I looked up a couple guides to find a way of speeding up the loading screen and have been succussful. Now when we start a new map, I usually find myself the first to start playing (while most of you guys are still on loading screen). So I will share what I have found.
The two basic steps is to switch off Preload All player Skins and Speech Recognition. These can be found within the game > settings > game > look under 'misc'
Although if you use Speech Recognition, then don't switch it off.
There are two more things I do to make UT start a little more quicker. I have no Nvidia Logo.
A few other graphical tweaks are on that guide, but I have my graphics set to full, so it doesn't help me.
And I have made a Batch file that closes explorer when opening Unreal2k4, then opens it again when your finished playing. Heres how to make one;
make a new notepad file and type,
add other 'taskkills' if you want, and change to your ut directory.taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe
start /wait E:\UT2004\System\UT2004.exe
start C:\Windows\explorer.exe
Save As Batch file (will appear as .bat). Make a shortcut to desktop.
I must warn you though 'taskkill' does exactly what is says on the tin, it'll just close the program, without saving anything, so if you recently put stuff in recycle bin, or changed your icons or start menu around it'll not save those changes.
Any other tips to streamlining unreal are welcome.