shape, so let's take a look at what I saw before I forget it all.

Maps
ONS-Layn: This one was the smaller of the two Onslaught maps I played, two high-tech bases on opposite ends of a hilly field with a touch of fantasy, like big mushroom plants littered around. The Power Nodes were pretty much a straight shot from one base to the other, with two nodes off to either side connected to the central one.

ONS-Torlan: This one was larger, and had more areas of steep ravines. The bases were set up in opposite corners and had a dam-theme, although the water was outside the edges of the map. The nodes followed a Z shape across the map to the other base, and had two routes to get from one base to the other.

BR-Serenity: This map is in a forest setting and uses a few of the Antalus meshes.

CTF-1on1-Joust: My prediction is that this map is the DM-Pyramid or DM-Serpentine of 2k4. It boggles my mind how this map made it in.

CTF-Colossus: If MTV made a CTF map, this would be it. A lot of flashy effects in this one, and a lot of wide open spaces.

CTF-MoonDragon: Definitely the most impressive of the CTF maps I saw, this one takes on an Oriental theme with a mountainous landscape separating two bases.

DM-1on1-Albatross: An enclosed outdoor map (like Antalus but smaller) with a port-town kind of feel and some good Z-axis gameplay.

DM-Rrajigar: An abandoned mine reminiscent of the Skaarj mines in the original Unreal, expect to explore this one for a bit before you know your way around.

Vehicles
There was only one aircraft in the game, which was able to fly above the map and get from one side to the other pretty quickly in ONS. It moved at an average speed though, and seemed more vulnerable to the AVRiL rockets. There is also the hovercraft, which was the fastest of the vehicles, and my personal favorite of the ones I used. It was pretty easy to outmaneuver other vehicles and players while attacking a power node.

There were also three ground vehicles. The first one was a jeep-type vehicle which fired flak rounds out of a roof mounted gun. There was also a tank, which was the slowest vehicle but fired very powerful rounds. The last vehicle was the two-person jeep, which seemed pretty useless. I never saw any of the players working together or standing by the jeep to wait for someone else to join, most of the time it sat in the base unused. If there was some way to have the driver fire it when no other player is in it it would have been more useful. This one will require true team effort to be effective.

In addition to the vehicles there were stationary turrets that the player could get into and control to defend their power cores. These were a lot of fun for trying to take down the aircraft attacking your base.

Weapons
AVRiL: Anti-Vehicle Rocket Launcher. Really effective at taking down aircraft and ground vehicles, especially with a lock feature (like the rocket launcher but instant), but has little use as a normal weapon against players and power nodes. Takes quite a while to reload as well, so make those shots count!
Spider Mines: I didn't see a lot of use of this weapon in the game, but it was a lot of fun to set up an ambush around a corner from enemy players.
Sniper Rifle: Pretty much the same as the UT1 sniper rifle, but looks much better of course.

About half of the 2k3 weapons have gotten a visual overhaul, the Shock Rifle, Assault Gun and Link Gun had changed that I remember seeing. I honestly prefer the look of 2k3's assault gun, the new one looks worse to me.

Players
The Gen Mo'Kai and Homo Sapiens Medusae are missing from 2k4 (rumor is Cliffy didn't like them), but a few new classes have been added. There are the Hellions, which look like they're straight out of a Mad Max movie, Xan and his compatriots including a few female robots, Marines including Malcom's brother Jakob and the return of Othello, who uses the same character model as Jakob but with a different skin. There were quite a few female Marines to play as well. One other character of note was Abaddon, an evil looking creature whos name probably holds more significance with mappers, since the AbaddonHardware static mesh package is a good source of the rusted-out static meshes found in levels like Scorched Earth.

Other
A few other things of note were new additions to the menu, including a Community tab where people can find news, activate user mods, play demos, and even have direct access to CliffyB Ownage maps! New mutators include several vehicle specific ones such as Lightweight Vehicles, which makes them bounce further when shot and when driving over hills. Several other new ones of note were UT Classic, which changes all the weapons to UT1 style weapons, Lightning Gun/Sniper Rifle, which can be used to replace all of one type with the other, and Super Berserk, which makes all of the weapons fire insanely fast.

I could see Onslaught being a lot of fun, unfortunately either the computers we were playing on were too slow or the gametype needs a lot of things stripped down some more, because half of the time we were playing at 3FPS. You will definitely need a beefy rig to be able to crank up the detail with this one. It's going to be a lot of fun though, I was worried about the balance between people in vehicles and people on foot, but it's apparent that it has been tweaked a lot and works well. I'm really looking forward to playing it online, hopefully we won't be waiting long!

Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 2:02 am

I remember this time, leading upto the release of the UT2003 demo, the atmosphere was buzzing with electricity. With UT2004, it seems to be a much more relaxed unpressured slip to the demo release. Im hanging out for the game, dont get me wrong, it seems that this time i haven't got my finger pressing the "F5" repeatively staying up all night, hoping to be the "first". I dont know what my point was anymore, DOH!

UO Staff Joined: 19 May 2003 Posts: 190 Location: BoooooM

You gotto be kidding ! Did they take away some of the UT2003 players/characters ? I thought there was ONLY going to be more stuff. This means that I can´t play as Ravage anymore. Both me and my girlfriend thinks that the Medusae are the coolest characters in the game and in UT2004 they are going to be missing Evil or Very Mad

This is some of the worst things I´ve herd in a long time !! I thought that alot of people thought that Mr Crow was one of the coolest characters and he got promoted quite alot before the release of UT2003 and now he´s gone !?
Crying or Very sad

-dp-

Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 7:05 am

Yeah, that's retarded.
If Cliffy, or anyone else, doesn't like those characters then they can just not use them, but they shouldn't be completely removed from the game.
That's gonna piss some people off and isn't a good idea.

Personally I don't like the Medusae(sp?), but do like the GenMokai dudes, however every character should stay in, for the sake of the option.

Guest

I find it EXTREMELY unlikely that anything from UT2003 will be removed: don't forget, UT2004 is meant to be backward-compatible, and that won't work if UT2003 has content that UT2004 doesn't have. If Cliffy really does have a problem with the Medusae then I'd be inclined to agree with him -they're butt ugly and don't have a particularly Unreal feel to them- but I seriously doubt it will mean the models will be removed. Besides, the Gen-Mo'Kai have some of the prettiest skins in the game, even if they are easier to hit than the other models. Razz

What I want to know is whether the UTClassic mod that AngelMapper mentioned is the same as UT2003's UTClassic mod or if it actually changes the weapons' appearances too... (oh, and how close to completion UT2004 looked. Razz

)

Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 8:04 am

I bet, at the very least, the UTClassic mut will be updated with teh sniper rifle Cool

Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 10:12 am

http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=322716

Great review!! I avoided the hellbender, too, when I first played, but then I saw the epic guys team up in that thing and my god it was sweet. total ownage. Shocked

- Tye

Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 10:57 am

a flak shooting vehicle?
tank i do know
and what 2 person jeep?

what are those 2 vehicles, i never heared of them before.

3 pers. hellbender, 1 pers. rocket shooting buggy, tank, what did i forgot?

Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 2:00 pm

Hmm, then I have no idea why they would be left out of the game I played. Seems like they would just leave them in for the demo.

Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 2:45 pm

maybe they took up to much space for the not release version, (demo etc) so they left them out there, couse they wernt new anyway, no need to play with them in the demo or pre versions. like the 3D buzz