OldUnreal (Engine)

I have a couple of basic questions.  I did load 227 first release beta onto our small server.  It ran fine, and the only thing that I observed happening was the downloads got extremley slow.  I also tried installing it on my own computer on a test but fully functional installation of Old Unreal 225.  I am not a open gl player so I selected D3d and the results were disasterous.  When I ran Unreal it was in good looking D3d but it did badly affect the video drivers when I shut it down.  The screen became completely washed out and very bright in video level.  To fix this I had to uninstall the Nvidia drivers and re install them over again.  I removed it from the computer.  I then got the bug fix version yesterday.  The D3D did not destroy the drivers this time, but the video jerked during the fly bye.  I looked into the advanced options video settings for D3D and saw options I dont remember seeing before.  I tried open GL with some limited success but the video is very dark.  It appears that you must get into the advanced options and do a lot of tweaking to make this look good.

As for me, the Old guy, this is not a good plan.  We have serious problems with regular unreal and gold, just getting players to set their controls, net speed, purge cache days, ect.   Stuff we consider normal settings.  I dont know how we will ever set up this game with newbies.  Is there a set of pre sets that will make the game run in open gl or D3D without tweaking?  I cannot tell people to put this in their game, with the experiences I have had to date with just installing it and trying to run it.   Where do you plan to go with standard settings?

I know and have read the forum carefully about all the enhancements and code fixes and stuff.  However I did not see any significant changes in the server while I was running it.  I also found few people willing to try it out.  What will be the advantages and disavantages of running this server side.  In plain language please, No Code knowledge here.   I think the redirect will be rather cumbersome to manage at first blush.  When you have rented servers with large bandwidths downloads are not a problem that causes server lag.  

I guess what I am saying is someone convince me why players would benefit from me moving our 3 servers to 227.  It runs great on the servers but I saw no beneficial changes.  Our servers are very stable with 225F and we been there a long time.  I do not take change lightly and seldom change the servers for just the sake of change.  I am not trying to be smart or to minimize the work and benefits of this vast project.  I know it is great and has many fixes.  I am just concerned about implementing it in the real unreal world of people who are not able to set their game settings without direction and assistance. I hope the final release has a uninstall option.

No, I completely agree with you sparky. I would keep the servers also at 225f for now. You are right about the bandwidth issue.. this is extremely slow compared to what can be achived from 225f. Now, i'm not too sure about the problems you were having with D3D8.... when I started D3D8 for me it was extremely fast and everything was preset just fine (no tweeking involved)

This version of 227 is still beta, so I dont believe that ANY deathmatch server (unless testing connection issues) should run it for now

ye its still beta, so many of the issues are being ironed out. If u run a server with 227 it shold be marked as test only. I had some video glitchs as well, but its running fine for me as a client now. I think once completed and the bugs are ironed out itll make it way easier for the new player. Right now they have to tweak the heck outa the 226, 225, 224 versions to get it to look good. Many players dont even know to change it from software rendering. The 227 patch will fix this as it detects what ur system can do (mine foudn opengl, directx, and my 3dfx wrapper so it gave me 3dfx as a option as well). So with one click they'll be able to choose and have a decent video mode / driver w/o having to go into the advanced options... so its a work in progress Im sure the video bugs will be worked out.

so ease of setup is one plus, the second is the redirect, I have it running on my test 227 server and it rocks. Super fast, etc.. releives lag on the server from the downloaders etc.. Yes if you are not using a redirect the downloads are slower then say a 225f server, but the redirect is pretty easy to setup (same as ut2k4, same as utiii, etc..), and I'd be more then happy to assist u in that if needed.

Again for publicly running a server u should hold off for the public release. Once its public, the bugs are fixed, etc.. then convert ur servers, and post in ur forums for peeps to upgrade their clients. until then keep on w/225f servers and whatever client peeps use....

agreed on the 225f server, i have mine running on lines with large upload capacity (50+meg) so I set the tick rate to like 70 and download are fast w/o redirect anyway. Dunno what changed to make the 227 based server slower as far as clients downloading...

But even as fast as I got my 225f servers to give files directly, the 227a with redirect enabled still blows that away... So I see the clear advantage, assuming u get the clients to convert to 227.. Probly put somehting in ur server description to tell them to get the patch (once public) from oldunreal.

We're working on fixing most of this, give it time

as for the d3d , it sounds like you used d3d instead of d3d8.. huge difference. I can't use OGL due to having an nvidia card :-/

atm, there's no real reason to switch from 225 to 227 for servers, as 225 and 227 support the same amount of clients stock..

What the hell? I could and can use OpenGL just fine in the current 227 release.

- Fenix

Yep, your exactly right, I did select D3D.  I am listening and reading with interest.  One thing about video.  I have been in televison engineering for years and one thing you learn about video it is very subjective.  What tests very good may not look so good.  It is very subjective depending on the viewer.  That is why when they make a new standard, they must use a large cross section of the population, to get a standard that looks good to the majority.  The eye is different by age, group, race, brain ect ect.  What looks good to one,, may be horrible to another.  The best way to win in video is to have very low wave form distortion.  But if all you ever saw was monochrome wouldnt color video look great.  If you never seen HDTV, NTSC looks pretty good to.  So a lot of the open gl vs D3D vs 3dfx is subjective both to the viewer and the hardware used.  I am very interested in making sure we are able to just have someone download this and it to run without initial tweaking, and then when they really get into the game they can seek out the tweeking guides.  I think this has been a unbelievable complicated task carried out to near perfection.

At the moment there is no reason to use u227 at a server except for testing. I have been testing with u227 because I want to do my contrubution into making u227 the best Unreal version ever, and to make sure it will work fine at my servers.

Unreal 227 servers will bring some extra features like an improved system against cheating. In a deathmatch / KotH environment this alone may be a reason to upgrade. But 227 will also bring a disadvantage that u226 clients can no longer join. If you plan to upgrade, it may be advisable to do some testing to make sure any issues you encounter are reported before the final is released.

We're working on fixing most of this, give it time

as for the d3d , it sounds like you used d3d instead of d3d8.. huge difference. I can't use OGL due to having an nvidia card :-/

atm, there's no real reason to switch from 225 to 227 for servers, as 225 and 227 support the same amount of clients stock..

Latest NVidia drivers seem to mess up some things. For me everything above 162.18 caused major trouble both with D3D8 and OpenGL. So for now I suggest to use an older release, and wait for a newer release of their drivers...

We're working on fixing most of this, give it time  ;)

as for the d3d , it sounds like you used d3d instead of d3d8.. huge difference. I can't use OGL due to having an nvidia card  :-/

atm, there's no real reason to switch from 225 to 227 for servers, as 225 and 227 support the same amount of clients stock..

What would having an Nvidia card have to do with it? I have an Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS (soon to be getting an 8800 GTX) and Open GL works just fine for me

Although with my other GeForce 4000 on my old comp, Open GL does not work at all...so its not Nvidia thats the problem

nvidia messed something up on the recent drivers

Then either my card works with Smirftsch rendering devices, or I never bothered getting the latest drivers. Either way it works fine for me.

- Fenix

We're working on fixing most of this, give it time

as for the d3d , it sounds like you used d3d instead of d3d8.. huge difference. I can't use OGL due to having an nvidia card :-/

atm, there's no real reason to switch from 225 to 227 for servers, as 225 and 227 support the same amount of clients stock..

What would having an Nvidia card have to do with it? I have an Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS (soon to be getting an 8800 GTX) and Open GL works just fine for me

Although with my other GeForce 4000 on my old comp, Open GL does not work at all...so its not Nvidia thats the problem

Its not the card, its the driver!!!
OpenGl and D3D8 even runs on my crappy "4 whatever go" card on my laptop...

Well then let's hope NIVIDA fixes it.

- Fenix

Yep. posted it was my driver, i can't use any older ones or else a few of my games are all messed up, I can just use d3d8 on unreal for the meantime..

lol i meant the Driver