Guide to Install UT2003 on Ubuntu

Foreword 2023

I have since used this guide to create a Lutris install script, which has been approved by the moderation team and is now publicly accessible! I would highly recommend using this Lutris script to install the game rather than following these steps manually. Nonetheless, if you still want to go through the process of manually installing the game, these instructions form the basis of that installer and should continue to work.

This guide assumes that you wish to install the game to ~/Games/ut2003. Modify your commands appropriately if you are installing it elsewhere.

Copy the Files from the Installation CDs

mkdir ~/Games/ut2003

sudo mount -o loop CDx.iso /mount/cdrom
sudo cp -R /mount/cdrom/* ~/Games/ut2003/

Repeat this for all the CDs, then fix the permissions:

sudo chown --recursive $USER:$USER ~/Games/ut2003
find ~/Games/ut2003 -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0775
find ~/Games/ut2003 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0664

Run Update Script

You will need the UT2003 Patch 2225.3 for Linux (ut2003_2225beta3-multilanguage.update.run) for this (mirror available in this repo.

This update script will update UT2003 and install the launcher and the ucc tool required for decompressing the installation CD's acrhives.

chmod +x ut2003_2225beta3-multilanguage.update.run
linux32 ./ut2003_2225beta3-multilanguage.update.run --target /home/yourUsername/Games/ut2003/

When asked if you want to read the README, answer n. When prompted to apply the update, answer y. When prompted for the installation path, enter the absolute path to your installation directory (e.g. /home/yourUsername/Games/ut2003).

Put in Your CD Key

Put your CD key in a file

echo XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXX >> ~/Games/ut2003/System/cdkey

Decompress .uz2 files

You need to decompress .uz2 files using ucc

cd ~/Games/ut2003/System; for i in ../**/*.uz2 ; do ./ucc-bin decompress $i -nohomedir ; done

or alternatively

cd ~/Games/ut2003/System && find .. -type f -name "*.uz2" -exec ./ucc-bin decompress "{}" -nohomedir \;

Make sure to include -nohomedir; without it, the files will be decompressed to ~/.ut2003 by default! This will use up space in your home directory and would prevent other users from playing the game.

If you want to save some space, it is possible to delete these files once you've decompressed them.

cd ~/Games/ut2003/System; for i in ../**/*.uz2 ; do rm $i ; done

or you can combine decompression and deleting into a single command to minimise excess storage usage:

cd ~/Games/ut2003/System && find .. -type f -name "*.uz2" -exec ./ucc-bin decompress "{}" -nohomedir \; -exec rm "{}" \;

Attempt to Run the Game

cd ~/Games/ut2003/System && ./ut2003-bin

Fixing Errors

libstdc++.so.5

If you get errors like

./ut2003-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

you need to install the 32-bit version of package libstdc++5

If you use a 32-bit system (not tested):

sudo apt-get install libstdc++5

or for a 64-bit system:

sudo apt-get install libstdc++5:i386

Configure Render Device

If you get errors like

Can't find file for package 'WinDrv'

In ~/.ut2003/System/UT2003.ini and ~/.ut2003/System/User.ini replace

RenderDevice=D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice
;RenderDevice=Engine.NullRenderDevice
;RenderDevice=OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice

with

;RenderDevice=D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice
;RenderDevice=Engine.NullRenderDevice
RenderDevice=OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice

and

ViewportManager=WinDrv.WindowsClient
;ViewportManager=SDLDrv.SDLClient

with

;ViewportManager=WinDrv.WindowsClient
ViewportManager=SDLDrv.SDLClient

If you wish to make this change persist for all users when they first run of UT2003, make the same change to the files ~/Games/ut2003/System/UT2003.ini and ~/Games/ut2003/System/User.ini.

Bad/No Sound

If you get errors like

open /dev/[sound/]dsp: No such file or directory

Run the game with padsp:

padsp ./ut2003-bin

ERROR: ld.so: when using padsp

If you are using 64-bit system, you might still get no sound. The startup may show the following error when using padsp:

ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pulseaudio/libpulsedsp.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64): ignored.

To solve this, install the 32-bit version if not already installed:

sudo apt-get install libpulsedsp:i386

Then, copy the padsp script (you can find it using which padsp) to a local (or global) file on your PATH called padsp32, and edit the lines that set the LD_PRELOAD variable to point to the 32-bit version of the library. These should be near the bottom of the file. You should replace:

if [ x"$LD_PRELOAD" = x ] ; then
   LD_PRELOAD="/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pulseaudio/libpulsedsp.so"
else
   LD_PRELOAD="$LD_PRELOAD /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pulseaudio/libpulsedsp.so"
fi

with

if [ x"$LD_PRELOAD" eq x ] ; then
  LD_PRELOAD="/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pulseaudio/libpulsedsp.so"
else
  LD_PRELOAD="$LD_PRELOAD /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/pulseaudio/libpulsedsp.so"
fi

Now run the game with padsp32:

padsp32 ./ut2003-bin

Configuration

UT2003 creates ~/.ut2003 directory to store your per-user config.