Just picked up UT 2003

[John Reynolds]

Local EBs store had it in, though I did pre-pay to make sure I got a copy the first day. $40 with a $10 mail-in rebate form. 3 CDs in paper sleeves with a 20-page manual inside the box.

[alexsok]

I picked it up as well today, so... it's time for fragging! :)

[jb]

http://www.pc-gamers.net/jb/reviews/ut2k3/

Some screenies ;)

[Rodéric]

Looks nice :)

[John Reynolds]

The new Magma CTF map is drop-dead gorgeous. The best graphics I have ever seen on a PC. Face3 is nice, but it's a frame rate-killer, dropping my rig down into the teens (of course that was at 6x AA and 16x AF <g>).

[Brent]

I can't wait to get it.. I drove around all day looking for it, not in stock here yet at EB or Gamestop :(

It should be around here on Monday, can't wait to pick it up!

[BRiT]

Never has a game made me feel so inadequate in the hardware department. :oops: This is a good thing!

I've been spoiled with being able to run nearly every game at higher-resolutions with every setting maxed out for the past year. Now this beauty of a game comes along and changes all that. I'm settling for 1024x768@32bit-8xAF + "high" texture/character/physics + "highest" world. As soon as I can responsibly afford to do so, I'm upgrading my 18-month old cpu and 11 month old video card to AMD XP 2400+ (hopefully o/c to 2800+ speeds) and ATI 9700Pro are on my list.

The Tokara Forest map is a blast! I've only done a run through the DM-maps, and initial single-player upto 1st team-DM, but I like what I see. Great game!

I guess I finished NWN just in time. :D

--|BRiT|

[Reverend]

I thought these kinda games weren't your cuppa tea, John.

[edit]Whoops, forgot you'd need the game since it'll be the benchmark of choice for the moment.

[John Reynolds]

I thought these kinda games weren't your cuppa tea, John.

[edit]Whoops, forgot you'd need the game since it'll be the benchmark of choice for the moment.

No, the only type of genre I really don't like is adventure games. Games I've bought this year are Bridge Commander, JK2, Freedom Force, Dungeon Siege, Neverwinter Nights, Ghost REcon, Medieval: Total War, Morrowind, WarCraft 3, Mafia, IWD2, and UT2003. I'm a renaissance man when it comes to gaming. :roll:

[Johnny Rotten]

Argh. I have a baaaaaad feeling this title is going to rip apart my 1.4 ghz tbird/Ti200/133mhz sdram rig. :cry:

Not...upgrading...until spring. Must...wait.... for Doom3...

[Brent]

I just got it myself today :)

http://www.speedguide.net/~brent/ut2k3/1.jpg

http://www.speedguide.net/~brent/ut2k3/2.jpg

[Brent]

wow, the music for ut2k3 is pretty awesome

my favorites are:

Intro Music, Jugs-Entrance, KR-Chemical Burn, KR-DM1, KR-Infiltrate, KR-Sniper-Time, Level2, Level3, Level13, Mercs-Entrance

and of course all the others are great too

best music i've heard in a while in a game

[Brent]

Here's my screenies

Frame Rates are shown, some places the fps dropped in the 20's... otherwise it was above 30, playble, but not the smoothest

System specs:

ABIT BD7-II RAID
P4 2.4B OC'd 150x18 = 2.7Ghz
512MB DDR at 150FSB Cas2.5
Radeon 9700 Pro oc'd to 350Mhz core latest 6178 drivers
WinXP
UT2K3 Full Version

ALL detail settings were set to ULTRAHIGH, everything was at it's highest quality setting, 2X AA and 16X Quality AF were enabled on the 9700 Pro.

http://www.speedguide.net/~brent/ut2k3/

[Johnny Rotten]

A 9700Pro and a 2.7 ghz P4 and you're only getting mid 20 to high 30 fps? Am I reading that right?

Ouch.

[Brent]

A 9700Pro and a 2.7 ghz P4 and you're only getting mid 20 to high 30 fps? Am I reading that right?

Ouch.

yeppers...

in gameplay it hovers around 40fps avg...

depends on the map and location though, sometimes drops to 20fps sometimes goes up to 60fps, heh

now keep in mind i have very high quality settings, 12x10 32bit, UltraHigh everything, 2X AA 16X Quality AF, Trilinear, Triplebuffer, Lod = 0 and MinFPS is set to 0 so that's why it will dip down so low... i could set the min fps to like 35 and then it would be more smooth... but for these shots i wanted the absolute best IQ regardless of FPS...

i don't know why in Face the fps dropped so low though... i gotta play around with it more

[John Reynolds]

i don't know why in Face the fps dropped so low though... i gotta play around with it more

I have the same problem with Face3. . .that map just crushes the fps.

[Babel-17]

ReduceMouseLag=True (default) and hardware accelerated EAX are two settings that suck up lots of cycles (number of channels is a hit also). World Detail at the highest setting eats a few also. I find the game bug free but I suspect performance was sacrificed to ensure a stable release .... time was running out. Ogl is looking very promising with the retail version.

I pity reviewers who plan on including benchmarks. :) The default 'bot matches are sensitive to settings changes.

[Seiko]

Well UT2003 really is just that. Another copy of UT with enhanced textures. I'm sure I'll get a lot of stick for this but ultimately I'm not impressed. 2 years of waiting and an upgraded rig for this game and for what? What to me feels and plays as an upgrade pack. As an existing UT user I don't feel I've been taken into consideration. I'm sure the new generation of players playing for the first time will fall off their chairs but as a veteran, it's a big let down. Before anyone tries to jump all over me I'm not saying the Team didn't put a huge amount of effort into this but to me it's all been put into the wrong areas. Faults range from little to no level interaction, none destructible lights/ scenery. Revamped maps as opposed to new ones. Massivley CPU dependant. Poor animation. New and awful game types. Of course I'm sure someone can list a whole sleuth of great features but from my perspective it's a flop :(

I will try and continue playing for my own sake, Unreal and UT have added greatly to my FPS experience but overall I think this really is the end of the line for the UT theme. Weird thing is I actually hope they prove me wrong.


BTW, after that slating is it even worth me mentioning my OpenGL rendering issues?

[Dave Baumann]

I've just picked this up today and I must say 3 Gig of disk space????

[Gollum]

Welcome to the brave new world of high-res meshes and textures Dave... ;)