More than 20 years after its initial launch, fan community OldUnreal is reviving classic arena shooter Unreal Tournament 2004 (the best one, by the way). Here’s the full announcement from the OldUnreal Discord:
Hi everyone! Some of you were probably wondering why we’ve been so quiet in the past couple of months. Today, we can finally reveal (part of) the answer: we’ve been working on a new side project!
With Epic’s blessing and with the help of some new team members, we are bringing Unreal Tournament 2004 (UT2004) back. This means that we are going to publish an installer that downloads the original disc image for UT2004, installs the game, and applies patches to it. We are also going to start publishing patches that modernize the game, make it compatible with Windows Vista or later, Linux x86-64 and aarch64 (Raspberry Pi and similar), and Mac OS 10.9 or later, fix bugs, and implement quality-of-life changes.
Yes, you read that right. UT2004 will soon be available to download once again. Free of charge.
This is a community-run effort but we’re excited to make the game easier to access and play again.
We have been working on this for quite some time now and have made enough progress to start inviting the first batch of testers. Highlights so far include:We now natively support modern Linux and macOS systems with 64-bit Intel and ARM/Apple CPUs,
- You can now play the game or run a server on a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5, albeit at a lower frame rate than on a PC!,
- The Linux and macOS distributions of the patch now include a fully functional UCC with an UnrealScript compiler (UCC make) and texture compression support,
- The Linux and macOS distributions now use SDL3 instead of SDL1,
- D3D9Drv and fullscreen support are fully functional in the Windows 64-bit client,
- We dealt our first (minor) blow to the editor goblin! We fixed several crash bugs, restored some broken functionality, and, most importantly, the editor will no longer freeze for several seconds when you click a viewport
Unlike most fan revival projects, which are technically illegal and usually a cease-and-desist letter away from shutdown, this one is being developed with the blessings of the game’s publisher, Epic Games. Of course, as owner of the property, Epic Games still holds all the power here, and there’s always the possibility the company will have a change of heart that brings this revival to a sudden end. We saw this with the much-anticipated open-world adventure Bionicle: Masks of Power, which was forced to end eight years of development at the The LEGO Group’s request, despite initially having its full support.
Still, as a long-time fan of the Unreal series and Unreal Tournament 2004 (I even wrote this ridiculous Assault/Onslight guide for it back in junior high), I can’t help but be cautiously hopeful for the long-term prospects of this project. I’m definitely going to be jumping into the fray once the revival releases, which is “soon”, according to the official announcement. It will be available free of charge.
