UnrealTournament Extension Pack

Unreal Tournament SDK

Seems like the old thread was gone during the last BU-Crash.. so I made a new one covering unmentioned information too.

About/Overview

The Extension Pack for UT is a custom made SDK for our old beloved classic UT. Next to many graphical enchancements like PostProcessing (Software and Hardware sided), 2 build-in Particle Systems, a StaticMesh-like Mesh System introduced to UT, Projectors, Tree Generators (and much more) it also contains tons of physics, gameplay/ai, audio and misc extensions (build-in Physics Engine (including Vehicle Support), RPG System, Level Memory System, many new Triggers/SpecialEvents and so on). The reason why I'm doing this all on my own is the following: the mod LSoNP crashed and my old team and me decided to put out an SDK based on the extensions LSoNP already. The Pack contains all features of LSoNP, all improved and made network compatible also including new features (completely rewritten Particle Systems, new enhanced Render Features next to those common in LSoNP). During development time many coders, mappers and other developers asked for a conversion to Games like Unreal, Deus Ex, UT2004, Rune, Tactical Ops. I'll see how the effort of a conversion is suggestive compared to the use for it in other Unreal Engine Games. 6 upcoming UT Projects have also announced that they'll use the SDK officially within their mod to make even greater final results, including Marathon: Resurrection (featuring it with their next Release), BerzerkUT, Unreal: Phoenix Rising and others. A 7th project using the SDK is oncoming but currently lacks members, it deals about an interesting tactical/strategy-hybrid shooter in near future, if you might be interested in that new different and ambitious total conversion.. then let me know!

Current State

Demo/Beta: Released on 17.10.2007 (100 %)
Final: Coming February/March 2008 (71 %)


Features

Visuals

• 4 build-in complex Particle Systems (all compatible to each other), easy to edit and with many performance options
• Projectors and enhanced Decals
• Software/Hardware PostProcessing: Light Bloom, Radial Blur, Motion Blur, ShaderCoronas, ShaderSprites, ShaderParticles, Lensflares
• Partial RenderToTexture Support
• Distance Fog
• new Mesh System (StaticMesh like) + Tool
• Advanced Zone Effects
• Sprite-based Dynamic Coronas
• Sprite-based Lensflares
• Mesh-based Dynamic Coronas
• Mesh-based Lensflares
• Advanced Sprites (with additional Axis settings)
• Weather Simulation (both static and dynamic)
• Vegetation Generators (Tree, Grass, Foliage)
• Combiner/Overlayer System (simulates a huge palette of texture-based and mesh-based shaders like SelfIllumination, CellShading, DetailMaps, complex Combiners etc.)

Physics

• Physics Util containing over 50 new Functions relating physics and collision
• Implementation of Forces
• Vehicle Support (Air-, Ground-, Water Vehicles) with allowed attachments (vehicle weapons?)
• Full Quaternion Support
• Constraints, Hinges, Joints and Angular Motors
• Extended Collision
• Advanced Interpolation
• Advanced Attachment Support
• Many X/Y/Z Displacement Options (mostly used for the Particle Systems)
• Revolution Support
• Material related events

Gameplay/AI

• External AI Scripting
• External Gameplay Scripting
• RPG System (new Inventory System, Conversation System, Quest/Subquests, Character Development etc.)
• Level Memory System (allows back/forth tracking keeping the state of the map as it was left before, allows non-linear gameplay and hub maps)
• Tons of new Gameplay/AI scripts and functions

Audio

• Mp3 Support/Player
• Ogg Support/Player
• Dynamic Footstep Sounds
• Material Relative Events/Sounds

Additional/Misc

• 4 Util Classes, containing ~200 new Functions all together
• New Movie/Cutscene System
• Volume Support (similar to those of the Unreal Engine 2.x)
• Auto Replacing Mutators (replaced old items and stuff with their new included revamped counterparts)
• Extracted UScript Source
• Tech Demo System
• Highly detailed Documentations (including Step-By-Step Tutorials, Class References and Lists, Tweaking Documents, Idea Documents for further development with the SDK)
• ~ 20 Tech Demo Scenes
• ~ 10 walkable Tech Demos and Test Maps
• Many tutorial related Maps
• Options Menu

NOTE: This is far from being the final feature list. Many features contain tons of sub-features not shown here. There might be implemented new features until it's release (currently I'm thinking about real texture-based shader system and some additional PostProcessing effects)


Media




























Full Gallery: Click!


Cooperating Projects

Maps

• DM-Ryigiar (Special Edition)

Mods

• Antalius SP (Singleplayer)
• Living Sacrifice (Singleplayer)
• Marathon: Resurrection (Single/Multiplayer)
• BerzerkUT (Single/Multiplayer)

Downloads

A Demo/Preview version of the Pack has been released a while ago.

UT99 Extension Pack [DEMO] 3.2 MB

I really really don't recommend developing with this one. It's far from final and contains only pieces of features of the final version.


Links

• Official ModDB Profile
• UnrealWIKI Page
• Thread @ UnrealPlayground.com
• Thread @ UnrealSP.org (New Forums)
• Official Myspace
• Thread @ UnrealED.de (German)
• Thread @ UTZone.de (German)
• Main Thread @ UnrealED.eu (German)
• UnrealTournament Extension Pack Sub-Forums @ UnrealED.eu (German)

Thanks guys for your kind posts!
Currently I'm working on the physics (Constraints/Joints, Vehicles, Extended Collision) and the new ParticleSystems (yes Plural, 4 at all). The Vehicle Support is much different to anything yet created for UEngine 1 (Still .:..:'s UVehicles are great and I highly respect him), the Vehicles don't just use one Centerpoint and Quaternions they have different Force/Traction Points that indicate Physical Behaviour, also each Wheel might have it's own correct Collision and Joints allowing Steering, Spring Force etc., old CollisionCylinder has been totally disabled for anything related with my PhysicEngine, if everything works well you'll have Vehicles that are wakeable inside, or carry stuff etc.

Reason for 4 Particle Systems:
I made my first actor-based ParticleSystem 5 years ago (even before Lost Secrets of NaPali) in this Time I came to the major decision that it's smarter to split functionality into different systems instead of storing everything in one ****load^^ Thus they're 2 major different ParticleSystems: Those whose Particles become independent (Particle move without being controlled (that much) by the Emitter) and those who don't (for example BeamEmitters, a linked list of particles that are always attached to the Emitter). Also a huge major performance improvement is the "Recycle Feature" instead of spawning Particles (which are Actors!!) over and over again, they're replaced at Origin. It also features over 20 Performance Settings like LOD, Culling, Visibility and son. Other great features are: Revolution Support, Force Support (more than just "Move there"), Conditional Properties (Settings may change depending on outer Influences), Special Sprites whose Axes are controllable whilst they can still rotate around themselfes (Quaternions ftw!), 2in1 Animation Support, Over 15 Rendermodes (Sprite, ShaderSprite, Lensflares, StaticMesh, Mesh, VertexParticle, Fog..) and tons of more Features.

GreatEmerald said:

It's definitely a great project, hope to see it released soon! Is there some place you post news, as I haven't seen any yet?
Looks like this project does even more things for UT than 227 patch for Unreal 1! And some things are the same, like footstep sounds and particles
The UDamage looks nice, I like how it feels like UT2 And speaking about that, maybe the Relics' animations in UT could be improved, like Strength -> Berserk animation from UT'04, Regeneration -> Booster, Speed -> Speed

Anyway, I'm sure this will be so useful for UT! And this may be the base for more very nice mods! Keep it up!

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Yes thx, the release date keeps delaying and delaying due to my intention to make everything fully working and bugfree, also the new particleengines and physics are most time consuming, finally yesterday I managed to bypass teh old cylinder collision and replace it with simple/semi-complex collision primitives

There're many places one can inform about the SDK, the best places to be informed about it is are:
It's official ModDB Profile
The official Forums (international, still not supposed to be active nowadays ;P)
It's Unreal WIKI Page

and of course several threads in many forums like this here, go and ask everything you want, that's why I'm doing such threads.

Yes I'm also thinking about to improve standard UT material combined with replacing mutators. Currently the SDK features all Unreal and all UT Weapons more or less visually improved. Your suggestion about the Relics and other stuff sounds good to me but I have to see what to pull off in the first final release.. I can still update and implement new features, it's also supposed that the community will do so by time. As for mods they're several projects that will heavily use the SDK as a base for an overall improved experience (Especially speaking of Marathon: Resurrection and BerzerkUT).

Of course I hope it'll be that useful for anyone still willing to develope on top of UT, that's it's main purpose because it'll feature new AI/Gameplay code, movie/cutscene systems, new mapping methods (like Volumes) too.

Nargil said:

Great work as usual Shadow.

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thx.. Raven, Raven did you change your nick !?

Nargil said:

227 is more concentrated on replication, security, bugfixes, etc, then on visuals.

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right indeed, one can't compare a patch with an SDK

haha lol, ok I understand^^

Yes you're right. I should post more progress news but on the other hand I always think "hmm no one really cares.." well of course it's not so^^ but yes I'll post more development/news articles and progress details.

Yeah that'll be quite possible that many users detect bugs and I'm really willing to remove them no matter what and it's also going to be tested offline AND online in order to make shure it works in single- and multiplayer. I also hope to implement proper bot support for the Vehicles.

Regarding Updates:
Personally I often thought over on how to archive a good support for proper updating. First everything was in one UPackage. With the time I came to the point that it'll be a lot more useful if the Pack would be splitted into Functionality-Packages: one for the basic stuff and Systems, one for Physics, one for the Particle Systems and so on. That makes it possible to release updates/patches that are a lot smaller if they're not related to all categories of the SDK. If one feature category has to be updated but needs an improvement for another category both (or more) required parts will be bundled as an update. But well I still recommend to backup older basic files. In order to kill version mismatches one has to think in 2 different ways: There'll be the system files that build up the SDK itself (the packages only containing the pure functionality in order to run it) and those files forming the real content that bases on these sys files. Thus updating the core package would course to the deepest changes. In addition I'm going to list every single small change compared to the previous version, what was deleted, improved/changed or added.

Regarding it's filesize:
Currently I'm thinking about 2 versions. In functionality they're totally the same, but the bigger version contains an additional Xtras Pack with many Ready-To-Use Classes and Features. Both versions are shipped with all required tools, documentations, maps, tutorials and so on. So the smaller Version should be around 15-20 MB and the bigger version around 80 MB.

GreatEmerald said:

No-one cares?! Why, all people do is waiting for the SDK and it's news

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ya ya I know.. I have some quite different points of view when it comes to development news, most of the people (like um 95-99 %) can't await the release but a minority of ignoramuses always say the same ****: "UT is dead", "no one wants to play it", "an SDK for that game is useless..", "wow cool the same **** like UT Revolution", and all that crap, funny on the one side but on the other one I have a "duty" to defend myself, the SDK and the overall UT comm against that bull****..

GreatEmerald said:

That's nice. Keeping everything in one file is not a very good option (56k users will kill you if you do!), and when everything is split into different files, it's easier to manage them.
That's somewhat big, but that will make so much improvements that it's really OK

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Yes I know, I try to care about any possible user group be it depending on it's hardware or OS.
The size is somewhat big for a UT Package I know, but there's so many to offer, the Xtra Pack alone will be around 40-50 MB in size.

Will the pack with Xtras be fully customisable? I love customising everything! That makes everything a lot easier and better to use. And if there will be more options (I guess so!), will it have it's options' descriptions? [/quote]
That Pack has been made with the purpose to offer a Ready-To-Use base of features which you don't have to create from scratch. Well the emitters, while not implemented in the engine, won't have a preview in ED, thus it would be useful if there'll be many Instant-Classes which only require some small adaptions to your maps/mods.

The only possibility to create and edit realtime Emitters is to code a complex ingame menu allowing you to change the chosen Emitter and save it's data into ini or int's whose content can be later copied into DefaultProperties Section of your own SubEmitter Class. I think I'll implement that to have at least something like a realtime preview, this feature will be also used for Cutscene Creation.. I hope xD
Currently this system is only used for the Tech Demos but should work fine for developing too.

The Xtra Pack is meant to be customized at one's will but I always recommand to save new classes in own packages, because that Xtra Pack might become a Standard Pack for the SDK.

The SDK contains a detailed Class Reference, many Tutorials, Tutorial Maps, Test Maps and other Help Files.. in short: hopefully every kind of documentation one will need to develope on top of the SDK.

GreatEmerald said:

And how will the options menu look?

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Well a multi-layered UT-GUI menu containing options for general preferences, performance, emitters, post processing etc. Of course everything will be stored in Ini-Files and the defaults are aimed on Medium Class PCs so no one will get a shock..

GreatEmerald said:

And the auto-replacing mutators, maybe it will have it's own tool to replace items with other ones? And maybe even replacing one item with two, like ChaosUT's vials to Armor Shards + HealthVials...

Well, good luck And inform us when you'll know the release date!

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I'll code additional mutator menu for these ones too thus the player can decide which classes are replaced/changed.

So.. hmm dunno.. I'm assuming April/May.. yes another delay, but I'm not sitting all day long on this. Got a band, many friends and enjoy alcoholics and chicks of course^^