Linux

Information and tips for running Unreal Tournament under Linux

Brief History

A Linux version of Unreal Tournament was originally planned, but not ready in time to be included alongside the Windows release. Epic open sourced the unfinished code for UT under Linux shortly after the game's debut. This code was quickly adopted by a few developers who started the [OpenUT] project on SourceForge. This later became a joint effort with [Loki Software] to produce a [Linux installer] and binaries for the game. OpenUT is no longer maintained, since January 2001. Loki is now bankrupt. See the [OpenUT FAQ] for more details on the history of the Linux version. The [Unreal Tournament Preservation Group] have taken over maintenance of the code base for UT with an agreement from Epic and are releasing patches for the Linux version as well.

Current Status

There exists both a patch and an installer for version 436 of UT under Linux. These are still available from mirror sites:

Note that installing the game under Linux requires a copy of the Windows Unreal Tournament game CD.

UTPG.org - version 451

The [UTPG] folks have released a Linux patch for version 451 of UT, which includes numerous security fixes, working webadmin, and Daniel Vogel's OpenGL driver.

Installation

Paraphrasing from the ut-install-436.run.README:

You must have 550MB free disk space
The Unreal Tournament game CD must be in your CD-ROM drive and mounted before running the installer.

example: mount /cdrom

As of November 2004: The UT Linux installer runs with only a little tweaking needed. Running the installer as suggested in the README using

sh ut-install-436.run

results in errors for both root and normal users.

Running the installer as root with the following options allows the installer to execute properly:

sh ut-install-436.run --keep --confirm

The installation should default to /usr/local/games/ut.

Note that you will have to manually delete the directory where the temporary installation files are uncompressed to, usually named ut-436, in the same directory you ran the installer from.

Author's specs:

Hardware

Pentium II 400Mhz
192MB RAM
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro
SB Live!

Environment

Linux 2.6.7
Debian unstable
XFree86 4.3
XFree86 radeon driver
ALSA sound, with OSS emulation