Steele Dawn

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Well, here's a thing still:
apart from that the qacannon method might not work in ut coop.

As for the sudoku, I said it made the early sd tests pain for me, I know it has been improved since, I am not talking current-time or truly picking on you. That would look very different if I did. You know I am capable of that.

The original puzzles iirc were not even touchscreen as such, I mean I'm not sure if they didn't think of using it in combination of panel or actual mouse/touchpad/"nipple", as in because it had mouse cursor implemented at one point, it being simply touch screen makes little sense, because you move mouse cursor using another device in reality.

Speaking of interesting features, the 220 steeldawn.u also contained timertrigger, which i believe was even earlier than botpack featuring a class that starts something x seconds after level start...
so before botpack and all that, it implies that epic somehow took this later too or maybe it was part of awgd as well.
It obviously had a lot going for it.

Either way what I also wanted to point out is that what i meant structurally was indeed like the dm maps being part of some maps or the nali village being an extra layer deep into the terrain, with all the fences and all, in mountain stronghold. That actually affects the gameplay and player cannot just drop straight down this way and would take damage if he does.

There was something else I was meaning to adress, what was it....

oh yes the Io stuff. Well, I believe that on the website only one of the sections "story" or "levels" was updated, this is clear in that the level order was slightly changed at one point with lavaplant and also the Io thing, one of the two doesn't mention Io at all and I believe at that point in developement Seriate IV would be actually the whole planet instead where it'd take place or a moon in the gryphon system.

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Automatically merged

Now to reply to your last post, my report is incomplete so I don't know if the sdpak file is there in separate version now (can't check atm), so it will most likely not work unless separate version is made like i did with upsx weapon and what not. Now because each weapon had different coding, and only impaler was rewritten from scratch it does mean they don't all animate properly online but they do work and you can fire them. The same might happen with SD weapons and I will do my best to try this, as in I might make the ut version of the weapons pack if it doesn't work as it should.

I am also relieved that my feedback wasn't ignored in the end because I feared it would be the case...

And indeed UT Lity pack (in one version, the other version was ran by loathsomes before he passed away) is being kept there simply because it was on the server already circa 2001, it is basically the dna of that server and so much in the mutator and everything depends on it. SD comparitavely is a brand new thing, but I'll rely this to 3's....

Also can you provide the v1b fix separately please for me still? thanks

[Delacroix]

the qacannon method might not work in ut coop.

I am not interested in hypotheticals at this point. I need concrete stuff. If the QA Cannon works improperly under oldskool.coopgame2, then I need specifics to reproduce. And then this'll get fixed.

Also, in UT coop... in ANY coop mode overall, across Unreal and UT99, there's the already mentioned matter of any single Praetorian being outnumbered by players.

The original puzzles iirc were

...INEXISTENT. Fixed that for ya. There were none implemented in game, on any of the maps I saw. The hardest, "puzzle-iest" part was an occasional hunt for the right switch that would open the door somewhere else.

I'm not sure if they didn't think of using it in combination of panel or actual mouse/touchpad/"nipple", as in because it had mouse cursor implemented at one point, it being simply touch screen makes little sense, because you move mouse cursor using another device in reality.

Whatever they planned, there was too little traces in the files to come up with too much. All we have therefore are Nali sudoku and Terran-designed numerical keypads.

Speaking of interesting features, the 220 steeldawn.u also contained timertrigger, which i believe was even earlier than botpack featuring a class that starts something x seconds after level start...
so before botpack and all that, it implies that epic somehow took this later too or maybe it was part of awgd as well.

I'd sooner suspect that Crable came up with this solution and like everything else he did, he brought it to the table for Epic as he was involved with them later....

the nali village being an extra layer deep into the terrain, with all the fences and all, in mountain stronghold. That actually affects the gameplay and player cannot just drop straight down this way and would take damage if he does.

Nowadays I can get down there without taking damage. It takes practice. The updated terrain in Farrow section of OldTown or at Mountain Stronghold really brings much more charm to the area that earlier was more flat than Noel Vermillion.

oh yes the Io stuff. Well, I believe that on the website only one of the sections "story" or "levels" was updated, this is clear in that the level order was slightly changed at one point with lavaplant and also the Io thing, one of the two doesn't mention Io at all and I believe at that point in developement Seriate IV would be actually the whole planet instead where it'd take place or a moon in the gryphon system.

Yes, I am aware of that. So I had two options: either place Seriate IV in the Sol system on Io, or in the Gryphon system near Na Pali. There was no real drawback against one or the other, but they're contradictory towards one another so I had to pick one. Ultimately, Io made more sense to me for the following reasons:

- Serinites were fleeing Earth in a hurry, so it's logical for them to be FORCED (either by lack of resources or due to exhaustion) to park themselves somewhere sooner rather than later (and judging from the numbering, they already made prior attempts which the Vesspines screwed up for them, seeing as if we assume Seriate was the original new country on Earth territory, there likely were Seriate II and III sometime later, likely also colonies which Vezzies flushed them out of),
- putting Seriate IV on Io gave us an opportunity to give the entire campaign a fresh look due to the new skybox (thanks, SteadZ!), which features Jupiter prominently.

It also puts things into perspective in regards to the extent of terraforming abilities of either Nali or Terrans... just read up on what Io is now and in 21XX it is already HABITABLE.

Now to reply to your last post, my report is incomplete so I don't know if the sdpak file is there in separate version now (can't check atm), so it will most likely not work unless separate version is made like i did with upsx weapon and what not. Now because each weapon had different coding, and only impaler was rewritten from scratch it does mean they don't all animate properly online but they do work and you can fire them. The same might happen with SD weapons and I will do my best to try this, as in I might make the ut version of the weapons pack if it doesn't work as it should.

I am also relieved that my feedback wasn't ignored in the end because I feared it would be the case...

SteeleDawnPak.u is the main version. SystemUT's SteeleDawnPakUT and SteeleDawnGUI are addenda to it, tied to Oldskool. If you modify anything, modify through SteeleDawnPakUT and SteeleDawnGUI.

And indeed UT Lity pack (in one version, the other version was ran by loathsomes before he passed away) is being kept there simply because it was on the server already circa 2001, it is basically the dna of that server and so much in the mutator and everything depends on it. SD comparitavely is a brand new thing, but I'll rely this to 3's....

Please do. And if 3 stumbles upon my posts... this is to 3 specifically:

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I know damn well I'm being harsh in my responses. However you need to understand why I think and believe that I am not the problem in this equation, but you are. First off, the patches. If you implement a freshly-finished product as soon as you did, grateful as I am for this, you need to be understanding of the fact that in an initial release issues may still exist. If they do, Yrex and I are committed to fixing them. Any doubts? The v1b update is evidence to it. I didn't even ask Yrex to make it. He saw the reports here and DMed me with the fix on his own volition. That's the way we do things.

As for balance stuff - you have a custom setup, as it turns out from Leo's responses. If you have a custom setup that e.g. modifies enemy HP, you seriously can't expect me to adjust my content to it. It's on you to modify your setup to deal with the Praetorian HP issue. Because if I touch something, players on vanilla balanced servers, or in SP, will have a different experience than what I planned for them.

You may offer feedback on anything you see fit, however please don't assume that upon your criticism I will immediately set out to change everything to suit your tastes. If you don't want SD on your server, that is something I'll come to accept.
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Also can you provide the v1b fix separately please for me still? thanks

PM sent on OU.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Yes but it could also be that the first flew to Io, settled down and then continued to the gryphon system. But yea. I do like the way that stuff looks in the skybox but I would have preferred unaltered skyboxes especially if it was in the gryphon system.

I did see the code for the original keypad however so I know it did use mouse cursor too despite first seeming it would be more like the stuff in sin, it was literally made by robert perry, who worked on awgd and who went on to form digitalo and from that came the abandoned ut addon pack and unreal devastation and devastation and....*explodes*

Crable was in Epic? I thought only at Legend. Still, why did he go silent all those years ago? he said he might have some stuff

Also:

I won't likely make a sequel to this, my SD Extended plan is abandoned, because I did want to squeeze gramercy in between lavaplant/river ruins actually. It does fit thematically there. Instead I might make a separate pack like was originally planned to make expansion for FLP, so I will instead do that and make ums chantilly a playable thing, it might end up using some sd resources too. But that plan/idea would be closer to that Ivanhoe guy or whatever his name was again lol. In fact I wasn't aware of his stuff originally and I still didn't play any of his packs. I know he featured some levels I wanted to use, too... so just the cover pack it is then

but yea then SDE will not happen and you don't have to worry about continuity, mr. jj abrams, I mean alex kurtzman, i mean... delacroix...
LOL

in fact it might be that the protagonist of the Cover pack will be Juarez (the character from upsx rework and subsequently the original name for jack before it got changed later on in developement). Or at least the player will meet Juarez if it won't be him....that was my plan originally before the sd recovery took place.

[Delacroix]

Yes but it could also be that the first flew to Io, settled down and then continued to the gryphon system. But yea. I do like the way that stuff looks in the skybox but I would have preferred unaltered skyboxes especially if it was in the gryphon system.

What could've been is now irrelevant - it's released, it's out there, it's set in stone. That way, we have opportunities, like e.g say, putting Seriate II on Mars in another project and Seriate III entirely somewhere else. I'll also have one thing regarding Jupiter saved for another opportunity.

Crable was in Epic? I thought only at Legend. Still, why did he go silent all those years ago? he said he might have some stuff

Legend were very tightly knit with Epic judging from the fact that they did three major projects on Epic's engine, so I might be getting confused.

I won't likely make a sequel to this, my SD Extended plan is abandoned, because I did want to squeeze gramercy in between lavaplant/river ruins actually. It does fit thematically there. Instead I might make a separate pack like was originally planned to make expansion for FLP, so I will instead do that and make ums chantilly a playable thing, it might end up using some sd resources too. But that plan/idea would be closer to that Ivanhoe guy or whatever his name was again lol. In fact I wasn't aware of his stuff originally and I still didn't play any of his packs. I know he featured some levels I wanted to use, too... so just the cover pack it is then

Very well then. If you want to use SD resources, you go right ahead, they're ripe for the taking.

but yea then SDE will not happen and you don't have to worry about continuity, mr. jj abrams, I mean alex kurtzman, i mean... delacroix...
LOL

I'll still worry about continuity. It's just how I am. I'm a writer by passion, the lore is a huge focus for me.

in fact it might be that the protagonist of the Cover pack will be Juarez (the character from upsx rework and subsequently the original name for jack before it got changed later on in developement). Or at least the player will meet Juarez if it won't be him....that was my plan originally before the sd recovery took place.

Hrm. Well, we'll see.

[OjitroC]

Yes, the daunting difficulty spike is intentional in Old Township. Brandon is just one civilian in the middle of enemy territory. The official Level Infinity description explains that stealth must be used on the level. Now Unreal doesn't have stealth mechanics of course, but even still, options are on the table for the player to avoid some of the confrontations. The chief of these options are: the Quantum Accelerator cannon and the slew of voice boxes that the player should damn well still have from Vegra.

While the Praetorians are powerful Skaarj units, please do try to utilize all tools available at your disposal. Once again, the QA Cannon, the primary fire of which makes the enemy a sitting duck which you can punish from afar, or voice boxes to lure the red boys away while you sneak past them. They can be defeated of course and careful management of the resources you receive throughout the map just might leave you with not only all weapons available for Brandon in SD overall (except the secret one) but also well over half the max ammunition.

Thanks for the detailed reply.

I get the point about stealth - having read through the manual the need for stealth in Old Township was very much in my mind - hence the desire to evade/avoid the Praetorians and not engage with them. At this stage of the 'journey' through the maps, I have no idea what ammo for the QACannon may or may not be available later and how much I might need it so I opted for minimal use where possible. I've never used the voice box before as I have read that they have no impact on ScriptedPawns.

... 1800 per Praetorian isn't too much, but its their default. Second, in a coop scenario, such a Praetorian doesn't face a lone Brandon Steele but multiple opponents at once, so it's the Praetorian that's screwed in this scenario .. They're 1800 on Unreal difficulty on my end!),

Well, they're 1800 on any difficulty level but ... because bBoss=True their health is actually 1800 + 15% = 2070.

But in non-coop scenario, a lone Brandon Steele faces muliple Praetorians (as well as other opponents at the same time)? I suppose the core of the point I'm trying to make is if the overall campaign is designed with coop in mind, then there needs to be some filtering out of opponents for a single player and/or for low difficulty levels.

However, having said all that, I'm obviously going to continue playing through particularly as there appear to be ways of evading the Praetorians (though what may be obvious to someone who has played the maps multiple times and is very familiar with them and with the capabitlity of the weapons may not be so obvious to someone playing them for the first time).

That's strange, I could've sworn we're having custom oldskool-subclass gametypes (see SteeleDawnPakUT and UT version of SteeleDawnGUI) that force Brandon as a player. And it worked fine. If something changed in that aspect, I think it warrants an investigation.

No Oldskool doesn't force the use of the Male3/Brandon skin.

That too, but I just thought that the difficulty-level changes in enemy aggressiveness and other aspects of gameplay balance was just enough, honestly. Didn't want to dwindle the numbers because (as tests have shown) with not enough enemies, maps just feel empty.

But you could put in different enemies for different difficuly levels and still keep up the numbers?

Steele Dawn requires a bit of a mentality change. Kill everything that moves when you're a random civilian that just happens to be capable of using guns? Yes, that's going to work admirably, right?

Well, it doesn't always work that way. The first portion of Old Township requires you to play smart. That means, pick your battles and focus on surviving and getting through enemy territory. Clearing out the area is still possible but it's ball-bustingly hard to dissuade you from trying to do that. If you continue to be stubborn about it, you do so at your own risk.

I realise all that - I don't approach Single Player with a desire to kill everything but with a desire to get through and survive.

The building... it's open for interpretation. Overall, that section of Vegra has its fair share of security measures (the locked-and-secure doors, the jet-propelled elevator being locked behind a forcefield), so the only thing you're supposed to know is that you're not supposed to normally be there. Whatever would normally be accessible behind the locked-and-secure doors or going on in the area right after the two forcefields is not for Brandon, a civilian, to know.

My point here is that, as the player, I don't really know why I am here - why? why do I go where I go? Perhaps a need for a bit more explanation in/of the storyline in order for me, as a player, to be more enaged with what's going on.

The pupae... Brandon doesn't comment on spiders or scorpions later, and they're similar in size. They're pests not worthy of his time, or comment.

But the pupae is significant isn't it? It's a Skaarj - perhaps Brandon knows that, pupae are common in the city - or perhaps he doesn't know what it is, in which case he would comment on it.

Similarly it's a bit odd that Brandon makes no comment on the ambush by the Skaarj Warriors?

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

VoiceBox does affect scriptedpawns, they will come towards the source of it slowly or turn the other direction, the pawns do have hearing...it is bots against its largely useless though.

[OjitroC]

VoiceBox does affect scriptedpawns, they will come towards the source of it slowly or turn the other direction, the pawns do have hearing...it is bots against its largely useless though.

Oh, right - I'll try them out.


----------------- EDIT ------------------------------
Returning to my point on the collision height of the Skaarj Praetorian, after a bit of 'digging' around I can now see what has happened. The Praetorian Pack Leader in Xidia has a CollisionHeight of 68 and a DrawScale of 1.4 - the later versions of the Praetorian in the packs I mentioned (UTMHpack, etc) have a DrawScale of 1.2 - the Skaarj Berserker has a DrawScale of 1.2 and a CollsionHeight of 56. Both the SB and the Praetorian use the same mesh, therefore the Collsion Height of the Praetorian in SD should be 56 and not 68. With the larger CollisionHeight it becomes more difficult to get head shots as one has to aim above rather than at the head (at least to some extent)?

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Yea, it does work just is a bit tricky and isn't perfect.

Either way I also didn't want to suggest to release it on 25th (anniv, but 25th of this month could have worked), that would be silly, but keeping the anniversary date in mind exclusively also felt kind of silly to me. And maybe the first news date we have noted down of SD could have been used instead. Not to scan someone's mind again lol. no mindmelts necessary or w/e

[OjitroC]

Evaded or disposed of the 3 Praetorians in the Old Town

A curiosity with the fourth one out by the water plant - I was in the building locating the key but could hear a predator attacking the Praetorian which didn't appear to fight back - eventually the predator killed the Praetorian which saved me a good deal of hassle - curious that the Skaarj did not appear to respond to the predator?

The thing with a dispersion pistol being left in the spot one spawns in when starting a save only happens in Vegra.

One annoying thing which is almost certainly notthing to do with the map but with Oldskool and/or UT 469 is that when gets a headshot, the Headshot!! message stays on-screen and doesn't go away. Like I say I have no idea of the precise cause of this.

A general point, and this is obviously a personal view, but I wonder if there are too many weapon types available. Obviously the Steele Dawn weapons need to be included but are there too many default Unreal weapon types? I find myself often cycling through all the weapons to find the one I want to use and tend to end up using the same four or five most of the time. Perhaps one doesn't need the Stinger, given one has the single and dual automags as a rapid fire weapon (and later get the minigun), or the Razorjack. Concentrating almost exclusively on the SD weapons would help to add to the feeling of a distinct and unique experience.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

I wanted to still show, regarding steele dawn, how the original keypads worked in the historical 220 steeldawn.u (and the conversion of it) that weren't used and were taken from awgd originally, the parent class was interactivepuzzle but only keypad was implemented though its possible awgd had more or more was planned.

sdkeytest

basically if you enter the code right it will disable the access denied forcefield things. Those events were in the map, this is one of the old wip versions of starport.

here's a link to a vid showing what happens.
video

[Delacroix]

Ironically, that's exactly what the keypads do in the final version on the map.

I think that by now, with Steele Dawn out and finalized, you have some evidence for Joe Wilcox that we can get the job done. That should net you access to AWGD if asked.

[OjitroC]

I have just realised something - if we look at this log ScriptWarning

Code: Select all

ScriptWarning: NeutronBallInfo Save161.NeutronBallInfo2 (Function SteeleDawnPak.NeutronBallInfo.Working.Tick:00B4) Accessed None 'RadiusVictims'
ScriptWarning: NeutronBallInfo Save161.NeutronBallInfo2 (Function SteeleDawnPak.NeutronBallInfo.Working.Tick:00BC) Attempt to assign variable through None

we see that the reference is to SteeleDawnPak and to NeutronBallInfo.

But surely SteeleDawnPakUT should be 'called'? And then the references would be to SteeleDawnPakUT and to UT_NeutronBallInfo.

So it seems to me that for some reason (in 469b/OldSkool) SteeleDawnPakUT isn't being used - which means that the CustomWeaponReplacer in SteeleDawnGUI isn't working as this would replace the QACannon with the UT_QACannon.

But if it did work it would also do the following replacements

Code: Select all

if(origClass==class'SDAutomag')     return class'OlWeapons.OlAutomag';
if(origClass==class'SDMinigun')     return class'OlWeapons.OlMinigun';
if(origClass==class'SDSniperRifle') return class'OlWeapons.OlRifle';
if(origClass==class'SDImpactHammer')return class'Botpack.ImpactHammer';

which would be unnecessary as they all work in UT 469 Oldskool.

The QACannon works fine in UT as well as I have summoned it into UT maps (playing DM gametype) just to test it out (in fact, all the SD weapons work in UT 436 and 469b outside of Oldskool having just summoned them all into a DM map).

So a broader question is whether all those weapons need to be replaced in UT?

No, it isn't inspired by Xidia. They are taken from Xidia, yes, because SD is designed to fit in (and expand upon) an extended community canon which Xidia is a part of.

Though as I have pointed out, in the Xidia map I looked at whch had a PraetorianPackLeader, its DrawScale is 1.4 - in later versions and in SD, the DrawScale has been reduced to 1.2 but the same CollisionHeight of 68 has been kept and this is obviously incorrect?

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

I have just realised something - if we look at this log ScriptWarning

Code: Select all

ScriptWarning: NeutronBallInfo Save161.NeutronBallInfo2 (Function SteeleDawnPak.NeutronBallInfo.Working.Tick:00B4) Accessed None 'RadiusVictims'
ScriptWarning: NeutronBallInfo Save161.NeutronBallInfo2 (Function SteeleDawnPak.NeutronBallInfo.Working.Tick:00BC) Attempt to assign variable through None

we see that the reference is to SteeleDawnPak and to NeutronBallInfo.

But surely SteeleDawnPakUT should be 'called'? And then the references would be to SteeleDawnPakUT and to UT_NeutronBallInfo.

So it seems to me that for some reason (in 469b/OldSkool) SteeleDawnPakUT isn't being used - which means that the CustomWeaponReplacer in SteeleDawnGUI isn't working as this would replace the QACannon with the UT_QACannon.

But if it did work it would also do the following replacements

Code: Select all

if(origClass==class'SDAutomag')     return class'OlWeapons.OlAutomag';
if(origClass==class'SDMinigun')     return class'OlWeapons.OlMinigun';
if(origClass==class'SDSniperRifle') return class'OlWeapons.OlRifle';
if(origClass==class'SDImpactHammer')return class'Botpack.ImpactHammer';

which would be unnecessary as they all work in UT 469 Oldskool.

The QACannon works fine in UT as well as I have summoned it into UT maps (playing DM gametype) just to test it out (in fact, all the SD weapons work in UT 436 and 469b outside of Oldskool having just summoned them all into a DM map).

So a broader question is whether all those weapons need to be replaced in UT?

Well the thing is, online it won't work by default on dedicated server, the Unreal weapons that are not tournamentweapon subclass. UT relies on clientside functions only with the weapons (the tournamentplayer being the main problem here).

This is why in my releases I usually provide a special version of the main file for UT (that have the main classes placed under tournamentweapon), not a bypass as it could easily break on custom setups. So yea, its not loading correctly for you. This is also why the weapons weren't replaced on 3's, however due to existence of the separate ut file i can implement it in the mutator update or separate mutator for 3's to do that....

[OjitroC]

I see - thanks for that.

Personally, as I only play off-line I'm quite happy with the way it is with the SD versions working fine.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Also, as I haven't seen it yet or the code, there's a possibility that this pulls some kind of check. Well also keep in mind that servers like 3's or loathsome's (he's dead now and ecoop also went with it), use same name for the coop gametype (coopgame2) without using oldskool.coopgame2. It gets confusing but it was for the reason of having the server visible for oldskool users. The oldskool browser tab in UT is unfortunately explicit about the name of the game (coopgame2) and is less flexible than unreal's that doesn't sort this way. So yea, on 3's it is ccooplf.coopgame2. ccoop was cardi coop, l at the end stands for leo as i continued to update it after he left. and "f" being the current version.

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Automatically merged

I see - thanks for that.

Personally, as I only play off-line I'm quite happy with the way it is with the SD versions working fine.

Well, it might also add decals and other UT stuff, which extent is unknown to me currently.

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Automatically merged

I just spoke to Joe Wilcox, he told me (upon my question whether AWGD could have started as a follow-up to Unreal had it had the ending as seen in the gw press guide (the escape pod not running out of fuel) ) that no AWGD didn't follow up on the Unreal story and that he's not changing his mind about releasing/sharing it.

It wasn't a question (in his case) whether someone is competent enough to finish the work or not. Its just somehow not an option and he doesn't seem to want to elobarate further or give off many details.

I'll be lucky if he decides to share any more details.

I mean at the very least it was worked on for half a year because even when it became "not official" addon, it was still worked on, to be released under wizworks still or maybe not. Perhaps the entire fuss surrounding it just gives Joe a bad taste and that's why he's not letting on anything.

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Automatically merged

well the only thing i still recall is that it was more similar to resident evil than anything else, but now that he revealed the story had basically nothing to do with unreal it makes me wonder what setting it was even taking place in. There's so little info on it and apart from that late 1998 showing of the project at the quake 2 tournament event, there wasn't much bits around, and the only new weapon revealed in media was a melee weapon called the LawnMower.