Hi all,
some days ago, when celebrating 10th anniversary of UT, I told you about "UT99 Extension Pack" (aka UT SDK), a UT development project aimed to update Epic Unreal Engine. Well, to whom interested in understanding the new graphic features, I advise to read the following fast page http://www.moddb....rnamentsdk and then the complete wiki page http://wiki.beyon...nsion_Pack
I've installed the demo version of the UT99 Extension Pack available on web site and this really set an improvement in gameplay performance.
I've tested the gain in performance playing on one of the most polygon-rich map available today for UT, "Apartment Block for Lease" (http://www.maprai...fileid=664), that maybe some of you knows as good map for freestyle sniper, imho a very funny map: without the SDK, the rendering was quite slow and the overall game really bad. After installing the SDK, the map became playable, even though not perfect.
I think that I can play on every -=CoN=- server map with no rendering problems just because of the SDK.
For those having a pc/notebook with old graphic cards like me (ATI Radeon Mobile 7000, 64MB), I think that installing the SDK is a nice way to improve the performance of the game without getting mad. Test it !
Anyway, to get a better graphic performance (and it seems also to resolve some problems related to UTDC), it's always useful to update the video drivers for UT. Here the link : http://www.cwdohn...
For those who are fearless and love experiments, there is also another interesting web site, www.omegadrivers.net, on which you can find special drivers to boost the performance of your graphic cards.
2 years ago I tried them for my desktop graphic card: UT really boosted (impressive, never like this !) but my pc crashed many times, so at your own risk and danger...
Unless someone has stepped in to complete this, development has stopped. The original author
working on this felt the game has was to close to death to save and gave up. Word to the wise,
those experimental drivers could cook your vid card if you aren't careful.
~Johnny Jones
Edited by Draco on 11-29-2009 11:51 AM
I'm not sure how you have seen a change. What you downloaded
off of that page was just the demo which consists of only one
map that that demo only works on. The good news is that it
seems that the development has continued.
~Johnny Jones
Edited by Draco on 11-29-2009 11:58 AM
Draco wrote:
I'm not sure how you have seen a change. What you downloaded
off of that page was just the demo which consists of only one
map that that demo only works on. The good news is that it
seems that the development has continued.
~Johnny Jones
It's funny to read at 11.50 that the development project has stopped and only seven minutes after that the same project has continued...
Anyway, the final public version of UT SDK was expected in 2009, but I think that it will be not completed this year, maybe in 2010 (as it 's written on web site, the progress of the project is about 65%...). I don't know now, and nobody knows now, if in future the project will be stopped definitively, for the present it goes on.
About I've seen after installing UT SDK, I can only say what I've seen with my eyes on my notebook: first, an improve in game performance on a map on which before I just couldn't play, second a better gameplay on other polygon-rich maps (for example Falkenstein).
My notebook was always the same, I didn't update the hardware with some new HDs, RAM or powerful video cards. The difference is only before and after installing UT SDK. That's what I can finally say. Luckily, I'am not subject to hallucinations...except when I play on Fractal with Buffalo_Bill !
