Looks like the next Unreal Tournament 2003 patch is about ready to be released, this post on the Infogrames forums has the list of changes. With a bit of luck we should have this patch within a week.

Unrealism has posted a brief Q&A with Epic's Steve Polge, asking him about Epic's upcoming bonus pack for Unreal Tournament 2003. Thanks HomeLAN Fed.

Good news for all the Unreal Tournament 2003 fans, the first Digital Extremes Bonus Pack for the game will be released tomorrow at 1PM CST. Here's what will be included level wise

Sizing in at around 195 Megs, the DE Bonus Pack includes 6 all new maps - 3 deathmatch, 2 CTF and 1 Bombing Run. Here's a couple of screens to whet your appetite until tomorrow. The Bonus Pack will be available in two forms - umod form and a zip file that extracts the map/textures/static meshs to the correct spots for people who don't have the latest patch (v. 2166) or who are running dedicated servers only. (umods sadly don't work without the latest patch or with server only versions.)

Click here for screenshots from two of the new levels, DM-Grendel and DM-Ironic.

Unreality has posted a list of changes expected to find their way into the next patch for Unreal Tournament 2003. Most fixes will be to the gameplay and networking parts of the game.

Epic released updated versions of the dedicated Unreal Tournament 2003 server files. The code is now based on the latest 2166 patch which was released to people a while ago. You can grab the Windows and Linux versions (big files) from FileShack.

HomeLAN Fed's Saturday morning mod interview is with Michael Hamlett, of the Strike Force team. This Unreal Tournament mod is on its way to becoming an UT2003 mod.

Trailing the Windows version by a few days, the Linux version of the latest Unreal Tournament 2003 patch is now available. Thanks 3D Gamers.

The Unreal Technology website has been updated, with some new source code for all your crazy Unreal Tournament 2003 mod makers. Now includes the 2166 code from the most recent patch for the game.

Epic has released a new Unreal Tournament 2003 patch for Windows, updating clients and servers to version 2166. The big new thing is demo recording/playback, but there are several gameplay/network/AI/other fixes as well. Of course you can also find this file on FileShack.

CanadianGamer.ca's latest Fragapalooza audio interview is with James Schmalz, who is of course the founder of Digital Extremes. You can download an MP3 or stream a RealAudio file.

Infogrames online producer Kyle Peschel posted this message on the Unreal Tournament 2003 forums, saying the next patch for the game should be ready in less than a week. The planned changes are listed as well. Thanks Erik.

The guys at Bombardiers.org have posted a Q&A with Juan Pancho Eekels, designer over at Digital Extremes. Most of the questions are about the Bombing Run game mode in Unreal Tournament 2003, but there's also a question about the upcoming Bonus Pack.

Once again a change list for an upcoming Unreal Tournament 2003 patch has been released, you can see it at Unreality. This patch is currently being tested.

HomeLAN Fed has a Q&A with Epic's CliffyB, asking him about the upcoming Unreal Tournament 2003 bonus pack. Looks like there will be at least five new levels and one new gametype among other content ("The download should be fairly hefty").

Sunday good yes? Here's a brief Q&A with Tim Sweeney of Epic discussing the 64bit builds of Unreal Tournament 2003 that have been mentioned in passing before with all the hoopla surrounding the upcoming 64bit CPUs from AMD and Intel. Here is Sweeney discussing AMD's performance combined with his stuff:

In pure CPU performance, Athlon64 is about 15% faster than previous Athlon's of identical clock rate for 32-bit apps, and 30% for 64-bit apps, [...] we haven't benchmarked yet but expect it to be faster though less than 30% because the GPU is as significant a factor as CPU

Recent investor articles are putting the release of the 64bit AMD cpu early 2nd quarter of next year.

BeyondUnreal has posted a single screenshot from one of the levels included with teh upcoming Unreal Tournament 2003 bonus pack. CliffyB also said 'the bonus pack is going to have many more old school style "flow" maps!'.

GameSpot has posted a screenshot taken from one of many images released by NVidia yesterday with the GeForce FX announcement. It shows us what the Unreal engine will look like with new lighting effects and such, and it looks pretty damn sweet. No word on what game it is from though, but NVidia says several games next year will use "advanced versions of the Unreal engine".

Planet Unreal has posted a big old list of changes that we'll see in the next Unreal Tournament 2003 patch. No date for this patch though.

The release of Unreal Tournament 2003 a little while ago was some of the most excitement and buildup for a demo in quite a while. Once the game came out it was indeed greeted with oohs and ahhs about how darn purty it was, however the stat whores have been quick to point out that even today UT2003 appears to be lagging behind the original UT, Quake3, Wolfenstein, etc in online player numbers. So then, maybe a bit of a let down? Nope not quite, get this:

Unreal Tournament 2003, the successor to 1998's Unreal and 1999 Unreal Tournament, was the best-selling PC game in the world for the first two weeks of its release in October. In its first month, Unreal Tournament 2003 has sold more than 800,000 copies worldwide.

That is in fact, a whole lot of copies sold. Speaking of UT2003, I dunno if I ever shared my full thoughts on it. Well, I think its well executed, well polished, and good fun. But, I think I'm just currently a bit tired of the style of gameplay offered there, which to me feels similar to the original UT and Quake3. Perhaps if I didnt play so darn much Quake3 I would be all over this game, but for now UT2003 just sits on my shelf waiting for the day I get the urge for that style of game again. Kinda like TonyHawk3 does. It's great stuff when I'm in the mood for it, but well.. I just havent been. Oh btw, here is the UT2003 demo and demo patch.

Epic has released updated Unreal Tournament 2003 source files, now including the changes from the 2136 patch. We have a mirror on FileShack. Thanks Blues'.