Review: Unreal Tournament 2003 on Linux

Game by Epic and Digital Extremes

November 6, 2002 -- Review by A.T. Hun

I was thrilled when Epic's Mark Rein first announced the news that Unreal Tournament 2003 was going to be available for Linux, not just as a server, but also as a client! Even more amazing, the installer would be on the UT2K3 discs instead of a separate download! Rapture! Epic enlisted Ryan "icculus" Gordon to do the port. As usual, he did fantastic work.

Review System

Here are the specs for my box. I'm running Mandrake 9.0 on an Athlon XP 1800+ with 256M PC2100. I'm using a GeForce3 Ti200 and a SoundBlaster Audigy with the latest available drivers. My hard drive is a Western Digital WD400BB-32CAA1. My CD drive is a Sony CRX140E 8x/4x/32x burner.

Installation

The installation process is pretty simple. There is a script called linux_installer.sh on the game's Disc Three. Mount the CD and run that script as root. That brings up the familiar Loki installer to do all the dirty work. Most of the installation went flawlessly. There were only a few caveats.

I disabled Mandrake's supermount because I hate it (it sounds like some Playboy channel cartoon superhero to me) and it gives the Loki installer grief. Just use mount/umount when swapping discs. Due to a problem right before the game went gold, the installer looks for "Play Disc," "Disc One," and "Disc Two." The discs are actually named "Disc One," "Disc Two," and "Disc Three." A minor annoyance. For some reason, the installer kept trying to access my floppy drive. I tossed a write-protected floppy into it to get the installer to cut it out. Also, make sure to add the dashes when typing in your CD key, otherwise the game won't run.

The installation takes an incredibly long time, even on my Athlon XP with a reasonbly fast drive. It unpacks three gigs of data off three CDs. For me, mounting and umounting discs as quickly as I could, the installation took exactly 24 minutes. Pack a lunch.

Gameplay

I'm not going to get the basic gameplay too much. Tons of other reviews can fill you in on that. Suffice it to say that the game runs very nicely, assuming you have the hardware to run it. The game requires video cards that can handle S3TC compression. As of this writing, only NVIDIA's binary drivers support that although I understand that ATI is working on it.

The OpenGL renderer isn't as speedy as its Direct3D counterpart, but it does the job. The in-game music is not affected by the corresponding slider in the options. It's either on or off. I usually keep it off so that isn't a problem for me. Since no audio drivers in Linux support hardware 3D acceleration, those options don't change anything.

Otherwise, the game plays the same as in Windows. I have not had any crashing issues. There was one minor problem with starting a single-player campaign that was fixed in the first patch. I played through the single-player game and have played online a bit. All in all, it's been bulletproof. Kudos to icculus!

The very best part about the Linux version is that, unlike the Windows version, you don't have to have the CD in the drive. Thus, you don't have to deal with the CD copy protection beating on your drive and delaying the loading of the game. While the gameplay seems to be faster in Windows, level loading seems to be faster in Linux.

The Loki updater also does a very fine job of finding and installing the latest patches. It is point and shoot. Utterly painless. The only problems I've heard with it have been related to people who use Debian Unstable or Slackware with the latest glibc updates. I hear that version of glibc breaks more than just the Loki updater, though.

Final Comments

Overall, I'd like to thank Epic for bringing this sweet new game to Linux. I know that companies will rarely, if at all, make any money off Linux ports. Their attitude was basically if we are going to ask Linux users to run servers, they should be able to play the game too! My hat is off to you! Hopefully more companies will follow Epic and id's lead and make their games available for us Linux fans.

If I had to give it a score, I'd give it a 9 out of 10. The graphics are gorgeous. It will really show off your video card's capabilities. My only gripe is that the OpenGL renderer is not quite up to speed with its D3D counterpart. Basically it's a very solid shooter that is beautiful to look at. The Master and I will be playing the new Bombing Run gametype for a long time.

If you like shooters, run Linux, and have the hardware to handle it, get Unreal Tournament 2003. You'll be glad you did. Now if you will excuse me, I hear my flak cannon calling me . . .