Epic desvela dudas sobre el Parche del UT2003

El presidente y fundador de Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, al que tuve la suerte de entrevistar el pasado mes de mayo con motivo de este esperado juego, ha realizado hoy un extenso post en los Foros Oficiales, desvelando muchas dudas respecto a los contenidos del primer parche para UT2003.

Fuente: Foros de Ina Community

A continuación el post en inglés:

Many of the items on your list are in the works for the first patch. Many of the items won't be in the first patch but we'll try to address in the coming month or two. Some are things we're still contemplating, and others are beyond our scope so we're hoping the community will jump in (like some of the mutator suggestions and more extensive tournament-centric ideas).

We'll try to compile and post a list of changes & fixes once it goes into testing. In the meantime, here are thoughts on a few of your points.
>> I cannot seem to put UT 2003 into a WINDOW mode from Full Screen mode. In UT you could hit ESC and in the top right click the little icon to put it in window mode. Would be nice to have this feature so you can keep an eye on the game while in spectator mode but still be able to use your computer. **EDIT** You can window it using ALT+Enter but it would be a nice feature to have an icon or GUI option to allow you to window the game. <<

Alt-Enter is the way to go. We didn't want to make this overly-accessible to newbies, because UT2003 doesn't behave like a standard Windows application when in a window (because it captures the mouse cursor when you click on it) which might confuse the novice types.

>> Online protection against engine changes needs to be re-evaluated. Some things are blocked from being changed while others are allowed. Possible that all should be blocked from online play or none should be. I personally am not one who changes any engine settings (like no shake weapons and lodbios) but I know people who do and they claim that some things you can do while others you cannot. <<

Joe Wilcox is tweaking these things and will continue as we see what people are using as exploits, versus fair customizations/optimizations.

>> Stop all skin hacks and LODBIOS from being used when server is set in tournament mode. This should be a server option for the admin to select but should be a MUST for tournament mode play. <<

Would everyone be comfortable if such an option only allowed the skins that shipped with the game to be used? The engine's skin support is so open and customizable now that it's difficult to unambiguously distinguish acceptable vs hacked skins, unless the rule is very simple and limiting like this.

>> However, I play on my own servers where we set the “KeepAliveTime=0” <<

Note, KeepAliveTime is an engine feature that should only kick in on Unreal engine games where the network stream might actually idle, which doesn't happen in UT2003 gameplay.

Also, I deny all knowledge of technology appropriated from the aliens. :-)

>> Make an "open ip" tab so you don’t have to connect to a server through the console <<

James Golding is making tons of improvements to the server browser BTW.

>> Unreal TV (uTV) type feature. For those who are not familiar with uTV it was a way to broadcast matches “live” to an audience of gamers. The way it worked was you had a uTV server (this wasn’t the game server) that ran a small application. <<

Unreal TV was awesome. Stay tuned for news along these lines soon. :-)

>> Advanced demo record / playback feature. The ability to rewind, fast forward, pause, slowmo, loop sections of demos. ** EDIT ** Time-jump feature as well. <<

Basic demo recording is in the works (not up and running yet, but in the works). But we want to avoid getting too deep into adding demo recording features like this. It's a very hardcoded feature since it's based on saving out the network data stream, so compatibility tends to break between patches, and there isn't keyframe data so demos aren't nicely rewindable without playing back from the beginning.

>> A map converter tool to convert UT maps over to UT2k3 <<

You can bring .t3d files over from UT to UT2003's UnrealEd without too much pain, but since UT2003 uses all new lighting, textures, weapon classes, and player sizes, you'll need to manually (1) re-texture them, (2) place weapons, (3) relight them, and (4) re-path them if you want botmatch support. This requires a bunch of handiwork, and can't be automated in a way that works well with all the maps in general. There are already a few conversions available of popular UT maps (like Deck 16) that look pretty good!

>> Demo -> AVI application. It would be great to be able to export a demo into a movie file (AVI). This would be a great way to showcase the game on the internet to people who don’t have the game. <<

There is support for dumping a screenshot of every frame to disk, and for playing at a constant game-updates-per-second rate (independent of frame rate), so once demo recording is in, this should be straightforward.

>> The new stats system has a lot more numbers but I really miss the graphs of the UT stats. I could tell at a glance what the scores were and what team won. I could also see which player(s) were doing well throughout the match. In my opinion the graphs spoke a thousand words and should return. <<

Good point, I'll pass this on to Christoph, the stats programmer. Everyone who's into stats and has suggestions, please submit feedback -- the best place is the http://ut2003stats.epicgames.com feedback link!

>> Direct Gmax and/or 3DSMax support in UnrealEd <<

Our 3DS Max exporter plug-in is available on the Unreal Developer Network, http://udn.epicgames.com/

Erik de Neve is looking into porting this to Gmax, and we'll go ahead with that unless we run into unexpected limitations.

>> First, I’d like to thank you for reading this document. I really feel that Unreal Tournament 2003 is a great game but has the potential to become so much better than it is right now. I feel with feedback like this, that potential can become a reality. <<

These are REALLY GREAT and practical suggestions. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the list. Obviously a lot of care went into it.