The original home of the Unreal Tournament Giant Map Clans
Started in 1999, the Unreal Tournament Giant Map Clans was formed by a group of dedicated UT players who enjoyed playing a fast-paced, low-gravity game mode in ‘force perspective’-styled maps where players were tiny little people zooming around ‘giant’ maps.
These maps were typically styled after rooms in a house or business and included such favorites as Bathrooms, kitchens, living rooms, bars, and game rooms.
The origins of the first giant maps are lost memories now but probably started with a forced perspective bathroom map. The first one I remember finding was called DM-BathroomSPE or DM-BathroomSPE][.
As a community, we didn’t really have ‘standard’ setting for our servers; however, LowGravity, ESR, and fast game speeds were a shared -.
To compenstate for the large scale of some of the maps, a faster game speed was necessary. Some servers ran at 135% of normal but others were significantly higher. For many of our organized team battles we settled on 150% or 155%.
With higher game speeds and lowered gravity, another setting called “air control” had to be adjusted to allow the player to dodge and flip through the air. Like game speed, air control values would range from 35 to 55.
The original core group of clans, with similar family-friendly ideals, stuck together through UT 99, UT 2003, and UT 2004. While some of the groups spun off several similarly themed communities.
Some of the founding clans included LASA, CBGB, DbD, 2399, RAT, SDK, IFC, and far too many others to list out of memory. We also had a European version of the UTGMC called the [CK] clan. Internet connectivity in 2000 didn’t exactly lend to decent performance from outside the USA. Many of our players were still using Dial-IP ISPs and played with pings significantly over 200ms.
By the time Unreal Tournament 2004 came around, the GMC was made up of more than 1200 members from popular clans like:
2399
BOP – Bringers of Pain
Clan[RAT]
GFY Clan
{COC} Creatures of Chaos
DbD Death Before Dishonor
JSCAC
Ohms One-Handed Monkey Spankers
IFC
CBGB
SDK – Skagalak’s Death Kamp