Unreal Tournament is coming back and will be entirely free
Unreal, the game series which first came to note for it's gorgeous Unreal Engine, is making a return as publisher Epic Games have just announced that work has started on a new Unreal Tournament game, to be run off the Unreal Engine 4, which also recently saw movements toward being made more widely available for independent outside developers.
As the project is only just started and will running with a small core team a playable version is still many months off according to Epic Games. The game will be built "from scratch", and will aim to make full use of the community in order to co-create content for the game which will eventually be monetized through a marketplace.
The planned marketplace content can be expected to include the modern staples of cosmetic items and game customization content but notably special mention is given to "modders", which have traditionally had a considerable impact in developing new game modes within the team deathmatch genre that Unreal Tournament resides in.
Here’s the plan:
A small team of UT veterans that are beginning work on the project starting today.
From the very first line of code, the very first art created and design decision made, development will happen in the open, as a collaboration between Epic, UT fans and UE4 developers. Forums will be used for discussion, and Twitch streams for regular updates.
If you are a fan and you want to participate, create a free account and join the forum discussion.
All code and content will be available live to UE4 developers on GitHub.
Development will be focused on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Quote from the developers:
"A lot of this is brand new for Epic, and we don't yet have everything figured out. Things will probably definitely go wrong from time to time, and when they do, we'll have to work through them together. There will be a lot of tough decisions to make, and not every feature will make it into the game. But if you're a fan of Unreal Tournament, a UE4 developer, or a future modder--or if you just want to learn how we make games--we hope you'll join us. It's going to be fun."
The announcement was originally covered over at Gamespot.
