Wednesday, February 25, 2009

DM-Spirit

"Dark! Haunted! Scary! - Desert of Three Features"

I've decided to release another of my old UT maps to add some more custom content to the blog and to boost the Unreal section a little more. Though this map is pretty much total crab compared to DM-1on1-Neglect. It's the first map I've made for UT2003 and I pretty much just wanted to try out the terrain editor. Called "Spirit Desert", the map features a spooky ruin swallowed by sand in a haunted wasteland, somehow inspired by the desert in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The map is huge (compared to other UT2003 maps), wide opened and it definitely doesn't win any awards for best gameplay. But it features some of the very shiny wind sound effects from Unreal and Unreal Tournament, which were ten times more atmospheric than all the sound effects in UT200x.

Screenshots:




Download

Thursday, February 19, 2009

UT3 Titan Pack Preview 2

About ten days ago, I revealed what can be expected from the upcoming UT3 Titan Pack using information from a beta patch. However, Epic asked me to temporarily delete my post until they lift the press embargo for this information, which they did today. Also, like I guessed, some of the presumed information was not correct, so here's the update. There's new vehicle stuff, some of the maps were for different gametypes than indicated in the level description shots, but the biggest surprise is, that "Titans" actually wasn't a gametype, but a mutator, which can be used with all the gametypes. You have a Titan meter, similar to the Adrenaline bar in UT200x or UC2, which can be boosted by kills, killing sprees, multikills, flag captures and so on. Once it's full, you can enter Titan mode, where you are superlarge and only allowed to use a giant Rocket Launcher or Shock Rifle. If someone kills you, you self-destruct. You can also grow larger and turn into a Behemoth by filling your Titan meter again, but then you will self-destruct after 30 seconds. Also, you can't do anything as a Titan except for mass destruction, meaning you can't carry flags, enter vehicles and so on. But there's a map, which supports the mutator in a different way, CTF-Morbid. In this map (which seems to be a CTF version of DM-Morbias) there are huge blast doors, that can only be opened by Titans and provide a quick shortcut back into your base.

Greed works exactly the way I've guessed last week. And it sounds awesome, it's a perfect mix between Capture the Flag and Team Deathmatch, both my favorite classic gametypes combined. It's also the first time, Epic makes a clever use of (V)CTF maps for a new gametype idea, Quake III Team Arena style. Killed opponents drop skulls (silver, gold or red ones, giving different points), you have to collect as many as possible of them and take them to the enemies' base to score. So, basically the teams clash TDM style and then it's capture time. Sounds like this is going to be my new favorite gametype.

Betrayal on the other side is an Instagib gametype, where you play in temporary teams. Your Instagib rifle fires both a red and a blue beam as primary and secondary fire modes, while the secondary firemode is for killing your own teammates. For this you get the team score, but you will become an outlaw for 30 seconds and your old team will hunt you for retribution points. Key to winning is to know, when the time is right to betray your own team. Sounds complicated, but it may be very interesting. You may wonder, why this is Instagib only, but I guess, it's because you can't really stab someone in the back with a weapon, that doesn't instant-kill. It's a good way of emphasizing the whole Instagib idea though.

Also, there are some new turrets, vehicles, deployables and power ups to make the maps more interesting, including the Eradicator Cannon and the Stealthbender on VCTF-Stranded and WAR-Confrontation, the Stinger Turrets on WAR-Hostile or the portable SlowField on DM-OceanRelic. The Titan Pack includes all the previously released bonus content from the first Bonus Pack (tagged with "BP1") and the XBox 360 version (tagged with "360"). Here's the list:

New Gametypes:
  • Greed
  • Betrayal

New Mutators:
  • Titans

New Maps:
  • DM-DarkMatch
  • DM-EdenInc
  • DM-KBarge (360)
  • DM-Morbias (BP1)
  • DM-OceanRelic
  • DM-Turbine
  • CTF-Face (BP1)
  • CTF-LostCause
  • CTF-Morbid
  • CTF-Nanoblack
  • CTF-Searchlight (BP1)
  • CTF-Shaft
  • VCTF-Rails (360)
  • VCTF-Stranded
  • VCTF-Suspense_Necris (360)
  • WAR-ColdHarbor (360)
  • WAR-Confrontation
  • WAR-Downtown_Necris (360)
  • WAR-Hostile

New Characters:
  • Kana (Ronin) (360)
  • Nova (Liandri) (360)

New Turrets, Deployables, Power Ups, Vehicles:
  • Stinger Turret
  • Eradicator Cannon Artillery
  • X-Ray Field (Deployable)
  • Link Station (Deployable)
  • Slow Field (Power Up)
  • Stealthbender (Axon version of the Nightshade)


The Titan Pack will be released on March 5th (two weeks, ahaha) on PC and PS3 (yeah, XBox owners will be pissed, but it's not Epic's fault) FOR FREE. Yes, you heard me, for free. About 800MB large.

Links:
Beyond Unreal
Old Post (with A LOT more screenshots)

Sunday, February 8, 2009

UT3 Titan Pack Preview

This really, really takes me back. Actually I'm not playing Unreal Tournament III, because I still don't have a computer powerful enough to play it and since there aren't any other new PC games, I'm interested in, and UT3 was pretty much neglected by Epic Games, I didn't care too much. However, one of the best things about playing Unreal were the free Bonus Packs developed by Epic Games (and Digital Extremes before they quit working together with Epic), which kept the games fresh. There was one free map pack for Unreal, four Bonus Packs for Unreal Tournament and five packs for Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004. Unreal Tournament 3 however got only one tiny pack so far featuring three new maps and then Epic Games abandoned this game for about a year, setting their focus on Gears of War. Now they are back, making one of the largest Bonus Packs in Unreal history (well, at least I hope it's free), called the "Titan Pack". The information comes from a pre-beta patch out of analyzed .ini files and materials from the Unreal Editor and might be not 100% accurate.

First of all, the pack contains all the additional content, that was "exclusively" made for the XBox 360 version. This includes three new maps (DM-KoosBarge, VCTF-Rails and WAR-ColdHarbor), two Necris versions of older maps (VCTF-Suspense_Necris and WAR-Downtown_Necris) and two new characters (Kana and Nova). Well, I'm not sure about the Necris maps, but the rest should be included. Note, that KoosBarge is a remake of DM-KoosGalleon from the first Unreal Tournament in industrial style.

Well, of course that's not all. The most important addition are the three new gametypes. The most interesting one at this point is "Greed", which seems to be the Unreal version of "Harvester" from Quake III Team Arena. You play this on CTF or VCTF maps and I think skulls are dropped from killed enemies. Goal would be to collect as many as possible of them and take them into the enemies' base (or your own, I'm not sure). Also, there are "Betrayal" and "Titans". Not sure, what they do, but Titans looks like a variant of Mutant or similar Tag games from previous installments, where one player turns into a giant... Also, there are about 11 new maps including a remake of DM-Turbine, which gets me pretty hyped, because this was one of my absolute favorite maps back in the good old UT. Then there is a map based on the DarkMatch idea from the original Unreal, meaning the map is completely dark. And there seems to be a CTF version of DM-Morbias, called CTF-Morbid. Here's the list:

Content

New Gametypes:
  • Greed
  • Betrayal
  • Titans

New Maps:
  • DM-DarkMatch (WAR-DarkMatch in the pictures)
  • DM-EdenInc (or "DM-Stall")
  • DM-KBarge
  • DM-OceanRelic
  • DM-Turbine
  • CTF-LostCause
  • CTF-Morbid
  • CTF-Nanoblack (DM-Nanoblack in the pictures)
  • CTF-Shaft
  • VCTF-Rails
  • VCTF-Stranded
  • VCTF-Suspense_Necris
  • WAR-ColdHarbor
  • WAR-Confrontation
  • WAR-Downtown_Necris
  • WAR-Hostile

New Characters:
  • Kana (Twin Souls)
  • Nova (Liandri)

Map Pictures:



None of this information is confirmed yet, so you might expect some additions or cutbacks, as soon as the actual pack is going to be released.

Next to the Titan Pack a new patch is in development, that improves the messed up GUI and holds several important fixes.

Source: BU Forums

Edit: Original source was deleted by the author, so were all posts about the pack on the official forums. Epic asked me to delete this post temporarily as well, but since the cat was let out of the bag, I've restored it (because of the pictures). Some of the information is not correct, see new post above.

Friday, February 6, 2009

From the Perspective of the Space Pirates...

Finally some Metroid news. Today Nintendo of Japan launched a new site for the Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Wii. There's finally a page and some trailers for the upcoming New Play Control title Metroid Prime, which looks now exactly like Metroid Prime 3: Corruption in terms of controls and gameplay. This is going to be a blast, I can't wait. But that's not all, the new official Metroid site holds a teaser for something new. It shows a picture of a cool looking Space Pirate next to the text "Another Side Story -coming soon-". The Japanese text below says "The Metroid Prime history followed from the perspective of the space pirates." Well, no one is sure, if that's supposed to be a game or not. My best guess would be, that it's an E-Manga like the one we got for Metroid: Zero Mission. But you could also hope, that it's a game, maybe a 2D side scrolling Metroid spin off for WiiWare where you play a Space Pirate, who knows? All I know is, that the concept sounds pretty damn promising, because you could experience stuff, you normally wouldn't see in a Metroid game following Samus. Want to learn how the Space Pirates are organized? Or want to participate in the Phazon experiments and be part of the team, who attacked the Valhalla to the steal Aurora Unit 313? So, whatever this teaser will reveal, I will definitely check it out.

Source: Metroid.jp