Originally Unreal was mostly used and played on Windows machines, even the Macintosh version was kind of exotic. Linux was barely ever used in the past for playing, or if, then in conjunction with Wine(X) with more or less success depending on the game and APIs used.
Both Unreal Tournament and Unreal (since 227) have native Linux executables, so I was asked to address a few Linux-specific topics also in my manual, despite the fact these topics do not really belong here. I still gave it a thought since this is my biggest patch and I wish to keep supporting Unreal, so however I can without going too much out of my way, I shall.
My problem is all infos here are 2nd hand info or theorised, since I do not use Linux. Hence, treat this section with some caution, and forgive me any inaccuracy you may find. Corrections are welcome, my contact information is on my main web page.
Most Linux-users probably have seen Windows systems and are aware of their
functioning, whereas the other way round is often not given. Also due to the
fact mentioned on top, this manual was originally written for Windows PC users,
as you will notice mentioning of Unreal.exe and the path
separator in directory descriptions being the backslash. That is
Windows-typical, though probably still understood by Linux users. In Linux,
executable files are NOT .exe, and the native Unreal builds have
the extension .bin. I am not going to rewrite every section of
this manual to accomodate for these circumstances properly, I am just
mentioning them once here, as I am sure you are intelligent enough to
substitute the correct files and/or notation(s) by yourself.
Both of these problems are related and derived from the same source - literally - as Epic had decided to use some obscure graphics library to implement these.
On a windows PC in Unreal, you can type the command preferences to
open an advanced Preferences window (in case you typed this in fullscreen, the
game will exit fullscreen mode to show it). The same would happen if you selected
Advanced Options from inside the game menu. Likewise, the command
showlog would also open a new window, and show you the server console
(or the client console, depending on whatever mode your Unreal was currently
running in - no matter, more or less the same thing here).
The server/client console window would allow you to see ingame-logs, errors, natively logged messages, and so on and so forth, and also allow you to type commands - the window features a prompt in its bottom line allowing you to type in commands. Only native and game-mode commands would execute at this point since the window is unrelated to a playerpawn.
The advanced preferences window would allow you to go through a lot of settings - both server and client related - which you would otherwise not typically see, as they appear nowhere in the normal game settings. These settings are for... well... the name says it... ADVANCED users who know what they are doing (or have been precisely instructed what todo by someone who does), because you can enter settings which will render your Unreal game unusuable.
I'm actually not entirely sure about the server console, but the advanced options window definitely does not exist. To access these options you will need to edit the respective ini files (Unreal.ini, User.ini and any other ini you might need...).
What if I cannot find the ini file for this or that mod -or- I have loaded the ini file in a text editor but I don't see the options and/or sections mentioned in the manual anywhere? HELP!
Here is some background information about configuration and default values... the Unreal engines has default values stored internally together with the code that uses them. When accessing configurable values, Unreal first looks for a configuration file and the required settings in there if the file is found, and if missing will assume the internal defaults.
In other words, if configuration files are missing, or entries within the configuration files are missing, internal defaults are being used.
Since the Unreal engine by itself only stores ini files and ini file settings when CHANGES to the internal defaults are done, you will need to either a) change some value or b) write inis forcefully.
Option a pretty much represents the chicken and egg problem, since if you could cause a change to have the inis, then obviously you would already HAVE those exact inis. Remains solution b...
Run the server/game and execute (as admin) the command
saveallconfigs, then exit the server/game. This will output
all ini files and settings completely (except client settings related to
player pawn, video drivers, other native configurations and similar...).
For completeness of information, if you want to have this ability outside of UTF, go to my website under the category Code School and download the mod called saveini. It does exactly the same thing, but will work outside of UTF on any server.
...to be continued... maybe...