The Story of UT and how it gets to UT3

[Doc Shock]

Could anyone give me an idea as to what the names of these guns are, what there primary fire is, and their secondary fire is. Also, maybe a breif disadvantage, advantage list (reload time) acuracy).

There is no reloading in UT (except for the Enforcers it seems, to make them not too powerful). All weapons are very accurate except for the rapid-fire of the Stinger (or the Minigun in previous UT games) and the Flak Cannon primary fire with its huge spread. Every other weapon will shoot exactly in the direction your crosshair points, no matter if you're running and jumping or standing still. But you still have to consider the flight arc of ballistic projectiles like bio goo or Flak secondary.
Every weapon has its purpose. You always have to be quick to pull up the right weapon for the right situation. Matters that have to be taken into account for weapon choice are things like range, the amount of time on your hands (usually measured in milliseconds), anticipation where your enemy might go, the weapon your enemy is carryng and lots of other stuff. It sounds a bit complex, but once you play the game you'll get used to it pretty fast, it's quite intuitive.
When you spawn, you only have the Impact Hammer and one Enforcer in your inventory, every other weapons needs to be collected from a weapon spawnpoint or a weapon locker.


Confirmed UT3 weapons:

1. The Impact Hammer. A classic melee weapon from the first UT. It was replaced with the Shield Gun in UT's 2nd generation, which had an energy shield as altfire that reflected energy projectiles and reduced an amount of the damage you took. It was considered to make the game too defensive instead of aggressive, so Epic brought back the original, but with a twist. Primary is still a melee attack. In the past, it was possible to charge it up and upon contact with another player it fired automatically. What's new is the altfire mode. It is a melee attack as well, but with EMP functionality. That way it is possible to disable vehicles for a short amount of time or knock power ups off of a player who collected them beforehand (things like the Damage Amplifier or Shieldbelt).

2. Enforcers. You start with one, but if you kill someone who's carrying another one you can pick up his as well and wield two of them at the same time. In UT99 (2k3+4 replaced them with Assault Rifles) they were powerful, single shot pistols. With altfire they were held gangsta-style and I think the behaviour changed a bit, though I can't quite remember how...

3. Shock Rifle. Primary fires a purple instant-hit beam that knocks a player a few feet backwards. Altfire shoots energy balls that do more damage than the beam but travel quite slowly. The trick is to hit the energy ball with the beam to unleash the powerful shock combo (aka Shombo), a powerful explosion.

4. Flak Cannon. Some people may regard it as the equvalent to a shotgun, but that doesn't do it justice. There much more to it. Primary fire shoots hot metal shards in a random pattern that spread out over distance, so you'd better be close to your target. The shards can bonce from the ground and walls so it is very well possible to hit someone who's around a corner. Altfire launches a big ballistic projectile that explodes when it hits something (in the newer UT incarnations some random flak shards emerged from the explosion as well). The projectile always had a smiley face on the front, a running gag in the UT series. At least the last thing you see before you die is a happy face...

5. Bio Rifle. In UT it was named "GES Bio Rifle", Epic said once that GES means "green exploding sh*t". That describes the gun pretty well. Primary launches small ballistic blobs of green goo that explode on contact with players and vehicles, but when they hit the ground or walls they stick there for a while before exploding. That way, a player can create temporary mine fields. Altfire charges the goo chamber. The longer the loading time, the bigger the blob. As the blob gets bigger, its range goes down while the damage goes up. A big blob hitting the ground splits up into dozens of small blobs. A direct hit with a fully charged bio alt used to be able to kill even a player who was stocked to the max with shield and health, but it's very hard to hit someone with such a slow, ballistic projectile at close range while not being too close so the explosion catches the weapon wielder as well.

6. The Stinger. Replaces the Minigun from the previous UT titles. Primary fire shoots rapid-fire insta-hit tarydium crystal shards in a random spread pattern, altfire shoots large shard projectlies that are slower but more accurate and deal more damage. When you kill someone with these, his body will get pinned to the next wall if there is one nearby.

7. The Link Gun. Primary fire shoots green plasma projectiles in rather rapid succession, altfire is a medium-range sustained beam. In UT it was named Pulse Gun. The new name comes from the new ability it gained in UT2k3: When aiming the beam at a teammate who also carries a LG, you charge up his weapon and increase its damage that way. This guy could then again charge up anther one and so it was possible to create quite long chains, where the front end weapon of it was getting more powerful with each link. In UT2004, power nodes and vehicles were introduced and both could be healed with the link beam. Linking up worked here as well, increasing the amount of damage being healed. It was confirmed that the gun's vehilce healing capabilities will remain in UT3 and since it is still names Link Gun I expect the linking functionality to be in as well, though we haven't had a confirmation on that.

8. The Rocket Launcher: Primary fire shoots a single rocket straight forward, altfire charges up to three rockets before firing them at once in a straight horizontal pattern. Tapping primary fire during the charge once (or twice, am not quite sure) deactivates the rockets self-propelling mechanism, turning them into grenades that tumble out of the weapon and bounce around for a while before exploding. Upon contact with enemies and vehicles they explode instantly. Tapping primary a second time (or the first, dunno) changes the rocket's flight pattern from straight line to twisting spiral. Tapping primary a third time sets the rockets back to their initial state. When holding your crosshair above a target for some time, the weapon will lock on to it and when you fire one or more rockets afterwrds, they will home in on it. In previous UT games they were not very nimble, so it was still possible to dodge them, but at long range the lock made quite a difference.

9. The Sniper Rifle. Primary fire shoots an insta-hit bullet that does massive damage (headshots deal twice as much damage as body hits), altfire controls the scope's zoom level. In UT2003 & 4 the UT99 SR was replaced with the Lighning Gun. Same funcionality, different looks. UT3 brings back the classsic, but with a twist carrying over from the LG: a visible tracer, so you can see who's shooting at you (in case the first shot wasn't lethal, that is).

10. The AVRiL Longbow. AVRiL stands for anti-vehicle rocket launcher. Its very agile rockets home in on any target under your crosshair, while the altfire targeting laser will "glue" your view to a target so the rocket's lock doesn't break off. When aiming the targeting laser on the ground, it can be used to designate a target location for nearby friendly neighbourhood spider mines to walk to.

11. The Redeemer. A superweapon that has a very long respawn time. You can only shoot it once. It fires a slow tactical nuclear missile. Primary fires it straight forward (bad, enemies can shoot it down pretty easily when it flies in such a predictable path), altfire is a "fly-by-wire" mode, where your view switches to the missile's internal camera and enables you to steer it directly.

12. The Target Painter. UT2k3 introduced the Ion Painter, which marked a target for an orbiting sattellite that fired on the marked loacation after the beam had locked the location (took a few seconds). UT2k4 added the Target Painter, which also marked a location, but not for a sattellite but for a bomber that appeared on the border of the map, flew to the desired location and dropped some bombs there (at least if it wasn't shot down on the way). UT3 will heve only one Target Painter, and it was stated that it is supposed to trigger map-specific hazards. At least that's the latest info about it we recieved from the devs. There is only guessing what they might come up with. Maybe rock-landslides, maybe the old sattellite or a new bomber, maybe an earthquake, maybe a lightning storm. Nothing specific has been stated yet.

13. The Canister Gun (not sure if its still in or if the name has been changed). From what was heard it is supposed to combine the features of UT2k4's Spider-Mine layer and Grenade Launcher. I guess altfire changes between ammo types and primary shoots/deploys. Though I wouldn't know how the remote detonate the nades, then. The Grenade Laucher used to fire sticky grenades that attached to any vehicle or player they touched, no matter if fried or foe. The nades were detonated by pressing altfire. Some people even attachrd them to the back of an allied vehicle and detonate them to give it a boost through the force of the explosion. Of course this only worked with dactivated friendly fire, but since that is the default it happened quite often. The Spider Mines are nasty little walking bombs that chase enemy players and vehicles, jump at them and then explode. The Stealthbender, a new UT3 vehicle, can deploy boxes that contain lots of those little buggers which swarm out once an enemy is near. The Stealthbender also deploys a time-bending slow volume and it is rumored that the canister gun might be able to do so as well. The slow volume is a large green box in which time gets slowed down.

There is one weapon from the original UT that hasn't made a return yet and most likely won't in UT3 either. It was called the Ripper. Primary fire used to shoot circular spinning blades that bounced off of any surfaces and were capable of decapitating players when hitting the head area. Secondary fire caused the discs to explode upon impact. Sounds a bit redundant, as there was a Rocket Launcher as well, but those shots were faster than those of the old RL but dealt less damage, so they definitivley had their purpose. It was a great weapon and most people consider it quite a shame that all following UT titles left it out.

Are there grendades.

No offhand grenades, only those from the canister gun, if they should actually be in the game. Nothing confirmed yet.

The vehicles: The one with four legs from war of the worlds, how do you get into these vehicles, do you teleport up, or do you have to have the machine at proper elevation so you can walk into the vehicle.

I suppose you teleport into them, just like in UT2k4. Complex entering animations like in Halo would just slow the game down.

Health does it regenerate if you are able to find a spot and hide for some short time.

Nope. Hiding never was a very useful option in UT anyway. It's all about the carnage. You have to collect health packs to heal yourself. Each used to give you 25 health points back, until you were back at 100. There are also small health vials that can boost your health above the limit of 100. And there is the big keg of health that adds 100 health to your existing amount. The absolute maximum for health used to be 199. And then there are the armor/shield pickups. Those had a maximum of 150. We don't how how exactly UT3 will handle the armor system yet (i.e. if the armor will absorb all damage until it is empty or if it will weaken the damage dealt to your healthpoints or if it will be different depending if you're wearing armor or the shieldbelt).

How customizable is your character, and can you customize your weapons.

Weapons: no. Character: Yes, but only visually. That's a feature which is entirely new to the series. You can select a body, a face, a helmet, various armor plates and stuff like that to customize the looks of your character.


Man, this whole thread is so full of information for people who are new to the series, I think it should be renamed to "What the UT series is all about" and made sticky. Anyone else think so as well?

[MatrixJCE]

Some more questions for the player who is new to the series:

Bots, i know what they are but i am not sure if i like the idea of bots. Who decideds how many bots are in a game, does it max out the map level with bots if you choose a 32 player map but only have 16 people. Does that mean an additional 16 bots would be put on to the game. Can you play all human vs bots. How good are the bots. Can you select the level of difficulty the bots have.

Mics and communication is possible in this game, do you know if it is broken up on squads or something along those lines. Can you talk to the enemy in team based games.

A question that is a must for me, how many people does the game support on online play. I have heard three different answers, First on a Resistance Fall of Man Forum that said it would only have 24 people, second, 40 , third 64 people and this is from an online source that i can't re-name because i forgot. But anyways, i would like some verification on this if you don't mind.

Different races and clans and things like that, can i choose which ever clan/race i would like to be apart of. For instance, Can i be the robotic main character or the lizard main character, things like that or not? That is it for now, until next time, thank you.

[Kronos]

Bots basically play the same role as a player would(almost).
If you were to host a server with 16 player slots all filled with bots and someone decided to jump into the server, one bot would leave automatically in order to make room for the joining player, if the player leaves, the bot comes back in.
You can host a server and select how many bots you would like in your server and you can even switch up the teams to your liking, such as what you said, humans vs bots(completely possible). Bots range from slow moving, horrible aiming, retarded skill levels to extremely accurate, fast, intelligent levels. While some hardcore UT players might say otherwise of a really skilled bot, they are indeed extremely good compared to the average player.

As far as I know about UT3, you cannot split up into different squads to talk separately within one another. However there are different channels you can join to talk to lets say either your team, your enemy, or everyone at once, and even locally within a distance range.

From the most recent news I believe UT3 supports up to 64 players online at once.

You can choose whichever character you want to be, from different clans and models of Humans, Robots, Krall(lizard dudes), Necris(undead like dudes), and many more.

EDIT: Another cool feature in UT3, and this can actually go with both the communication part and the bot part. You can talk to your bots, give them orders through voice or through button commands.

[MatrixJCE]

Thank you so much Kronos, i appreciate that. The servers, is this something that i can just create, or is it something that people actually have allready created and that i have to join on. The reason why i ask such a dumb question is because people in a previous thread indicated taht they can restrict swearing with an admin and things like that. If i create my own from home off of my ps3 do i need additional hardware, or something like that. Could i be the admin, i am not a power hungry person but i would like to know these answers.

[Kronos]

It hasn't been confirmed that you will be able to host servers off the PS3.
It has been rumored though that you can from your PC and join in through your PS3 I believe.
At anyrate, for the PC version you will be able to host your own server and setup your own rules to your liking, you would be the admin therefore you would make the rules.

[MatrixJCE]

If a ps3 can't set it up, (hypothetically) and i didn't have a computer the i would only be able to join other servers. If this is true, then what kind of personalization would an individual have on the servers for the ps3. Please don't take me the wrong way, i am just try8ing to get information.

[Kronos]

Oops forgive me for not saying PS3 cant host servers. Yes PS3 I believe will be able to host servers, what I meant was that it cant host dedicated servers. Lol wow that totally blew by me, sorry about that.

But besides just hosting servers, you can also play instant action which is basically like hosting a server without the players and instead just fighting bots.

[Doc Shock]

By the way, Kronos, I'm afraid you were mistaken when stating that UT3 would support 64 players:
There was an interview in which it was confirmed that the max. player limit will be capped around 24 for the PS3.
On the PC there can be more slots, depending on the pipe and the computing power of the machine the dedicated server runs on. Wouldn't make much sense, though, because the maps are balanced for 8 to 24 to players. But maybe some custom maps will be made especially for 64-player-carnage, who knows. But you'd need one hell of a machine (and Inet connection) to play a game with 64 players and a map so big it supports them. I hope I'll be able to afford a new PC till november...

[MatrixJCE]

Doc Shock, if the game is only capable of playing 24 people, why would the vehicle design have so many different people slots. The one vehicle that i am talking about (don't know the name) has four defensive positions and is manned by at least one other person to drive. It might be another person to man the huge tank thing main fire, don't know. Assuming that it is a 5 person vehicle, then that leaves 14 other players and 17 other available vehicles. Or if you think only one vehicle per map would be applicable it leaves 19 people and 17 vehicles. My impression of fpsers with vehicles is that there are more then one of each type of vehicle depending on the importance of the vehicle. I can't imagine a game play in warfare with 12 v. 12. If you could send me a direct link to this interview i would much appreciate it. I don't know if i am going to buy the UT3 if it only supports 24 players while Resistance Fall of man, ( what i know consider compared to this game a much more simple game) supports 40 players at once on the ps network.

Question: Who decides how many players the online community will support at once. is it ps3 or epci. thanks for the responses guys, i feel like a ut3 expert almost, jk

[Doc Shock]

The decision is made by Epic, based on the maximum player amount they can achieve without causing the game to lag, I believe. Remember that a PS3 will have to work as a listen server, which means you need to have a very fast internet connection to be the host for a big amount of other players.
You just can't compare Resistance with UT, those games are totally different. If UT's netcode is more complex than the one of Resistance, supporting the same amount of players just for the sake of it will simply lead to lag. UT was never about large battles with lots of people anyway. Even if the Warfare maps are huge, the action will always focus around one or two points, so it should work very well even with 8 players on each side. At least that was the way things used to be in UT2k4 and it worked very well.

By the way, the big vehicle you're talking about is the Leviathan. I guess it's a pretty safe bet that you will never get more than one of them per team, and it won't be available on the smaller maps at all. In UT2k4, very few maps (only some of the bigger ones) had the Levi in them.

[MatrixJCE]

More questions for the player who isn't familiar with UT

OK, Thank again for you quick response. I appreciate every one who has come to this thread and posted a thread for it has been very informative. More questions: I understand that the number of players is directly related to how much lag is done through out online play. Unfortunately, i am not sure way this has a direct relation between the two. For instance, I have a Cable modem connection, high speed something. I really don't have a number quantity for you. But if 64 people had the same connection that i had and the game was designed to run at optimal performance if you had the same connection speed that i hypothetically had, would everyones play be considerably slower because of the net code.
I also understand that ps3 are not as good as the high end pcs. Being under the impression that this game has taken almost three years to develope. It had to be built off of three year old hardware which i would assume would be about as hold as some of the ps3 hardware. My point with this is that if the pc can do 64 people then i guess i can't understand why the ps3 would limited to only 24, that is a significant downgrade between the two systems especially when the title is a multiplayer game.
Question: If it starts out at release at 24 people, do you know if it is possible to improve the number of online players by doing an update or anything like that. I have never heard of anything like this happening in the past, but i don't see why it couldn't happen.

You indicated that it would be fine for Unreal tournament 3 to have an online population of only 8 at a time because it is up close and personal. How will 24 warfare play when it is 12 v 12 and they have the same potential for 64 players on one map. I don't know if this is going to be the same up close and personal game that it might be for the ps3. This is just a speculation from what you have just recently indicated.

Like i have said in many of my other posts/threads, i have never played this series. When you say the gamplay will be affixed around "a couple of points," i assume that you mean two points of intersection that are crucial for game play. For Warfare, i would hope that there are more then just two areas of intersection. What this paragraph is meant for i guess is just a little more information relative to the gameplay of warfare. The reason why is because i am hoping that the ps3 will still have more then 24 people and warfare is the only thing besides the ctf.

With the deployable that slows time, is there anyway to do an aerial deployable. What i mean by this is maybe a weapon that only aerial vehicles can do to slow the approaching enemy down or to thrown in the air and slow the aerial action down. I just feel that it shouldn't be restricted to just ground play if you know what i mean. I think this is enough for this post i can't wait for anyone to answer and reply to my thoughts and questions.

[Kronos]

Actually not even the PC version holds 64 I believe, they changed this I think in the past back down to 32 players makes for the PC, the PS3 player count I don't think has been confirmed. At any rate I think it'll also be 32.

[theeDEATHMASTER]

It was mentioned however that the pc actually has an unlimited #.

[Doc Shock]

Regarding the question about Warfare gameplay:
Although there can be map-specific side-objectives, the main goal of a warfare map is usually to destroy the power core located in the enemy base. To be able to attack it, you have to take down its shield by connecting your own power core to it via a grid of power nodes. You can only capture a node that has a direct connection to your core or another node in your posession. Every node that has no connection to an enemy node is invulnerable, so there are usually not more than two or three nodes attackable at one time.
So, unlike in the Battlefield series, where all the players need to split up and spread out to battle for all of the various control points, the action in UT3 is usually focused around the few vulnerable nodes.

Oh, and the PC supporting an unlimited amount of players in theory has little to do with the practice. Even the biggest maps in the game are balanced for a maxium of 24-32 players gameplay-wise. Even if a server and his connection speed would be powerful enough to host a 64-players game without too much lag, there wouldn't be enough vehicles around for everyone and the maps would become so crowded that it would be quite hard to keep an overview of what's actually going on. So its highly unlikely that we PC players will be playing the same maps as the PS3 players with significantly more people in them.
Custom maps/mods are a different matter, though, could work there. But PS3 players won't get every mod that will be released for the PC anyway, I bet the majority of mod makers won't bother to buy a PS3 just to be able to test wether their mod works on it... Of course there will be modders who already have a PS3, so they don't need to buy one for testing purposes. But they'd still need to buy the UT3 PS3-version in addition to their PC version and PS3 games are quite expensive...

[Da Spadger]

THE STORY line, of unreal tournament part three:

<Snip>

This post WINS. All hail Skaarj Sauce. \o/