Epic, Digital Extremes and Atari in association with Nvidia have launched the " USD 1,000,000 NVIDIA Make Something Unreal" contest. The whole concept aims to offer the talented part-time developers of mods for UT2003 and for the unreleased UT2004, reward and recognition. In order to enter, the mod has to be freely available and compatible with UT2003 or UT2004. You can find the recently released UT 2004 screenshots by following the screens tab above.
The competition will be split into 13 categories and will run for almost a year over three phases. Teams that create mods should choose one person to represent the mod and file the entry for the contest.
The idea behind having three phases is to encourage people to enter early and often, and to keep improving their mods over time. The same mod may be entered in all three phases of the contest but, in order to be judged, there must be noticeable improvements to the mod upon the second or third submission.
Grand Prize finalists will be invited to collect their prizes at the Game Developers Conference on March 22, 2004. Epic will fly, at least one team member from the five Mods chosen to GDC, all expenses paid, to compete for Grand Prize consideration. Each team member will be put up in a swanky hotel and invited on stage at the Nvidia booth to show off their work and be on hand for the award of the Grand Prizes.
The grand prize will be worth USD 400,000, other prizes are an Unreal engine licence worth USD 350,000, and USD 300,000 worth of high-end PC hardware. 50 computers will be given away to educational institutions, and 50 to contest winners.
In order to help get hopeful developers on their way Epic have created a website which offers about 100 hours worth of downloadable training videos.
You can find the official competition page and the training site links by following the download tab above.
