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Epic Games' Mark Rein has announced in the Infogrames boards that Unreal Tournament 2003 has gone gold for the PC. This means the final version of the game has been burned, and it's now being duplicated in production. While the CD will contain only the PC and Linux versions, Mac gamers should also be happy, as this announcement means more of Epic's resources should now be free to work on the Mac OS X port.

Of other interest to Mac gamers is the inclusion of Maya: Personal Learning Edition with the title. While a stripped down version of the full, powerful 3D application, Maya: PLE includes a plugin for making Unreal 2003 models. As many know, this version of Maya is also available for OS X, so this means it's very likely Mac gamers will be able to more directly contribute to the game's expansions and modifications. Rein also notes they have many future plans for the game, include free bonus packs of material.

In a seperate post, Epic's Steve Polge explains they have already taken fan feedback into consideration for some gameplay tweaks as well:

For the most part, we are very happy with the current weapon balance. We have made the following small changes since the demo:

- flak alt-fire shell has higher initial velocity, so it travels a little further.
- link projectiles are smaller.
- shock projectile travels slightly faster.

I've also fixed and tweaked the bot AI:

- Bots less accurate at high skills, and have slightly slower reaction time
- fixed bot use of minigun
- Bombing Run AI was somewhat broken in the demo. Its substantially improved now.
- bots group together less in Team DM.
- various other tweaks.

Steve Polge: Unreal Tournament 2003 Gameplay Changes

Mark Rein: Unreal Tournament 2003 has gone gold!

Unreal Tournament 2003 (add to watch list)

Digital Extremes (add to watch list)

Buy Unreal Tournament 2003

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