Epic Games and Intel have partnered up to bring us the “$1 Million Make Something Unreal Contest.” The companies are asing aspiring game developers to come up with their own mods for Unreal Tournament III (PC version only; sorry PS3 owners) in the form of environments, gameplay, weapons, vehicles, and more; though full-conversion mods probably have the best chance. Winners will be selected in several categories with prizes including Intel Software Development Products and Velocity Micro PCs, as well as the grand prize of one Unreal Engine 3 license. Judging will begin in June with four preliminary phases until the grand final prizes are awarded in Fall of 2009.

But this is actually something for all of us PC gamers to pay attention too, whether we enter the contest or not. Why? Well the last time this contest was held, the winner was a game called “Red Orchestra,” which eventually made its way to retail and helped found Tripwire Studios. With a cool million worth of prizes at stake, you can bet some of the hidden best and brightest modders are going to start coming out of the woodwork. Besides that, since the prize is essentially the means to start your own development studio, the top ones are sure to be works of passion from the developers. And all the mods created for this competition will be made available online absolutely free. In other words, we’re probably going to start getting some good games next year for free. For more information, be sure to check out the contest’s official site.

Via Press Release

As Jonathan reported earlier, the new (free!) map pack for Unreal Tournament 3 is now available for download from the PlayStation Store. You’ll get Facing Worlds and two other maps I couldn’t care less about because Facing Worlds is the greatest thing ever, courtesy of Epic Games and Midway. That sure is awfully nice of them, and it makes me wonder if we’ll get to see a similar pack for free on Xbox 360 once the game gets moved over to Microsoft’s box.

Turok also is getting the downloadable content treatment today, although it’s not free. $4.99 will net you five new maps (although that statement might not hold true if you don’t view changes in time of day as constituting a “new” map).

$8.99 is the asking price of the new flOw bundle, which simply includes the full game and its expansion pack. Nothing new about the actually content, but if you want to take the plunge with flOw, this is the way to do it.

For the next two weeks (until April 15) you’ll find Warhawk on sale for just $29.99, $10 cheaper than it normally costs. You can use that saved money to buy some of the downloadable content that’s been released for the game since last August, or maybe you can just change paces and pick up that flOw bundle.

Videos, themes, Rock Band tracks, and an update to High Stakes: Poker Edition are also new on the Store. Hit the break for the full list of content. Read the full article »

You might think that Microsoft’s lawyers are moving quickly to rob every penny from the individual responsible for creating the Master Chief character model in Unreal Tournament 3, but you’d be wrong. As it turns out, what serves as an homage to the Halo series is being treated just as that – not as an act of copyright infringement.

A Microsoft attorney that goes by the alias “DonkeyXote” writes on his Windows Live blog:

Many people are talking about the Master Chief mod for Unreal Tournament 3, that allows you to play in the character of the Master Chief on the PS3. Many people are surprised Microsoft is “allowing” this.

Actually it’s nothing more than the Game Content Usage Rules in action. When these were developed, people all thought they were focused on machinima. The truth is that while they do address machinima they also allow for a lot of other things. Mods like this are one of them. The developers aren’t selling the mod, they’re not monetizing Microsoft’s IP, they’re just creating something to share their love of the Master Chief on a new platform. It’s a great thing for us and a great thing for the gaming community. And much though I love my friends at Epic, Unreal Tournament isn’t Halo. This will also remind people of just how great the Halo games are and remind them that if they’re done with the user-created faux-Halo experience, the real Halo is available only on the Xbox 360. And no one is taking characters from PlayStation games (do they even have any games?) and putting them on our platform…

Aside from the annoyingly anti-Sony, Halo-is-the-best-thing-ever sentiment that he has, I’m glad to see Microsoft isn’t seeking to put a stop to this. One has t wonder what Microsoft would do if Halo levels were replicated in UT3, which seems like more of a “when” rather than an “if.” Writing that, I feel as if I’m about to be barraged with links to different Halo-inspired UT3 maps.

Midway and Epic Games have announced that three new maps are now available for download for Unreal Tournament III on the PS3 and PC. As icing on the cake, it turns out this new content is 100% free for both versions of the game (take that microtransactions). PC users can download the maps by clicking the link below, while PS3 users can find them on the Playstation Network. The three maps include Morbias, Facing Worlds, and Searchlight:

Morbias is the deathmatch arena that started it all, perfectly suited for anything from small intense duels to chaotic free-for-all matches.  The Unreal Tournament classic, Facing Worlds was one of the most played maps in gaming history.  This beloved sniper map makes its return alongside an intricate new capture the flag map, Searchlight, designed for both z-axis rooftop runs and strategic indoor gameplay.

Maybe this will convince more people to jump on this woefully underappreciated game.

Via Press Release

Epic Games has announced that a number of the top titles from their library (i.e. almost all the Unreal games) are now available to purchase and download over Steam. They’re now offering Unreal Gold, Unreal II, and all the Unreal Tournament games, including the newest Unreal Tournament III. That’s not so impressive. What is impressive however is that all of these games can now be bought together as the “Unreal Deal Pack,” which includes the entire Unreal collection for $59.99. There’s also a 10% discount running for a limited time on all the individual games as well as the bundle (so you can get it for $53.95 at the moment).

“Epic is a leading developer of game engine technology and has produced some of my favorite games of all time,” said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. “It’s an honor to be working with them and offering their current and classic titles to the millions of Steam gamers around the world.”

Not a bad deal for some of the top games of all time. I wonder if Gears of War will end up on there eventually.

Via Press Release

For most of us in the South Eastern part of the United States, March has indeed come rolling in like a lamb, which according to old wives tales and the Farmer’s Almanac means that it will be going out like a lion. So, if instead of wanting to go outside and enjoy the crisp air and the wonderful sunshine while you can -you would rather sit at your computer and play a few demos and get the latest patches, or just lay about in your favorite chair, who am I to scold you for it?

This week we received the following demos: Journeys of the Dragon Rider, Penumbra: Black Plague (updated), Light of Dreams, Strategic Command 2: Blitzkrieg and a few others you can check out here.

Patches for the week included: Conquer Online, UT3, Frontlines: Fuels of War, Fantasy Wars, Enemy Territories: Quake Wars and a few more that can be found here.

Happy Gaming!

The sort of creativity and ingenuity that modders exhibit on a consistent basis never ceases to amaze me. Most recently, the mod wowing me is the one seen above – a level designed inside of Unreal Tournament 3 where everything is constructed from LEGOs. Better yet, it’s a destructible world made of LEGOs, so you can blow apart buildings, vehicles and bystanders, only to watch them crumble in hilarious LEGO fashion.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that a few of us like LEGOs, but I mean come on – how cool is this? I know there are LEGO games out there (of the official and unofficial flavor), but to do this through the confines of a mod is pretty incredible. Better yet, thanks to the PlayStation 3 version’s mod support, you can experience this on either the PC or PS3.

Microsoft, get your act together and let this sort of stuff happen on your console.

Download it here.

via Evil Avatar

If nothing else, this rumor will give your eyebrows a workout as they rise up when it’s suggested that Microsoft is poised to purchase Epic Games. This rumor is being reported on by GamePro, according to dBTechno.com, and suggests that the price would be a cool $1 billion. Epic is of course the developer of Gears of War and Unreal Tournament, as well as the oft-used Unreal Engine.

While Epic as a company has yet to respond to the rumors officially, VP Mark Rein sent an email response to develop, stating, “I have not seen the actual GamePro article but if they’re going to make predictions about us selling Epic we would prefer if they started at $2 billion.” What makes $2 billion the magic number?  Rein said, “Because we don’t want anyone thinking that we’re cheap. ”

Rein’s sarcasm aside, we can’t really shoot down this rumor outright – Microsoft Game Studios have seen quite a few defections recently, and it seems quite clear that Microsoft needs to somehow bolster its first party lineup. Ensuring that Gears of War remains exclusive to the 360 (and PC) doesn’t seem like a bad way of doing just that.

via Xbox 360 Fanboy

CliffyB seems to have caused quite a mess with his comments that PC gaming is in “disarray,” but in other corners of the Internet (does the Internet have corners? then how does the globe have corners?), Mark Rein sat down with Gameplayer to discuss Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War, and the Unreal Engine.

So where do you see the limitations [of Unreal Engine 3] coming in? At which point do you start thinking you need to move onto the next engine?

Well there’s so much more further to go with this generation. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are really only in their infancy and we’re going to make a couple of more games for them. It’s not a case of next game/next engine. You can see we have brought UTIII out and we are doing cool stuff on these systems so we are with it for the near future now. We do have a research project for the next engine but that’s just Tim Sweeney writing bits of formulas on paper [laughs]. We won’t be seeing any changes until we see changes in the console technology. So who knows? It could be five years; we don’t have a clear time-frame for it. But we are working closely with Intel on projects and an engine down the road that’ll really take advantage of that.

So with UT out the door it’ll be pretty quiet for you guys next year?

We’ll just have to wait and see. You know how it is – people are like ‘you just did Gears of War, when’s the sequel out?’ We’re still working on the first one guys! Now we’ll be working on stuff for UT. For us it isn’t a case of ‘we’ve put our game out, it’s time to move on’. Putting our game out is one step in supporting our game. That’s the public step. Now the game is out we have to watch what happens next. That’s all about the way we roll. We see the game as just being the start of the user experience and we’re working more and more around the mod contents. But it’s a case of getting this game out, seeing what people can do with it and working from there.

I wouldn’t put much stock in Rein’s comments that it could be five years before the next generation of consoles or Unreal Engine; it sounds more like the first number that came to mind rather than some secret he knows.

I also wouldn’t put too much stock in the idea that Epic’s not working on Gears of War 2. We know it’s coming, Mark. Don’t you play coy.

The usual fanboy wars are ultimately a major exercise in futility (and idiocy… and a lot of other things), but when you hear a bigwig like Epic Games’ Mark Rein, it’s worth listening to. In an interview with Guardian Unlimited, Rein was asked if he thought consoles were catching up to PCs in terms of the FPS genre, which has traditionally been stronger on PC.

His response:

I’m a real fan of the PC, but yes, consoles are definitely stealing a lot of hardcore gamers from the PC. When Call of Duty 4 came out, I heard some of our guys sitting around talking about the great game they’d had last night and I’m like, ‘Hey guys, what server are you playing on? I’d love to come and join you,’ and they said, ‘Just send us a friends request,’ It was at that point I realized they were all playing it on console. Plus, the sales of the console versions are something like ten times the sales of the PC versions.

With that in mind, you’ve got to think that Mark Rein is happy that they brought Unreal Tournament 3 to PS3 and (hopefully, in the future) Xbox 360.

via Next Gen