unreal posts

We haven't heard much from Epic Games lately. But is there a big announcement coming from the Unreal-Unreal Tournament-Gears of War developer? On Thursday, people who checked out Epic Games' forums saw this image above. However that image was taken down pretty quickly and it seems message threads about said image have been deleted from the message board.

What is it? Is it an announcement of a new Unreal game that got leaked before it should have? Perhaps an all new Epic Games project? Maybe even someone hacking into the forums and posting an image that means nothing? Even a news post about this image on the fan site Beyond Unreal was taken down (although the message board post is still there). We've emailed Epic to try to get a comment on just what might be going on.

Update: Our sister site Joystiq claims through their unnamed sources that the big announcement that might be tied into this image could be a version of Unreal Engine 3 priced so that regular consumers can purchase and use it. Meanwhile BeyondUnreal has now deleted the message board post where we got this image.

PC download sites are no longer waiting for the weekend to bring you some sales on their library of titles. Today GoG.com announced that all of their Unreal games in their library are now on sale for 15 percent off their normal price. Unreal Gold, Unreal Tournament GOTY, Unreal 2 The Awakening Special Edition and Unreal Tournament 2004 Editor's Choice Edition can be downloaded for $8.47 each until Monday at 11:59 am ET.

Over at GamersGate they have a similar deal all this week with games that come from publisher Buka. Their titles are available to download for between 50 and 75 percent off their normal price at GamersGate for this week only.

Finally Steam has added 17 new casual games from publisher iWin to their library. This week only all those games will be on sale for 25 percent off their normal Steam price. There's also some special bundle prices that reduce the price of those games even more.

The July 4 weekend is just a few days away and it looks like some downloadable PC game sites are getting a head-start on offering deals from their library of titles. Impulse has put several of their games on sale for the holiday period including a Sins of the Solar Empire bundle (with the original space strategy game and its mini-expansion Entrenchment) for $29.99. It has also put all of the Unreal franchise games on sale for 25 percent off.


Meanwhile Strategy First has put all of their games on sale for 50 percent off at their online store. This includes their "Take No Prisoners" bundle which has a whopping 20 games. During the sale you can get the bundle for a mere $34.99. The sale lasts until July 12.

Update: GamersGate has annouced they will put one game on sale on their site every day in July for at least 50 percent off. Here is the list of games for the first week:

July 1: Buccaneer: The Pursuit of Infamy - 75 percent
July 2: X-Com Complete - 50 percent
July 3: Atlantis Collection - 50 percent
July 4: Men of War - 60 percent
July 5: Arena Wars Reloaded - 50 percent
July 6: Painkiller Universe - 50 percent
July 7: Civilization IV: Colonization - 50 percent

As they usually do the downloadable game sites GoG.com and GamersGate are offering some price cuts on a few of their items this weekend. Over at GoG.com they have a special bundle promotion on the games Spellforce Platinum and The Guild Gold. You can get both games together for just $13.98, a 30 percent savings. If you own one of the games already you can get the other game for a $3 discount.

Over at Gamersgate they are selling all of the Unreal games for 15 percent off their normal prices. Also on sale this weekend is Sid Meier's Railroads, Sword of the Stars Complete Pack and Dark Sector. All of those titles are currently being sold for 50 percent off their normal GamersGate price.

Several weeks ago the GameTap downloadable site announced they would add Epic Games' Unreal franchise to their library. Today Gametap is expected to add both Unreal Gold and Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year edition to its premimum service sometime today.

GameTap's blog site has also revealed that their free game of the week feature finally returns after a several week hiatus. This week Total Overdose will be free to play for one week. Also GameTap has refreshed its regular free library with an all new list. The library includes titles like the original Operation Flashpoint, Commandos 3, Colin Mcrae Rally and BloodRayne. The blog site also has a list of upcoming free and premimum games that will be added to GameTap in the coming week.s

As the 1990s concluded, PC gaming continued its rise during 1998-1999, when some of the best games released. Hardware acceleration for game graphics increasingly common, online gaming gained popularity to the point where massively-multiplayer online games became an emergent genre. At the same time, we began to see signs that the Adventure game genre, a longtime cornerstone of PC gaming, was nearing its end.

It was perhaps the golden age of PC gaming and by the end of the 1990s it seems little could slow it down. While the new millennium hasn't been quite as kind as the last decade, it's still fun to look back on PC gaming to see how it progressed from the primitive 2D graphics at the beginning to the advanced 3D accelerated visual at the end of the 90s.

Click on the image above to read more of We Love The 90s (for PC Games): 1998-1999

Independent Minds aims to take various aspects of indie gaming and present them to you each week. From game round-ups to design elements to interviews with prominent members of the scene, it's an exploration of what makes indie gaming great as well as what makes someone an indie.

For the game developer, nothing is more important than the longevity of a game. Will people be playing your opus a year after release? Ten years after release? The answer should be yes, but the ways to extend the life of a game are often overlooked. There are many different methods to add replayability, including multiple story paths, procedurally generated content, and non-linear gameplay. However, the best way, and the one that has ensured the survival of games like Unreal Tournament or Half-Life, is allowing players to fiddle with the content themselves. The more your players can tweak the game, the more they will play it, and that's a lesson all developers should take to heart.

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

In the late 1990s, there were three big FPS franchises on the scene. There was, of course, the reigning champion Quake, and alongside it were newcomers Half-Life and Unreal. All three franchises were renowned for their ability for users to create modifications, cutting-edge graphics (at the time), and robust multiplayer support. However, in 1999 the Unreal franchise blew the minds of the FPS fan with Unreal Tournament. It quickly became one of the most played multiplayer games of all time and launched the Unreal Tournament franchise, which has been one of the benchmarks of multiplayer FPS gaming for the past 10 years. With the release of Unreal Tournament 3's free expansion, it's a good time to take a look at the game that originated the series.

Last week's revamp of the Gametap PC game download site wasn't a smooth one and it appears that the issues are continuing to affect the level of customer service for the site. Gametap's blog site reports they have gotten a lot more "tickets" with issues from their from their users than they predicted. As the site states, "As a result of this exceptionally high volume, we have been unable to respond immediately to every ticket that is sent into our system." Some of them include problems with canceling an account, not being assigned to the correct Game Package and password issues.

The blog site states, " . . . we will be making every effort to return to an acceptable Service Level Agreement once we are over this hurdle." In the meantime the service is still adding games. Earlier last week GameTap announced it was adding over a dozen games from publisher Focus Home Interactive. Today Epic Games announced that the entire Unreal series, including Unreal Tournament 3, would be added to both Gametap and the company's European branch Metaboli.

By John Gaudiosi

Epic Games gave Big Download an exclusive first look at the latest advances in its Unreal Engine 3 technology at its studio in Cary NC last week. Tim Sweeney, chief executive officer and technical director of Epic Games, talks about what impact new features like Unreal Lightmass, Unreal MCP and the new Unreal Content Browser will have on both the developers working on new titles and the actual games created by UE3.

To showcase Unreal Lightmass, a new global illumination solver, Epic used a demo of the Sponza palace in Israel. Sponza illustrates how Lightmass renders color bleeding on the screen and illustrates effects like translucent and meshed shadows. The technology also supports emissive materials.

Sweeney said Unreal Lightmass produces high-quality static lighting with next-generation effects, such as: soft shadows with accurate penumbrae; diffuse and specular interreflection; and color bleeding. The result is higher quality lighting, while retaining full compatibility with UE3's existing lighting and shadowing features.