About that question above (the poll), you must first:
1) - Warn people about .dll installs - I installed your mod and then during install I just saw some dlls entering my UT instalation. While I checked afterwards and they were harmless and organized in seperate folders, you should ALWAYS warn people that you're going to install aditional dll files before installing anything.
And you don't mention that anywhere, not even in the this thread.
So you better change your installer a bit so it at least informs people that you're going to install new dlls in their system.
2) - Solve very basic bugs - When I say "basic bugs", I don't mean easy ones, I mean the ones that happen very often and that makes the gameplay somewhat lame. Beta test your mods conveniently before release, don't release them with some missing or buggy code. Examples of these bugs:
- the cars turn around when they are stopped (wtf? maybe this is why you say they drift)
- there are several physics glitches in the collision (the vehicles get stuck quite often at some walls)
- the cameras are also a bit glitchy when you move them in weird angles and also they are too "jumpy"
- the stationary ones are floating visually
- the wheels move way slower than their true angular speed relative to the real linear vehicle speed
- the tanks turrets/cannons don't rotate with the tank
- the bot support is strange to say at least (some of my own team keep turning with their cars around their own node
)
And the list would continue, but the idea here is not pointing mistakes.
And these bugs are from your latest Onslaught mod released.
What I mean with this is that you need to make basic testing to them before release, otherwise bugs like those will happen always you release a complex mod like this. So don't ever release anything which has really bad bugs from what you know and discovered, and if you have a hard time to work them out, there are still some coders out there and ask them help if needed for a specific problem.
3) - Keep the code as clean and organized possible - No, you're not the only one which don't organize their code. Many coders/modders out there do that mistake also, and when they have a bug to fix they use over than 60% of their time to look for the block when the code has a bit of complexity.
4) - Before building maps, you should take a look into some BSP definitions and limitations out there. You can do better than what you did for example in your ONS-Torlan. What I mean is that: the main building has "weird" BSP, and the real thing in UT99 can really be more simple and stable.
Also, there's a squared cut all around the map, caused by the hollow cube you added to act like a "play zone volume" (which was indeed a very good idea I must say), but you added it as Solid, and besides it making the map look damn ugly, it can cause many BSP issues if we consider the whole map), so in your next version change it to Semi-solid, rebuild, and you will have a much more stable map and the cut will simply disappear, making the map look as you would like I think.
5) - If you have so damn people interested in your mods, invite them to beta test them with you. I did that with the few mods I developed, and the result was a much more stable and faster mod, beyond than what I could do by testing it myself and alone. So do the same for better results.
6) - You should check all the models you import before release, since they might not be exported the vertexes joined together, making them look like a BSP+Mesh weird mix, unless they are intended to be that way, and also the skins: check always if bNoSmooth is set to false, unless you want your skin pixelated like very old skool (for example your weapon lockers) and also some skins are too blurried. I extracted some decorative models from Ut2k4 a while ago for 2 maps, and also used a weapon locker extracted from there, also I did my own models and made skins for them (and they were not that good), and everytime when I used them in UT, they didn't look that blurried.
I didn't check your textures, but I guess you're using very low resolution textures or you have another problem in their smoothing.
And I noticed all this in just 10/15min of normal gameplay.
With this, I don't want to bash your work or anything, I just wanted to give some advices.
No matter what other people say about your mods being leet, you should not let bugs stay and things you could do better undone.
The best proof of that, is that I already saw many mods (even with multiplayer support) being called as "Excellent", but only a few survived and are somewhat known and played today, because most of the modders didn't care much anymore about their mods stability or better development due to the good comments.
You say you like to mod, and it's good to have another modder in UT99, but just care a bit more about what and how you do and listen more the criticism than the good comments.
Just my 2 cents :]
1) - Warn people about .dll installs - I installed your mod and then during install I just saw some dlls entering my UT instalation. While I checked afterwards and they were harmless and organized in seperate folders, you should ALWAYS warn people that you're going to install aditional dll files before installing anything.
And you don't mention that anywhere, not even in the this thread.
So you better change your installer a bit so it at least informs people that you're going to install new dlls in their system.
2) - Solve very basic bugs - When I say "basic bugs", I don't mean easy ones, I mean the ones that happen very often and that makes the gameplay somewhat lame. Beta test your mods conveniently before release, don't release them with some missing or buggy code. Examples of these bugs:
- the cars turn around when they are stopped (wtf? maybe this is why you say they drift)
- there are several physics glitches in the collision (the vehicles get stuck quite often at some walls)
- the cameras are also a bit glitchy when you move them in weird angles and also they are too "jumpy"
- the stationary ones are floating visually
- the wheels move way slower than their true angular speed relative to the real linear vehicle speed
- the tanks turrets/cannons don't rotate with the tank
- the bot support is strange to say at least (some of my own team keep turning with their cars around their own node
)And the list would continue, but the idea here is not pointing mistakes.
And these bugs are from your latest Onslaught mod released.
What I mean with this is that you need to make basic testing to them before release, otherwise bugs like those will happen always you release a complex mod like this. So don't ever release anything which has really bad bugs from what you know and discovered, and if you have a hard time to work them out, there are still some coders out there and ask them help if needed for a specific problem.
3) - Keep the code as clean and organized possible - No, you're not the only one which don't organize their code. Many coders/modders out there do that mistake also, and when they have a bug to fix they use over than 60% of their time to look for the block when the code has a bit of complexity.
4) - Before building maps, you should take a look into some BSP definitions and limitations out there. You can do better than what you did for example in your ONS-Torlan. What I mean is that: the main building has "weird" BSP, and the real thing in UT99 can really be more simple and stable.
Also, there's a squared cut all around the map, caused by the hollow cube you added to act like a "play zone volume" (which was indeed a very good idea I must say), but you added it as Solid, and besides it making the map look damn ugly, it can cause many BSP issues if we consider the whole map), so in your next version change it to Semi-solid, rebuild, and you will have a much more stable map and the cut will simply disappear, making the map look as you would like I think.
5) - If you have so damn people interested in your mods, invite them to beta test them with you. I did that with the few mods I developed, and the result was a much more stable and faster mod, beyond than what I could do by testing it myself and alone. So do the same for better results.
6) - You should check all the models you import before release, since they might not be exported the vertexes joined together, making them look like a BSP+Mesh weird mix, unless they are intended to be that way, and also the skins: check always if bNoSmooth is set to false, unless you want your skin pixelated like very old skool (for example your weapon lockers) and also some skins are too blurried. I extracted some decorative models from Ut2k4 a while ago for 2 maps, and also used a weapon locker extracted from there, also I did my own models and made skins for them (and they were not that good), and everytime when I used them in UT, they didn't look that blurried.
I didn't check your textures, but I guess you're using very low resolution textures or you have another problem in their smoothing.
And I noticed all this in just 10/15min of normal gameplay.
With this, I don't want to bash your work or anything, I just wanted to give some advices.
No matter what other people say about your mods being leet, you should not let bugs stay and things you could do better undone.
The best proof of that, is that I already saw many mods (even with multiplayer support) being called as "Excellent", but only a few survived and are somewhat known and played today, because most of the modders didn't care much anymore about their mods stability or better development due to the good comments.
You say you like to mod, and it's good to have another modder in UT99, but just care a bit more about what and how you do and listen more the criticism than the good comments.
Just my 2 cents :]
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