[ut3] UT3 Linux client progress

Slavik Goltser slavikg at gmail.com
Sat Oct 31 19:17:20 EDT 2009


Ryan,

I am writing this in the hopes that you will read this and maybe even
consider responding.

On November 19, 2007 we saw the release of Unreal Tournament 3 for PC. Since
then, there had been ports of this game from x86 based code to two
completely different CPU architectures. I am, of course, talking about
PowerPC that is powering XBOX 360 and the heavily modified PowerPC that is
power PS3. The said ports, both happened within 6 months of the PC version
being released, with the PS3 version using OpenGL for rendering. This is now
almost 2 years after the initial PC release and so far we have only seen
screen captures of Unreal Tournament 3 running in Ubuntu GNU/Linux and
Macintosh OS X. At this point in time, where a full blown game could've been
designed, built and produced, one question remains. Where is the Linux
version of Unreal Tournament 3?

Around the beginning April of 2008, Mark Rein was interviewed about Unreal
Engine and Gears of War 2 (I do not remember the context or who did the
interview). During the interview he stated that Unreal Tournament 3 for
Linux has become a pet project. As someone who was trained to be a developer
in college (BS in Computer Information Science, CUNY @ Brooklyn College,
Summer 2007) I know what happens to pet projects when you are in a
workplace; they get mothballed. In the art book that came with the
collector's edition of Unreal Tournament 3, Mike Capps (President of Epic
Games), writes the following (emphasis mine):

Our message to you, is that we really, really care about this franchise,
> about making fun games, about constantly pushing games technology forward,
> and *about fans like you*. You might not always like what we do, and
> you're not shy about telling us on the forums when you don't! But what keeps
> us up late nights on this franchise isn't money, or fame - not even the
> physiologically unsound amount of caffeine drunk at Epic could keep us up
> that late.
>

I work for a managed services provider and can guarantee you that in the
past year you have dealt directly (even more so indirectly) with the systems
which we support for our clients. I also know how such paragraphs get
written. First, notice how Mr. Capps mentions fans (us, the subscribers to
this list) at the very end of the sentence, we are clearly the last in the
line of thoughts of at the very least, the upper management (fans always
are). Second, Mr. Capps mentions that it's not the money or the fame or the
caffeine that keeps everyone up late at night. What does keep everyone up
late at night are the deadlines that are always arbitrarily set (you can
never set a realistic deadline on a software project). The deadlines come
from contracts, which also mention very large amount of money. But no matter
how bad the things get, you always tell the client that everything is
peachy. That is how business works. Thirdly we have the blurb from Mr. Rein
that Unreal Tournament 3 for Linux is a pet project.

At this point (after almost 2 years since the initial release), we have had
updates from you (via phoronix.com) that the Linux client is still being
worked on and that bugs are being fixed and client optimized. But is it
really? Are there so many bugs at this point that you would not even release
a beta version to allow the gaming community to test it? This is something
we are willing to do for free! (and have done so for many MMOs) Heck, we've
even payed to beta test games by the means of pre-ordering them. Let us help
you!

Sincerely,
Slava
Someone who can't play UT3
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