The time has come and so have I. Modder ‘James Horsley’ has just released an RTX Remix Mod for Unreal Tournament 99 that adds Path Tracing to this classic arena shooter. This is a dream come true for a lot of UT fans.
As the modder noted, this is a custom render device for the Unreal Engine, optimized for use with NVIDIA’s RTX Remix. It is built off of the D3D9Drv renderer and it is heavily modified to better support Remix. Right now, the mod only supports UT 99. In theory, though, it can be modded to also support the first Unreal game. Or at least I hope so.
You can download the mod from this link. Make sure to read its installation guide as you need to make some changes to the game’s configuration file. Below you can also find some screenshots. These screenshots can give you an idea of what you can expect from it.
Perhaps it’s just me but I really love this RTX Remix Mod. The mod does not make any changes to the game’s textures or 3D models. As such, this path-traced version of UT 99 still has that old polygonal look. Yes, the game would greatly benefit from higher-quality assets. However, I kind of dig the way the game currently looks.
In January, we shared several RTX Remix Mods that are in the works. As such, you can take a look at screenshots and videos for Tomb Raider 2, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Manhunt, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and Garfield Kart RTX Remix. Last week, we also shared a video from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas RTX Remix. Oh, and last month, we shared videos for Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 and Midnight Club 2.
Speaking of Path Tracing Mods for older titles, you might also want to check out the following ones. Modders have released early demos for their Path Tracing Mods for Tomb Raider, Max Payne and Call of Duty 4. Do note that the COD4 Mod is a “proof of concept” demo, and it does not look that great. On the other hand, the RTX Remix Mod for Max Payne looks amazing (at least in my opinion). Let’s also not forget the RTX Remix for COD: WoW. And then there is this amazing RTX Remix Mod for Need for Speed: Underground 2. Oh, and don’t forget to give a go at this RTX Remix for Unreal Tournament 2004. Finally, you can download Path Tracing Mods for Doom 2, Quake, Half-Life and Serious Sam.
Enjoy and stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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I prefer by far the original lighting system.
Let’s not forget that adding RTX, especially in old games which didn’t have realistic graphics, ruin the art direction which was way more important back then.
Now you just made UE look like one of those generic and bland indie FPS made with Unity assets on Steam.
Indeed. On a somewhat related note, as coincidence would have it, last night I played a bit of Unreal Tournament 3 just to see how it held up, and it did not age well. It came out during that awful era of the brown/grey trend, so the art style suffered greatly thanks to that. Even using the “vivid” and “intense” presets didn’t help either. And even supersampling from 8K, the visuals still looked somewhat off. It’s like nothing really stood out, including the other players/bots. Oh, and the gameplay and movement didn’t feel good either. It’s no surprise that UT3 more or less flopped.
I booted up Unreal Tournament 2004 afterward and it was night and day. Despite being the older game, 2k4 looked way better largely thanks to its art style that has an actual identity. Everything looked bright, clean and colourful, and it was easy to make out other players/bots. It also had better gameplay due to faster movement, and just felt more responsive overall. I look forward to the proper RTX remix mod for UT2K4 at some point in the future.
UT3 was a huge disappointment, Epic consolized themselves a lot during that period and they never been any better since, the gameplay felt off and the visuals were drowned deep inside this brown soup and blur, and the textures were miserably low res due to console limitations and they didn’t manage to do better textures for the PC version
The feel of UT3 was from off to ugly in visuals and gameplay, i tried but could never be other than put off by it, and yes, that’s why it flopped.
However, boot up 2004 and it’s a delight to play, though maybe too colorful. 99 of course still impeccable though not a looker.
Yep, UT99 is fantastic too. Also, 2k3, while not as good or popular as 99 or 2k4 was still much better than UT3.
Uhm, come on, honestly, UT99 didn’t have much of a particular art style other than a variety of themes under drab lightning and dark areas, it was as high res and high poly as it could be at the time, but aesthetically it was still just sort of ugly. In contrast, Quake 3 did look much more aesthetically realized than UT99. In fact this is much easier to see in retrospect.
So, to me anything is a plus and more so here than in other classics, as long as it doesn’t illuminate the maps too much. (and modder, tone down those stupid R255 and G255 lights)
Agree for the Quake 3 part, it’s miles better visually and even artistically, UT99 aesthetics hugely depended on the maps, some of them were indeed boring AF
Not sure what I’m doing wrong. I have RTX Remix 2024.2.1 installed via nvidia’s Omniverse app, then followed this mod’s instructions correctly and it even says “Direct3D9 optimized for RTX” in the game’s render mode, but path tracing doesn’t seem to be working and looks nothing like the screenshots posted.
ewwww
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realistic lighting but no normal maps is a waste. plus the original baked lighting wasn’t bad and actually looked better in a lot of places. look at what they did to trinity (?, I mean the skyscraper map). the entire outside is just bright, no contrast. you basically get flat, blown out lighting and nice dynamic shadows. I’d take the dynamic shadows but the basic lighting is worse this way and makes all the materials look weird. stone and carpet looked somewhat believable before and now they’re made of WAX.
While its a huge step up in light quality it also highlights the bad parts like low res textures + low poly models – Especially when many such mods often are overly bright.
Still amazing to see how old games get a new life
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