Organized Crazy Addicts

[T}{ANAT}{O$]

Some days ago I finally received XMP, but only yesterday I felt like installing it.
After the installation - which needs the original Cd - I finally tried it.
Guess what - 15 minutes later, I was fascinated , 2 hours LAN-gaming
later I was REALLY happy that I hadn't sold it as planned.
It's a little "resource-hungry", but hey - I always thought about
trading in my xp 2600+ for some Ath 64er

But back to the game:

3 character classes with own loadouts and specials:


Ranger: He/she is the medic of the team - as well as the sniper. Lightest armor
of the three, but this makes it possible to jump higher than the rest.
Spawns with Sniper Rifle ( slow, tracing round in team colour, 5*3 shots),
.50 pistol "Grace", grenade launcher with smoke grenades and the schocklance.
He can heal players and drop medpacks.


Tech: Medium armor and weaponry, drops repair packs, is fastet "hacker" in the team.
Comes with: EMP and toxic grenades, shotgun and CAR. His further equipment is quite usefull
as well: shield walls, deployable rocket and auto-turrets, and he can drop shield packs.


Gunner: As you might guess by the name, he wears heavy armor and weaponry,
but this makes him also the slowest unit. His arsenal contains: flame-thrower,
rocket-launcher, grenade-launcher with frag and incendiary grenades, landmines and laser
triggered mines.



3 vehicles, with one or more gunner seats

Tank -> Juggernaut; main turret: , driver can control flame thrower
LAV/Buggy -> Raptor; turret machine gun, has flesh grinders attached to its front
MAV -> Harbinger; main turret: double rocket launcher, back turret: plasma gun

In this game, all machinery and goodies need power, which is deliverd by generators.
To benefit from them, you have to secure your own and "hack" new or hostile generators.
The increased energy allows more equipment like deployable cannons, or the use
of installed guns or gun nests.
To "use" vehicles and emplacements, you push the "use"-key near the glittering net you
see over certain areas of the textures (see pics). You can also "hack" spawnpoints and switches, which then
can only used by your team members.
The game idea is some kind of capture the flag:
you have to steal the enemys artifacts and take them hame to your own artifact node.


The only real drawbacks I encountered so far are the network play issues:

* When vehicles are spawned into a level, there may be a brief (1/4 of
a second) hitch while their meshes, skins, and other data is loaded.
This is by design.

* U2XMP's Internet play performance is highly dependent on the
bandwidth of your connection, the latency (ping time), and the packet
loss. The game is designed to be playable up to 300 msec ping times,
5% packet loss, and 33.3K connection speeds. Performance degrades
heavily under worse latency, packet loss, and bandwidth connections.

This isn't meant as a professional review, but maybe you'll want to
try the game for yourself after this few lines?

I'll add some screenies in this thread, maybe somebody has some real great
MP-shots, since I didn't make good ones during my short session. I'd like to see them in
here - you can also send me an PM if I should host them somewhere.

[T}{ANAT}{O$]

The last seconds of an unwary tank...

[T}{ANAT}{O$]

The "Juggernaut" in teamcolour (3rd person view from driver)

[T}{ANAT}{O$]

My "Juggy" a moment before I get out to hack the deployment node. (Import to be able to respawn at this point later in game)

[T}{ANAT}{O$]

A detail of the flamer that can be used by the driver. (seen from driver's 1st person view)

...and seen from 3rd person view

[T}{ANAT}{O$]

Front view "Raptor" - these mangler's are really mean, if someone grabs you at moderate speed, you're minced meat.

[T}{ANAT}{O$]

A pic of the "Harbinger".

[T}{ANAT}{O$]

Looks nice this gun...


...and deals a lot of damage at a high rate of fire!

[MyStiQuE]

Nice!!

[LeeBe]

wow nice one m8 good review. I think I might buy this one now

what is the multiplayer like? bit like Halo? or more like UT2003?

[roba]

Looks nice, I ll try it too....but...erm... does it check validity of cd key?

[T}{ANAT}{O$]

Well, I never tried Halo, so no idea - but you are only really successful with a TEAM, where people think before they act and don't "Rambo" the map. You have to make sure that you have enough energy sources, otherwise your defense turrets will become useless, you need spawnpoints to get into battle faster... Help your teammates by healing them, repairing their armor or assisting them with the vehicles.
I nearly forgot: You move faster in here than you did in Unreal 2 - still not as fast as UT'03, but ok I think. You can also "sprint" for a brief period, jumping is temporarily enhanced by jump-jets, so impressive jumps can be made with some training.

Installation works like this: You need the original copy of Unreal 2 - The Awakening; it checks for the Game-CD. (They say a "copy" won't work - not sure if that's the truth...). After the installation you won't need the Cd again - even online, except you want to play the original U2-Single-Game.

It comes with Listen/dedicated server option.

You can download it for free, or buy it for ~38 $ with Unreal 2 in a special edition.

[T}{ANAT}{O$]

I collected some interesting links on this.

Review:
Beyond Unreal XMP Review with Screenshots


Downloads

Full XMP Game
XMP @ UnrealII.com
XMP-Full @ BeyondUnreal
XMP @ Fileplanet

Demo
XMP Demo @ BeyondUnreal
XMP Demo @ Fileplanet


And once again: If you own the original Unreal II- The Awakening game, you just insert the Game Disc
(is checked during installation) and install the downloaded files.
If you do not have the game, you can only try the demo so far, or you have to buy
Unreal II Special Edition (incl. XMP) Atari.com
Says $39.75 (in the US), seems as if they mix it up with a X-Box game, but Toys'r'us does this as
well - thought Unreal II isn't available at X-Box up to know, so why the special Edition?

[T}{ANAT}{O$]

I need some help:
I recently scanned my Pc with Ad-Aware, and it says the file "libexpat.dll" that
comes with XMP is a dataminer (PeopleOnPage)?
I know that this dll is used for the Update-function of XMP, and I haven't been able
to detect other typical PeopleOnPage related files, dll's or registry entries.
Maybe one of you has any experience with this?

[roba]

It isnt spyware, look here:

http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=4478627#post4478627