Surreal Engine is an ongoing project to reimplement UE1, mainly focused on Unreal Tournament v436 and Unreal Gold v226 at the moment.

This one has been discussed in the other linux_gaming community before, more than two years ago. Since then there were numerous improvements:

  • It can now run UT99 maps and Unreal Gold botmatch maps (whereas it was limited to only UT before), and boot up onto the intro flyby of Deus Ex.
  • Colission handling is much better (but not perfect yet).
  • Can utilize SDL2 on Linux for windowing and native Wayland support (previously it’d use pure X11, and actually still does if you don’t have SDL2 installed).
  • The menus mostly work now.
  • Initial works for the AI (they will move around sometimes, and retaliate if attacked).
  • Game detection system based on the SHA1 sum of the game executable. This allows us to detect many versions of UT and U1/UGold, as well as Deus Ex, Klingon Honor Guard, NERF Arena Blast, and more!
  • A launcher has been added to select the game you want to play on startup. And lots of other improvements!

There is still a lot of work to do to implement everything though, and contributions are always welcome!

  • simple@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Oh my god, that’s amazing. I wasted so much time in UT99 messing around with bots back in the day. The game still holds up well.

    • Ultragramps
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      8 months ago

      I was there for the fan wars. I was in the Tribes camp, but Quake and UT ate up plenty of time. The map mods for Duke Nukem were a big deal for a while making ridiculous stuff with inescapable pits that were only fun to play a few times.

    • LupertEverett@lemmy.worldOP
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      8 months ago

      Based!

      One thing to keep in mind if you’re gonna try Deus Ex out with Surreal Engine is that it currently does not have the input system working, due to it being completely different than UT’s lol. Lots of functions aren’t implemented yet also, so we’re pretty much stuck with the intro flyby now :V

  • Marzanna
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    8 months ago

    That’s awesome! My childhood dream comes true

    • LupertEverett@lemmy.worldOP
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      8 months ago

      Sadly it cannot yet. The engine immediately crashes upon starting it up. Current focus is more on getting Unreal Tournament v436 and Unreal Gold v226 (and Deus Ex whenever it gets some attention) running.