Titan JB Night. Every Friday, 20.00 (BST) / 21.00 (CET)
Jailbreak Press Center
Welcome to the Jailbreak Press Center. Here you will find general information about the Jailbreak mod.
Please feel also free to visit our forums where the Jailbreak community lives, the map database on Nali City that describes and links to maps created by community members, or contact us directly if you have any questions or if you would like to get more in-depth information about Jailbreak.
We'd like to ask you not to directly link to this page, but feel free to grab and use any content you find here.
Contents
What is Jailbreak?
Jailbreak is a first-person shooter team game modification. The most recent release is Jailbreak 2004 for Epic's renowned Unreal Tournament 2004. A version with fewer features, Jailbreak 2003, exists for Unreal Tournament 2003.
Jailbreak 2004 won the Best Gametype category in Phase III of the Make Something Unreal Contest, and is one of the third-party additions included on Epic's Unreal Tournament 2004 Editor's Choice Edition.
The Jailbreak team previously released UT Jailbreak, for Unreal Tournament.
Stay out of Jail!
In Jailbreak, like in many other game types, your objective is to frag the opposing players—but unlike other game types, fragged players go straight into safe custody in the enemy jail when they're killed. To get them out of there, one of their teammates will have to fight his way into the enemy base and trigger the jail release switch that's hidden there (Jailbreak!). It is your task to defend your prison release switch and to free your own teammates when they're in jail. If your opponents manage to get all members of your team in prison, the opposing team will score a point, and your team will die a horrible death.
Jailbreak strongly focuses on team play and forces players to take on different roles for their team as the game goes on—defending their release switch, going into offense to frag opponents, or attacking the enemy base to release your own team members from prison. You'll have to be a versatile player to survive and win a game of Jailbreak.
More: About Jailbreak
Jailbreak Screenshots
This is just a small selection of the screenshots in the gallery.
The jail release switch
Screen maps in jail
Addien-Dwy map
SubZero map
Jailbreak Features
Bases, Jails, and Release Switches
In general, a Jailbreak map can be roughly divided up into three areas: the red base, the blue base and no-man's-land in between. This is much the same as many other team games, and indeed, popular CTF maps were adapted for UT Jailbreak, providing newcomers to the mod with a familiar environemt in which to learn the rules.
The team base is where the players spawn at the start of a round, and this is what they must defend, for at the heart of the base is the release switch. Should the enemy reach the switch and succeed in activating it, they will release their captured team-mates. Or to put it more simply: the red team guards the blue release switch, and the blue team try to reach this to free the jailed blue players. And vice-versa.
Any player killed in action respawns in jail: an area where players are in some way cordoned off from the action of the game. But it's never boring in jail! Mappers provide plenty to keep convicts amused while they wait for release. Previous distractions have included views of the fragging via surveillance cameras, live-updating maps, or plain old windows; in-jail games where points win prizes; and even a connection to the Jailbreak IRC channel, where you can talk to spectators.
Of course, no matter how much fun it is to be in jail, the future is grim: should all the members of a team be captured, they are executed, and the opposing team scores a point. Each jail has its own inventive way to end the lowly lives of the imprisoned players. Prepare to be depressurized, eaten by monsters, shot into space, drowned in slime or extinguished in big explosions.
So it boils down to this: stay alive or you'll be put in jail; defend your base to keep attackers out; and fight your way into the enemy base to the switch to release your teammates.
The Arena
Fortunately, there's more than one way out of jail. You can of course simply enjoy the entertainment and wait for your hard-working teammates to release you. Some maps add a twist by providing an escape route, which can be so treacherous to navigate you may wish you stayed back in jail (and likely you'll make a false move and go right back there!).
But there is an honourable way to get out of jail: the Arena. At fixed intervals, one imprisoned player from each team is placed in a small deathmatch arena where they will fight for their freedom. The winner is released and the loser is sent back to prison in shame. Jailed players can watch all the action on the Jailbreak ArenaCam!
Other features
- Full bot support
- Not everyone has the benefit of a good internet connection. The Jailbreak development team considers bot support to be a crucial part of a mod.
- Easy installation
- Installation is made simple by distributing as a UMOD file: a standard module which Unreal Tournament 200x's own setup system recognizes and installs.
- Full integration into Unreal Tournament 2003 or 2004
- Starting a game of Jailbreak is as easy as starting any other gametype. Just launch Unreal Tournament 200x, pick the gametype, pick a map and go!
- A Jailbreak-specific HUD
- This displays all the information players need presented clearly.
- All your old favourites
- Devotees of previous versions of Jailbreak will find the features they know: release protection, llama hunt, jail fights and more!
A Brief History of Jailbreak
Jailbreak was originally developed by Team Reaction for Quake 2, who also began an Unreal Tournament version in late 1999. This UT Version was never completed, the but partial work was picked up by Daikiki and Mongo. The first version of UT Jailbreak was released in the summer of 2000 and was quickly accepted by the Unreal community and sparked the growth of the fiercely loyal and rapidly expanding UT Jailbreak community.
With the release of the second version, Jailbreak featured a much wider range of bundled custom maps and much better single-player support, and received very favorable ratings that were backed by community acceptance. Daikiki, now joined by Mychaeel and ElBundee, two other Unreal community coders, released an update to this version shortly after, and in September 2001 started work on the third version of UT Jailbreak, to be known as Jailbreak III. This involved a thorough overhaul of the code base, many added features and an entirely new suite of bundled maps, and was released in March 2002. A final version, Jailbreak III Gold was released a few months later. This featured minor improvements and fixes, and yet another new suite of maps.
In the summer of 2002, even before Epic's release of Unreal Tournament 2003, Mychaeel began work on a design document for the next generation of Jailbreak: Jailbreak 2003, now known as Jailbreak 200x to reflect the fact that it exists in both UT2003 and UT2004 versions. This has many new features, unprecedented flexibility for mappers, and, as usual, full bot support and integration into the default game installation.
More: Jailbreak History
News feeds
The Planet Jailbreak site has news on the Jailbreak mod itself and also the lively Jailbreak community. This is available as RSS feeds that may be freely syndicated provided the source is acknowledged:
Contact Us
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, need fresh Jailbreak news and media or want more in-depth information about Jailbreak.
News and Public Relations
Development Team
Pic of the Week
