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One of the best "new" features of the 413 patch is the ability to set a key to drop you right to the online game browser from a game, instead of the main menu screen. This is accomplished by binding a key (F4 is the recommendation made by the patch's read me) to the command: "MenuCmd 1 0". I've played with this feature a bit and I have come accross something which might be quite useful... the "MenuCmd" command works for ALL the menus!!

So here is what I have done so far... I have a key bound to "MenuCmd 1 0" (F4=MenuCmd 1 0) which takes me directly to the online browser...just like it says to do in the read me.

I have also bound two other keys as well with commands...

One of the things that I find myself doing quite a bit is changing teams on CTF games...in order to do this you have to go press the ESC key (which dumps you to the main menu screen) and select Player Setup from the Preferences menu...you can now access this Player Setup dialog directly by binding a key. Just bind this command to a key of your choice: "MenuCmd 2 1". It works great!

I have also bound one more key to the Start Practice Session menu item: "MenuCmd 0 1". I then press the key when the game starts up and it takes me directly to that dialog for starting a new practice session.... it also works while playing a game...just hit your key and presto, you are at the Start Practice Session dialog box.

You could also bind keys to select any menu item you wish...but these three are the only ones I see myself needing on a regular basis.

For those interested in binding additional menu items...the format is as follows:

The first number after the "MenuCmd" command is the actual menu you will be selecting...
0 being the leftmost menu. (Not 1). The second number is the command in that menu, with the top most item being 0. So knowing which menu and item you want to bind to a key, you can select any item from the menus by binding it to a key.

For example... If I wanted to select the "Open Location" item in the UT menus, I would have to bind a key to "MenuCmd 1 3".

The 1 would select my second menu from the left, (the Multiplayer menu) and the 3 would select the fourth item in that menu, (the Open Location menu item). Very simple to figure out once you know the numbering system!


eko





To get the best performance possible out of RAVE (ATI Rage Pro or 128), you may need to tweak your Unreal Tournament settings. First, while playing the game, bring up the console (Tab or `) and type "stat hardware". This will show information about your Rave 3D card. The important values are at the bottom, "Used" and "Free". This is the amount of video RAM textures are using on the 3D card, and how much room is free. As UT plays a level, it loads more textures into VRAM, so the Free number will go down. If Free video ram hits zero, UT will be forced to throw out some textures to make room. You may notice a slight "hiccup" or pause when this happens. For best possible game play, you want to minimize the frequency that the Free ram reaches to zero. Even with a 16MB Rage 128, you'll use up the VRAM with the highest detail settings. A normal UT map may have 20-30 MB of textures (or more!).

To decrease texture memory usage (or free up extra video ram), you can try the following tips:

- Decrease World Texture Detail and Skin Detail in the UT Preferences dialog (under the Video tab). Setting the detail to even medium can drastically reduce texture memory usage.

- In the Unreal Tournament.ini file, under the [RaveDrv.RaveRenderDevice] section, set "MipMapping" to False. MipMapping uses multiple copies of textures to make things look better in the distance, but increases memory usage.

- Also in the Unreal Tournament.ini file, , set "VolumetricLighting" to false. Volumetric Lighting is used for effects like fog, but turning this off reduces texture usage.

- Reduce your game resolution and color depth. Setting color depth to 16 instead of 32 will free up more video ram for textures. Setting resolution to 640x480 or 512x384 doubled instead of 800x600 or 1024x768 will also free up VRAM.



- Dedicated servers should run for nearly indefinitely and not need the "MaxIdleLevelStart" flag set in the ini file. The bug that caused servers to stop listening after 2 to 10 hours has been fixed, with much help from Apple's Developer Tech Support. We have run a server on a stock DV iMac for 22 hours straight with bots and clients, constantly switching levels every 2 minutes, and it performed fine. This should hopefully do a lot to increase Mac server stability. This fix only applies to dedicated server mode. Running a server where you can play on the server may still have listening problems after many hours of consecutive play (but this shouldn't matter because the only reason to run a non-dedicated server is if someone is actually at the machine all the time playing, and they can simply quit and restart the game to fix any listening problems).

- Load times (loading the game initially, switching levels) should be sped up, anywhere from 10% to 20%.

- Added an option to use 32 bit textures in Rave. To enable this, edit the "Unreal Tournament.ini" file, and add the line "Use32BitTextures=True" to the [RaveDrv.RaveRenderDevice] section. This option will give higher quality textures, but should only be used on Rage 128 or better cards, with the UT "World Texture Detail" setting set to Medium or Low. Turning on this option with high detail textures or on a Rage Pro will seriously degrade performance, as the game will be using far too much texture memory for even a 16MB video card.

- Files downloaded and saved into the "Cache" folder now have 27 character names. You should throw away any files in your cache folder.

- The .ini flag "nofractalanim" now works correctly - setting it to True will turn off fractal animation (fire/water/etc) to boost speed.



- If Rave doesn't ever get detected, make sure you have enough memory free to completely run the game (at least 128MB). Turn on virtual memory if necessary.

- You can't assign the number keys on the keyboard (the ones above the letters, not the keypad) to any actions in the Input dialog. This is a limitation in the PC version as well, the number keys are hard coded to switch weapons.

- The Speech Binding dialog doesn't work correctly (it can get lost and not remember all the settings). This is also a known issue on the PC. You can edit speech bindings directly in the User.ini file, by assigning a key to a string (ie. "NumPad1 = speech 1 0 0", with a bit of experimentation, you should able to figure out which messages are spoken by the 3 different numbers following the speech command).

- If you always switch weapons when tyring to alt-fire with a two button mouse, make sure your mouse software (USB Overdrive, MS Explorer control panel, etc) is specifically disabled for Unreal Tournament. You should configure your mouse directly inside UT using the "Input Device" menu choice, and not try to have the mouse software pass control clicks or other events to UT. Check your mouse manual for more information about configuring it.

- If you seem to be losing sound effects, open the "Unreal Tournament.ini" file and edit the line "EffectsChannels=16", changing it to "EffectsChannels=32". This will allow more simultaneous sound effects.



New features (Gameplay):
- Can now use number and arrow keys to navigate voice menu
- Random bots picks from all 32 (not first 16) - including the specially configured ones
- Can summon specific bots: 'AddBotNamed Alarik' adds the bot with the name Alarik (if he's in the list of configured bots)
- Now shows waiting players on team scoreboards before start of game (players who aren't ready are greyed out)
- Improved bot AI about triggering pressure zone when player is in it
- Changed xDSL and cable modem clientspeed to 10000 (and added separate category in netspeed selection)
- No longer need to type 'iamtheone' for cheats in single player
- Demos can now play looping - demoplay demofile?loop
- Turbo/hardcore mode is now shown in UBrowser for team games