======================================================================== Unreal Tournament 2004 Release notes. ======================================================================== Developed by : Epic Games & Digital Extremes Distributed by : Atari ======================================================================== Table of Contents ======================================================================== 1 System Requirements 1.1 Minimum System Requirements 1.2 Recommended System Requirements 2 Performance 2.1 Resolution 2.2 CPU speed 2.3 Memory 2.4 Considering upgrading? 2.5 Getting better performance 3 Troubleshooting 3.1 Crashes 3.2 Sound issues 3.3 Network play issues 3.4 Control issues 3.5 Direct3D 3.6 TNT2/ Kyro II/ Voodoo 3 issues 3.7 OpenGL 3.8 DirectX 9,0b 3.9 Game is starting up windowed 3.10 Software rendering 3.11 Joystick support 3.12 Logitech mice 4 Dedicated Network Servers 4.1 Explanation 4.2 Launching 4.3 Multiple server per machine 5 Online Stats Tracking - UT2004stats 5.1 Overview 5.2 Turning on *your* Stats Tracking 6 Useful Web Links 7 Technical Support 8 Copyright Notice ======================================================================== 1 System Requirements ======================================================================== 1.1 Minimum System Requirements ------------------------------- Operating System: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP Processor: Pentium III or AMD Athlon 1.0 GHz processor Memory: 128 MByte RAM Hard Disk Space: 6 GByte free Video: 32 MB Windows compatible video card* Sound: Windows compatible sound card. NVIDIA nForce or other motherboards/soundcards containing the Dolby Digital Interactive Content Encoder required for Dolby Digital audio.* DirectX: DirectX version 9.0b or higher DirectX is not required for using the software renderer Modem: 33.6K baud (for modem/Internet play) Internet (TCP/IP) and LAN (TCP/IP) play supported. 1.2 Recommended System Requirements ----------------------------------- Operating System: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP Processor: Pentium IV or AMD Athlon 2.0 GHz processor Memory: 512 MByte RAM Hard Disk Space: 6 GByte free Video: NVIDIA GeForce 4 or ATI Radeon Hardware T&L card with 128 MB VRAM recommended Sound: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS DirectX: DirectX version 9.0b or higher Modem: Broadband Internet connection Internet (TCP/IP) and LAN (TCP/IP) play supported. * Indicates device should be compatible with DirectX, version 9.0b or higher. ======================================================================== 2 Performance ======================================================================== 2.1 Resolution -------------- The resolution in which you run the game will have the greatest impact on performance if you are not in the lucky position of running the latest top of the line graphics cards. Running at 640x480 in 16 bit mode or even 512x384 in 16 bit mode should provide decent performance even on older hardware. 2.2 CPU Speed ------------- The game is also very sensitive to CPU speed, memory bandwidth, and cache performance. Thus, it runs far better on leading-edge processors like those of AMD and Intel. See section 1.2 for a guideline on recommended specs. 2.3 Memory ---------- Unreal Tournament 2004's performance is highly dependent on the amount of RAM you have in your machine, and the amount of memory that is available. Machines with less memory will access their hard disk more frequently to load data, which causes sporadic pauses in gameplay. Thus, if you have a 128 MByte (or less) machine, you should make sure that you don't have other unnecessary programs loaded in memory when playing Unreal Tournament 2004. 2.4 Considering upgrading? -------------------------- For people considering upgrading their machines, here are some tips based on our experience running Unreal Tournament 2004 on a variety of machines: 1 The biggest performance gain in Unreal Tournament 2004 comes from having a state of the art graphics chip. 2 The next upgrade that tends to improve Unreal Tournament 2004 performance is upgrading your CPU. 3 Finally, lots of RAM helps. With memory prices continually falling, it's now reasonably affordable to upgrade to 512 MByte of system memory. 2.5 Getting better performance ------------------------------ By default Unreal Tournament 2004 picks hardware specific default values the first time you run the game which should result in decent performance but there is always room left to tweak. Resolution and texture detail levels have the greatest impact on performance, if you have a fast CPU. So you might want to tweak the settings to achieve the visual quality / performance tradeoff you desire. If you have a fast graphics card, but a rather slow CPU you might want to lower the World detail setting in the detail settings menu. Last but not least, if you have both a fast CPU and a fast graphics card you shouldn't have to read this :). ======================================================================== 3 Troubleshooting ======================================================================== 3.1 Crashes ------------ If Unreal Tournament 2004 stops with a "Ran out of virtual memory" message, you need to free up more hard disk space on your primary drive (C:) in order to play. Unreal Tournament 2004's large levels and rich textures take up a lot of virtual memory. We recommend having 500 MByte of free hard disk space for running the game. 3.2 Sound issues ---------------- If using a 3D sound accelerator such as the Sound Blaster Audigy series sound card, you can go into "Options/Audio" to enable EAX by selecting the "Hardware 3D Sound + EAX" options. You need to upgrade to the latest version of Sound Blaster Audigy drivers in order to get acceptable 3D sound performance. Using Unreal Tournament 2004 in conjunction with earlier versions of the drivers MAY cause severe performance problems (major slowdowns in the order of 30-50% while playing sound) in which case you should change the option back to the default "Software 3D Audio". If your computer is hooked up to a 5.1 speaker system, you should go into "Options" and turn on "Hardware 3D Audio" to take advantage of 360-degree sound panning, which rocks. There also is a safe mode available in case you run into any audio related problems like glitches/ hitches/ static or bad performance if sound is enabled. 3.3 Network play issues ----------------------- The minimum speed connection for acceptable Internet play performance is a 33.3K modem connection to your Internet Service Provider. Known network play issues: * When a new player enters a network game, clients may experience a 1/4-second pause while the mesh, skin, and other data is loaded for that player. This is by design. * Unreal Tournament 2004's Internet play performance is highly dependent on the bandwidth of your connection, the latency (ping time), and the packet loss. The game is designed to be playable up to 300 msec ping times, 5% packet loss, and 33.3K connection speeds. Performance degrades heavily under worse latency, packet loss, and bandwidth connections. 3.4 Control issues ------------------ Some PC keyboards can't recognize certain combinations of 3 or more simultaneously pressed keys. 3.5 Direct3D ----------------- Please ensure that you are running the latest drivers for your graphics card as Unreal Tournament 2004 stresses the hardware and drivers to a greater extent than most available games and we rely on a number of bug fixes hardware vendors incorporated into their latest drivers. To obtain the latest drivers please visit the website of your graphics card manufacturer. 3.6 TNT2 / Kyro II / Voodoo 3 issues ------------------------------------- Due to the lack of certain key functionality like texture compression and cubemap support TNT2, Kyro II, Voodoo 3, G400, ... cards won't be able to run the game at the full visual quality. As uncompressed textures are much larger than the compressed ones we have to drastically scale down both size and color depth of the textures in order to fit them into video memory. This means you will notice banding artifacts - especially in the menus. The lack of cubemap support means that reflections won't look correct though during gameplay you'll most likely be hard pressed to spot the difference. 3.7 OpenGL ----------- The OpenGL renderer is not officially supported on Windows but could be a good choice on certain hardware / driver combinations as it might trigger fewer bugs in drivers. Unless you are experiencing serious visual flaws there is no reason to change to the OpenGL renderer though. Unlike Unreal Tournament, Unreal Tournament 2004 was designed around D3D and offers the best performance and visual quality with the D3D renderer. Also please keep in mind that the OpenGL renderer has higher system requirements...
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