THIS PROJECT IS ON HOLD

I have tried to reach out and get Epic on board with letting me release this but other than a brief email early on I hasven't heard anything. With Pengo released and Escape from Nefertiti's Tomb now shipping I don't have time to keep at this. Hopefully Epic will decide what they want to do by this summer when my time should free up some again.

While you wait, if you have an Oculus Quest 2 - please buy my latest game, Escape from Nefertiti's Tomb!

What is all the fuss about...

The Good news...

As promised, I have taken the time to figure out what it would take to get Unreal Tournament Alpha to compile and be workable again. For those new to the story I've worked on every UT game either as a community modder (UT99), an Epic Games employee (UT2K3, UT2K4, UT3) or an indie who came back just to try to reboot the series (UT Alpha). I was there that sad day when Epic halted development and while I think it was the right decision at the time for Epic, I don't like leaving things undone.

So more than a year ago, I promised a couple of UT supporters and fans that if I got a chance to, I'd spend some free time looking to see what could be done. COVID sadly delayed my other for-fun project, PengoRoyale, from being released. Then I was crunching to finish Escape from Nefertiti's Tomb, a VR escape room for WisEngineering's Digital Reality Lab. But here is that promise finally fulfilled.

The BAD news...

Now, I don't want you all to get your hopes up too far. I have the code compiling and the game running. But it's very much on life support! Four years of sitting means a lot of code rot and decay. On the engine side, there have been a lot of advancements and changes. So there are whole system I have to evaulate. I need to guage if it's worth porting over and reimplementing the old way or if the newer underlying system is better. Some examples include: movement replication, weapon projectiles, the online subsystem and the UI. And I want to do something different and much cooler with Hubs.

The UGLY news...

Now all of this is great, and I have a pretty well laid out plan of attack which I'll post about at a later date. BUT.. there is a single sticky point. I need Epic to adjust it's EULA for the game or give me specific permission before I can even think about moving forward. I did this much on faith that they will but I'm not about to spend days working on bringing the game up if they don't let me distribute it. I've sent off word and hopefuly I'll get some clarity soon but until then, it's back to a holding pattern. In the meanwhile, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my Youtube channel for updates.

At least there is more hope than yesterday! And with some luck, soon we will be fragging like it's 1999!:"

-- The Digital Leprechaun --

.. Joe Wilcox ..