UT 2k3/2k4 RainbowSix mute would like some testers

[meowcat]

@ Corporal_Lib [BR]: That drawing of the bunny character with the AKMSU is kind of disturbing (a character I would expect to see in a James Bond movie)

The improved CAR 15 will not be in this release (but maybe in next week's release). I am doing some network testing now to make sure all the code still works. Hopefully will have a new release posted in a couple of hours.

 

[Kyle Kellahshehskee]

Corporal_Lib,

So you're Gordon Freeman? The resemblance is stunning, although Valve red-shifted you're hair a bit too much.

Your drawings are nice, although the bunny-costumed girl has legs so muscular that they're probably deadlier than the AK she's struggling with. I wonder how hard that would be to code into the mod?

And an imminent release? NICE! Hopefully I won't be collapsing onto the top of the keyboard, as it's been a pretty busy day.

 

[Corporal_Lib [BR]]

Noboby noticed she´s topless? OK, you guys gun nuts only watched to her AKS-74u and her muscular legs (she´s supposed to look "stronglike" as Jessica Biel ... that girl has biceps larger than mine) XD

If the netcode is stable it means we can play COOP? =D Sugoi! Lets plan a full infers session on a YARM server (ypu´ve mentioned some posts ago the M14...what´s new on this battlerifle???)
My real name is Gerson Freeman, I´m gordon´s younger brother, Black Mesa trainee..

 

[meowcat]

The "new" M14 is just the classic wood grained version, but this one has wall penetration turned on all the time (not just in the COD4 mutator) so there is a reason to use it instead of other weapons.

Just finished some network testing. Basic weapon/player/game code works great, but I still need to iron out some third person player animation code issues (they're pretty annoying to see in game), and player camouflage selection issues (not replicating properly to clients), so the release will probably not occur until tomorrow or three hours from now at the soonest. Sorry

[EDIT] Ok, I've fixed the bugs (at least the ones that I came across). The team/individual camo selection works almost perfectly (the only difference is that players who join after a match has begun may not see other players with their currently selected camo if they have already tried to change it for their next spawn). The client side weapon hit effects work well now (no more freaking lag to see your own bullet impacts yeah!), and the client side hit detection appears to work well (primarily included to support a better Coop experience). I will be uploading this YARM revision in the morning.

 

[Kyle Kellahshehskee]

Don't sweat it! After all, you're doing the heavy lifting!

 

[meowcat]

Uploading latest version now. There are one or two third person animation bugs remaining that will have to be ironed out next release (client seeing the server playing the offhand throw grenade animation), but otherwise it works well. I will update this post with the link once its up.

[EDIT] Try this download. I will be working on levels the next day or two so that there is something better scaled to play YARM in.

 

[Corporal_Lib [BR]]

Niiiiiiiiiiiiice (as Borat would say) ;D

Dling now..post my impressions later.. out of curiosity, when will YARM change the version number? It´s been 128 since last year.. what is the logic on program version numbers? (programmer wise) lol

 

[meowcat]

I used to have a numbering convention, but I don't quite recall what the reasoning behind it was anymore. If I can iron out the bugs in this release (which I am sure there are still plenty), I will update the numbering on the next release, as it will hopefully be a pretty clean update.

 

[Kyle Kellahshehskee]

Meowcat;

Am I the only one here who gets goosebumps whenever the rounds come buzzing by? The inclusion of just that "little" detail ramped up the dread factor by a dozen.

This has to be short due to how tired I am, but in short:

The stand-in wooden crates are thus far spawning without issues. I haven't seen anything unusual yet, such as a crate spawning where elevators/lifts/air jets are. It'll be interesting to see what will happen if that occurs. At this point in time, I still wish that the defensive position was larger than what it is (as in my illustrations), and that the too-obscuring glowing rings were gone, but you're probably just testing the waters to see what we find.

Did you tweak the bot code, because they seem to be pooling together into multi-man elements more and assaulting a location in unison more frequently than before. I hope that I wasn't imagining things, because there were numerous times where if it wasn't for my extremely fortunate usage of the very-limited cover provided by the 3-4 missile boxes, I would've been easily overrun for sure.

I can't imagine how sickening things are going to get once suppressing fire effects are implemented. Those crates won't provide me as much luck once the enemies' incoming rounds start impairing my ability to perceive and interact with the world!

Don't panic when I say this, but I couldn't find the Colt carbine. Is it available only in certain muts, or should it be locatable in all of them?

Have to run. This release has raised the bar once more. THANK YOU!

Good night!

 

[Kyle Kellahshehskee]

Missing cold breath, too distant crates, and more...

Truncated choppy list of observations below! No time for Shakespeare!

Cold breath not working on cold maps.

Cannot locate CAR-15.

Cannot locate the Halo assault rifle with undermounted grenade launcher (I was really looking forward to trying that thing out!).

Cannot locate the katana. How is it that these weapons aren't in-game? Do I have to have a certain mutator activated, or...?

What's the line listing I need to disable the teammates' names?

What's the line listing for altering how long dropped weapons stay present on the map? I tried hunting for these in the .ini files (when provided, using the terms listed in the Read Me document), but I came up with nothing.


About 1 in 6 missile-crates spawns are coming out "wonky," mainly tilted on impossible angles (the top crates are still firmly seated on top of the lower boxes which are severely tilted).

Oftentimes, the crates are too far away from the glowing HUD capture ring to be truly useful. If I try to make use of the stacked crates, I'm so far away from the capture ring that it can be easily seized by others without me even knowing that they're there.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing if it's done in addition to a more robust defensive ring. In fact, let's say that there's only a 30% chance of a few, badly shot up missile crates to spawn near WEAPON spawn points. These crates would not change color when touched, and their shot out lights would not illuminate with team colors--perhaps they were so badly damaged that they were abandoned altogether, but are still useful for seeking some degree of cover and concealment. These badly damaged crates would never be setup as defensive circles, and any exposed missiles will have already expended their supply of the pressurized toxic gases.

I'm sure that I forgot to mention a tactical/game balancing detail in my earlier posting about the missile-crate defensive ring. You probably already figured it out, since it's so obvious, but I'm mentioning it here for others to consider and give feedback on. In that post, I stated that every once in a while, a defensive ring will spawn with a crate that's damaged enough that its missile is partially exposed. Should the ring be assaulted with explosives, there's a chance that this exposed missile gets damaged, and it releases a highly pressurized toxic (translucent and green?) gas that quickly fills up the smaller invisible capture zone at the center of the ring of crates, and the gas will also rapidly expand to a meter beyond the outermost edge of the crates. The gas is emitted for 20 sec., at which point the emitting particulates "clog up" the emitting hole, and the gas then dissipates and becomes "safe" to inhale within another 10 sec. This 30 sec. time frame is a penalty to the not-too-careful attackers, for during this time, the crates will STAY lit with the last defender's colors, and will thus continue generating points for the team even though nobody can actually physically occupy the toxic region.


My previous observation with the "enhanced team working" bots is probably due to a gaff on my part. I forgot that in the Game Rules I set the bot number to "16." I'm confident that the grouped-together-bots was due to there being more of them on the map than what the map designer intended.


The mantling animation was PERFECT. It was very smooth, looked NATURAL, and didn't bug out on me. I want to try running into it, and then hitting "sprint" while the animation is playing a few more times to be sure of my observations, but this is a major improvement over the past incarnation.

I'm really looking forward to trying out your new "YARM showoff" levels!

I'm still sure that there are several features that will be big draws to the mod once they're fully realized: the defensive rings, the implementation of suppression fire psychological effects, and a bleeding/bandaging system.

Keep up the great work. Have a good night!

 

[meowcat]

Hi Kyle, Thanks for the feedback. I tried to get this release out sooner rather than later because it fixed several very annoying network bugs.

1. Yeah the cold breath does not seem to work (I tried using a previous emitter effect that I'd used for cigar smoke, but no dice). I will work on this and get in for the next update.

2. For the weapons: CAR15 has not been updated (have not taken the time to make the M68CCO yet). The Katana, and MA5G (underslung Grenade launcher version of the MA5b) are selectable in the YARM weapons mutator weapon exchanger.

3. Team mates name thingy: I'll get to that tonight, will be in the next release.

4. Dropped weapon timer: Hmm I guess it did not automatically add the line to the ini file. Add the following to configure the time in seconds (the code will automatically clamp it to less than 300 seconds):

[yarm.WeaponPickup_yarm]
fMaxDroppedTime=12.0

5. Crate angles: That is the reason I was hesitant to add them at all. I have the code set to automatically tilt the crates to match the terrain they sit on (which in my opinion looks better than having them always sit horizontal). UT2K4 does not readily support physics that would allow them to automatically drop according to gravity (it can be done using replicated Karma actors, but those things murder network and computer performance). The reason I did not place them in the middle of the Domination point is that in small hallways the crates/cover end up blocking the hall altogether (bots do not handle paths being blocked with great intelligence). I only move the existing crate stacks to the new location when I've determined that there is sufficient space around it. I could improve that algorithm, but I have other more pressing things to work on first . The bot limitation of not being able to sidestep the crates though is my main reason for not working on this feature more aggressively. If I had all of my own custom maps (with specific locations for Domination Points or Hills) I could do it (only select points with lots of space around them).

I'm hoping to have an additional map or two done by next weekend as well. I'll give a bandaging system a try too.

 

[Kyle Kellahshehskee]

YARM bots' names for assigning...

Meowcat;

Refreshed the page just before moving off to do more work. Pleasantly surprised at your quick and detailed response. Thank you for it.

Thank you for the code to control dropped weapon pickup time.

Are there any plans of supplying a document that spells out which default UT2K4 bots are replaced with the YARM bots? This might be tricky to do, because, I imagine, perhaps YARM's bots are also assigned by class type, and this will switch them out based on the YARM-mutator that's being used? If it's possible to supply such a list, it'd be great so that we can assign the bots we'd like to appear on both sides of the conflict.

Thanks again for all you do!

 

[meowcat]

No bot configuration option has been added to YARM yet. I am still playing with how to do this cleanly (less code coupling, ease of use and debugging etc), but what I think I will end up doing is allowing the user to have configurable lists of Bot Loadouts (e.g.: Use the woodland camo, sniper player model, PSG1 Rifle, and Colt Pistol), and then configurable prioritized team lists (e.g.: For red team use player configurations 1,3,4,5,12, and 14. For blue team use configurations 1,2,4,6,7,13, and 23). If each team only has 2 players, only use the first two loadouts from each list. This should be reasonably straight forward to create and use. At this point the YARM Bot list will probably only be compatible with the YARM weapons mutator (not the COD or INF mutator), but this has more to do with GUI intricacies, and the fact that each mute has its own pawn classes, and do not share the exact same weapon library. If it works, I will try to make versions compatible with the other two mutators.

On a side note, I've added and tested a "remove team beacon" bit of code. It works well and will be in the next release.

I figured out why the cold breath code does not work. As always, for stand alone games the fix is beyond simple, but in order to work in network games I need to either replicate yet another variable (I abhor adding more crap to the network load), or perform a nontrivial level name check on the client's copy each an every time a pawn comes into relevance. Everytime a pawn goes out of sight (behind a network occluder like BSP) on a client for more than about 5 seconds it is locally destroyed. When it comes into view the next time it is essentially respawned, and all of the variables that were replicated at the beginning of the pawns existence, are re-replicated again, though some things like the third person WeaponAttachment may not be replicated in the same update (which was causing a bug in my player's uppe torso animation code, I eventually made a work around). I will definitely update the breath code to work in standalone games, but I'm not ready to make it network compatible yet.

A few pics of a CTF remake of the old Rainbow Six (Rogue Spear?) MP map Bunkers:
<-> <-> <->

 

[Kyle Kellahshehskee]

Been away for a while. Bunkers looks good. Thanks for the sneak peek!

 

[meowcat]

I've been working on a bot config menu a bit, yuck I dislike the GUI code! Anyways, I finally fixed the teamskin bug (it was because my yarmBots subclassed Bot instead of xBot). I also have the breath working fairly well (at least for standalone games).

Also, here are a few other screenshots of another CTF map I'm working on, a remake of the UT99 CTF map 'CTF-Fin' by the Hanh 'Wanderer' Court. This time though I have the map set in the winter.
<-> <-> <-> <->

 

[Kyle Kellahshehskee]

Man, if I'm not mistaken, that "Fin" map remake is one that was played ALL of the time when I started playing INF online. Your map looks way better. I'm happy to hear that you're getting the bot config menu setup, and that the breath's looking good.

Can't wait to dive into the next release.

 

[Kyle Kellahshehskee]

Finally, here's some detailed feedback...

I love how you setup your range of grenade launcher options for the Halo assault rifle. It's a breeze for me to see exactly which "secondary fire" mode I'm in, and it's rarely confusing.

However, I am extremely frustrated with using said weapon in any fire mode from the iron sights view. When using the standard fire mode, there is no iron sight! Not your fault, as that's how the Halo weapon looks, but without them, it's pretty much useless. Maybe create a "holographic-HUD" type iron sight, as if it's being projected within Master Chief's helmet's visor?

The bots are pretty impressive with the undermounted grenade launcher. That said, it's extremely difficult using it as a human being. Is the kill radius too small? If I'm not mistaken, the kill radius is 5 m. and anything out to 140 m. can get wounded (that's if it's struck by shrapnel).

Visually, I have an almost visceral negative response to seeing the extremely long plume of smoke as that round streaks through the sky. If you do decide to port it over into one of the other muts (say, as an upcoming M-302), please consider severely truncating this smoke trail, if not removing it altogether.

Maybe you might want to change the smoke trail to one of a stream of sparks, so that it can be used as a TRAINING round as the player learns to use this weapon in the game. Seeing the arc then is useful.

Again, I'd look at INF's coding for the M203's iron-leaf sight view for implementing such a vital feature in the game.

Samurai sword: looks good. Swings good.

Exhaustion-effect: I like it a lot, but I'd push the darkness a bit more so that one's breadth of view is more severely penalized. Are there any other penalties applied to the players/bots when one runs out of stamina, because it sure seems like I can recover extremely quickly.

I hate to say this, but I think that at this point in time, the missile-crates should probably be shelved UNLESS it's for a custom built map and/or a map that is known to have ideal spawning features. Perhaps these maps could be entered into an .ini file? Currently, too many boxes are spawning in very strange ways, and they're so far away from the glowing ring as to not be very useful. That said, I'm confident that for custom made maps, they'd work fine IF the designer took them into consideration while the map was being constructed.

Is it possible to enable a "splashing water droplets on the screen" effect for maps that have rain falling? These maps could be entered via an .ini file as well.

How robust is the ballistic system for the INF and YARM Weapons mutators? At this point in time, it doesn't seem as comprehensive as what's in the CoD mut. Are my observations correct regarding this, or...?

Could you be more specific what it more precisely means to adjust either up or down the "sprint" likelihood for bots?

Are any of the body-movement sound effects that I concocted going to be utilized in a future release? I feel that they would certainly enhance the immersion factor just as the passing-rounds sfx did.

Great work Meow. I hope that your winter is a merry one.

 

[Kyle Kellahshehskee]

Oops!

Forgot to mention one more thing: I'd increase the volume of the passing rounds sound effect by at least 25%.

 

[Kyle Kellahshehskee]

KEEP the crates...!

I must be schizo because...

I'm changing my mind on the crates. Earlier, I played YARM Domination for an hour, and I had four maps in a row spawn with terrific placements of the crates at all of the spawn points. An amazing string of good fortune, I know, but when the crates spawn well it really makes the Domination gametype irresistible.

If they spawn in a poor fashion, well, there's no real harm done, so I'd leave it as it is unless you can improve it further.

For some reason, the Red Orchestra maps typically have decent placement of the crates when they spawn. In fact, I'd dearly like to see an additional set of crates spawned on said maps, as I'm pretty confident that a second set would work well.

I'm playing against the bots at the "Masterful" level, and they do quite well, tossing their frags pretty smartly.

And before I forget, are you considering releasing Death Match versions of the maps that you're working on? I typically don't play CTF ever since you released your superb Recovery gametype.

 

[meowcat]

Hi Kyle,
1. I have every intent of shortening the trail of the MA5g grenade, but will still keep it to allow some learning of the general arc of the grenade (and provide the target some ability to return fire by having a general idea of where the shooter was). If I get around to an m203/m302 combo on a default assault rifle, I'll probably use the spark emitter instead. The Halo MA5g UGL was meant to be less powerful than the HKG69 40mm (to still give a reason to use it).

Yeah, I was debating what kind of iron sight to add to the MA5b/g. i don't quite know what would look appropriate yet though...

2. Stamina: I'm very reluctant to increase the stamina vision darkening anymore. When you combine it and very low health, you can't see anything at all really, which although is probably more realistic, I did not find to be much fun. No other stamina effects at the moment, though I suppose I could maybe have it affect accuracy/arm wobble in the COD mutator. Again I don't like simulations very much (had enough of my limited fill of that in RL) so I'm a little hesitant to add it in, but I suppose I could specialize the YARM INF mutator to take those effects into account.

3. Water droplets: I very much wanted to try this at some point. The only problem I had was how to convincingly add it as an overlay to the screen (UEngine 2.x does not support the pixel distortion features of the newer engines), and when to activate it (rainy maps only, after running through water etc.). It is a neat idea though.

4. The ballistic system (wall penetration) is only activated for the COD mutator and a few YARM Weapons by default (Robar and the M14CS iirc). Doing those extra traces for every shot is not trivial so I was really trying to limit it. I could perhaps add it as a mutator option (wall penetration only, not the adjusted damage settings).

5. Body Movement sounds: Whoops, I did mean to add those! Should be in the next release.

6. Sprint Likelihood: Whenever the bots are about to move while either falling back, strafing, or charging at you, the below function called to determine whether they should walk. It also checks the conditions under which they should begin sprinting. The sprint probability is just a little bit of randomness so they don't necessarily sprint every time that they could:

function bool ShouldTacWalk(){
     // sprint if possible.....
     if(bBotSprint && !Pawn.IsFiring() && yarmPawn(Pawn)!=none && !yarmPawn(Pawn).bIsDashing
         && FRand() < fBotSprintProb && yarmPawn(Pawn).fStamina > 20 && (level.TimeSeconds > 1.0 + LastSprintTime)){
         LastSprintTime = Level.TimeSeconds;
         yarmPawn(Pawn).BeginDash();
     }
     if(!bBeTactical) return false;
     if (Pawn.IsFiring() && Skill > 2 && !Pawn.Weapon.bMeleeWeapon ){
          return true;
     }
     return false;
}

7. Buzz-by rounds: I'll kick the volume up (actually make it configurable)

8. Crates: Yeah, they sometimes spawn in perfect locations, other times not so well. Since using them is configurable (check the Game Rules tab) I won't be touching this setting again.

9. I plan to create DM versions of the CTF maps as well (not necessarily the same layout, but the same theme and use of art assets).