Name: UltimateONSTools
Version: 1.0
Compatibility: UT2004 should be enough, I think you don't even need the ECE, although it's consider "stock" by the community, so maybe you want to install it anyway, just to be sure.
Description:
Most of you have probably never seen me before because I am usually more active in pure ONS-forums, but now I created something that I want to share with the whole community. I hope that they can use it to let this game live for further ten years.
So what have I done actually? The download link at the end of this post is a .u-file that you can load in the Actor Class Browser of UnrealEd 3, which will add some things to that list.
These things will allow you to take a lot more influence in an ONS-map than you maybe ever dreamt of. I will give you some examples and then explain in detail how to use the tools.
You will also find an example map attached, which I will explain further below and which demonstrates some things you can do. (The original map was created by Wulff)
What you can do with this:
This will probably look familiar to those of you who played Warfare in UT3:
-Let's take the first one: a powernode that controls a bridge. It's really hard (if not even impossible) to achieve that in UT2004 with the default methods. With the tools will it be done in a few minutes.
-Maybe you want to bring some more time pressure into the game? Imagine that you could pick a certain node. If a team builds that node, then a countdown will start, let's say 60 seconds. Now the enemy team needs to destroy that node within these 60 seconds, or something bad will happen. For example could a Levi be spawned there after 60 seconds. Or their powercore, although it is save considering the linksetup, could take damage.
-One node with that time limit seems to unfair to you? Well, you can extend that condition!
Maybe your team should need to hold 2 nodes for the bonus? And maybe must a certain enemy node be downed, or the condition to activate the countdown will not be fulfilled.
Almost everything is possible. This is something what you could call a smaller version of Unreal Kismet, without that fancy interface, unfortunately.
How it works:
This package contains several actors that can be placed in a map. The actors are:
-UltimateONSFactory (a subclass of a normal ONSFactory)
-EventLogicGate (a subclass of Triggers)
-the rest are subclasses of EventLogicGate, which is actually only there for the structuration.
If you feel to skip this long manual, then just right-click on the actor that you want to know more about and click on "Edit Script…"
I made a lot of comments to tell you what each variable that you see in it's properties is doing. Take a look on those comments and on the testmap and you should be fine.
I also recommend to leave things at the default value if you are not sure what they do.
However, I continue with the manual now.
You will need to know the basics of digital circuits in order to use many of these things, but they are pretty simple.
Digital circuits work with logical gates. This package contains similar logical gates. But while you use the Boolean values (True and False, or 1 and 0) in reality, this stuff is basing on the Trigger-system of the Unreal Engine.
That means that certain actors can cause "Events" when a certain condition is fulfilled. The most known thing for that is a Trigger, which will cause an Event when you touch it. Touching the Trigger will call it's Touch-function in UnrealScript and that function will cause the Trigger to "trigger" every actor whose Tag matches the Event that you set in the properties of the Trigger (while you set the Tag in the properties of the actor that you want to trigger).
Ok, so when one of the actors in this package is triggered, than a part (or the whole) condition is True. The actor will do something if or as long as the whole condition is True.
"As long as" means, that it might cease doing what it is doing when the whole condition gets False. To achieve that it is enough to have only a part of the condition becoming False. And how can you get a condition False?
By "untriggering" it. Not many of Epic's actors support the full triggering system, meaning they often can only trigger things, but not untrigger them.
Untriggering uses the same Event-field as the Triggering does.
One actor that does support untriggering is by chance the Trigger, that I described above already. It can untrigger it's Event when you leave the Trigger's collision radius.
And Mover, for example, can be set to move when they get triggered and to stay there until they get untriggered. You see how that works out for our bridge idea, don't you?
So ok, we have the Trigger that does the whole stuff, but that's actually a bit cheap in ONS. So that's why I created something that interprets the current constitution of a powernode out of it's Events. You need to know, that a node (or powercore, I use that name for both things) has, different from most other actors, not just the normal Event-field: it has 3 additional Event-fields, one that triggers when the Red team has build the node, one when the Blue team did that and one that triggers when the node gets destroyed.
So you enter a different name for each of the 3 Event-fields and then place a NodeEventDirector from my package. That thing has 3 Tag-fields in which you should now enter the three names that you set for the node's Events.
The NodeEventDirector will now take care of triggering and untriggering, depending on the node. But in order to have it work properly, you need to specify for which team it shall work actually (that is done with ObserverTeamNum). So if you set 0, then the "condition" will be True, when the Red team has build that node. 1 means the Blue team. You then just need to specify an Event that this NodeEventDirector shall trigger actually.
What are the other things that this actor can do?
-bSwitchTeamsOnReset: if True, then the ObserveTeamNumber is automatically adjusted when the sides swap in ONS. That means that if the condition was True when Red had the node in the first round, then it will be True for Blue in the second one. That is very useful to have equal conditions in both rounds for the teams, so it's basically just the teamcolour that switched.
-LinksetupException: enter the name of a Linksetup in this array, which you want to ignore this actor. For example entering "default" (the name is not case-sensitive) will not let this NodeEventDirector trigger something at all, when the Default setup is active.
EventLogicGates:
I am talking about the actors that start with "Logical" in their name. They work like the real digital ones, so I will only explain what they compute:
LogicalOR: As all LogicalGates (except the LogicalNOT) has the LogicalOR two Tag-fields in which you enter the name of two different Events that shall trigger this OR.
The LogicalOR will itself trigger a new Event (which you have to specify) when at least one of the condition is True, meaning if at least one of two possible Events has triggered it.
It will untrigger it's own Event, when it gets untriggered by both Events.
LogicalAND: This behaves like the OR, except that it will only trigger it's own Event, when it got triggered by both of the conditional Events. It will untrigger it's own Event when at least one of the conditional Events untriggers the AND.
LogicalXOR: The exclusive OR does the same as the OR, but it will only work if exactly one condition is fulfilled and the other one is not. So it will untrigger if both or none of the conditions is True.
LogicalNOT: This reverses the incoming Event and will output the result (as every EventLogicGate) in a new Event-name.
So if you trigger this thing, then it will untrigger it's output-Event, if you untrigger the NOT, then it will trigger the output.
UnTriggerCast:
As I said above already, not every retail actor supports the untriggering, and that in both directions. Meaning that some don't understand untriggering and can only be toggle-triggered. Or some actors only send Trigger-Events and you won't get any Untrigger-Event from them.
That's why I made this thing, which can turn one thing into the other.
IMPORTANT: This is not the same as the LogicalNOT! That one would work in both directions, this one only in the specified one. You can specify the direction by going into the Object-group in the properties of this actor and to set the other InitialState.
The UnTriggerCase will not care about the order in which the Events come in, so you need to have that done somehow by the actor that sends the Events. (That might be a possible feature for the next pack: Cast only each second incoming Event. But on the other hand should it work fine if you just put a Counter before or after this)
CountdownEventGate:
A very important thing, when you trigger it will it wait for the specified number of seconds before it triggers the next Event.
But in that time can it be untriggered to prevent it from triggering the next Event.
You can also specify a ToleranceTime (leaving this one on 0 will disable it).
The Tolerance can do two important things: If the countdown gets aborted (aka untriggered) before it had finished, then you have ToleranceTime much seconds to trigger the CountdownEventGate again. If you manage to do so, then you will continue from that time where the countdown was aborted, otherwise you have to start at the full time again.
The second thing is that if there's a ToleranceTime specified and the countdown succeeded already and the CountdownEventGate gets untriggered, the next Event will not get untriggered immediately. If you can re-trigger the Gate before the ToleranceTime is over, then you prevent that untriggering.
You can also specify a seperate CountdownStoppedEvent, that will trigger (not untrigger!) when the countdown was aborted in time.
-bLoopCountdown: When the countdown succeeded and triggered the Event, then it will start from the full time again and loop until it really gets untriggered.
-bBroadcastCountdown: Setting this to True will show the remaining time on that countdown in the player's HUD in regular intervals. The intervals become smaller the more the countdown is close to succeeding.
-Messages: You can define different messages for the Red and Blue team that will be shown in their HUD when different things happen with the countdown.
You can also choose the message type, what will change where the messages (and the remaining countdowntime, if broadcasted) will be shown. CriticalEvent is the default and best solution, but I want to leave the choice to you.
It is also recommend to let the message teams be switched, so that the messages really match the right team. If choosing this, you should avoid to use "Red", "Blue" or unique descriptions of the map that might not apply to the switched team. Leave a message empty to disable it from being displayed.
NodeDamageGate:
Simply choose a Target by clicking on Pick and then on the Target in the Editor. You can choose a different one for switched rounds too, or take the same as in the first because there need to be both set. Note, that the location of the cores will not switch in the rounds, so you probably want to choose the same core in both rounds when planning to damage it.
Yes, this thing deals damage to nodes and cores when it gets triggered and it has no problem to also damage a shielded node or core.
The player who triggered the Event that caused this actor to deal the damage will be rewarded with the points for that.
Note, that someone can't damage it's own nodes or core, when they directly trigger that DamageGate (meaning the Instigator of the Event is from the team that owns the node). However, you can still accidentially damage your nodes when the damage got triggered by something that is not a Pawn EventInstigator (something that can have a teamnumber), like a node that your team build. So as a mapper it's your job to pay attention.
-bNotifyAboutDamage: If True, this will enable messages like "Blue PowerCore under attack" when it is damaged by this actor, otherwise will it be a "silent" damage.
For your information: a powercore has 4500 healthpoints, a node has 2000.
UltimateONSFactory:
It's really ultimate as it allows you to take so much influence on a map's vehicle balancing like never before!
As for the NodeEventDirector, you can specify LinksetupExceptions in which this factory is NOT active.
You have two arrays, one for Red and one for Blue, which can contain multiple, different vehicles. One of them is chosen randomly to be spawned, depending on which team holds the factory. If you leave a blank in between, that will be counted as bad luck and you have to wait for the whole RespawnTime again for the chance of a vehicle.
(The arrays will only be used, if bRandomSpawn = True, otherwise the one, small VehicleClass-field is used)
-You can spawn neutral vehicles (will use the array of Red's vehicles), set the factory to work only for one team (bUseStaticTeams / StaticTeamNum)
-You can set for each vehicle in the array the size of the SpawnEffect, so for example having a Scorpion with the gigantic SpawnEffect of a Levi. This is more useful to custom vehicles, but besides that would there be no other way to properly implement the effects for so many different vehicles.
-bUniqueVehicle: Spawn only one vehicle, stop doing anything after that. That could be used for very, very, very, powerful supervehicles, or neutral ones.
-bIndependentFactory: The factory does not depend on a node! It will use the StaticTeamNum to be assigned to a team from the beginning (can also be 255= neutral, so the first who gets it will possess it). An independent factory will be active, no matter what's happening around it and it can be placed everywhere and still work for the same team.
(Think of having a spawnpoint for neutral Leviathans that spawn every 5 minutes)
-bEnabled: The factory is enabled from the beginning. Set this to False and let the factory be triggered by something to enable it. (Untriggering will disable it again)
-bCrushable: Spawn the vehicle, no matter if there is a player. The player will be crushed by the spawning vehicle, even if he's in your team, but this is good against enemies who try to block a spawning vehicle.
-bSpawnProtected[Red/Blue]: If True for one of the teams, then this team's vehicle will take no damage as long as it has not been used by the team. This prevents the enemy from camping and spamming your spawning vehicles.
-bEnterringUnlocks: If False, this vehicle will still be teamlocked after being entered. Best use for this is, if you spawn MinigunTurrets with this factory and don't want them to be used by the enemy.
See the script of this actor if you need further information.
Note that "Red vehicle array" and "Blue vehicle array" can be considered as the position rather than the team. When sides are switched, then the factory that is placed in the Editor on the Red side and produces Red vehicles will work for Blue when Blue is on that side, but the vehicles to spawn will be taken from the Red vehicle array just like it would be done in a round without switched sides.
Comments:
That was it for now. I hope you can use this do give us some really good maps with things you were just not able to do until now.
Think about vehicle balancing: You can spawn different vehicles for Red and Blue at the same node, giving the winning team for example weaker vehicles at the enemy prime nodes.
Also, you can use a combination of all this actors to create something like this:
When the Blue team was pushed back into it's base and survives very long, but sees no chance for a comeback, then you could spawn an additional helpful vehicle for them to free themselves.
The actors for such a situation could be:
NodeEventDirector at the two primary nodes observes if the Blue team has build the nodes -> LogicalNOT turns the Falses of both nodes into Trues -> LogicalAND connects these two things and sends the output -> CountdownEventGate counts two minutes before it triggers -> UltimateONSFactory at Blue base is triggered and spawns a vehicle (bUniqueVehicle = True).
In words would that mean: If Blue team did not made it to build one of their primaries in the last two minutes, then spawn exactly one time an additional vehicle at their base to give them a chance for comeback.
So, that was long, I am exhausted.
This is a stable release that is there for you to use it.
Please do not modify this package or take anything out of it. Just put the whole package with your maps if you use something of this. And please give credit to me where it should be done.
Please give me feedback about this! I want to make an updated version of this one day, so tell me about bugs or what things you miss in such an UltimateONS-package.
Don't worry if you use things of this in your map. You will not need to update everything in your map when a new package comes out, unless you need the new features in the new package.
Screenshots:
It's pretty hard to post screenshots for something that you usually see only in action. So take a look for yourself with the example map in this package.
I was asked already to add some of these things in a real map, like Torlan, so that the people can see if it works out. It shall be done, but later.
I said I would explain the testmap. Just open in the editor and see how it could have been done. The things that happen there, from the view of only one teamside:
-Building the center node will spawn one of two possible, neutral, vehicles after some time.
-Building the center and your prime will spawn a vehicle on your side.
-Building the enemy prime will damage the enemy core unless the enemy takes his prime back.
Have fun.
Credits:
Wormbo - I couldn't have done this without him. Whenever I had a question about UnrealScript -> Wormbo has the answer.
Stepo - He did his best supporting me.
TAhrrkijn - Always tried to help me where he could. What would Dr. House be without his team? Still brilliant, but he needs someone to discuss his problems with before he can solve them.
Mychaeel - from the Jailbreak Developer Network. I couldn't have done anything that uses more than one Tag without his JBProbeEvent-script, which I borrowed. Thank you very much.
SuperApe - He probably doesn't even know me, but his SuperVehicleFactory somehow started this project because that Factory didn't work well in ONS (it didn't care about the nodes), so I decided to make my own Factory. And then I wanted to control how nodes affect the Factory and step by step was this project born.
Known bugs:
-An Independent Factoy is unfortunately not 100% independent. Nodes have a bad habit to destroy any teamlocked vehicles that are closest to them in compare to other nodes. They dynamically find the vehicles when they get destroyed and call the Destroy()-function for each of these vehicles.
The vehicles will respawn, but it can be annyoing, especially with a high respawn-time. However, when the Independent Factory spawns neutral vehicles, then it will be all fine, as those a already TeamUnlocked when spawning.
There might also be the case that vehicles that are spawned with bEnterringTeamUnlocks = False will be destroyed by the destruction of close nodes when the driver left them.
That's a bad thing, so that value is more experimental.
-Since the NodeDamageGate needs to accept "InstigatorController == None" in the script in order to let it get triggered by the NodeEventDirector-chain, it can be triggered by pretty everything. It is doing a check if "InstigatorController != None" to find out whether the Target has the same TeamNum as the Instigator and so whether it should damage it or not.
During testing I was running about the bug that a player itself couldn't damage a node by his team, but if he would die right infront of a simple Trigger and let the corpse touch the Trigger, then that could damage the node. So I recommend not to use the NodeDamageGate with Triggers that can be activated by simple touches, either restrict it to something specific (that should be possible), or use something like a UseTriggger.
-bEnterringTeamUnlocks of the UltimateONSFactory will have no effect on a MinigunTurret from Assault, because this is already unlocked when it spawns. And so there's nothing to prevent from being unlocked anymore.
Homepage:
Here are other threads in other forums where I posted that thing, so if you have a question or request, then it's maybe already answered there:
http://forum.omnipotents.com/showthread.php?p=181355
http://ut2004.titaninternet.co.uk/fo...d.php?p=320777
Download: (should be a pretty small file in size)
http://www.mediafire.com/?d3dtnyyqdje
*Download is only for testing purpose, do not map with it, as it's not clean yet*
Version: 1.0
Compatibility: UT2004 should be enough, I think you don't even need the ECE, although it's consider "stock" by the community, so maybe you want to install it anyway, just to be sure.
Description:
Most of you have probably never seen me before because I am usually more active in pure ONS-forums, but now I created something that I want to share with the whole community. I hope that they can use it to let this game live for further ten years.
So what have I done actually? The download link at the end of this post is a .u-file that you can load in the Actor Class Browser of UnrealEd 3, which will add some things to that list.
These things will allow you to take a lot more influence in an ONS-map than you maybe ever dreamt of. I will give you some examples and then explain in detail how to use the tools.
You will also find an example map attached, which I will explain further below and which demonstrates some things you can do. (The original map was created by Wulff)
What you can do with this:
This will probably look familiar to those of you who played Warfare in UT3:
-Let's take the first one: a powernode that controls a bridge. It's really hard (if not even impossible) to achieve that in UT2004 with the default methods. With the tools will it be done in a few minutes.
-Maybe you want to bring some more time pressure into the game? Imagine that you could pick a certain node. If a team builds that node, then a countdown will start, let's say 60 seconds. Now the enemy team needs to destroy that node within these 60 seconds, or something bad will happen. For example could a Levi be spawned there after 60 seconds. Or their powercore, although it is save considering the linksetup, could take damage.
-One node with that time limit seems to unfair to you? Well, you can extend that condition!
Maybe your team should need to hold 2 nodes for the bonus? And maybe must a certain enemy node be downed, or the condition to activate the countdown will not be fulfilled.
Almost everything is possible. This is something what you could call a smaller version of Unreal Kismet, without that fancy interface, unfortunately.
How it works:
This package contains several actors that can be placed in a map. The actors are:
-UltimateONSFactory (a subclass of a normal ONSFactory)
-EventLogicGate (a subclass of Triggers)
-the rest are subclasses of EventLogicGate, which is actually only there for the structuration.
If you feel to skip this long manual, then just right-click on the actor that you want to know more about and click on "Edit Script…"
I made a lot of comments to tell you what each variable that you see in it's properties is doing. Take a look on those comments and on the testmap and you should be fine.
I also recommend to leave things at the default value if you are not sure what they do.
However, I continue with the manual now.
You will need to know the basics of digital circuits in order to use many of these things, but they are pretty simple.
Digital circuits work with logical gates. This package contains similar logical gates. But while you use the Boolean values (True and False, or 1 and 0) in reality, this stuff is basing on the Trigger-system of the Unreal Engine.
That means that certain actors can cause "Events" when a certain condition is fulfilled. The most known thing for that is a Trigger, which will cause an Event when you touch it. Touching the Trigger will call it's Touch-function in UnrealScript and that function will cause the Trigger to "trigger" every actor whose Tag matches the Event that you set in the properties of the Trigger (while you set the Tag in the properties of the actor that you want to trigger).
Ok, so when one of the actors in this package is triggered, than a part (or the whole) condition is True. The actor will do something if or as long as the whole condition is True.
"As long as" means, that it might cease doing what it is doing when the whole condition gets False. To achieve that it is enough to have only a part of the condition becoming False. And how can you get a condition False?
By "untriggering" it. Not many of Epic's actors support the full triggering system, meaning they often can only trigger things, but not untrigger them.
Untriggering uses the same Event-field as the Triggering does.
One actor that does support untriggering is by chance the Trigger, that I described above already. It can untrigger it's Event when you leave the Trigger's collision radius.
And Mover, for example, can be set to move when they get triggered and to stay there until they get untriggered. You see how that works out for our bridge idea, don't you?
So ok, we have the Trigger that does the whole stuff, but that's actually a bit cheap in ONS. So that's why I created something that interprets the current constitution of a powernode out of it's Events. You need to know, that a node (or powercore, I use that name for both things) has, different from most other actors, not just the normal Event-field: it has 3 additional Event-fields, one that triggers when the Red team has build the node, one when the Blue team did that and one that triggers when the node gets destroyed.
So you enter a different name for each of the 3 Event-fields and then place a NodeEventDirector from my package. That thing has 3 Tag-fields in which you should now enter the three names that you set for the node's Events.
The NodeEventDirector will now take care of triggering and untriggering, depending on the node. But in order to have it work properly, you need to specify for which team it shall work actually (that is done with ObserverTeamNum). So if you set 0, then the "condition" will be True, when the Red team has build that node. 1 means the Blue team. You then just need to specify an Event that this NodeEventDirector shall trigger actually.
What are the other things that this actor can do?
-bSwitchTeamsOnReset: if True, then the ObserveTeamNumber is automatically adjusted when the sides swap in ONS. That means that if the condition was True when Red had the node in the first round, then it will be True for Blue in the second one. That is very useful to have equal conditions in both rounds for the teams, so it's basically just the teamcolour that switched.
-LinksetupException: enter the name of a Linksetup in this array, which you want to ignore this actor. For example entering "default" (the name is not case-sensitive) will not let this NodeEventDirector trigger something at all, when the Default setup is active.
EventLogicGates:
I am talking about the actors that start with "Logical" in their name. They work like the real digital ones, so I will only explain what they compute:
LogicalOR: As all LogicalGates (except the LogicalNOT) has the LogicalOR two Tag-fields in which you enter the name of two different Events that shall trigger this OR.
The LogicalOR will itself trigger a new Event (which you have to specify) when at least one of the condition is True, meaning if at least one of two possible Events has triggered it.
It will untrigger it's own Event, when it gets untriggered by both Events.
LogicalAND: This behaves like the OR, except that it will only trigger it's own Event, when it got triggered by both of the conditional Events. It will untrigger it's own Event when at least one of the conditional Events untriggers the AND.
LogicalXOR: The exclusive OR does the same as the OR, but it will only work if exactly one condition is fulfilled and the other one is not. So it will untrigger if both or none of the conditions is True.
LogicalNOT: This reverses the incoming Event and will output the result (as every EventLogicGate) in a new Event-name.
So if you trigger this thing, then it will untrigger it's output-Event, if you untrigger the NOT, then it will trigger the output.
UnTriggerCast:
As I said above already, not every retail actor supports the untriggering, and that in both directions. Meaning that some don't understand untriggering and can only be toggle-triggered. Or some actors only send Trigger-Events and you won't get any Untrigger-Event from them.
That's why I made this thing, which can turn one thing into the other.
IMPORTANT: This is not the same as the LogicalNOT! That one would work in both directions, this one only in the specified one. You can specify the direction by going into the Object-group in the properties of this actor and to set the other InitialState.
The UnTriggerCase will not care about the order in which the Events come in, so you need to have that done somehow by the actor that sends the Events. (That might be a possible feature for the next pack: Cast only each second incoming Event. But on the other hand should it work fine if you just put a Counter before or after this)
CountdownEventGate:
A very important thing, when you trigger it will it wait for the specified number of seconds before it triggers the next Event.
But in that time can it be untriggered to prevent it from triggering the next Event.
You can also specify a ToleranceTime (leaving this one on 0 will disable it).
The Tolerance can do two important things: If the countdown gets aborted (aka untriggered) before it had finished, then you have ToleranceTime much seconds to trigger the CountdownEventGate again. If you manage to do so, then you will continue from that time where the countdown was aborted, otherwise you have to start at the full time again.
The second thing is that if there's a ToleranceTime specified and the countdown succeeded already and the CountdownEventGate gets untriggered, the next Event will not get untriggered immediately. If you can re-trigger the Gate before the ToleranceTime is over, then you prevent that untriggering.
You can also specify a seperate CountdownStoppedEvent, that will trigger (not untrigger!) when the countdown was aborted in time.
-bLoopCountdown: When the countdown succeeded and triggered the Event, then it will start from the full time again and loop until it really gets untriggered.
-bBroadcastCountdown: Setting this to True will show the remaining time on that countdown in the player's HUD in regular intervals. The intervals become smaller the more the countdown is close to succeeding.
-Messages: You can define different messages for the Red and Blue team that will be shown in their HUD when different things happen with the countdown.
You can also choose the message type, what will change where the messages (and the remaining countdowntime, if broadcasted) will be shown. CriticalEvent is the default and best solution, but I want to leave the choice to you.
It is also recommend to let the message teams be switched, so that the messages really match the right team. If choosing this, you should avoid to use "Red", "Blue" or unique descriptions of the map that might not apply to the switched team. Leave a message empty to disable it from being displayed.
NodeDamageGate:
Simply choose a Target by clicking on Pick and then on the Target in the Editor. You can choose a different one for switched rounds too, or take the same as in the first because there need to be both set. Note, that the location of the cores will not switch in the rounds, so you probably want to choose the same core in both rounds when planning to damage it.
Yes, this thing deals damage to nodes and cores when it gets triggered and it has no problem to also damage a shielded node or core.
The player who triggered the Event that caused this actor to deal the damage will be rewarded with the points for that.
Note, that someone can't damage it's own nodes or core, when they directly trigger that DamageGate (meaning the Instigator of the Event is from the team that owns the node). However, you can still accidentially damage your nodes when the damage got triggered by something that is not a Pawn EventInstigator (something that can have a teamnumber), like a node that your team build. So as a mapper it's your job to pay attention.
-bNotifyAboutDamage: If True, this will enable messages like "Blue PowerCore under attack" when it is damaged by this actor, otherwise will it be a "silent" damage.
For your information: a powercore has 4500 healthpoints, a node has 2000.
UltimateONSFactory:
It's really ultimate as it allows you to take so much influence on a map's vehicle balancing like never before!
As for the NodeEventDirector, you can specify LinksetupExceptions in which this factory is NOT active.
You have two arrays, one for Red and one for Blue, which can contain multiple, different vehicles. One of them is chosen randomly to be spawned, depending on which team holds the factory. If you leave a blank in between, that will be counted as bad luck and you have to wait for the whole RespawnTime again for the chance of a vehicle.
(The arrays will only be used, if bRandomSpawn = True, otherwise the one, small VehicleClass-field is used)
-You can spawn neutral vehicles (will use the array of Red's vehicles), set the factory to work only for one team (bUseStaticTeams / StaticTeamNum)
-You can set for each vehicle in the array the size of the SpawnEffect, so for example having a Scorpion with the gigantic SpawnEffect of a Levi. This is more useful to custom vehicles, but besides that would there be no other way to properly implement the effects for so many different vehicles.
-bUniqueVehicle: Spawn only one vehicle, stop doing anything after that. That could be used for very, very, very, powerful supervehicles, or neutral ones.
-bIndependentFactory: The factory does not depend on a node! It will use the StaticTeamNum to be assigned to a team from the beginning (can also be 255= neutral, so the first who gets it will possess it). An independent factory will be active, no matter what's happening around it and it can be placed everywhere and still work for the same team.
(Think of having a spawnpoint for neutral Leviathans that spawn every 5 minutes)
-bEnabled: The factory is enabled from the beginning. Set this to False and let the factory be triggered by something to enable it. (Untriggering will disable it again)
-bCrushable: Spawn the vehicle, no matter if there is a player. The player will be crushed by the spawning vehicle, even if he's in your team, but this is good against enemies who try to block a spawning vehicle.
-bSpawnProtected[Red/Blue]: If True for one of the teams, then this team's vehicle will take no damage as long as it has not been used by the team. This prevents the enemy from camping and spamming your spawning vehicles.
-bEnterringUnlocks: If False, this vehicle will still be teamlocked after being entered. Best use for this is, if you spawn MinigunTurrets with this factory and don't want them to be used by the enemy.
See the script of this actor if you need further information.
Note that "Red vehicle array" and "Blue vehicle array" can be considered as the position rather than the team. When sides are switched, then the factory that is placed in the Editor on the Red side and produces Red vehicles will work for Blue when Blue is on that side, but the vehicles to spawn will be taken from the Red vehicle array just like it would be done in a round without switched sides.
Comments:
That was it for now. I hope you can use this do give us some really good maps with things you were just not able to do until now.
Think about vehicle balancing: You can spawn different vehicles for Red and Blue at the same node, giving the winning team for example weaker vehicles at the enemy prime nodes.
Also, you can use a combination of all this actors to create something like this:
When the Blue team was pushed back into it's base and survives very long, but sees no chance for a comeback, then you could spawn an additional helpful vehicle for them to free themselves.
The actors for such a situation could be:
NodeEventDirector at the two primary nodes observes if the Blue team has build the nodes -> LogicalNOT turns the Falses of both nodes into Trues -> LogicalAND connects these two things and sends the output -> CountdownEventGate counts two minutes before it triggers -> UltimateONSFactory at Blue base is triggered and spawns a vehicle (bUniqueVehicle = True).
In words would that mean: If Blue team did not made it to build one of their primaries in the last two minutes, then spawn exactly one time an additional vehicle at their base to give them a chance for comeback.
So, that was long, I am exhausted.
This is a stable release that is there for you to use it.
Please do not modify this package or take anything out of it. Just put the whole package with your maps if you use something of this. And please give credit to me where it should be done.
Please give me feedback about this! I want to make an updated version of this one day, so tell me about bugs or what things you miss in such an UltimateONS-package.
Don't worry if you use things of this in your map. You will not need to update everything in your map when a new package comes out, unless you need the new features in the new package.
Screenshots:
It's pretty hard to post screenshots for something that you usually see only in action. So take a look for yourself with the example map in this package.
I was asked already to add some of these things in a real map, like Torlan, so that the people can see if it works out. It shall be done, but later.
I said I would explain the testmap. Just open in the editor and see how it could have been done. The things that happen there, from the view of only one teamside:
-Building the center node will spawn one of two possible, neutral, vehicles after some time.
-Building the center and your prime will spawn a vehicle on your side.
-Building the enemy prime will damage the enemy core unless the enemy takes his prime back.
Have fun.
Credits:
Wormbo - I couldn't have done this without him. Whenever I had a question about UnrealScript -> Wormbo has the answer.
Stepo - He did his best supporting me.
TAhrrkijn - Always tried to help me where he could. What would Dr. House be without his team? Still brilliant, but he needs someone to discuss his problems with before he can solve them.
Mychaeel - from the Jailbreak Developer Network. I couldn't have done anything that uses more than one Tag without his JBProbeEvent-script, which I borrowed. Thank you very much.
SuperApe - He probably doesn't even know me, but his SuperVehicleFactory somehow started this project because that Factory didn't work well in ONS (it didn't care about the nodes), so I decided to make my own Factory. And then I wanted to control how nodes affect the Factory and step by step was this project born.
Known bugs:
-An Independent Factoy is unfortunately not 100% independent. Nodes have a bad habit to destroy any teamlocked vehicles that are closest to them in compare to other nodes. They dynamically find the vehicles when they get destroyed and call the Destroy()-function for each of these vehicles.
The vehicles will respawn, but it can be annyoing, especially with a high respawn-time. However, when the Independent Factory spawns neutral vehicles, then it will be all fine, as those a already TeamUnlocked when spawning.
There might also be the case that vehicles that are spawned with bEnterringTeamUnlocks = False will be destroyed by the destruction of close nodes when the driver left them.
That's a bad thing, so that value is more experimental.
-Since the NodeDamageGate needs to accept "InstigatorController == None" in the script in order to let it get triggered by the NodeEventDirector-chain, it can be triggered by pretty everything. It is doing a check if "InstigatorController != None" to find out whether the Target has the same TeamNum as the Instigator and so whether it should damage it or not.
During testing I was running about the bug that a player itself couldn't damage a node by his team, but if he would die right infront of a simple Trigger and let the corpse touch the Trigger, then that could damage the node. So I recommend not to use the NodeDamageGate with Triggers that can be activated by simple touches, either restrict it to something specific (that should be possible), or use something like a UseTriggger.
-bEnterringTeamUnlocks of the UltimateONSFactory will have no effect on a MinigunTurret from Assault, because this is already unlocked when it spawns. And so there's nothing to prevent from being unlocked anymore.
Homepage:
Here are other threads in other forums where I posted that thing, so if you have a question or request, then it's maybe already answered there:
http://forum.omnipotents.com/showthread.php?p=181355
http://ut2004.titaninternet.co.uk/fo...d.php?p=320777
Download: (should be a pretty small file in size)
http://www.mediafire.com/?d3dtnyyqdje
*Download is only for testing purpose, do not map with it, as it's not clean yet*
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