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With the blessing of Epic Games, the team at OldUnreal continue maintaining the classic Unreal Tournament and they have a big new release out.

To this day the original Unreal Tournament still stands up exceptionally well, because Epic really had the feel of the gunplay and the level design nailed down quite nicely. On modern platforms though, the original is a bit — uh, well it has issues. The OldUnreal team thankfully continue pushing out upgrades. And if you weren't aware, the original did have a Linux build available too.

OldUnreal release 469 is out now with tons of bug fixes for this classic. It's a long list, with plenty of attention given to the Linux version too. Here's some Linux fixes:

  • Fixed an issue where the mouse would get stuck in the middle of the game window on Linux and Mac.
  • Fixed several issues that caused network connections to be terminated unexpectedly on Linux and Mac.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the game viewport to have the wrong dimensions after resizing the game window on Linux or Mac.
  • The ucc make commandlet now works on Linux and Mac.
  • S3TC/DXT1 texture compression should now be available in the ucc tools for Linux and Mac (though obviously not in UnrealEd).
  • The Linux and Mac clients now have clipboard support.
  • The Linux and Mac clients finally support unicode! The most visible consequence is that player names with non-ascii characters in them will now display correctly when playing on Linux servers (provided that you use font textures with the proper unicode glyphs).
  • Added selectedcursor support to the Linux and Mac clients.
  • Added the -SETHOMEDIR= command line option. Normally, the game looks for the UnrealTournament.ini and User.ini files in ~/.utpg/System (on Linux), ~/Library/Application Support/Unreal Tournament/System (on Mac), or in UnrealTournament\System (on Windows). With this option, you can override the preferences path (e.g., ./ut-bin-x86 -sethomedir=~/.loki/ut/System).

For those curious, the OldUnreal patches also add in numerous other enhancements including a more modern OpenGL rendering system, SDL2 for Linux which should make the experience so much nicer, PNG support for screenshots, faster server downloads, raw input support and much more. You can pretty much considering it the ultimate version of Unreal Tournament.

The great news is that the 469 release is network compatible with "all previous public releases of UT (down to 432)". See more on it here.

It does need the original data files of course, which you can buy easily on GOG.com or Steam. You need to add the OldUnreal 469 release on top of an existing install. If you need help installing the original first, Lutris has a few installer scripts available.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: FPS, GOG, Steam, Update | Apps: Unreal Tournament
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Thetargos Sep 25, 2020
Quoting: legluondunetwhat is the best graphical version? Windows or Linux one?
For this game in particular, the 'best' is to have the S3TC 'high res' textures, though some skyboxes render wrong in both D3D and OpenGL. Performance wise, OpenGL was better with 'beefy' graphics cards, while D3D used to make the game playable with less powerful graphics cards. To my eyes, though, neither D3D nor OpenGL were visually as "clean" as the Glide renderer for 3dfx Voodoo cards**... actually UT99 was one of the few games that actually had the Glide renderer available on Linux, and ut performed just as well as on Windows, back in the day. Damn the memories!!

*Especially noticeable in the foggy areas, such as the initial flyby in both UT and Unreal. I did not notice any banding, while the nostalgia lens may distort reality.


Last edited by Thetargos on 25 September 2020 at 12:12 pm UTC
sourpuz Sep 25, 2020
I'm a bit confused on how to install this
Oet_ Sep 25, 2020
Quoting: sourpuzI'm a bit confused on how to install this
1. Download the right file from the OldUnreal releases.
2. Extract into a folder, e.g. "OldUnreal".
3. Get your original UT copy (assuming you already own it).
4. Copy the folders "Maps", "Textures", "Sounds" and "Music" to "OldUnreal".
5. Run ut-bin from "System".
Oet_ Sep 25, 2020
Quoting: legluondunet
QuoteWorks great, except the menu is hard to read (so small :)).

Did you try "Override GUI scaling" + "GUI scaling factor" in "Video" preferences ?
"Override Font scaling" + "Font scaling factor" could help too.
The GUI scaling worked, but the font scaling did not:
CreateFont failed: 2 (No such file or directory)
Can't find file '' for import
sourpuz Sep 25, 2020
Quoting: Faalhaas
Quoting: sourpuzI'm a bit confused on how to install this
1. Download the right file from the OldUnreal releases.
2. Extract into a folder, e.g. "OldUnreal".
3. Get your original UT copy (assuming you already own it).
4. Copy the folders "Maps", "Textures", "Sounds" and "Music" to "OldUnreal".
5. Run ut-bin from "System".

Ah, thank you, I somehow overlooked the "releases"-link on the GitHub page!
mos Sep 25, 2020
Not so simple tho... at least the maps are stupidly compressed in the GOTY release and need to be decompressed manually with ucc

Font scaling worked in previous (closed beta) releases..
mos Sep 25, 2020
Quoting: sourpuzAh, thank you, I somehow overlooked the "releases"-link on the GitHub page!
you could've just DLed the repo cos the release tarball is probably just a packed repo more or less
AnthraX Sep 25, 2020
Quoting: Faalhaas
Quoting: legluondunet
QuoteWorks great, except the menu is hard to read (so small :)).

Did you try "Override GUI scaling" + "GUI scaling factor" in "Video" preferences ?
"Override Font scaling" + "Font scaling factor" could help too.
The GUI scaling worked, but the font scaling did not:
CreateFont failed: 2 (No such file or directory)
Can't find file '' for import

We forgot to include a couple of fonts in the patch package. Will try to fix ASAP!
murdoch Sep 28, 2020
I've been playing Unreal Tournament through Steam recently - just finished and soon going to play through UT 2004 again. Works perfectly.
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