Alden Bates' Weblog

A demo for Unreal Tournament 3 was recently released. Since I'm a big fan of UT2004, I downloaded it last night to try it out.

Installing the demo wasn't too bad, though it did force me to install Microsoft's .NET 2.0 framework (Why?). Having completed installation, I started the demo. It played the manufacturer logos (is it really necessary to have logos for hardware manufacturers on a game?!) and then the screen went blank. It stayed blank for about thirty seconds and then my PC rebooted. Windows cited an infinite loop in the graphics driver (What?!). I guess I should have rebooted manually after installation, although the installer gave no indication this was necessary.

I tried starting up the game again, and it got to the main menu! Huzzah! I checked through all the options and attempted to start a deathmatch in the level "Heat Ray". The game gave me a loading screen and then... crashed again. Windows reported that the software had had a fatal error, but wouldn't elaborate. Fantastic!

I rebooted and tried again, selecting a different map to play. This time it got to the point of showing the first view of the level ("Shangri La") and playing some ambient sounds before crashing again. Sensing a theme, I started the game up again, and tried the only other level in the game, the Capture the Flag level "Suspense". This time Windows said UT3 had announced a runtime error, and didn't even generate an error report.

So, three levels, and none of them play on my machine. Given that I upgraded my PC this year specifically so I'd have a machine fast enough to play Unreal Tournament 3, I'm a little annoyed. I guess unless another demo is released which works on my computer, I'll have to put off buying UT3 until I upgrade my computer again (probably in another 5 years...).

Meh, computers.

Edit: this post on Epic Games forums looks promising. I'll have to try some of the things it suggests.

Edit: Having updated my processor and video card drivers, changing the option in UTEngine.ini and shutting down AVG, the game now works on my system. WOOHOO!