Terror Is Reality

[PaD]

Inspired from Dead Rising 2, this is a funny little game mode I made years ago. You are spawned in a Slayer (a variation of the Scorpion vehicle, skin from the Scorpion GT) and simply need to ride over as many monsters as possible! The first player to reach a certain amount of roadkills wins the game.



Ideally, this is played on small arena maps as included in the package. DM-Gael works fine, too! The more human players, the more fun - bots sometimes do nothing until provoked.

Download: http://pdinklag.de/ut2004/TerrorIsReality.zip

Installation:
Simply move the System and Maps directories into your UT2004 installation. For admins, the game's class name is "TerrorIsReality.TIRGame".

Config:
Add the following to your UT2004.ini and configure as desired:

[TerrorIsReality.TIRGame]
MonsterTypes=class'skaarjpack.krall'
MonsterHealth=5
MonstersPerSecond=10
NumMonstersWanted=125
TimeLimit=10
GoalScore=500
Music=Sound'TerrorIsReality.TerrorIsReality'
PlayerVehicle=class'TerrorIsReality.TIRScorpion'

NumMonstersWanted is the maximum amount of monsters at one time. If there are less, new monsters are spawned every second (MonstersPerSecond). Keep the MonsterHealth low so roadkills are easier.

To disable the built-in music, set "Music" to "None". You can have players spawn in any other vehicle by changing the "PlayerVehicle" class (Levi arena!).

By the way, I recommend the Nalis from Satore's Monster Pack (class name: satoreMonsterPackv120.SMPNali), they don't retaliate! (I'm so cruel...)

Mapping:
Nothing special is required to make maps for this game mode, any DM map will work. Monsters are spawned near PathNodes, players on PlayerStarts as usual.

To be able to test a map from the editor, in the level properties under "LevelInfo", set the "DefaultGameType" to "TerrorIsReality.TIRGame".

[jefe]

Everything sounds great except "the Dead Rising 2 rock loop is hardcoded into the game mode..."

Forced music is the worst. Please make that an option that can be turned off.

[PaD]

True that. Just checked, seems I declared the music and vehicle class as "config" back then.
Just set "Music" to "None" and it's all good. I updated the main post. That's a server-side setting though, not a client-side option. I might add that.

[jefe]

Thanks. I will try this out on my server soon.

[Flak Master]

Wow, my friend from high school would enjoy this, as he's a huge fan of Dead Rising and can't stop talking about the third game! Good job!

[jefe]

I played a few maps of this, really enjoy it.

It would be nice if the music loop was removed from the mutator, so each map can have a standard music track without the possibility of conflicting sounds. This would also make the mutator a lot smaller.

I'd like this game mode to have its own prefix so it doesn't show up on other game types on map vote. (TIR-TerrorIsReality, etc.) I tried my setting up mapvote with that prefix, but I guess you have to use a standard one for it to be recognized? I'm not sure. For the time being I've named the maps AS-TIR- since I only have one other AS map on the server. This is how I have it configured at the moment:

GameConfig=(GameClass="TerrorIsReality.TIRGame",Pr efix="AS-TIR",Acronym="TIR",GameName="TIR",Mutators="DM.DM" ,Options="MaxPlayers=14?NumBots=2?MinPlayers=2?Goa lScore=100?GameDifficulty=5.0")

The LavaIsland map seems a bit small. I made a larger version for my server, I can upload it if you'd like.

Here's another map I just put together:

[shot]http://screenshot.xfire.com/s/129033372-4.jpg[/shot]


EDIT: Would it be difficult for you to add a round system, like best 2 out 3, sort of like Assault? Also maybe kill off the monsters at the end of the match? 100 krall are pretty loud when the game's over.

[PaD]

Haha, thanks!
A little history on this, it was merely a little fun experiment for a Halloween event. I dug it back out from my vault this year and thought I might release it just for the hell of it. Seemed like a good idea.

You're right, the music should not even be part of the game mode. It was meant as a gimmick, that's about it.
I'm not sure what a round system would add to the game, it'd simply be a second score counter for each player, wouldn't it? Though I agree that a little breather might be a good idea, playing with a score limit of 500 becomes a little exhausting...

Concerning map voting, you can define different voting configs as you did, and you can have a separate map list for each. I personally prefer doing that via WebAdmin, way easier that hunting and pecking through that INI file. Then again, I'm not sure what speaks against its own map prefix.

With those ideas and maybe some more, I might make a new version of this. Cool to receive some resonance on this! And thanks for the map!

[jefe]

This mod inspired me to port one of my Mario Kart Wii tracks, Rezway II to UT2004.

I'll post the track itself after I fix the collision a bit.

[jefe]

I've just uploaded a map pack with the following four maps:

DM-[TIR]-MKWii-RezwayII-1.ut2
DM-[TIR]-LS_Block-Fort-1.ut2
DM-[TIR]-LavaIslandXL.ut2
DM-[TIR]-Basketball-1.ut2

Download:

http://www.vgmp3.org/DLs/UT2004/UT20...ackJefe_v1.zip


Ok, so after playing this quite a bit on the server are a few observations and ideas.

First, the monsters always seem to clump to one side of the map, no matter how well connected the path nodes are. They should spawn with a more random distribution at nodes. An example:

Powerups would be really cool. Like increased speed, temporary invulnerability, a magnet to attract monsters.

Configurable vehicle health and scoring would be good too. Like dying subtracts 10 from your score.

Custom monsters that make less noise, or some way to make them quieter.

Going with the rounds idea, maybe different monsters on each round, or use different vehicles.

[Sly.]

Are you using default Invasion monsters?
It could be that they just try to find the closest pathnodes to the players/playerstarts.

[PaD]

First, the monsters always seem to clump to one side of the map, no matter how well connected the path nodes are. They should spawn with a more random distribution at nodes. An example:

I have seen that in the code lately, I actually just iterated through the level's navigation point list every time. I have no excuse for this, but fixing that is easy.

So, let me collect those ideas:

• Better distribution of monsters on the map.
• Custom map type with prefix "TIR-".
• Custom monster that shuts the hell up.
• Better configurability (vehicle health, speed, scoring).
• Different types of vehicles.
• Multiple rounds per game with different monsters or vehicles.
• Powerups (speed, invulnerability, monster magnet).

I really like a lot of these and that should have me motivated! I will put this little mod up on github so anybody can stay up to date, share ideas via issues and maybe help out with things if they want. Expect that some time this week or at the weekend. Thanks for all the feedback!

[jefe]

Sounds great!

Due to the high number and density of monsters, both dynamic lighting and shadows can look glitchy. You should be able to remove the dynamic light properties from the custom monsters. I'm not sure about shadowing. Or maybe the game mode itself can override shadows and dynamic lights?

[PaD]

I uploaded the sources to Github:
https://github.com/pdinklag/TerrorIsReality

I also opened the suggestions as issues.

If you got a Github account and want to be able to push to the repo, let me know!
I'm not sure yet if I will get my hands on this this weekend already.