TTR 1.3 Community Edition Interview

The Third Reich is a fully-fledged WWII modification for the old Unreal Tournament engine, and the latest incarnation of this mod for the UT2004 engine is progressing nicely. While the TTR team is working hard on the next generation version of The Third Reich, some community members got together to work on a new version of the original modification.

We decided it was time to interrogate our prisoner-of-war Lt_Reno, so we can bring you up to date about the upcoming release of the TTR 1.3 Community Edition.

Community Members as bots? TTR 1.3 has it all!

First of all, tell us something about yourself and your connections with The Third Reich team.

Well I'm actually on the Dev team, but I wasn't at the start of 1.3. During v1.3's production Jaeg, TTR's previous coder, left so I joined to fill the spot.

Did you have any previous experience in modding? If so, what kind of experience?

I used to mess around and make small things, maps, mutators, but nothing really big until I joined the TTR team.

Peekaboo, I see you!

The original The Third Reich version for the first Unreal Tournament was released almost 2 years ago, and the next generation version is well on its way. What was your main motivation to pick up development on the old TTR?

Well, as I said, I wasn't on the actual team at the time, and figured I could polish off my skills in Uscript and apply to the Dev team when 1.3 came out. There were a bunch of things I wanted to see in TTR that weren't in v1.2, so I talked to Stryker and here I am now.

TTR 1.3 is a community project. Are you working alone, or are any other community members contributing to the project?

Yes, many community maps are being added to this, as well as the standard maps. LivingTarget, one of the community members, also helped me out a lot with the coding.

Invasion, the new gametype with limited reinforcements

What are the main improvements or bug fixes that we can expect in version 1.3? Are there any alterations to the original gameplay?

There is an all new game mode called Invasion, where there is no timer, and each side has a set number of lives. You win by annihilating the opposing team or capturing all the objectives. The area objectives can be re-captured, so there is a distinct need for strategy to go along with it. And with the lives system, you can have a bunch of good players and make the game last for quite some time. There is also support for 32 bots now as well. And last but not least, LivingTarget and ScvWebFire worked together to help fix a server problem in the player class, hopefully fixing server problems.

Close combat at its best

A single player campaign was planned for the original TTR, but those plans were cancelled later on. Are there any plans to include a single player campaign in this community release?

Not in this release, no. But maybe in the future...

When can we expect a release?

Beta testing will begin shortly, so it depends how many bugs crop up and need fixing, but its will be a very short time.

Finally, are there any plans for new releases after 1.3 hits the scene?

For now, no. But we never know what the future may hold.