How serious of a gametype change would this be...

[Virance]

I am wondering how large of an undertaking this would be for a fairly novice programmer. I'm actually a third year design student at UAT using this as a level design package; however, a few other students any myself are currently considering a Paintball mod. The first thing we want to do, so we can start testing the levels in a fairly "real" setting, is to create a new gametype.

Goals:
X minute matches (total match time)
Y minute rounds (time for individual rounds)
No respawns in between rounds similar to Counter-Strike; once you die, you wait for the round to complete.

On paper it sounds like "thats it?," in reality - two of us have enough programming knowledge to work with the engine by example easily enough, just wondering if this type of modification would be a serious undertaking - or if it is something that an expert Unrealscript programmer could probably knock out in a day or so.

EDIT: A second thing that we would like to add would be a single-flag CTF mode. Meaning, instead of Red team bring Blue flag back to their base - there would be a red team, a blue team, and a white flag - both teams fight for the white flag and attempt to bring it back to their base.

[BakerCo]

I don't think that would be too difficult post your progress and if you need help give use something specific. good luck and have fun

[Virance]

This is going to be a real stupid set of questions but...

Pre-question: is there anywhere I can go that will answer the below questions?

1) Is there any way to look into the source-code for the default weapons? I assume it has something to do with decompiling/reading from the upk files found in... UTGame\CookedPC\Weapons

In particular, I think the alternate-fire of the flak cannon would be an excellent starting point for the projectile portion of a paintball gun.

2) Is it possible to read and edit .u files?

3) What tool do you suggest for working with UnrealScript? Preferably something with syntax highlighting (if available at all).

Thanks in advance!

[schenksmill]

1) The available source for the game is available here.

2) You won't want to edit the .u files. What you'll do is write your own scripts, then compile them into a seperate .u file. As for reading, the scripts out of the .u packages have been posted above.

3) A lot of people use WOTgreal, which is essentially an unreal engine IDE. It's in the process of being updated to support UT3. However, if you prefer regular old text editors, both Context (site seems down temporarily) and Crimson Editor have available UnrealScript highlighters.

[Virance]

Thank you very much! That should be more than plenty to get me started, especially when the UDE gets fleshed out a bit.

Just poked through a bit, and the CTF game type files seem to be an excellent place to start. Strip out all the actual, you know, CTF functions - but keep the round functions making the round end on either time or when everyone on one team dies (and disable respawns). Not sure exactly how I'll go about doing all that - but just quickly scanning through it shouldn't take tooo long, and it will surely be fun to do it.

[ScottUT]

Hey, if you can......

Can you make a paintball mutator? One that replaces bullet decals and scorch marks with paint?

Im sure more than a few servers would adopt that.

It would e cool if it were muti colored too, in the sense that the decals and scorch marks alternate between 4 colors or so. RED RED RED or BLUE BLUE BLUE might get kind of boring.

[Virance]

I'm not really much of a programmer; so it's going to take me some time before I start seeing any real progress on a project. However, quickly running through it appears that to do a decal replacement on the scorch marks would be fairly simple: just replacing a single line in a few files...
ExplosionDecal=MaterialInstanceTimeVarying'WP_Rock etLauncher.Decals.MITV_WP_RocketLauncher_Impact_De cal01'
DecalWidth=128.000000
DecalHeight=128.000000

That set of code seems to appear in every projectile file that paints an explosion decal (found in UTGame\Classes file names start as UTProj_). I'm unsure as to how I would go about importing new graphics as a mutator, or even how I would go about forcing a replacement of those lines. However - knowing how to do those two things I think one would be able to add a new hit decal. All of those classes extend UTProjectile - which contains code that checks sub-classes for those variables and if they do not exist it defaults to painting nothing; so, I think it should also be possible to add the paint to weapons which do not currently have any decal as well.

[Virance]

Just wanted to post an updated, likely the last one I will post for a while. I've recently installed some wiki software on my recently opened site, www.indevs.net (inDevs - the Independent Developers Network; just opened it with some fellow game design students from UAT) for handling our projects. The first one added is UT3 Paintball (will be named more creatively later).

For now, I've started the design documentation - though it is not NEARLY complete. This will be where I will be working primarily over the next couple of weeks while I thinker with UnrealScript (I've found from past projects the more time you spend on your documentation and systems design the less time you will have to spend programming/constructing. Much easier to fix things in the design stage than once they are actually implemented).

http://indevs.net/wiki/index.php5?ti..._Documentation

Anyhow, feel free to follow along on the wiki if you'd like. Any major updates will be posted on the inDevs.net home page as well. Once I start really working with UnrealED and UnrealScript I will most likely write a series of tutorials; as I learn things myself I like to document my progress well for fellow students.

Also... if anyone happens to want to work on a round based paintball mod, particularly a programmer or artist, don't be a stranger :-D

[Mr.UglyPants]

Sounds like a cool idea, hope it works.