[smitelli]

Never played Thief, but I logged a lot of hours in Unreal, 1998. I was (and still am) amazed at how full-featured the software renderer was. I always wished I could peek at the code behind it.

If memory serves, the only thing my 3dfx Voodoo3 could do that software-only mode could not was surface reflections. Maybe something with colored lighting too, it's been a long time. Point is, it was a decent enough substitute for dedicated graphics hardware.

[Aurornis]

I was too young to understand but I distinctly remember the 3Dfx version looking vastly better everywhere to my eyes. Reflections were amazing though. Could have been the higher resolution, or could have been the fact that I was playing on an older CPU at home at the time. I was jealous of the people with hardware acceleration.

[mfro]

The software renderer did display many effects and even textures different. This video does a great breakdown:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npMujOQsjGQ

[deltoidmaximus]

Did unreal have 16-bit color software rendering? Most software renderers back then that I recall only did 8-bit color and ran choppier than the 3D accelerated renderers on the hardware at the time. This made a pretty big difference especially with lighting in my experience.

[qsera]

But I remember Unreal being unreachable for me at that time because I couldn't even dream of getting a graphics accelerator and it won't even start with out a one, or was it the sound card requirement that was the blocker?

[misnome]

Everything up to (and including) Unreal Tournament had software rendering. It was one of the selling points when its competitor (Quake 3) was Hardware-accelerated-only.

[anthk]

Deus Ex too.

[MisterTea]

Original Unreal had soft rendering just like Quake 1/2 and so on. Though at that point my brother and I had saved up enough beans to buy a Voodoo2.

[wincy]

I think it was the graphics card. I remember getting a paper route and waking up at 5am every morning to save up the money for my Voodoo card. Was absolutely mind blowing as a 13 year old.

[Match451]

The (incomplete) Thief2 and System Shock2 source code was leaked years ago from a Dreamcast development kit. I imagine a Google search would find you a download. I think I saved a copy too, someplace.

[markus_zhang]

The guys in OldUnreal have access to the source code AFAIRemember. Epic gave them the source code so they can produce those patches. They also improved the UT99 engine I think.

[ronjouch]

Link: https://github.com/OldUnreal/UnrealTournamentPatches