Posted by Flak

We have another new build of the Unreal Tournament pre-alpha for you to check out and play. This build includes a visual overhaul of the Titan Pass Capture the Flag level. We revisited this level to take advantage of what we’ve learned about improving visuals, gameplay clarity, and performance.

We’ve been working on ranked matchmaking for the last couple of months. For this release we'll be periodically holding several matchmaking tests. To make sure we have enough players in queue for matchmaking to work successfully, we'll be enabling it during peak times to keep your queue times low.

We’ve begun work on improving the Unreal Tournament soundscape. This is still a work in progress, with new sounds, sound balancing, and a new custom client-side sound amplification system in development. This new system provides per client custom amplification, occlusion, and low pass filtering of different types of sounds based on if player is the instigator, target, or teammate of the instigator of the sound. The goal is to emphasize the sounds which are most important to you for gameplay.

There has also been continued iteration on player movement, including adjustments to slide functionality and character acceleration. We’ve made functionality and balance tweaks to several weapons, including the Redeemer, the Flak Cannon, the Rocket Launcher, and the Impact Hammer. Shot down Redeemers now fall out of the sky with a delayed explosion so defenders have a chance to run. The Impact Hammer alt-fire shield now slows projectiles instead of destroying them.

This update also includes Bot AI improvements and many other game enhancements, bug fixes and updates. You can read about all of the changes on the Unreal Tournament wiki.