03.11.26
11PM
I am really excited because after WAY TOO MANY HOURS of trial and error I am starting to build my first release candidate for my Unreal Tournament 2004 server and ModPack!
The goal of this project is to create an inclusive UT04 server that is focused on character models rather than competitive gameplay. I want this to be a space that is attractive to 3D modeling artists and people who want to play high quality custom models with other people online rather than just local bot matches.
I am hoping to get a community going and I may end up starting a Stoat server for this. I don’t really want to use Discord for this because it’s kinda awful lately, and hopefully the sorts of people this would attract would be okay with this.
I’ve learned quite a bit in this process, and a lot time was spent figuring out that I wasn’t going to be able to UTComp in the server because it restricts model use for the brightskin feature and to prevent cheating with things like invisible skins. I have been able to use AntiTCC with model verification turned off so it doesn’t kick clients for having custom models.
I am going to rebuild my UT04 folder by installing the mods and models I’m using manually and copying over the working config files from my current build. Next I am going to unpack all the mods/models I’m using and convert them to uz2 files that I can host, probably using Copyparty from my server. Then I’m going to zip the mods/models into a large zip file that should allow players to just install that as a mod and have everything the server requires. This will also bypass one of the limitations that the game has on being able to download and use models.