Unreal Tournament 2004, also known as UT2K4 and UT2004, is a futuristic first-person shooter computer game

Unreal Tournament 2004, also known as UT2K4 and UT2004, is a futuristic first-person shooter computer game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. It is part of the Unreal series of games and is the sequel to 2002's Unreal Tournament 2003 and the original Unreal Tournament.

Among significant changes to gameplay mechanics and visual presentation, one of the major additions introduced by Unreal Tournament 2004 is the inclusion of vehicles and the Onslaught game type, allowing for large-scale battles.

The game features all or most of the content of its predecessor, replacing it on the shop shelves. Unreal Tournament 2004 boxes sold in the United States include a $10 mail-in rebate requiring that a short form be completed and sent to the publisher along with a copy of the manual cover for Unreal Tournament 2003. Versions sold in the United Kingdom had a similar offer, but required sending in the play CD for Unreal Tournament 2003 instead.

Its successor, Unreal Tournament 3, was released on 19 November 2007.

Development

UT2004 was built upon the "Ion Storm" engine and content of its predecessor, UT2003, addressing most its shortcomings, and overall features more than twice the combined content of the previous game.

Unreal Tournament 2004 was developed by multiple studios, with Epic games leading the project. Lead programmer Steve Polge described the role of each company involved:

Epic Games: Enhancements to the Unreal Tournament 2003 game types, the new UI, Voice over IP and bot voice command support, engine enhancements and optimizations. They also made an improved single player game, and improved community and demo recording support, in addition to thirty-one new playable characters. A Sniper Rifle similar to the one included in the original Unreal Tournament was added. They created one Onslaught map, and developed AI support for Onslaught. 16 new DM maps, 5 new CTF Maps, 2 new Double Domination maps and 1 new Bombing Run map were added. The Assault gametype design and implementation were also reintroduced from the original Unreal Tournament.

Psyonix: The Onslaught gametype design and implementation, with 6 new vehicles, 4 new weapons (Grenade Launcher, Spider Mine Layer, Anti-Vehicular Rocket Launcher (AVRiL), and the Phoenix target painter), and the Energy Turret. They also created seven Onslaught maps, and collaborated with Streamline Studios on the popular map ONS-Torlan. Finally, they made the new model for the Translocator.

Digital Extremes: 3 new DM maps, 6 new CTF maps, 2 new Bombing Run maps, and 3 new Double Domination maps, 2 new playable characters, the new HUD design; new weapon models for the Assault Rifle, Shock Rifle, and Link Gun.

Streamline Studios: The single player introduction movie and ONS-Torlan in collaboration with Psyonix. Later made an Assault map called AS-Confexia, downloadable from the Internet.

Unreal Tournament 2004 would be the first closed source game to support the new x86-64-bit extension, utilizing Linux, as Windows for x86-64 had not been released at the time.

If you liked this article, subscribe to the feed by clickingthe image below to keep informed about new contents of the blog:

Teeworlds 0.5.2 released!

Teeworlds is a fast-paced sidescrolling multiplayer-only computer game. The game features cartoon-themed graphics and physics, and relies heavily on classic shooter weaponry and gameplay.

 

The controls are heavily inspired by the First-person shooter genre of computer games. The latest release is 0.5.1. With version 0.4.0 the game changed name from Teewars to Teeworlds, the developers citing unspecific legal reasons.

 

Teeworlds is still under development, but it is playable and can be downloaded free of charge at the Teeworlds home page. Versions for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X are currently available. In December 2007, the source code was made available to the public under the terms of an open source license. To fund their hardware the developers do accept donations from their players, but these aren't required to play the game.

 

Purely a maintenance release, Teeworlds 0.5.2 addresses a server crash bug, clears up some GUI issues and many small improvements. The main Teeworlds branch is still being refactored by matricks, which is an ongoing process. Tom Adams contributed to this release.

 

Teeworlds presents as a crossover from the classic sprite-based shoot-em-up games of the arcade era and modern-day first-person shooters. It is played on typical two-dimensional, side-scrolling platform-style maps, but utilizes FPS-style keyboard controls for moving, switching weapons and chatting. A mouse reticle is used for aiming. The game also sports a grappling hook and double-jump mechanics for maneuvering.

 

The weapons are inspired by FPS games such as the Quake and Unreal Tournament series. The player starts out with a wooden mallet for close combat and pistol. The first does a lot of damage, but requires the enemy to be in close range. The second one does the bare minimal damage, but has a very long range and will recharge its own ammo over time. Spread through the map the player can find additional weapons in the form of a shotgun and a grenade launcher. The shotgun shoots multiple bullets which do little damage individually, but together they can be lethal. The grenade launcher has the potential to do a lot of damage because its blast causes splash damage. Its drawback is among other that it fires in an distinctive arc, making aiming an art on its own.

 

The spawnlocations of these weapons are both needed to acquire a weapon and to refill them once depleted. On some maps there's also a katana sword available with a extended respawn time. This weapon kills other players in one hit but is in essence a melee weapon which throws the player forward quite making it very short ranged. The grappling hook and double jump provide extended mobility, allowing advanced players to dodge incoming fire and quickly maneuver around the map. With the release of version 0.4.0, the development team added a new weapon, the laser rifle.

 

Release notes
General
* Fixed server flood crash (Magnus Auvinen)
* A bunch of smaller fixes (Tom Adams)
* Fixed a couple of compiler warnings (Magnus Auvinen)

 

Download

Linux x86
Linux x86_64
Source (tar.gz)

 

F.A.Q

Documentation

Forum

Screenshots

If you liked this article, subscribe to the feed by clickingthe image below to keep informed about new contents of the blog:

Tecnoballz, nice brick breaker game from TLK Software PocketPC port

A exciting Brick Breaker with 50 levels of game and 11 special levels, distributed on the 2 modes of game to give the player a sophisticated system of attack weapons with an enormous power of fire that can be build by gaining bonuses. Numerous decors, musics and sounds complete this great game. This game was ported from the Commodore Amiga.

You need:

    * i386, PowerPC, or SPARC platform
    * 32MB RAM and 80MB swap
    * Linux 2.x
    * XFree86 3.3.x or better
    * SDL 1.2
    * SDL_mixer
    * Mikmod
    * the GCC C++ compiler
    * GNU make

2007-11-19 TecnoballZ 0.92

    * Autoconf and automake was improved
    * The code was compiled with GCC 4.1.2
    * The code was considerably cleaned up and rewritten
    * The source code files and C++ classes were renamed
    * The names and variables names and comments are now in English
    * The simple copies use now SDL_BlitSurface
    * French language support was added
    * Resources files were renamed
    * The graphic files were converted from BMP to PNG
    * New graphics was realized for the mode 640x480
    * The license was changed to the GPLv3
    * Joystick and keyboard support was added
    * GP2X and PSP support
    * Various bugs were fixed

Screnshots

 

If you liked this article, subscribe to the feed by clickingthe image below to keep informed about new contents of the blog:

Urban Terror free multiplayer first person shooter does not require Quake III Arena anymore

Urban Terror™ is a free multiplayer first person shooter developed by FrozenSand, that (thanks to the ioquake3-code) does not require Quake III Arena anymore. It is available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh. The current version is 4.1.

Urban Terror can be described as a Hollywood tactical shooter; somewhat realism based, but the motto is "fun over realism". This results in a very unique, enjoyable and addictive game.

Gameplay

Urban Terror is billed by FrozenSand as a "Hollywood tactical shooter." It blends elements from games such as Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike, and Warsow. The realism in the mod is introduced through a number of changes:

The weapons available are from real life.
The weapons have recoil.
The weapons are less accurate when fired while moving (called movement penalty).
The weapons require reloading after a magazine has been expended. Reloading before a magazine is expended will result in the loss of the remaining rounds in the magazine.
Falling from a sufficient height causes damage, and possibly death.
Wounds cause bleeding, which must be bandaged to prevent the player from bleeding out.
Sprinting and jumping drain stamina

The number of weapons and other gear that can be carried is limited. Damage is also more realistic than in Quake III Arena, based on dividing the player target into discrete areas. Depending on the map being played, external environments are realistic too and can include weather effects such as rain or snow. Weather effects can also be controlled by game variables a server admin can set.

Urban Terror allows players to perform superhuman feats. Damage is a key example; while damage taken depends on the part of the body which is hit, one can keep going after receiving numerous hits. Further breaking from reality, Urban Terror also retains the movement speeds from Quake III Arena (circle jumping) which allows players to move through the environment incredibly quickly and includes moves such as wall jumping and power sliding. Wall jumping allows players to literally jump off of walls and helps the player to gain more height, distance and speed. Power sliding lets the player move rapidly in a crouched position, maintaining speed.

 

These abilities have spawned a sub-community of players who focus on specially designed "jump maps" of which the goal is to reach the end of a series of difficult courses.
Numerous game modes are featured, including classic FPS modes such as Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag. Also included are Team Survivor, Free-for-All (deathmatch), Bomb & Defuse, Capture & Hold, and Follow the Leader. Beta 4.2 will bring two additional game types: Last Man Standing, and Jump Map Training (a special mode for the aforementioned jump maps)

Damage and stamina
Damage registration in Urban Terror is done by dividing the player target into four discrete areas: head, torso, arms, and legs. The effects on the torso and head can be reduced by game items such as the kevlar vest and the kevlar helmet, respectively.

 

In addition to the damage system, wounds require bandaging, and wounds sustained in the legs slow the player down considerably until they are bandaged. When a wound is not bandaged, the player will eventually slowly die from bleeding to death. Players can also bandage each other to restore other players health partially. The bandaging proceed much faster if the player that is bandaging is equipped with a medkit item, and which also allows the healing of others back to almost full health.

A stamina system is also present, and is depleted by jumping, sprinting, and crouching. The amount of stamina is related to the amount of health a player has. Equipping or picking up a kevlar vest increased stamina drain considerably. Stamina is recharged fastest when a player is motionless and crouched, but will recharge slowly even during normal movement.

Download

Screenshots

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maps

Abbey

Abbey CTF

Algiers

Ambush

Austria

Casa

Crossing

Dressingroom

Elgin

Firing Range

Mandolin

Prague

Proving Grounds

Ramelle

Riyadh

Sanctuary

Snoppis

Thingley

Tombs

Toxic

Turnpike

Uptown

If you liked this article, subscribe to the feed by clickingthe image below to keep informed about new contents of the blog:

Aleph One is an Open Source 3D first-person shooter game, based on the game Marathon 2

Aleph One is an Open Source 3D first-person shooter game, based on the game Marathon 2 by Bungie Software. It supports, but doesn't require, OpenGL for rendering. Aleph One was originally a Mac-only game, but there is now a cross-platform version based on the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) library, that should in theory run on all systems supported by SDL (Linux, BeOS, Windows, Mac OS, Solaris, IRIX, *BSD, and others). Except for a few minor things, the port is complete and playable.

Multiplayer
One of the most important aspects of Marathon to many players across time has been the multiplayer game. Aleph One has expanded the technologies of this mode in many ways. A 2003 build of Aleph One allowed players to host multiplayer games of Marathon Infinity over an IP address as opposed to just a LAN network. While it was technically already the case, in 2004 a server browser was added to Aleph One and allowed players to play Marathon over the Internet for the first time.

Despite this achievement, many players have claimed that hosting and joining a network game played online is a difficult process. Since this aspect of Aleph One is still in its infancy, firewalls have prevented players from being able to host, or in rare cases, join games. Overcoming this involves opening a port for data to come through and doing so has been a difficult procedure. The most recent build of Aleph One eased this problem with built-in software bypassing the firewalls, but many users still report difficulties. It is possible that the software is incomplete. Another major difficulty many users claim to have with online play is that different router speeds of participants in a game have caused latency in data transfer, as well as poor synchronization in some cases. In December 2006 a version was released with specific fixes to latency issues.

Aleph One has added three new multiplayer gametypes to Marathon[1]. These three gametypes are not played as much as the gametypes Bungie designed due to the relatively small number of compatible maps and tools with which to create them as well as the often lack of a sufficient number of players.

They are:
Defense: The "Slate" team defends a Hill from the other teams, who must stay on the Hill for half of the duration of the game to win.

Capture the Flag: Players steal flags (which are actually skulls) of other teams and take them to their own bases to score points.

Rugby: In this game, players must take the red skull to another team's base to score points.

Download

Aleph One/SDL program

• AlephOne-20051119.tar.gz Source tarball (1367k)
• AlephOne-20051119-1.src.rpm Source RPM (1375k)
• AlephOne-20051119-1.i386.rpm Binary for Linux/i386 (Fedora Core 3) (853k)
• AlephOne-20051119-1.x86_64.rpm Binary for Linux/x86_64 (Fedora Core 4) (1103k)
• Getting Aleph One via SVN:

  $ svn co https://marathon.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/marathon/trunk aleph

  
  A Web interface to the SVN repository is also available.

Aleph One data files

These are freely distributable but not Open Source. See here for details.

Marathon scenario files

The original Marathon 1 data files are not compatible with Aleph One, but Raul Bonilla and the M1A1 team have made an excellent conversion calledM1A1:

• AlephOne-M1A1-1.0.tar.gz Marathon files (tarball) (38M)



• AlephOne-M1A1-1.0-1.noarch.rpm Marathon files (RPM) (38M)

Marathon 2 scenario files

• AlephOne-Marathon2-1.0.tar.gz Marathon 2 files (tarball) (29M)



• AlephOne-Marathon2-1.0-1.noarch.rpm Marathon 2 files (RPM) (29M)

Marathon Infinity scenario files

• AlephOne-Infinity-1.0.tar.gz Marathon Infinity files (tarball) (39M)



• AlephOne-Infinity-1.0-1.noarch.rpm Marathon Infinity files (RPM) (39M)

Extras

• Additional GUI themes for Aleph One/SDL

Required libraries

• Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) (you need SDL, SDL_image, and SDL_net)



• Lua scripting language (precompiled packages are here)



• Speex audio compression library (precompiled packages are on freshrpms.net)

 

Installing And Playing Aleph One/SDL

The installation of Aleph One/SDL consists of two steps:

1. Installing the Aleph One/SDL program



2. Installing Marathon data files

1. Installing the program

From a binary package

• Unix: If you are running Linux/i386 with XFree86 4.0 and OpenGL you can download and install the binary RPM (you will also need to install at least one of the AlephOne-M1A1, AlephOne-Marathon2 or AlephOne-Infinity RPMs). Otherwise, you have to compile Aleph One/SDL from the source (see the next section). In both cases, you have to have SDL >= 1.2.0 installed.
  
  
  Note: If you are getting a message like
  
  

  error: Failed dependencies:
          libGL.so.1(LIBGL) is needed by AlephOne-20040417-1

  
  while installing the RPM, try installing again with the --nodeps option. If this is the only failed dependency and you have OpenGL installed, the program should work.

Compiling from source

1. You will need to have the SDL library installed. Aleph One requires at least SDL 1.2.0. Note that if you didn't install SDL from source, you will also have to install the SDL-devel package.



2. Download the Aleph One/SDL source tarball, or get the source via SVN.



3. Under Unix, install Aleph One as follows:
   
   

   $ ./configure
   $ make
   [become root]
   # make install

   
   Under BeOS, do this instead:
   
   

   $ make -f Makefile.BeOS install

   
   This will compile the source and create a directory AlephOne in your home directory that contains the AlephOne application and some data files.

2. Installing the data files

To play Aleph One, you will also need Marathon scenario (graphics, sound and map) data files. For your convenience, I've created archives containing the data files from the now freely available Marathon (M1A1), Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity scenarios, converted to the formats needed by the SDL version of Aleph One.

• Unix: Either download and install at least one of the AlephOne-M1A1, AlephOne-Marathon2 or AlephOne-Infinity RPM packages, or download one of the AlephOne-M1A1-1.0.tar.gz, AlephOne-Marathon2-1.0.tar.gz or AlephOne-Infinity-1.0.tar.gz tarballs and unexpand it to /usr/local/share/AlephOne/.



• BeOS: Download one of the AlephOne-M1A1-1.0.tar.gz, AlephOne-Marathon2-1.0.tar.gz or AlephOne-Infinity-1.0.tar.gztarballs and unexpand it to the same directory as the AlephOne application.

The packages contain the files Images, Map, Map.resources, Music, Shapes, Sounds, some scripts, and the respective instruction manual in PDF format (from the original Mac version).

Playing Aleph One

First, be sure to read the README file that comes with Aleph One/SDL.

• Unix: If you have installed the Marathon, Marathon 2, or Marathon Infinity scenario, type
  
  

  $ alephone-m1a1

  
  for M1A1, or
  
  

  $ alephone-marathon2

  
  for Marathon 2, or
  
  

  $ alephone-infinity

  
  for Marathon Infinity, to start the game. If you don't have hardware-accelerated OpenGL, you will get better performance by specifying the -goption. If this causes corrupted graphics (red screen), you should also specify the -m option.



• BeOS: Double-click the AlephOne application.

Screenshots

 

 

Quake II was extremely well-received, by reviewers and gamers alike

Quake II released on December 9, 1997, is a first-person shooter computer game developed by id Software and distributed by Activision. It is not a sequel to Quake; it merely uses the name of the former game due to id's difficulties in acquiring a trademark for alternative titles.

The soundtrack for Quake II was mainly provided by Sonic Mayhem, with some additional tracks by Bill Brown.
The next game released by id with the title Quake, Quake III Arena, is also not considered to be related to Quake and Quake II as it is multiplayer focused, and has a dissimilar storyline.

A direct sequel, titled Quake 4, was released in October 2005 for the PC (Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux), and later for the Xbox 360 and the Apple Macintosh. A prequel to Quake II, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, has been produced by Splash Damage.

Quake II takes place in a science fiction environment. In the single-player game, the player assumes the role of a Marine named Bitterman taking part in "Operation Alien Overlord", a desperate attempt to protect Earth from alien invasion by launching a counter-attack on the home planet of the hostile cybernetic Strogg civilization. Most of the other soldiers are captured or killed almost as soon as they enter the planet's atmosphere, so it falls upon the player to penetrate the Strogg capital city alone and ultimately to assassinate the Strogg leader, the Makron.

The game is played in general first-person shooter paradigms, in which the player shoots enemies from the perspective of the main character. The gameplay is very similar to that featured in Quake, in terms of movement and controls, although the player has been slowed down, and now has the ability to crouch. The game retained four of the original Quake's weapons (shotgun, super-shotgun, grenade-launcher and rocket launcher), although they were all completely redesigned and made to function in slightly different ways. The remainder of Quake's eight weapons (axe, nail-gun, super-nailgun and Thunderbolt) are gone. Newly introduced weapons are the blaster, machinegun, chaingun, hyperblaster, railgun and BFG10K. Some power-ups from Quake are still present, including quad damage.

Anche grazie al supporto di software esterni come Gamespy e All Seeing Eye, che aiutano ed organizzano la ricerca di server di gioco su Internet, il gioco online è entrato nelle abitudini di molti videogiocatori.

Alcune mappe multiplayer di Quake 2 sono diventate talmente "dei classici" da essere state ricreate per Quake 3 da alcuni mapper appassionati. Nella versione per il Nintendo 64, il multiplayer non è online, ma si gioca al massimo in quattro sulla stessa console. Lo scopo principale è di uccidere più volte possibile gli altri giocatori.

Screenshots

OpenArena is available from the default repositories of a number of Linux distributions, including Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, and Ubuntu.

Open Arena is a free and open source first-person shooter (FPS) computer game based heavily on the Quake III Arena style deathmatch. The OpenArena project was established on August 19, 2005, the day after the id Tech 3 GPL source code release. It is still in early development.

OpenArena's primary goal is to make a completely free, open source FPS game derived from Quake III. Its game engine is ioquake3, based upon id Software's GPL id Tech 3. In addition, a "missionpack" add-on is planned, to take advantage of the GPL'd Quake III: Team Arena source code.

The newest version of OpenArena 0.8.1 was released on October 31, 2008. The version 0.8.0 was removed because of the non-free content from the previous version.

OpenArena is available from the default repositories of a number of Linux distributions, including Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, and Ubuntu.

OpenArena's gameplay is the exact same as Quake III Arena - score frags to win the game using a balanced set of weapons each designed for different situations. Guns include a chaingun, rocket launcher, shotgun, and railgun. The Quake III style of play is very fast and requires skill to be played successfully online.

Gameplay modes exist such as Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Tournament, and Capture The Flag (all modes also in the original Quake III). OpenArena version 0.7.6 adds the new Elimination, CTF Elimination, Last Man Standing and Double Domination gametypes.

OpenArena has undergone compatibility testing with some Quake 3 mods and maps. Because "OpenArena" is not finished, many mods and maps from the original game are not compatible. A list of tested mods can be found at http://openarena.wikia.com/wiki/ModCompat

More recently OpenArena has advertised itself as a "sexy" first person shooter and warns that some models are near nude (only covered with tight clothing or hair), in addition to the game's violent theme, it is "not appropriate for children".

Screenshots

3

If you liked this article, subscribe to the feed by clicking the image below to keep informed about new contents of the blog: