SErik

So I posted some weeks ago that I moved from Unreal Engine 3 to the Source engine from Valve but this actually never happened because I was too busy writing the thesis. And then Epic updated Unreal Tournament 3 and there was tcplink from Unreal Tournament 2004 back again. So I believe it is possible to realise the concepts now with the Unreal Engine 3 and after I finished my thesis I will hopefully have some time to get more into the practical work with UE3.

As I finally decided to make some tests with the UT3 engine I noticed that the UDPlink function from UT2k4 is not implemented in the new engine. But I will need something to communicate with the outside. So I took a look around again and evaluated the Source engine a little bit. So maybe I will not use UT3 but Source from Valve instead.

There are several plus-points to the Source engine:

• It seems that it is possible to communicate with the outside over UDP. There is a class called CBlockingUDPSocket which was pointed out to me by Dustin Hulm aka Teddy from the mod Dystopia. Thanks for that.
• I like the visual aesthetic of Team Fortress 2 as you can see in the machinima Ignis Solus. And hopefully there will be soon the opportunity to make mods with the new version of the Source engine. A beta update is already there. I am waiting for the final.
• It runs better on my notebook. My notebook is my primary tool for working.
• The Source engine is older than the Unreal Engine 3. This lead hopefully leads to more experienced users with it, more tutorials and lesser bugs.
• There seems to be a good documentation from Valve for the engine: Valve Developer Community

I already bought Orange Box and set up some stuff. Hopefully I will find the time to do some testing soon.

In the meanwhile I hope I can register/apply my thesis soon. To be able to do this I need to find a second supervisor/tutor.

For my thesis I have to learn a lot about modifying Unreal Tournament 3 and I fear that this will take me a while. After all I am not a programmer. For me it is just a thing that needs to be done and I am not interested in it furthermore.

Becaus of that it is really fascinating that a few people are so short after the release of Unreal Tournament 3 already so into the Game.

For example there are two gametype modifications already downloadable in the forums of Epic.

The first one I noticed was Slaughterhouse. This mod is really funny. You see yourself from the top fighting against dozens of enemies. It was posted on 2007-11-21, which was two days after the North American release of the game.

The second one is Invasion. This was an official game type in Unreal Tournament 2004 and someone made it for Unreal Tournament 3. It is still a beta release and was posted on 2007-12-05.