The much anticipated unofficial Unreal patch 227g by OldUnreal has finally been published! Besides a huge amount of bugfixes and improvements in Unreal code it sports improved Linux support, compatibility with Unreal Gold, and a much improved UnrealEd v2.1, featuring Static Meshes, improved viewport renderers, alpha blending and a multitude of improvements on editor handling.

Without a doubt 227g is a huge milestone for mappers and players alike, and I encourage everybody in the Unreal community to try it out. Even those who have long moved to UT99 will find themselves in a familiar environment with the addition of the UMenu system and the UnrealEd upgrade. The vast amounts of time and effort invested by the 227 development team have spawned a most admirable piece of tech that should definitely be put to use!

Visit our friends over at OldUnreal to download the patch. You can view the 227g release notes and the UnrealEd 2.1 notes in the OU wiki.

This is top notch news. Ever since waaaaaaaay back when staticmeshes first got implemented I've been dying for 227g to become final, and now it is!

In related news, Leaked 227h_1.7z:

These are great news. Finally I can play Unreal using OpenGL.
I have some questions about static meshes, as I didn't see an example included:
1. What are the advantages of static meshes in comparison to Vertex meshes?
2. Do they have a collision hull like brushes?
3. Do they increase the number of nodes of a poly?
4. Do they cast shadows like brushes?
5. How do I make a static mesh model?

Yes, static actors can now use mesh collision, and they can be accounted in level lighting/cast shadows. You make new static meshes with your modeling package of choice, but you can also convert brushes/meshes to static meshes (and vice versa) in the editor.

Here's something I whipped up in a few minutes. I made a box room, place a bunch of decorations together, selected them all and converted them into a static mesh. This is how it looks together with a light source I made with the in-built particle emitter:

All made within minutes using only stock content.

Not sure about the nodes thing and the exact differences to vertex meshes. You can also set static actors using Vertex meshes to cast shadows and use mesh collision! They can even be made to count as world geometry in code.
There's many more features, mind! Multiple environment textures per mesh, enviro-mapped geometry, Distance Fog, configurable lightmap detail, DrawScale3D... it's quite the deal.

These questions are pretty much answered here. Dots also said "Remember that static meshes STILL USE gouraud shading for lighting, meaning you can only light them up from their vertex locations and not in the middle of a long stretch of a surface."

In brief:
1 - Pretty much has the same advantages that any other game using static meshes does.
2 - Yes
3 - Not sure
4 - Yes



You can use your favourite modelling program and export the model to .obj, the import it using Ued 2.1's meshbrowser (File->Import Static Mesh Frame .obj)


edit: godamnit sana you beat me

Thank you guys. I didn't see that you can convert brushes to static meshes (and that the old meshes have now mesh collision too). The mesh is different illuminated (espescially when the lightsource is too close), but the casted shadow is very similiar. I also want to thank Smirftsch and his team. Amazing work, which they did in their free time. Unreal 227g means a revolution in respect of mapping in Unreal.

Will maps made with this patch be full backward compatible, or what is recommended when mapping?

If you don't use any of the new 227g features like emitters and static meshes, the maps will be compatible to older Unreal versions and to Unreal Tournament. If you do, they will be 227-only.

Use 227g - this patch needs new maps!

just have to append one thing for now- I have a Mac port, but it's not included because I'm not allowed to release it...

sana: Fixed!

Basically like Sana said, if you want the maps to be backwards compat, don't use 227 specific stuff. But it is definitely recommended to use 227g for mapping, just for all the fixes UED2.1 provides...and no crashing every 15 minutes either ^_^

Also you'll need to use something like Zora's converter for the level summary thing like when maps are made with UGold, so that pre-227 clients can open the maps.

http://hyper.dnsalias.net/dl/MapConverter.7z

seems the bug devil has his time, so 227g will be replaced within a short time to 227h. But please continue testing meanwhile and report

227g is great, and I'm glad it has finally been released. It already has been running rock-solid for months at my servers. Once again, many ancient bugs and issues have been fixed making it by far the most robust Unreal (1) version ever.

Bugfree is a stage (very) seldom reached.
Anyway, bugs are nothing more than unexpected features of the product.

Slapped togther a small map with quite a few static meshes in if anyone is interested.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ge07qu