#Unreal (1998)

1247 messages · Page 2 of 2 (latest)

sharp walrus
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toho license would likely be the hardest part, depends on if they want returns like the fortnite collab or if they are cool with modest gains from modest projects

fast zodiac
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god i so want the game to be archived for many to play.

true apex
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Could Atari afford the license for Godzilla?

lethal tide
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Console port

polar timber
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Seriously, though, I have yet to see actual, convincing reasons why U1 should not (could not is a different matter) be ported/adapted into consoles that isn't whine based on ignorance or prejudices.

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Especially with how FPS on consoles have been evolving throughout the years.

wooden oriole
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Here here. I think great games should be as available as possible to as many people as possible. Shouldn't have to fork out for a different system to enjoy it with everyone else.

sharp walrus
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I'm on board, especially in the age of gyro aiming

true apex
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Epic games is a big company, they can afford to maintain two franchises.

true apex
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Crossplay would increase the number of lobbies and improve the matchmaking.

true apex
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But not game consoles?

low storm
true apex
true apex
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Why did I get hyper fixated on a game I can’t play?

timid ermine
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like I get you really want this game for your PS5. everybody here would like this game to be available again for both PC and consoles. but sadly it can't change that Epic's leadership thinks so little of their legacy that they don't even want to sell the PC version as-is on digital storefronts

true apex
elfin coral
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Maybe they need their Fortnite money to maintain Fortnite

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A bunch of the earnings of a game go back to developing that same game

true apex
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Also Epic games needs to diversify their demograph.

elfin coral
elfin coral
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If you ask me they should fix Fab before trying to revive games that won't be profitable enough for them

true apex
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Also Epic Games can literally afford to lost because they have Fortnite.

true apex
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Also there are indie boomer shooters and Epic games can tapped into that market through Unreal.

timid ermine
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yes but Epic's leadership just doesn't care

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we can bring up every single reason why these games should be available everywhere possible over and over and over, but it doesn't matter if the people who can actually make something happen tell everyone who approaches them "we're not interested"

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if the high-ups at Epic don't even care about whatever drops of income having the game on PC storefronts gave them, it's clear that it's going to take a shake-up at the company before things change

true apex
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Shake-up, like the changing of the guards?

timid ermine
# true apex Shake-up, like the changing of the guards?

yes the only likely way anything will change at this point is when the people in charge of these decision at Epic leave and are (hopefully) replaced by people willing to either start an in-house effort or work with another company like Nightdive to rerelease and/or remaster the Unreal games

terse estuary
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I just see it as shareholders so there's straight up zero hope for anything good. If only the unreal engine wasn't a thing you could still barely wish they would sell the game IP but that's an utopia that would never happen since they are both in a stockholm syndrome loop.

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Ubisoft failed hard at least and basically tencent has the AC ip now but epic will never go bankrupt so you can't even wait for that

elfin coral
# true apex What’s Fab?

Fab is the new marketplace for Unreal Engine (well, and Unity). They messed it up for real (I'm a game dev, that's why I know about this). They just took what they had and threw it away to make a product that has no real support

true apex
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The KEX engine would push the Unreal Engine 1 to the limit.

sharp walrus
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Community members have re-emphasized in a different chat room how important supporting the existing mod scene is for any potential Unreal remaster. Wanted to bring that up in this page in the event that staff checks these pages to calibrate expectations on scope of projects.

low storm
silk apex
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Hope that Epic Games can someday remove the Fortnite stick that's up their ass to make this become a thing

terse estuary
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In a utopian world, there is a law where if you don't do anything with an IP for 10 years, it can be reassigned to someone else who either does justice to it or the company will have to pay a huge fine (not just 0,05% of annual income growth) if they tarnish the game reputation.

silk apex
flat pier
# terse estuary In a utopian world, there is a law where if you don't do anything with an IP for...

actually it used to be something like that, initially with copyright. You had to register a work, then you got the copyright for 10 years, after which you could extend it once, and if not (or if the extension expired too) it became public domain... something that was fought tooth and nail by the big media companies, in order to arrive at the current state of copyright law, where nobody can do anything for more than a lifetime after an authors death 😕

proven robin
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Copyright expiry would probably lead to a ton of Skyrim situations though.

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Like 'oh yeah, it's been nine years, let's re-re-re-re-release this game and call it a day.'

silk apex
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Yeah but I'd rather have too many ways to play a game than none at all, so

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But then that might bring an issue where like that's all they ever do with a franchise is re-release one thing over and over, so idk

terse estuary
silk apex
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Disney was able to delay Mickey Mouse going public domain by like 70 years just by lobbying for copyright extensions

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Like Mickey Mouse was supposed to go public domain in like the 1950s originally before all the extensions I believe

terse estuary
silk apex
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Only way that these companies will change is if something starts affecting their bottom line or new legislation gets passed that forces them to stop being so shitty, and unfortunately Stop Killing Games hasn't really impacted either of those yet

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But I don't doubt that it is something they are probably concerned about

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This all just reminded me of how much I hate Pirate Dickhead actually lmao

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That dude is such a tool, I've always hated him so bad

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Egocentric nepobaby

proven robin
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SKG's effects could be anything from a fart in the wind to basically bringing the hammer down on the practice of killing games.

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The EU bending their heads over it could get them an even rawer deal too, and all that over a Ubisoft open world racer they could've patched to remove the server check ins.

silk apex
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Pirate Software's stance on it is so braindead

proven robin
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Even if it did what he feared, it's not like we lost anything worth keeping then.

silk apex
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He acts like if the government tries to enforce laws that stop this practice of just like pump and dump live service games that indie developers would just like suffer eternally because they'd have to keep their games online indefinitely for the rest of time

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When that wasn't ever what SKG was asking of game devs

proven robin
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Personally, I think SKG is kind of letting them off easy.

silk apex
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The goal, from what I understand, is just like implementing ways of playing the game offline so when the servers are inevitably shut down they can still be played

proven robin
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Well that's a possible solution, or allowing the community to fix/run their own.

silk apex
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Yeah that too

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Not just to turn live service games into this eternal like ball and chain that you have to bear the costs of until the end of time

silk apex
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Ridiculous

proven robin
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Yeah, that's the whole thing.

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He doesn't even work there anymore from what I know, so why's he dickriding this faceless company that's running the most successful MMO in the world?

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Like these guys are the last ones to need your advocacy dude.

silk apex
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Because he's just clinging onto it with every ounce of his being

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How many times on stream has he brought up the fact that he and his dad used to work there

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Like countless times

proven robin
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Honestly that is actually sad tho.

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Like this is the peaked in high school of game dev.

silk apex
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It's his one true like experience that fuels his imaginary reality of being this like ultra elite level game dev

silk apex
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Especially since he was only a game tester there

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And the only reason he even got that position was because his dad worked there for like 20 years

silk apex
proven robin
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Oh yeah, he definitely is.

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I'm just holding my fingers crossed that it achieves something.

twin bolt
# flat pier actually it used to be something like that, initially with copyright. You had to...

In the past yes. There was a famous example of a film where they just forgot to copyright it and it entered the public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charade_(1963_film)

Charade (1963 film)

Charade is a 1963 American romantic screwball comedy mystery film produced and directed by Stanley Donen, written by Peter Stone and Marc Behm, and starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. The cast also features Walter Matthau, James Coburn, George Kennedy, Dominique Minot, Ned Glass and Jacques Marin. It spans three genres: suspense thriller, ro...

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in 1976 Congress passed The Copyright Act of 1976 which made copyright automatically granted

flat pier
# silk apex He acts like if the government tries to enforce laws that stop this practice of ...

That's not something very expensive either. With the modern cloud solutions, you can have a game server not exist until somebody wants to play, then it starts in seconds, and shuts down after the players are gone again, dropping the cost down to the level of the morning coffee for older games that service just a handful of players. Turn based games don't even need a live server, they could use a database or a file storage to just exchange the turn data (e.g. Age of Wonders does it like that since 3). It's all a matter of proper engineering, I do DevOps for a living and I weep at every big game premiere with dead servers, cause that's so easy to fix, yet only Forza Horizon managed to utilize modern solutions for that (it uses kubernetes in Azure cloud).

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Community Doom and Quake servers are up for 30 years, and you don't see people going bankrupt over that.

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And for developers without cloud engineers, PlayFab enables all the good tech, with pay as you go pricing, and is something that ND uses in their games, to my heart's joy

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Like always, it's just a case of proper project planning from the start. Same with going multiplatform.

silk apex
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Yeah so he's even more full of shit than I first thought, good to know

terse estuary
# silk apex Pirate Software's stance on it is so braindead

The thing is that he's doing it maliciously and on purpose since he is 100% aware his stance stands on nothing. It's a pretext so he can keep defending the live-game corpo greedy malpractices.
I recall a comment on yt which sounded like this and it hits the mark very well:
"He's not a game developer but a social exploiter"

silk apex
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It's the reason he explains everything with his kindergarten fucking MS Paint drawings, make people think that what he's saying is somehow more thought out or correct even if it's absolute horseshit

silk apex
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Such a fuckface

timid ermine
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yeah he sucks and all but the bit's old, he's no longer a factor now that the lobbyists are starting to chirp about SKG

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dude served his role in unintentionally giving the movement a villain to rally against but I'd rather not see him continue to be a distraction, there's bigger threats to pay attention to

silk apex
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And yeah the lobbyists are what might ultimately end up killing this movement and are the real threat here, not some dork who goes by Thor even though his real first name is Jason and Thor is just his wack middle name

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Tbh it's kind of scary that they're getting involved now

silk apex
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I don't really have faith that the dumbass American government will side with SKG or whatever ends up happening there, but I do have hopes that the EU will, which will inevitably lead to industry-wide change regardless of what America has to say

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Though correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't this sort of like brought to the EU already?

sharp walrus
silk apex
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And they like passed or declined or whatever?

silk apex
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Sorry

sharp walrus
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i believe that. just gotta be careful because things can snowball quickly

silk apex
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That's true

silk apex
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So we'll see where that goes I guess

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They made the right call with the Apple stuff so I hope they do in this case as well

terse estuary
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sick trailer, @kindred mural you are a magician 👏

low storm
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Yep, krullor has been working on this for years now 🙂 he's not too far from finishing. I think he's at nalicastle right now then will go onto reduxing the mothership

kindred mural
true apex
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All it’s missing now is a publisher, for console ports.

low storm
rain idol
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https://www.moddb.com/mods/dark-earth
Finally, some custom mod for Unreal

ModDB
Dark Earth mod for Unreal

A large mappack loosely inspired by the pre-reboot (1995 to early 1997) concepts of Unreal. It provides a mix of combat, platforming and puzzles. It's based on some recovered content (we didn't have much of that, esp. maps), reconstructions based on...

low storm
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FWIW there's also The One by Turboman and The Savage Lands by Team Red Nemesis

twin bolt
late quartz
true apex
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What’s stopping the Unreal games from getting official remastered releases for PC and game consoles like Quake?

polar timber
late quartz
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tencent timmy

twin bolt
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we know Unreal is fully owned by Epic

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however Epic's actions with the franchise legit make zero sense

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like all of the games were on Steam, then they were abruptly removed

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then Tim said he would re-release Unreal Tournament 3 with its multiplayer fixed

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then he just didn't

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then he let a fansite host cracked downloads of them and gave them official permission to do so

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which is what

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like why not just keep them on GOG/Steam?

low storm
low storm
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The real crime is that the rest of the franchise isn't re-listed yet

twin bolt
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I've never seen any other developer operate this erratically with their own franchise

strong jackal
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Make it make sense

twin bolt
timid ermine
# strong jackal Make it make sense

okay tinfoil hat time: Epic wanted to make the Unreal games into EGS exclusives and pulling the games down from other storefronts was part of that, but then found out EGS exclusivity for them wasn't viable for some reason

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but their highups were still like "lol they're old games and nobody cares about old games" so the whole series was abandoned without anywhere to buy them

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the deal with letting the fans distribute archive.org links to Unreal/UT99 was a way for them to quietly wash their hands of having anything more to do with the old games while saving a bit of face

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the Secret Level tiein was also a bit of damage control (and maybe also the show specifically wanting to do a UT episode instead of a Fortnite one)

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the UT3 rerelease was quietly shitcanned when Epic realized that would require actual work that didn't involve Fortnite content or engine development

kind ridge
flat pier
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sure, but being "official" has a different ring to it - if anything, it gets more people to contribute when there is no risk of getting a lawsuit and your work thrown in the bin

low storm
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Wondering what the risk of the lawsuit is in this case, when the OU devs: @kind ridge , Smirftsch, Metallica, Marco, etc etc work in on these patches with the help of Epic games?

If there was going to be a lawsuit, I think they would have done that instead of doing the legal legwork in order to get the games relisted for free through OldUnreal (having said that, they're obviously all not relisted yet)

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Epic games even link to us on their website under the Unreal/unreal tournament section

proven robin
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I don't know if they've got anything on paper, I'd hope so, but we've seen fan projects go under for less lately.

low storm
# proven robin The issue is mostly that publishers and developers are only cool with fan projec...

That's maybe a fair point to make, but we have had agreements with them for almost two decades, Smirftsch was given an NDA from epic to update the first unreal's sourcecode back around 2006 and Epic's support has only increased over time. Several years ago we were then able to update UT99 and now 2k4.

I guess the agreements can be withdrawn at any time but so far over the past 19 years that hasn't happened.

Also members of Epic (and ex members) still talk publicly about fan projects with praise like unreal redux.

polar timber
kind ridge
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We never do anything without Epic's explicit permission and we have all of it in writing

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But we don't own the rights to these games and don't have a commercial license

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And technically, they could shut us down whenever they want

twin bolt
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if only they'd release UE1's source code

proven robin
kind ridge
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We've had agreements for 19 years for Unreal, 6 years for UT99, and we just took over UT2004. I'd like to think that they're not going to shut us down unless we give them a very good reason to

low storm
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and it's almost finished, Krullor is at NaliC now

kind ridge
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An official remaster is just one of several possible paths toward long-term preservation of the game, but it does not provide stronger guarantees than distributing your game assets for free and making your source code available (either open-sourced or maintained by a group such as OldUnreal). The IP owner/licensor still decides how long that remaster will remain available for download.

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Projects such as unreal redux also prove that you don't need an official remaster to get graphical updates for the game

proven robin
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It's a lot less vulnerable than fan projects, though.

kind ridge
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The only undeniable advantage of an official re-release or remaster is that you can do it for consoles too

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That is completely impossible for us

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I'd personally like to see them open-source UE1 too. That would be even better for long-term preservation

proven robin
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The issue really boils down to money, companies aren't exactly incentivised to pull products they're turning a profit from unless there are more pressing matters, such as licensing for music/IP/etc.

kind ridge
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well those remasters don't sell forever either

proven robin
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But it doesn't cost them anything to keep them up.

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The only thing they'd have to foot, and in the case of Nightdive I'm sure they do it themselves, is the publishing cost which is like a single payment of a hundred bucks.

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At least on Steam.

kind ridge
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If that was true, then Epic wouldn't have pulled the games from digital store fronts either

proven robin
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There's a 30% cut for a reason is all I'll say.

proven robin
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Steam in particular, but hey, I didn't say anything of the sort.

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Financially it made about fuck all sense for them to pull them from all storefronts and just decide not to make it a first-party title.

kind ridge
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I know they're big fans of GoG

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but they removed the games there too

proven robin
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Yet they're not there either.

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Indeed.

low storm
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Another important thing to point out >

The game was released day 1 with the modding tools and modding/mapping has always been encouraged. There's no way in hell will they nuke fan projects (mods, mission packs, mappacks, maps yadda yadda) unless they cause security concerns like that awful DX11 mod for alot of Ue1 games did. Also the author of that mod has made sure to never be honest about exactly 'why' he got in trouble with Epic (It was because of significant security no-nos in his native mod, that hijack the users clipboard data/replace it with a link to his own patreon among other things)

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Outside of OU's projects, there's also Surreal engine (not to be confused with SURREAL98) which is a clean room re-implementation of Unreal 1 - engine is mostly rebuilt from scratch to use Unreal/UT logic aswel as being able to load content packages

low storm
proven robin
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I'm 99% sure it wasn't a financial decision.

low storm
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I also used to be of the belief that they took down the games because they simply hate the games and community, but i learnt that doesn't seem to be true - otherwise they wouldn't have made the efforts which they have to then later preserve Unreal, UT99 and now 2k4 via oldunreal

proven robin
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My own theory is that they had a remaster project coming up, realised the community was doing a longer and better job at keeping the games preem, and just quietly shafted it while pulling the games from the stores. Because it wouldn't have made sense to let others (GOG, Steam, etc) profit off a markedly worse version than the one that's on the net.

Do note, I have no way of confirming this, but it's the only thing that really makes sense to me.

low storm
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but they've been involved with the community stuff for decades, it's not something they've just realized. Smirf had to go through Epic to get the NDA to update Unreal 1 back in 2006

proven robin
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Could've been related to the projected money and resources it'd take to remaster it from their end. Why put that in when the community does it for free?

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Another possibility is that they saw the state of community projects and just pulled the plug on official distribution altogether. For largely the same reasons.

low storm
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even when the community is doing it, for free or otherwise, that's good too! I'm not really sure modern day epic really understands the source material, especially if you look at all the baloney retcons between the UT games, if they're going to keep applying the same "rule of cool" over "established consistency" then I think an official reboot like that would be really bad

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The skaarj look completely different almost each title. I would hate to see them just go with some new retcon in that department

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so, I'm more than okay with this being in the hands of the community who moreso know how to treat it, given that we're fans of the source material

proven robin
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Oh absolutely, I'm definitely not against community projects per say, I'm just extremely sceptical and shit out of goodwill for corpos at this point.

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Maybe I sound a little too jaded from time to time. XD

low storm
proven robin
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I mean considering that Nintendo literally shuts down charity events that feature their games, they go after Palworld so relentlessly, and the frequency at which we hear about fan projects being taken down for one reason or the other, there ain't a lot of good to go around in the world.

low storm
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For sure, also i think Epic have alot of problems but accepting mods for their games isn't one of them

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Unreal was essentially made by (some) ex-quake modders, so they understand how important modding is

proven robin
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One of the most fascinating things to me is exactly that, people having a passion for something and then translating it into their own projects or IPs.

true apex
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Hypothetically if it ever gets a remastered release, the PC version could be timed exclusive to Epic Games Store.

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Seriously why can’t Epic Games do both?

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What’s the point of Secret Level having an episode based on Unreal Tournament when they’re doing nothing with it.

twin bolt
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Idk Epic's handling of Unreal makes zero sense and I've given up trying to understand it

true apex
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I mean would it hurt if a new Unreal game was free to play?

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Have the old guards really left Epic Games?

twin bolt
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and he's the founder

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so he was there before they even made Unreal. Back when they were "Epic Megagames"

twin bolt
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then they suddenly cancelled this plan

twin bolt
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It'd be one thing if Epic was like "Unreal Tournament is old we don't care about it" and just did absolutely nothing with the IP but they keep doing this flip flopping between that and "Actually we love Unreal tournament"

true apex
twin bolt
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like why take UT3 off Steam, then announce you're making UT3 free to play but then just cancel it later

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like why not just keep it on Steam and generate passive income?

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it just doesn't make sense

true apex
twin bolt
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or that

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Epic's actions make zero logical sense and the only explanation I can see is different employees making random impulsive decisions at the company

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like with Valve for example a lot of their interactions with fan communities don't really make sense. Like they'll refuse to let some fan mods on Steam for inane reasons but then they'll greenlight Hunt Down the Freeman and open source TF2

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from what I've gathered it's because "some other employee took over this case and changed their mind on it"

true apex
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I don’t know if it was Id software or Bethesda that greenlit the remastered releases of the first two Quake games, but at least they’re doing something else with the IP besides Quake Champions.

kind ridge
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I think they just don't have the time for it

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The secret level stuff was all done by a third party

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All of their technical people are probably working on UE and fortnite

twin bolt
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legit Epic's decisions are unlike any other video game developer I've ever seen

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other video game devs you can at least assume their intentions based on the results years later. Like Activision issuing C&Ds over Call of Duty games makes sense since it's the breadbasket

kind ridge
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They fired a bunch of people a while back. UT3X might be one of the victims of that

twin bolt
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maybe but still

true apex
lean monolith
polar timber
granite cedar
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If they ever do a remaster of Unreal Gold, then Unreal Tournament GOTY would also have to be remastered alongside it. An Unreal Tournament remaster would also need to include the extra console (Dreamcast & PS2) content, mainly the exclusive maps. Lastly, a Vault similar to what the System Shock 2 25th Anniversary Edition had would be also be incredible! 👍😎👍

lean monolith
eager cave
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Call me crazy, but I'd also love to see the second Unreal game remastered. If the character could run a bit faster and a few annoying things were fixed... it would be a really nice, cohesive FPS.