Here is what I can say:

1. I love the RAVE Version on Rage128 MacOS9...the colors are so vibrant, but there are some glitches due to porting problem, but it plays so fluid on G4-Cube! (no Hires-Textures possible)
2. On PC with no S3TC capable GFX-Card like my Matrox G550, I play it via D3D because of the working gamma-control and I activate the highres-texture option which gives me a sort of overlay to textures.
3. On PC with S3TC capable gfx-card I use the S3TC textures from the UT99 cd and convert then so that they can be used on unreal. On modern machines/gfx cards there are patches required to get these S3TC textures to display correctly.

I can't say anything to modern texture-packs or upgrades with newerer renderer for DX8 and above. I am oldskool you know 😉

There are still missing effects in Unreal when using the stock Direct3D and OpenGL renderers, even with the latest official patch. If you don't have any means of playing Unreal in Glide mode, I suggest using the OldUnreal fan patch on a modern system.

Alternatively, you may be able to use an older version of the fan-made UTGLR renderer on a retro system, but I haven't tried this personally.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-07-24, 13:36:

There are still missing effects in Unreal when using the stock Direct3D and OpenGL renderers, even with the latest official patch. If you don't have any means of playing Unreal in Glide mode, I suggest using the OldUnreal fan patch on a modern system.

Alternatively, you may be able to use an older version of the fan-made UTGLR renderer on a retro system, but I haven't tried this personally.

I do have a Voodoo 2 and will get a second one soon actually... maybe I should try that

It's probably gonna be more complicated than I thought to get this running

As a heads up, UnrealGoldPatch227i.7z did not work on Windows 98, it expects a newer operating system to boot.

So, still looking for the most recent version atm.

this should be the last official patch: https://unrealarchive.org/patches-updates/unr … inal/index.html

whether it's the "best" is debatable though, for instance somewhere along the line they changed the weapon sounds around. though it does have the D3D renderer from ut99 and that tends to work somewhat alright, and at least in ut99 it's possible to re-enable vertex fog and detail textures in the ini. still, compared to glide the D3D renderer tends to be overly bright by default.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-07-24, 13:36:

There are still missing effects in Unreal when using the stock Direct3D and OpenGL renderers, even with the latest official patch.

Can you please get into more detail on this. Thx!

dr.zeissler wrote on 2023-07-25, 15:39:

Can you please get into more detail on this. Thx!

Sure, here's an early game example.

At the very start, when you're exiting the first room through the ventilation shaft with the green fog, there's a junction where the pipes on the ceiling are leaking gas in two spots. Under Glide, the leaky gas is animated in both spots. In contrast, under the stock Direct3D and OpenGL renderers, only one leaky spot is animated, while the other one is visibly frozen in place (completely static). EDIT - added screenshot.

IIRC, the documentation of the fan made UTGLR renderer describes what's missing in the stock renderers in more detail. You might want to check that out too.

There were also some additional 'particle' effects in earlier versions, like the dispersion pistol trails. There was also once the ability to smoothly subdivide models ("CurvedSurfaces") that got regressed in an update (one early place to check is the corpse at the start)

IIRC the new sound effects changes happened around 218-220.

When Unreal gained multitexture in GlideDrv, the lighting got darker (because it was blended differently). Later patches try to shift the lightmap a bit but it's nowhere near as volumnous as it were before the multitexture change. (Voodoo Graphics and Banshee may not be affected.)

I had no idea UT99 had such a complicated history regarding its patch level. Maybe there should be a table describing the changes across time? I love UT99 like many here so this thread is pretty interesting to me.

To add my small piece of history, my friends and I stored a copy of UT99 on a Novell Netware server in high school. It was buried somewhere the admins wouldn't look for it, granted that's not really secure in any way, but it worked. We'd download it to the client machines and run LAN matches before class started. It was one of my favorite gaming memories. This was in the late 2000s (2006-2010) so UT99 was old by then but it ran smoothly on the various Dell Optiplex + Dell CRT systems we had on hand. Many many matches were had and I honed my skills with my classmates. :)

Cosmic wrote on 2023-07-25, 21:56:

I had no idea UT99 had such a complicated history regarding its patch level. Maybe there should be a table describing the changes across time? I love UT99 like many here so this thread is pretty interesting to me.

To add my small piece of history, my friends and I stored a copy of UT99 on a Novell Netware server in high school. It was buried somewhere the admins wouldn't look for it, granted that's not really secure in any way, but it worked. We'd download it to the client machines and run LAN matches before class started. It was one of my favorite gaming memories. This was in the late 2000s (2006-2010) so UT99 was old by then but it ran smoothly on the various Dell Optiplex + Dell CRT systems we had on hand. Many many matches were had and I honed my skills with my classmates. 😀

i had no idea too, just had the CD and played it now and then, i can see differences but the game is fun, not sure what can be added to it over the version i have

nice story too, stuff like that creates fun memories

I just played through on a similar spec to yours in D3D mode using patch 226 Final from Epic. Be sure to set your windows desktop color depth to 32 bit. Widescreen (1280x720) was available in the game video options which all worked fine. In the game's advanced options, enable all the high res and detail options, and switch off paletted textures.
I wouldn't worry the small differences between renderers and patch versions. Game looks and plays great in widescreen 32bit and a decent resolution.
I played this back in the day both in software mode and later on voodoo 2, so it's not as if everyone had a uniform experience back then. It's a great game and although it does sag a bit in the middle it's worth seeing through.

Oldunrealer here, nowdays we're testing the 228k of Unreal Gold :p

For UT: https://github.com/OldUnreal/UnrealTournamentPatches

Did I get that right, the (ultimate unreal) version with all content intact and no modified lieghtning/colorsheme and original soundeffects
is the original PC-Version up to 219? while playing/using glide mode right?

If you prefer the maximum fidelity there's always the software renderer :p

Don't bother with "227" or "469".

If you have Unreal Gold, it doesn't need a patch. UTGLR can be coaxed to build against the 226 public headers and will give you a better behaved OpenGLDrv. If you intend on playing with Glide cards, you can just do so as-is. If you have the retail copy of Unreal 1 (that's usually version 200 or something) then just install the 225f patch on it. Though I have 224 installed specifically to build my mods and maps on, a lot of mods were built under 225f and expect it as a minimum.

UT just needs to be patched to 436. You can use the "nodelta" variant of the 436 patch to forcefully patch your install to 436 without having to deal with needing "original files". A good example of this problem is if you have a OEM copy of UT from a Creative sound card, which is pre-patched to some specific version (I think 428?) and will never work with the original patches because it expects a un-tampered with retail CD.

The problem is that there are no 226 Unreal 1 servers to play on... and 227 does not work on windows 98

Any workarounds for that?

d3vilsadvocate wrote on 2023-07-29, 09:07:

The problem is that there are no 226 Unreal 1 servers to play on... and 227 does not work on windows 98

Any workarounds for that?

IMO, you don't really lose much by playing OldUnreal instead of using real hardware. I recently replayed Unreal Gold on my retro rig (AthlonXP + Voodoo 3 + Aureal Vortex 2), and after that, I went through the Na Pali expansion using OldUnreal (227i). The OldUnreal experience was excellent, all graphical effects rendered correctly, and even the sound positioning using OpenAL (hardware) was pretty good with an X-Fi Titanium sound card.

I guess if you really want the Galaxy3D sound engine with the original (non-UT) sounds and the lighting from the unpatched, retail version of Unreal, then real hardware still has an edge there. Personally, I don't care about that kind of minutiae with regards to Unreal, but to each their own.

The "new" UT (469c) has Cluster, the heir of Galaxy (if you are interested in it)

[Galaxy.GalaxyAudioSubsystem]
UseDirectSound=False
UseFilter=True
UseSurround=False
UseStereo=True
UseCDMusic=False
UseDigitalMusic=True
UseSpatial=False
UseReverb=True
Use3dHardware=False
LowSoundQuality=False
ReverseStereo=False
Latency=40
OutputRate=44100Hz
EffectsChannels=32
DopplerSpeed=9000.000000
MusicVolume=48
SoundVolume=192
AmbientFactor=0.700000

[Cluster.ClusterAudioSubsystem]
UseCDMusic=False
UseDigitalMusic=True
CDMusicVolumeFactor=1.000000
MusicVolume=128
SoundVolume=255
EffectsChannels=32
AudioDeviceGuid=
EmulateGalaxyMusic=True

d3vilsadvocate wrote on 2023-07-29, 09:07:

The problem is that there are no 226 Unreal 1 servers to play on...

There's no 226 servers because 226 should NEVER be used to host a server. You can join a server being hosted on 224 or 225 with either 226 versions. (Unreal Gold, or Retail Unreal patched to 226f)

227 had a "Allow old clients" option but this always resulted in extremely stupid problems, especially if someone compiled a mod under 227 instead of 224 or 225.

As far as I know, Zora still hosts her servers using 225f. (Her "KeyCoop" which is played on deathmatch levels I think?, and regular co-op servers one of which runs only custom levels instead of the standard Unreal 1 maps)

If I ever found it in me to complete everything I've left on hiatus, my own server would be using 225f and can be joined by pretty much anybody except anyone using 224.