Patchy Like It's 1998: Unreal 1 Updated
D'awww! My cockles are forever warmed by communities keeping olden games alive, and so it is that an email declaring the latest release of a fan-made, Epic-permitted patch of the original Unreal brought about my first smile of this dingy day. OldUnreal's Patch 227 has been kicking around in various forms since 2008, but yesterday brought the first update to it in over a year.
The list of fixes upon fixes are too long to mention here, but the essential purpose of v227 is to add DirectX9 and OpenAL support as well as mending everything that needs mending. Epic are aware of and permit the patch, though that's not quite the same as an actual endorsement I suppose.
227 is aimed at technical rather than sweeping changes, however - "The general gameplay and the game itself was not touched and it should remain 100% compatible to old mods and maps." v227i arrived yesterday, and while I don't entirely understand 99% of its claimed under-the-hood changes, I think we can all get behind "Added support for localized female death messages."
See here for the full list of changes across 227's four-year history, and download the latest version here. Good work, that modder.
Entirely appropriate too, for let us not forget that UNREAL IS THE FUTURE:
Thanks, Lowenz.