Unifying Unreal and UT99 for network play?

[Hyper]

Is it possible to join Unreal Tournament (UT99) servers with Unreal?

I see that a mod exists by MasterKent called BotPack227 allowing players to play UT99 maps in Unreal, including OldSkool support for UT SP/coop maps that require this (Note the irony in this)

But my use case / wish is a bit different. While it made all the sense in the world for Epic to release UT99 as a standalone game, I have always deeply regretted this. Why? Because it split the community between two excellent games. I mostly sticked with the old Unreal as it had everything I needed. Robust single player, great deathmatch and lovely cooperative play.

But it is 2024 and I have to recognize that Unreal Deathmatch is dead. It has servers but hardly any players or clans. UT99 has the opposite problem. The UT99 community worked in the past on creating single player support via OldSkool and cooperative support. But the UT99 coop scene has the same problem as the Unreal Deathmatch scene: No players.

It would be wonderful if Unreal could just browse and connect to UT99 servers for deathmatch play or that UT99 would just connect to Unreal servers for coop play, unifying both games to the game Unreal should have been.

But when I install the BotPack227 mod to my Unreal game I can't connect to UT99 servers. I can load UT maps like CTF-Face just fine in 227j now, but no network play. Is there any way to achieve this?

Same for UT99. If I link my Unreal folders to UT99 I can open Unreal maps in UT99, but I can't connect to Unreal servers.