PlanetJailbreak

For those who have missed the news on BeyondUnreal, I like to point out that the guys from UTPG have released the 451 patch for UnrealTournament a few hours ago. The patch is intended for use by both clients and servers and is completely network compatible with all previous public releases of UT.

Grab the file here: UTPGPatch451.zip and have a look at the changelog over here: ReleaseNotes451

Work on the Jailbreak 2003 scoreboard continues. Here's the current design for the game clock.

The numerical display counts down the seconds to the end of the game. Meanwhile, the pie chart gradually increases to show how much of the available game time has passed. The red and blue triangles mark the moments at which captures occurred. You can see at a glance roughly how long it's taking each time to round up the enemy. If you see markers of your enemy's colour spaced close together, signifying frequent captures of your team, you need to rethink your strategy!

Tie captures can happen in Jailbreak, so for those there's a grey marker. Sexmachine writes: "I remember having some ties during our last LAN party and also on the server in the last few weeks... it's a great feature and always leads to a big laugh."

In games with no time limit, the clock starts with a scale of 15 minutes, then doubles the scale every time the clock limit is hit.

What makes Jailbreak so great? Apart from the team of uber-leet mappers, coders, testers and moose-cleaners who make it? And apart from the great maps, the downright twisted death sequences, and the scoreboard that makes you want to break down and weep with joy?

Well, we're a humble lot here at Jailbreak. We like to think that the best thing about it is, plain and simple, the Jailbreak gametype itself. CoolDude summed it up nicely in our forums recently:What's nice about Jailbreak is that it's got elements of Team Deathmatch, Domination and Last Man Standing. If you like you can play it with strategy. If you don't like the strategy part, just be an aggressive player.I couldn't agree more, even if I used both hands. Read the rest of the discussion (it's a long thread, and starts off on the subject of multiple switches), and brush up on your Jailbreak strategy too. I'll leave you with this titbit from SpoonDog:Don't die.Now I call that good advice.

Note: Following the crash of the Beyond Unreal forums in June 2003, the above threads were lost.

The ideas for death sequences keep coming. This one's made by Crokx. It's a nice little number we call the Thunderbolt, for obvious reasons.

We're also working on a variation of the default fireball death: something for out barbecue enthusiasts, it's a flame-grilled sort of experience, in which players all burst into flames. Other ideas in the can include an electrical death with sparks a-flying and the moose crusher.

Jailbreak 2003's modular class structure means these are coded completely separately: the jail class just triggers the death sequence. That means mappers are completely free to write their own. We just like creating new and interesting ways to die! Expect to see more!