High-Resolution Unreal Skins mod

Current Status: RELEASED! DOWNLOAD HERE

This Mod will replace all those old, blurry Unreal/RTNP skins with detailed, high-res versions. It works in Unreal 227 and Unreal Tournament '99. My primary goal with this project was to keep the skins looking as faithful as possible, while removing the obvious outdated "pixelation" of the original skins. In order to achieve this, each skin has been manually reworked. There has been no simple filters or cheesy sharpening techniques used during the skinning process. Each part of every skin has been manually air-brushed and blended. Hundreds of layers were created to apply overlay detail textures, better looking shadows, better highlights, and more. The end result is faithful skins that look almost the same from a distance, but far more detailed up-close. In the case of bigger meshes like the Titan, detail is evident even when viewed from a distance. Most skins have been increased from the original dimensions of 128x128/256x256 to 2048x2048/4096x4096.

The following skins are replaced for Unreal and RTNP:

• All Monsters/ScriptedPawns/Creatures
• All Inventory
• All Decorations (except the Robot)
• All Gibs
• All projectiles except those with animated textures/effects.
• The Gina Player Skin by Ahaigh (all other player skins are incomplete at this point)

I also recommend getting DieHard's S3TC textures, which look great when combined with these Skins: UTTexture.com

Although these skins will work in UT99 offline with bots, they are primarily meant to work with the OldSkool mod in SinglePlayer. The Oldskool mod allows you to play Unreal1 content in UT99:
OldSkool Mod

Installation / Configuration

1. First make sure you have a copy of UT99 (preferably with the OldSkool mod mentioned above), or Unreal patched with 227. The unofficial 227 fan-made patch for Unreal can be found here. I highly recommend this patch anyway, as it fixes a whole plethora of issues and adds multitudes of features. This patch allows S3TC textures to work, which is what these high-res textures are called.
2. Extract the contents of the zip file to your Unreal227 or UnrealTournament folder (keep folder names on, so the files automatically go to the right places).
3. Skip this step if using Unreal 227. If using UT99, make sure the UTGLR Drivers are installed (OpenGL or Direct3d9). These drivers are awesome and should be used anyway for optimal performance and visual enhancements.
4. Enable S3TC Textures by running the game, opening the console, and typing "preferences". This will open the Advanced Options window. Go down to "Rendering", and choose the driver you are using (OpenGL or Direct3d9). Drop down this list, and look for "UseS3TC", and set it to "True". The skins will not work or might even crash the game if this is set to false!
5. Add the Mutator "Unreal: HD Skins" to the mutator window. If using Unreal 227, the Mutator button will appear when you go to the "new game" window. If using the UT99 OldSkool mod, go to Options->OldSkool, click the Options tab, and the "SP Mutators" Button. Add the mutator in this window.

Note: This pack currently does not work online with a dedicated server. An online version is currently in the works by GoPostal, although there are no guarantees when and if this might come out. The pack will work offline with bots however, or with a local online server!

Credits

This project was conceived by me (Lightning Hunter), and most of the skinning was done by me. However, there are a lot of other people to credit! Here is a
comprehensive list of all who contributed:

-Ahaigh01 created a thread at OldUnreal back in 2011 with a handful of high-res skins. All of these skins have been included in this release, with most
of them having been tweaked by me. The following skins were created by Ahaigh and are completely unmodified:
Flags, Sign, Steel Barrel, Wooden Barrel, Chest, Wooden Box, Moon Two, Moon3, Boulder, Lantern, Knife, all the books, and the Rabbit.
The following skins were created by Ahaigh and tweaked by me:
All trees & Plants, the Monk Statue, Eightball Gun, Dispersion Pistol, Health, Nali Fruit, Amplifier, Bandage, Flash Light, and Gina player skin.

-Yrex helped out immensely with code tweaks, mesh fixes, and more. The RTNP weapon skins would not be working properly if not for his meshes and coding help! He also helped me tweak the original mutator almost beyond recognition, fixing many bugs with OldSkool not working properly with the HD Skins, as well as allowing Fragments and chunks to work. Thank you for all your hard work with the code, Yrex!

-Buff Skeleton (Waffnuffly) created the original Spawn Notify code, which allows the mutator to exist in such an easy to use form! This pack would be so much more difficult to install/run without it...

-Casey, for the creation of the UT Texture Merger tool (which will most definitely be used in the future), and also for his help in general.

-Skywolf created multiple mesh fixes, such as the new Titan mesh that fixes the mirroring issues with the skin. These issues were blatantly obvious with high-res skins, but barely noticeable with the original blurry skins. Also, keep an eye out for a possible future release from Skywolf with HD meshes/models!

-sn260591 created the original mutator code for this mod, which unfortunately lagged the game (might have just been my system) and had to be scrapped. However, I still have to thank him for the original code that allowed me to get this project up and running and tested!

-J-Rts created the original Flak Cannon skin, which I heavily modified.

-Leo T_C_K, GoPostal, Rocky, and Preki for beta testing. Thank you all for your feedback and support!

-Thanks to the following people for their feedback at OldUnreal and UnrealSP.org: Leo T_C_K, Gopostal, Kajgue, AlCapowned, han, Krull0r, BobIsUnreal, unreality, Dr.Flay™, Ironword, and Teridax.

Also, a lot of the detail overlay textures I used on these skins came from various free texture websites on the internet. Here are some of my sources:
hhh316: Hhh316.deviantart.com
Mb3d (Max Textures): Mb3d.co.uk
AGF81: Agf81.deviantart.com
CGArtShop (website down now) - for the blood texture or "seamless strawberry jam".

Many of the other detail textures used came from Unreal itself. I apologize if I forgot to credit anybody for any detail textures used in this pack!

Production Details and Other Info

This project took about 8 months of very intensive work. Honestly, I'm not sure I should have spent this much time on it! The average skin took 4-6 hours to complete, with some of the more complex skins (like the Titan) taking several weeks.