UPDATE: From 7pm UK time? EDIT: Use .zip version of the game for Steam UT2004.
Keen-brained readers might recall a comments thread conversation we had about the lack of airships, balloons and other dirigibles in games. I decided we had to fix that, and the easiest way to do it was by starting up a game of the brilliantly barmy balloon combat mod for UT2004, Air Buccaneers. You probably don’t remember it, as it was one of the more obscure mods of the time, but it’s wonderful, mad, and remarkably atmospheric. In it two teams fight with cannons, blunderbusses, “air-mines” and other steampunk equipment, as they traverse the skies in rickety balloons. It’s brilliant. I downloaded it, and booted it up and… disaster. No servers. Fortunately, the heroic men at PC Gamer UK stepped into the breach and put a server up! (85.236.100.18:8077) Now it’s down to you lot to get the mod, and bring this work of airship excellence back to life, if just for a few evenings. More details below.
Okay, assuming interest – you guys are interested, right? – I’ll try and be on for a bit tonight (Wednesday), and the again on Saturday. If there’s lots of interest we’ll try and sort out a competition of some kind.
And perhaps a kindly North American-based reader might look into temporarily setting up a North American server? That would be really good. Not vital, but great.
As I say, we’ll have to see how it goes, but I think bringing lost multiplayer games back from the dead is one of the best reasons to play games on the PC, and it’s our duty to make them have a last hurrah. Today Air Buccaneers, tomorrow something else! Probably.
Obviously you’ll need UT2004 to play, and I think that’s on Steam, or can be picked up cheap elsewhere. Air Buccaneers is here, and the PC Gamer server is, well, the only one you’ll see on the server browser.
To your cannons!
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I admit it, when I saw the article I had a little SQUEE session. UT2k4 shall be installed.
Nothing beats the little awards ceremony post map completion, set in a rowdy pub. Yarr.
Needs more color
I just returned after playing on the server for a good while – great fun! Let’s hope even more people show up for the next gathering, I’d love to play on a full 24-player server :)
I never found ANYONE to play that mod with not even one time :( I’m seriously going to have to get UT2004 again lol.
That says a lot about the mod that I keep playing by myself just to float around in air ballons and shoot air mines at nothing lol.
I can’t believe no one has taken this and ran with it yet with a full scale fps game. There is VERY little in this world cooler than air ships, and among them are airships with cannons.
Hurrah! At last!
It was great playing with you chaps tonight, I look forward to replicating the fun on Saturday!
Man that was even better than I remember.
Best moment for me was making a fast attack run on the enemy battleship with gunpowder, but thinking I’d messed it up and not shot it down. Not deterred, I drew my sword and leapt aboard… and THEN it exploded.
lmao. classic last word “Enguard!” ***BOOOM***
Will there be another? I didn’t have a chance to install the game and Air Buccaneers today.
Just wrapped up a fun game that peaked at about 5v5, which seemed quite sufficient for a full game of this. More the merrier of course! Looks like the next planned game is saturday, I’ve got some other plans that afternoon but if I wake up before noon then I’ll be there too.
Until then the best bet seems to be any day before 10 PM RPS-time, since a lot more folks are around. Since edit function is broken I assume the time the comments system lists is the default? It say ~10:30 PM for me now, and the server started emptying about a half hour ago.
Never a bad time to log in dolo and practice firing at nothing though, after this saturday who knows when a server’s going to be up at all.
Why, what’s happening this Saturday (apart from the Air Buccaneers community server going up)?
I LOVED this game when I played it a few years back, it’s absolutely amazing. I wish I could get this running in the Northern Americas sometime….
KBKarma: Unless you mean a different server, the server’s already up now. It’s not certain how much longer the PCG UK server is going to be up AFTER this saturday, we just know it’ll be up at least until then since some of the RPS crew (John Walker I believe) intend to play again that day.
Wedge: It plays fine for me here on the west coast of the U.S., ping 180 doesn’t seem to make any difference, but you’ll have to be a morningbird (as in getting up before noon) to line up with the majority of RPS’ community over in the UK.
There’s a fair amount of off-peak players, like right now for instance. We’ve had 5 players on the server for the last couple hours. So if you have the time don’t just check back saturday or tommorow, people are coming on at random hours. I was playing it 1v1 for about an hour before others started showing up.
I emailed the creator of ABu a wile back and I just checked my email earlier today and found a reply
This is how the email went
________ME___________
I am a fan of a game you created Air Buccaneers. I was wondering if there were any future plans in store for this project or has your group put it aside?
_____________________
______HIM(tmannine@tols16.oulu.fi)___________
Hiya,
Thanks for your email.
LudoCraft operates nowadays as a games development company. We still have some hopes for getting a publishing deal for the future version of ABu. If, and when, we have some resources to develop the game, we definitely will make a new version for the current Unreal Engine.
More info about LudoCraft from http://www.ludocraft.com
Cheers,
Tony
_____________________________
__________ME_________________
Oh that’s good to hear at least the game lives on. There use to be one ABu server running for UT2004 but just recently it shut down. On fathers day it was completely full 24/24 player! It was great. I know there is a large amount of people who still play ut2004 that love ABu. Thanks for making a great game and good luck with your new games!
_________________________
I guess I’m just glad that the game is still alive
Is anyone able to see a running server?
Good news everyone! I have successfully uploaded and launched ABu on my server!
It works great!
I was thinking of setting up a day were I would run ABu the whole day. Maybe once a week how dose that sound to you guys?
Any suggestions?
BTW the server info is
NAME:[AGS] ABU all day! pass=pass
IP:68.232.172.209:7777
Are any servers still up and being played regularly?
I remember playing ABU years ago, I’m rather sad I missed the revival… just hoping it’s still going?
No I don’t think so. I had mine up until the end of August (just last month) and I would get an occasional passerby but no stayed for long so I decided to close up shop :(
I still think Air buccaneers is a great game but its just not as fun with no one to play with. I hear there’s still hope though because it might get made into a standalone game kinda like killing floor did…
We can only hope and pray