[ Transscript of review for Night Hunters with Flashlight | Posted by Vlosk on 2003-09-06 | Score: 6.5 ]
This mutator, when combined with proper pre-darkened maps, gives basic DarkMatch to UT2003. For any who don’t know what this game mode is, you’ve probably been living under a rock and thus don’t care about this; for the rest, we finally have some next-gen in the dark action.
Though the default settings piss me off, the flashlight settings are completely user configurable. The button didn’t appear in the GUI, and until I saw the info on the site, I was about to hammer this for those very settings. Instead, you can change the too-bright, too-tight, default-off light and make something that fits your personal preferences in terms of ambient size, color, and usage; though the ability to toggle is included (keybind ) you can prevent this, or allow it, and choose the initial state of your flashlight. Team colors are also supported, as is a check to use a ‘realistic’ light which appears to scale the light up over distance. [though it should cut the intensity, instead of allowing me to paint any wall over 10 meters away completely bright…]
Bots and monsters have lights, though they don’t know or care how to use them. I don’t mind this fact, as the lights work and that’s all Darkmatch really needs. However, bots change view so quickly that instead of a relative slide of the light, the bot’s light objects jitter annoyingly. Not much to do about this I suppose, but unless you dim the lights, be prepared to be strobed. [If there was a sense of ambient light in the map, this wouldn’t be AS bad, but then many people like their DarkMatch _really_ dark, so what are you going to do…]
UT2003 is incapable of having dynamic darkness, much like the original UT did; even though you can get damn close, you can’t affect the lighting of things like terrain. Thus, the solution in this case was t change the maps themselves; though this works, it irks me. First, you have to download rather large files that you essentially already have; should there be enough changes to make this worthwhile (ie perhaps a dimmer skybox, removed ‘unlit’ surfaces, eliminated or fixed emitters, removed ‘unlit’ meshes, etc) I would have applauded the move no questions asked. As it stands though, the maps are basically a map with no lights. Instead of doing what a mutator would have done with code (in the old engine), or even with a nifty UED app, the best choice would have been to either fix the maps themselves (or find some mappers to help) thus creating the ULTIMATE Darkmatch experience: it would only take about 30 minutes to an hour per map, and it would be default fix my gripe with ALL modes of Darkmatch; being the lit lights and decorations that mean nothing in the darkness. (and instead of turning light to LT_None, you should just selectall ->light -> delete [make all surfaces have a giant lightmap, and shrink the map size a fair bit]. Fix meshes (delete lightcones, fix the meshes with bright textures [or add small lights to effect the area around these!]), fix bsp textures, fix skybox. Rebuild, and call it a day. Perhaps even taking a few screenshots for the ingame preview). As it stands though, the pre-made maps are just flat Darkmatch, when there is all-but-literally a tonne of additional potential here.
In its current form, this mutator / map combo earns a 6.5 out of 10. Not great, not really good, but not terrible either. Note that this is for the Darkmatch – flashlight mutator, not the Night Hunters gametype. However, should some work be done, as follows, this mod gets an easy 10 out of 10:
#1 – Fix the maps. It doesn’t take long, and especially if you used a little bit of ambient lighting instead of absolute dark, you could create a STUNNING effect. [Also, the issue of meshes not excepting projectors is a mute point if you’re going to manually edit the map to begin with.]
#2 – Tweak the light. The current dynamic light is ok, but not overly great either. With a little work a colorable projector could be configured; this would be my personal preference, as the issues with doing so are rendered mute by the change-map issue. (and it would look better than the circle!] However, should dynamic lights be used, some solution needs to be added for static-meshes; vertex lighting with that perfect sphere of light looks _bad_. This could be in the form of raised ambient light, or going projector, but either way, it looks odd as it is. Also, should volumetric lighting be added (particle cones with beams, see UDN) I would be very happy / impressed.
#3 – Have a readme. Would have saved me a bit of time…
#4 – Check your files; the map pack is corrupt, to all unzip programs, this is the same for _both_ map-pack downloads; though you can extract some (not all) maps from the non UT2003Mod setup.
This map is basic Darkmatch…. Though the original DarkMatch was a classic in UT / Unreal, it should be noted the engine increased 100 fold since. I would think it reasonable to expect that we get more than Unreal 1 graphics 4 years later. [especially when its very possible to do so]
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