Random comments
Any map named "Battle Arena" is doomed to fail. Historically, mappers have decided to call their maps "Battle Arena" if there is no cover and no good weapon or health placement, because then a deathmatch turns into a confused mess on the ground floor. Single player battle arenas are just as confusing and pointless: usually a large, open map full of monsters. Anyone who makes a map called "Battle Arena" deserves to be smashed against the skybox with my new Enhanced Gravity Gun.
Developer Journal
2 Feb 2007
Vehicles for Unreal Tournament. Wouldn't that be a nice thing? How about vehicles that you can mount user-controllable turrets (or any other actor) on? All who agree, please let me know and I will send you my latest script package... Not really. I just finished a user-controllable turret for UT. So I could attach things to it realistically, I had to create my own mover subclass because the Attach Mover is a failure, at least on my computer. So I created a turret. I'm working on a vehicle class for which you can specify whether it's a land vehicle (goes on land, falls if it's in the air, sinks in water), water vehicle (doesn't go on land, falls out of the air, and sinks in water), a hovercraft (goes on land, falls if it's in the air, floats on water), an airplane-type flight vehicle (strafing and rise/sink disabled, falls if its velocity is too low), or a helicopter-type flight vehicle (can strafe and rise or sink, and hovers). You will be able to attach any kind of actor to it! I can't wait...
29 Jan 2007
In 30 minutes last night, I made a pickup with similar functionality to the CRYSIS nanotech suit. Like the original nanosuit, it regenerates health. It has four modes: Strength (doubles your damage), Speed (Multiplies your speeds by 1.5 and doubles your JumpZ), Health (regenerates 2 points health per second instead of 1), and Cloak (invisibility). I was going to do an Armor mode, which would give the player 1 point armor per second AND 2 points health per second, but I could only figure out how to do that if the player already had armor, so I made it a simple health mode instead. I'm going to re-do this in the near future. I made the nanosuit re-skin the player with the UT shield-belt textures, so it looked like the player was wearing fancy force-fields or armor. The problem with that is, you can't tell what team someone's on if they are wearing the nanosuit! I'm going to fix this tonight.
28 Jan 2007
Over the weekend...
STICKY GRENADE LAUNCHER!!!
Fire: launches a grenade with a 10-second time limit. If it hits a player, it will attach to the player and beep once every second. This gives people a fair warning if they are going to be suicide-bombed.
Alt Fire: launches a grenade that sticks to anything that isn't alive, and blows up when it touches something alive–like a trip mine. To be fair, you can shoot these trip mines apart (though they have 50 health), and you can pick them up with the gravity gun. You can then either throw them at your enemies or touch another mine with it to sweep up both of them.
Berserker pack
Doom fans will recognize this. It is basically a subclass of UDamage that increases your damage, doubles your ground, water, and air speeds, and triples your jump height for 30 seconds. (Please let me know if that sounds too long.)
Classic Portal Gun
This portal gun works more like the original weapon from Portal. The Portals are instant-hit, and you can manage each one separately: fire is a blue portal, alt fire is an orange one. They look surprisingly like the original portals except that you can't see through them (but I'm working on that.)
24 Jan 2007
I finally got my gravity guns to work properly. They include angular velocity calculations, as I said, so you can pick up people with the Enhanced Gravity Gun and smash them on the ground. :-)
I also finished a rather unusual weapon. I call it the "Energy Disc". the launcher is basically the UT razorjack, but the disc is special. Here's how it works:
-You only get one disc. If it has been fired, you can't fire again until you get it back. -Primary fire causes the disc to collect energy from anything it can. It will drain 20 points of health from anything that has health. If it hits a wall, it returns to you. -You can power up the disc this way to 400 points energy. If you fire the disc into a hazard, it will instantly gain full power. -Alt fire causes the disc to give all its energy to anything it hits that can take damage. At power levels above 200, the disc will cause a shockwave each time it hits a wall. The disc will return to you after you hit someone or if it bounces off more than two walls. -The disc is about five times as fast as the razor blade, to make up for the fact that you get only one.
The Splinter Machine was overpowered and the bots couldn't use it, so I scrapped it in favor of this one.
19 Jan 2007
I decided to recode all my weapons, using my own code in routines copied out of TournamentWeapon. Now, they work and can be picked up properly.
I also decided to work on a gravity gun because I haven't made a melee weapon to go with all my other weapons. At first, I wanted it to pick up and throw objects around, but there isn't that much to throw in any of the original UT maps, so I thought about allowing it to pick up and throw players. Well, that isn't so good in a map like Facing Worlds. Therefore, I decided that it will be able to pick up and throw only Decorations, Movers, and Projectiles. (I want it to be able to throw the flags in CTF around too.) Primary fire picks up an object, and alt fire throws it. I decided to make alt fire deal some damage if the object is close enough. That way, it can be used as a melee weapon that bots can use too.
There will also be an "Enhanced Gravity Gun" which has all the capabilities of the basic version, but it can also pick up and throw people! So you can throw them off the asteroid in Facing Worlds, or just smack them into a wall somewhere. If you aim it at level geometry, you can pick YOURSELF up and swing around that point. There are some rudimentary angular velocity calculations so you can do some Spider-Man-like tricks with it. This version will be like the InstaGib rifle: it will have its own special mutator, and will not appear in any maps as a pickup, because it's just too powerful of a weapon.
I also got my mutator to work properly. Now, if you use it, you start out with a Dispersion Pistol, a Portal Gun, and a Gravity Gun.
18 Jan 2007
Funny thing I just noticed about my weapons. The ones that are 'from scratch' (Subclasses of TournamentWeapon') never become pickup items! You can't kill someone and take their SRME, Nemesis, Quad Shot, Portal Gun, etc. Is there special code for making an item become a pickup? And where is it implemented?
Sticky grenade launcher anyone? That's my WIP right now.
17 Jan 2007
I DID IT! UT now has a fully functional Portal Gun! It works basically the same as the original gun from VALVe's game "Portal", but there are a few differences which I implemented because what I did was really the easiest way I knew. Here are some specs:
Fire: Launch up to two Portals. These portals are automatically connected to each other. If you try firing more than two portals, the gun won't do anything.
Alt Fire: Clean up all your existing portals.
Portals will stick to any solid surface (not movers or barrels), and they will also stick to players. For example, you can fire one portal, stick it to an enemy, then fire the other into a hazard. He will be teleported into the hazard. Perhaps a better way to handle that would be to fire one portal into the hazard FIRST, then shoot your enemy, then clean up, because you can teleport to a portal while it is flying. If portals contact a teleporter or WarpZone, they will become locked in a dimensional paradox loop: The teleporter or WarpZone will try to teleport the Portal at the same time as the Portal is trying to teleport the Teleporter. This is resolved by an immense release of energy and the destruction of the portal. Portals can teleport players, barrels, and projectiles. Of course, if you fire the Shock Rifle at a portal, it won't teleport the beam because that's a hitscan attack. This gun does not take ammunition. It cannot rapid fire. Projectile speed is supposed to be 10000 units per second. It is impossible to fire a portal into a space that is too small to fit in, because the portal has the same collision box as a player. Now, I'm trying to make a mutator where the player starts off with a portal gun instead of a translocator, AND a sidearm which is not the enforcer. Anyone can help?
16 Jan 2007
Gave the Unreal Quadshot some code. It now works like a real shotgun. Its stopping power, sound, and firing modes led me to name it the "Anti-Son-Of-A-Bitch machine."
Fire: A single 12-gauge shotgun shell. 20 pellets, good accuracy, 5 points damage per pellet. If you blow this in someone's face, it will turn them into bloody hunks of meat. Alt Fire: Four shells, one after the other, auto-shotgun style. I need some help on this part because overuse of the alt fire causes the gun to, ahem, jam. After that, you can't even switch weapons, but you have to wait around and die before you can use your trigger finger again. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING!
Everything before this point does not have a precise date. Some of my other weapons to this point:
Air Cannon: this weapon is only meant to knock people around and stop them from firing at you.
Fire: harmless shockwave with a huge momentum transfer. You can rocket jump about 100 feet with it. Alt fire: shockwave that causes a concussion, but has no momentum transfer.
Splinter Machine: a U238 powered weapon, replaces the Flak Cannon. Bots don't know how to use it because both firing modes can spin up. This weapon has no killing power of its own: you can't hurt someone by shooting them with it. It relies on a small fission explosion to create shrapnel out of anything it hits, which then does some serious damage. It doesn't work with humans because human splinters just can't do enough damage.
Fire: Launches a fast-moving activated U238 pellet, of variable size. It explodes on contact. One unit of ammo yields a moderately annoying blast. Ten units yields one twice the size of a hand grenade. Alt Fire: Launches a similar pellet, but it bounces around corners until it hits a player. Same blast statistics as for the other pellet.
Flechette Cannon: If you like watching people stuck full of darts, twitching, screaming, and bleeding all over the place, this is your favorite weapon.
Fire: Launches toxic darts minigun-style. Each dart does a total of 10 points damage, 2 points at a time. I was so proud of myself when I got the darts to stick in players realistically. Alt Fire: Launches 10 darts, shotgun style.
NEMESIS: my replacement for the Redeemer. I can't make my own models for UT because gmax development has been discontinued, but I wanted a model that made it obvious this gun was fusion powered.
Fire: Sprays out explosive energy packets. One is enough to kill a person, but this sprays 10 at a time. Makes for a really nice explosion noise. Alt Fire: Launches a slow-moving energy grenade whose explosion is comparable to the Redeemer shell (actually, it's twice as big, but the shell is twice as easy to hit), and sprays out 20 energy packets.
Shrink Ray/Microwave Expander: Hail to the chief, baby. A friend of mine suggested that I code a weapon similar to the one(s) from Duke Nukem, so I did.
Fire: projectile shrinks your enemy for 30 seconds and ensures that his health stays far enough down that you can jump on him and smash him...if you can jump high enough. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to change the player's collision cylinder. Alt Fire: projectile attaches to player, inflating him over the course of 10 seconds, at the end of which, he explodes.
Dispersion Pistol: I needed my own sidearm to go with all the weapons I'm making, so this was it. When I ported it from Unreal, I thought it didn't seem like such a good idea to put weapon power-ups in a map. Therefore, I made all five power levels accessible by holding down the trigger. Unfortunately, this means that Bots don't like it.