This is my Pentium II 450MHz with 256MB RAM and a Diamond Viper V550 running Unreal build 219, the final version of Unreal before Sonic Mayhem's noises which most people would recognize from the Quake II soundtrack replaced some or most of the original Unreal sounds. What caused the sound changes in build 220, then? My friend "LeoTCK" claims that the sound modifications were intended to be a part of the "Botpack" extension, which would go on to become the popular stand-alone game known as Unreal Tournament.
Afterwards, build 220 included the updated sounds, particularly the weapon sounds, presumably to make them compatible with Unreal Tournament. Even though the new weapon sounds were 16-bit audio while the old ones were only 8-bit, I really liked the older weapon sounds. These days, versions 224v and higher can be used to play back the original sounds via a mutator. (Unless you simply want to play the older, unpatched version.)
Anyway, I'm going to log off now; expect more articles to appear in the future.
