Extracting the rest of the fun out of Unreal Tournament 3

(tags game, Unreal Tournament, FPS, failure, programming, quotation)

Well Saturday afternoon was altogether a disappointment on the Unreal Tournament 3 front. I can't play UT3 and have fun at the same time because of my slow computer Project Sugar. For example, on the first campaign map, which is just one-on-one deathmatch with your character's sister "Jester", my computer freezes then revives then freezes, in about 2 minute intervals. If I turn off the ATI video card "VPU Crash Utility", I can complete the map but with these painful 30 second black screen interruptions. :-( Never mind that the graphics are rendered at 320x200 with double-sizing and the mouse feels laggy. At least I can log in with my "CD-KEY" so its not pre-h4XX0r'd.

So I decided to see what else I can do. I ran the Credits, probably the last thing I would do if ever. Now I know why the install directory is 6+ GB. There's pictures of all the developer and artists in there. Heh.

Tim Sweeney: "It is easier to change the world than to adapt to it."

Tim Sweeney is one of my personal programmer heros. I would personally rank him over John Carmack because the former is frequently thinking about higher-level programming idioms as well as making game engines. Well it's my humble opinion that making programming easier for people has more priority than tuning to the machine. Maybe this is an ivory tower versus everyman battle, since John Carmack is also very inspirational with his code-for-all open-source stance.

I was a bit surprised with his low-key presence in UT3. Then again he's reportedly off in the clouds thinking about the next game engine, Unreal Engine 4.

Instead of thanking his support, Sweeney chose to be inspiring. This seems to be a rephrasing of a George Bernard Shaw quote: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man." Go progress!

Cliff Bleszinski: "Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."

Cliff Bleszinski is also one of my heroes, not just because we share first names. He's a gamer turned game dev and is really good at map flow, speeches and hyping. But I don't know if he programs or what. I do know he's pretty artistic with his CliffyB's Ownage Map selections from UT99 and UT2004 (sadly dead link?). His quote is acutally directly lifted from H.L. Mencken. I still wonder why Mencken said that originally.

In any case, UT3 will be sitting on my hard drive unused. And, no I can't extract the music because its locked up. Looks like I'll have to buy the soundtrack. Whoa, this site has all the soundtracks I have been wanting recently, Halo 3, UT3, and Mass Effect.