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Unreal Tournament 2007, or UT2007, codenamed Envy, is part of the Unreal series of games and is the sequel to 2004's Unreal Tournament 2004. Using Unreal Engine 3, it is a first-person shooter video game designed mainly for multiplayer gaming, although the game has a built in single-player mode that mimics multiplayer gaming by featuring AI-bots. Unreal Tournament 2007 (abbreviated "UT2007") is set to be released for Windows PC and PlayStation 3 in 2006. Macintosh and Linux versions are not yet confirmed, but considered likely since Epic's lead Mac and Linux programmer has stated that the Unreal Engine 3 editing tools are designed to run on Mac and Linux. The game is developed by Epic Games and will be published by Midway Games. UT2007 will utilise the Unreal Engine 3.0, and will feature many of the modes from the previous games in the series. Not returning, however, will be the Bombing Run, Domination, and Assault gametypes. They will be replaced by a new gametype called "Unreal Warfare", which will feature vehicles and accommodate a large numbers of players.

The first version of the game will be the Windows version, with the console versions following later.

Development

In a similar manner to Half-Life 2, the levels of UT2007 are being developed with simple building blocks, with artwork to be added afterwards, so as to focus on improving gameplay. Lead designer, Steve Polge, claims "We're not trying to make a prettier UT2K4. We're really trying to make a very new game." A larger emphasis is also being placed on AI. The bots in UT2007 will be able to understand simple voice commands; while they will not understand speech as well as a human, Polge states you will be able to "have some sort of conversational vibe with it". All of the current (employed) developers for this next installment are under a non-disclosure agreement, which means that they cannot release much information about Unreal Tournament 2007 or its game engine.

The Next UEd

Note: A lot of the information supplied in the following paragraph is speculative.

The next UEd, or Unreal Editor will have changed a lot compared to its predecessor. UEd is the program that comes with all Unreal Tournament games. It allows anyone to edit and create custom content for the game. One main feature will be an in-editor play button, which means that mappers will be able to test their content whilst editing it, something not possible to do in the current UEd. Also, there will be a visual scripting interface, allowing those with little/no programming knowledge to create their own mods easily. UConstruct

Gameplay

The following game modes have been confirmed:

• Deathmatch
• Team Deathmatch
• Capture the Flag
• Onslaught - Essentially a team deathmatch type of gameplay played on a huge map where the object is to destroy, capture and hold key power nodes. The gameplay is very similar to the conquest gametype of Battlefield 1942, however, after capturing key nodes you must destroy your enemy's power core. Vehicles are extremely critical in onslaught mode. This mode was introduced in UT2004.
• Unreal Warfare (formerly known as Conquest) - New to UT2007, maps will be potentially as large as three Onslaught maps, and will have objectives similar to Assault maps. A limited form of resource management will exist in the form of tarydium mines or fields that must be captured; the more your team captures, the faster you can build vehicles and turrets, and the more bunkers you have the more tarydium you will need. Bunkers will possibly serve a similar purpose to power nodes in Onslaught.

Weapons

The following weapons have been confirmed:

• Impact Hammer - returning from its absence in UT2003 and UT2004.
• Dual Enforcers
• Canister Gun - has three firing modes: Grenade Launcher, Mine Layer and Bio Rifle.
• Shock Rifle
• Link Gun
• Stinger - this weapon, previously seen in Unreal and Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict, will replace the Minigun.
• Flak Cannon
• Rocket Launcher
• AVRiL
• Sniper Rifle
• Translocator
• Redeemer
• Target Painter - will have an effect specific to the map it is used on.

The game may also feature deployable devices such as security cameras but not much is known about these yet.

Vehicles

The following vehicles have been confirmed:

• The Manta hovercraft
• The Raptor fighter
• The Scorpion buggy - The Scorpion now has an enclosed cockpit, and has been changed to fire rockets instead of bolas. It has a speed-boost function that allows long jumps off of ramps, and which also works as a kamikaze self-destruct if the player ejects from the cockpit. Side-blades remain, but now extend from under the nose of the vehicle instead of near the back.

• The Hellbender
• The Cicada gunship
• The SPMA mobile artillery
• The Paladin tank
• The Goliath tank - The new Goliath now has treads that handle more realistically.
• The Leviathan
• A hoverboard - A skateboard-like fast way to get around a map, especially if you attach yourself to another vehicle to be towed. But while being towed you are unable to use your weapons.
• A spider-walker of some kind (a Necris vehicle) able to fire over a hill and then quickly duck down again.

All nine original vehicles in Unreal Tournament 2004 (including the Editor's Choice Edition vehicles) are to return. These will be known as the "Axon" vehicles.

There are also supposed to be nine new "Necris" vehicles, with very different (possibly alien-like) styling and unusual behaviors. But they are intended to be a good balance against the equivalent Axon vehicles.

Graphics Engine

Unreal Tournament 2007 graphics engine is created by Unreal Engine 3 for next generation consoles and for PC's Direct X 9. Unreal Engine 3 is the

Visual Features

• 64-bit color High Dynamic Range rendering pipeline. The gamma-correct, linear color space renderer provides for immaculate color precision while supporting a wide range of post processing effects such as light blooms, lenticular halos, and depth-of-field.

• Support for all modern per-pixel lighting and rendering techniques including normal mapped, parameterized Phong lighting; custom artist controlled per material lighting models including anisotropic effects; virtual displacement mapping; light attenuation functions; pre-computed shadow masks; directional light maps; and pre-computed bump-granularity self-shadowing using spherical harmonic maps.
  • Advanced Dynamic Shadowing. Unreal Engine 3 provides full support for four shadowing techniques:
  • Dynamic stencil buffered shadow volumes supporting fully dynamic, moving light sources casting accurate shadows on all objects in the scene.
  • Dynamic characters casting dynamic soft, fuzzy shadows on the scene using 16X-oversampled shadow buffers.

• Ultra high quality and high performance pre-computed shadow masks allow offline processing of static light interactions, while retaining fully dynamic specular lighting and reflections.

• Directional Light Mapping enables the static shadowing and diffuse normal-mapped lighting of an unlimited number of lights to be precomputed and stored into a single set of texture maps, enabling very large light counts in high-performance scenes.

• All of the supported shadow techniques are visually compatible and may be mixed freely at the artist's discretion, and may be combined with colored attenuation functions enabling properly shadowed directional, spotlight, and projector lighting effects.

• Powerful material system, enabling artists to create arbitrarily complex realtime shaders on-the-fly in a visual interface that is comparable in power to the non-realtime functionality provided by Maya.

• The material framework is modular, so programmers can add not just new shader programs, but shader components which artists can connect with other components on-the-fly, resulting in dynamic composition and compilation of shader code.

• Full support for seamlessly interconnected indoor and outdoor environments with dynamic per-pixel lighting and shadowing supported everywhere.

• Artists can build terrain using a dynamically-deformable base height map extended by multiple layers of smoothly-blended materials including displacement maps, normal maps and arbitrarily complex materials, dynamic LOD-based tessellation, and vegetation layers with procedurally-placed meshes. Further, the terrain system supports artist-controlled layers of procedural weathering, for example, grass and vegetation on the flat areas of terrain, rock on high slopes, and snow at the peaks.

• Volumetric environmental effects including height fog.

• Extensible particle system with visual editor, supporting particle physics and environmental effects.

Gallery

External links

• The official UT2007 website
• UConstruct - UT2007 mapping (development) website
• The general Unreal Tournament website
• Unreal Engine 3
• BeyondUnreal UT2007 Info Page
• UT2007World - UT2007 Community
• Interview on development process
• Sony Conference E3 '05, Unreal 2007 video (Direct link to video) High Definition (windows media video format)
• PlanetUnreal's UT2007 Page
• UT2007 Mods and Tutorials - at the Mod DB

• 2006 computer and video games
• Unreal
• Xbox 360 games
• PlayStation 3 games
• Windows games
• Linux games