Unreal Tournament

Unreal Tournament is a multi-player-centric first-person shooter released in 1999 by Epic Games. The game is based around tournaments that prisoners are put through in the Unreal universe.

Unreal Tournament Game Of The Year Edition
Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition or UT GOTY was released in the year 2000 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest online multiplayer first person shooters of all time. UT GOTY included a disc containing the game itself and a second disc containing some bonus maps, new models (such as the Nali Warcow), and mutators such as relics and professionally-polished versions of the Chaos UT and Rocket Arena game types. Although all of the material on the second disc (about 50 MB) can be freely downloaded, the price of the game is cheap enough for gamers with slow internet connections.

The general consensus amongst experienced Unreal Tournament players is that the original Unreal Tournament's game play (on a PC) is far superior to that of its successors, UT 2003 and UT 2004, which explains why so many people continue to enthusiastically play the Original to this day. This might also help to explain why online player counts for the Original were dramatically higher two years after its release than online player counts (of real humans and not bots) for Unreal Tournament 2004 two years after its release and for UT3 two years after its release. For example, in 2001 it was possible to find thousands of people playing the Original’s Capture-the-Flag mod online at any given time.

Opening Narration
"In 2291, in an attempt to control violence among deep space miners, the New Earth Government legalized no-holds-barred fighting. Liandri Mining Corporation, working with the NEG, established a series of leagues and bloody public exhibitions. The fight's popularity grew with their brutality. Soon, Liandri discovered that the public matches were their most profitable enterprise. The professional league was formed; a cabal of the most violent and skilled warriors in known space, selected to fight in a Grand Tournament. Now it is 2341. 50 years have passed since founding of DeathMatch. Profits from the Tournament number in the hundreds of billions. You have been selected to fight in the professional league by the Liandri Rules Board. Your strength and brutality are legendary. The time has come to prove you are the best. To crush your enemies; to win the Tournament."

- Opening narrator

Single Player
In single player mode you are first able to choose your character and the skill you desire. The type of character you choose will determine which team you are on in the Capture the Flag tournaments. After choosing your character you are able to play Deathmatch.

Deathmatch
The objective of Deathmatch is to be the first player to reach the frag limit. The player is up against everyone else and all other players are your opponents.

Team Deathmatch
Same as deathmatch, but there are teams.

Domination
Domination is usually done with team play. The goal of Domination is to take and secure control points around the map. Holding control points on the map earns your team points over time. The goal is to hit a certain score before the other team does.

Capture the Flag
The objective is to take the enemy's flag and return it to your own flag post a certain number of times.

Assault
This game type is among many peoples favourites. It requires strategy, instead of running out and gunning your opponents. There are 2 roles, the attacker or the defender. If you start as the attacking team, you must complete a number of objectives, while defending yourself. Once all objectives are complete the game restarts, and your team switches roles. Then the opposing team have to do it. The fastest time wins. But if you are the defender, your job is to stop the attackers from completing their objectives.

Last Man Standing
The objective of LMS is to be the last one standing - with the most lives left. Basically the players hunt each other down and must not run out of lives.

Online Multi-player
Unreal Tournament is primarily an online multiplayer game and in its heyday it was possible to find thousands of people playing it online 24/7. Hundreds of clans were formed and they competed in leagues and on organized ladders, often using voice-over-IP communication programs such as Teamspeak, Roger Wilco, and Ventrilo. Players also communicated via Internet Relay Chat. Because UT99 was very popular, thousands if not over ten thousand custom maps and game modifications were created which would auto-download to players upon joining servers. The ease with which custom material could be created and distributed contributed to the game's success. As of the week of October 4, 2009, at around 4 p.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time, over 800 players were counted in the server browser.

Pickup Games (PUG) Matches
Many members of the Capture-the-Flag' community enjoy playing pick-up game (aka PUG) matches. The name "pickup game" really means "pickup clan-match-style game", which means that the game will feel like playing a formal clan match as opposed to playing on a public server where players join and leave the teams in the middle of maps. PUG matches also make use of voice comm, with each team joining a separate chat channel on a Teamspeak or Ventrilo voice-over-IP server. Most pugs are for 5v5 capture-the-flag games and are often played by people who used to be members of the clan community. Normally, 10 people on an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server spontaneously "join the PUG", which is managed by a program called the pugbot. Players can join by either changing their nickname to have a certain letter in front of it or by typing .join depending on what pugbot program is in operation. (So if the letter is y, then a player named Bigfoot would change his name to y-Bigfoot to join). When ten people have signed up, two people become team captains, either by typing in a designated command or by being randomly appointed by the pugbot, and then they proceed to draft-pick the other players in an A-BB-AA-BB-A draft order so that the first captain has both the first pick and the last unpicked player. The players then join a Teamspeak voice comm server and join the PUG game server itself where they play a 5v5 best-of-three-maps match. Like a clan match, players have assigned positions (i.e., flag defense, offense, middle, front door defense, etc.) and teams try to cover their flag carriers. It is a tremendous amount of fun and the game experience is more intense than playing on public servers. To get started, you need to obtain an IRC browser program such as mIRC or the Firefox plugin Chatzilla. You can find the UT99 CTF pug match communities on these IRC servers:


 * irc.gamesurge.net
 * irc.quakenet.org

For North American PUG matches come to irc.GameRadius.net and then join channels #speedpug (125 speed regular weapons) and #mlut (100 speed regular weapons). (Major League Unreal Tournament) is the home channel for the pro community and you need to be registered with and logged into the Gameradius server in order to join it (instructions available at www.GameRadius.net). Note that new channels do form occasionally and that activity might shift from one channel to another, so just ask around to find the currently active pug channel. (Alternatively, use your IRC browsers channel list feature to find out which channels are heavily-populated and then investigate.) Other channels exist for other game types such as Instagib and Sniper, and some channels are passworded. New North American players are advised to first try #speedpug where they are more likely to be welcomed by the other players. In Europe the IRC server is irc.Quakenet.org and you might try channels #ctfpug and #ut994funpug.