Welcome to jdrgaming.com Thursday, March 28 2024 @ 07:49 AM PDT

Unreal Tournament 99 server change

For twenty years, I've complained that the original Unreal Tournament server has a bug that prevents a lone player from starting a round. The server sits in a holding pattern until a second player joins, at which point the round starts.

This was a problem, partly because it made testing my own server difficult, but mostly because it meant that the first player to join a server had to wait around for at least one more player to join before they could actually start playing.

Well, a kind Github user named scottadkin just replied to my request on the OldUnreal/UnrealTournamentPatches repository, pointing out a server setting that controls this behaviour: Tournament Mode.

I immediately checked, and sure enough, the JDRGaming UT99 server had this setting enabled. I disabled it, saved the change, and restarted the server. Then I ran my game client, joined my server, and hey presto, was able to start playing immediately, despite being the only joined player (the player rosters are filled out by bots on my server).

Boy do I feel dumb now. But also very happy!