Unreal Tournament 99: big delay on 2nd round of LAN games

Games
1

I’ve been playing this game for the first time the last few weeks. My kids & I are passing around a CD I got with a Soundblaster bundle years ago, playing LAN games.

It’s all working well, except when our first round finishes. After that, the host game restarts without everyone else - it’s usually multiple minutes before the other players can rejoin. The host machine has to quit UT and restart a new game for us to reliably be able to join quickly. Should I run a dedicated server on a separate machine? Get retail CD(s)?

One other question is about setting up games - no matter what we try, humans seem to get pushed to separate teams. Sometimes we don’t want that - does anyone remember a way to avoid that?

Is there any resource you’d recommend for learning how to manage this old game? I’ve been able to find plenty of new maps for it, and figured out how to install them, but I assume I’m missing a lot - our multiplayer issues seem like they’d have been major obstacles for lots of people.

2

I’d run a dedicated server if you could. I didn’t realize you needed the CD in the drive to play LAN matches - if possible you could always buy the original off steam for $10 but I’d try the server idea first.

3

Thanks! We do have additional machines for a dedicated server, and that did seem to avoid the huge rejoin delay. I only tested it myself, we’ll have to have another family LAN party tonight to verify.

It seems the dedicated server requires the CD each time it launches a new round, but that shouldn’t be a big issue for us.