Unreal Tournament 2004 now free with community patch after 20 years

Epic Games has allowed the Internet Archive to host its older shooters, making Unreal Gold and the original Unreal Tournament available for download. Now Unreal Tournament 2004 has been released for free, with Epic's approval. "Please note that this is the first public patch for Unreal Tournament 2004 in over 20 years," writes UT project manager and computer science professor Stijn-volckaert.

"We have implemented numerous fixes and improvements, written a new SDL backend for Linux and macOS, and even a new renderer. We have also migrated the entire codebase to modern build systems. Some new bugs may have slipped in!" UT 2004 is generally regarded as a high point of the series, combining the visual upgrades from UT 2003 with a wider array of game modes.

It introduced vehicle-based Onslaught modes and brought back the objective-based Assault mode missing from UT 2003; one Assault map, AS-Mothership, moves the action into space, with players fighting in fighter craft before attackers board the mothership to try to blow up the core.

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