UTMultiTeam (3- and 4-Team Deathmatch) [WIP][ALPHA][v0.1]

[Catalyst]

Name: UTMultiTeam
Version: ALPHA 0.1 (ie there are outstanding issues to be fixed, see below)
Compatibility: UT3 Patch 1.1
Download: http://www.modfight.com/utmt/UTMultiTeam-ALPHA-0.1.zip

Description:
UTMultiTeam is a mod which brings classic 3-way and 4-way team deathmatch to UT3. It replaces all elements we could think of with multi-team equivalents including weapon skins, player skins, the HUD and scoreboards. In future releases, it aims to provide a classic domination gametype as well. Notably, deaths from changing team or leaving the game no longer penalise your team as they do in vanilla UT3.

Comments:
Well, here it is. I'm not entirely sure about releasing the mod in its current state, given that it still has some issues (you'll find out what if you look a bit further down this post). However, the core gameplay is in place and some friends and I have successfully played some online bouts against one another so it does work! I'm releasing this now since I'm not sure how much more time I'll have to work on this in the short-term and I'd rather give people the chance to play and test it than let it sit around gathering dust. Long-term I'm aiming to fix many of the current issues. Don't let that rant put you off trying it though, it all works well enough! Consider yourselves our little guinea pigs. So, without further ado... here's UTMultiTeam!

Screenshot: Check out this thread for many in-development screenshots. EDIT: Oh, go on then, have one or two





Credits:
Special thanks to Lotus, for kindly letting us use his CustomUT team color materials and code. Also, many thanks to 8-4-7-2, for lending me clan rSu's server for testing. This mod is the work of Catalyst.

Homepage: None, currently.

Feedback:
Feedback would be particularly valuable on the gameplay: are the colors right? Too dark? Too bright? Is there anything noticable we've missed? Compatibility with different mutators would be interesting to know as well - please try and break it! Then let us know what went wrong . If you notice something that looks wrong, then please take a screenshot and show us.

From a mod author perspective, we would very much appreciate it if authors who want to us this mod as a base for their multi-team mods could take a look at the codebase and let us know if there's anything they'd like changing. We're very open to providing new features if they fit with what the mod's trying to do and if anything we've coded is too restrictive or convoluted, let us know - we might agree with you and fix it

But above all, enjoy yourselves!

Known Limitations:

• Vehicles are not yet team colored, although there is some provision for that in the current version
• Players vs Bots is not handled at all
• If you create a sub gametype with more than 4 teams, the team change GUI box in the mid game menu will not appear, since it is based upon the message box mechanisms and is only allowed four buttons.
• The translocator is not yet colored to teams.
• HUD items for team games such as CTF or WAR that indicate the current status of the flag and such will not appear correctly yet
• Team portaits will not yet be colored to their team. This is a limitation of the methods used to color players' skins, since the engine does not take into account materials added to the players' meshes after they have been set up initially.
• No thought has yet been given to the server browser, it may or may not work.

Known Bugs:

• Redeemer HUD is red for green and gold teams when in flight
• Regression to the default IronGuard character is fairly common. We know why this is and aim to fix it in a future version
• Pressing escape in the in-game Change Teams dialog box randomly switches the player to a new team instead of cancelling the switch altogether.
• Spectators see some skins wrongly, including ultra-brite glowstick mode in some cases
• There is a potential bug whereby skins loaded at the start of the round are not colored correctly
• Spectators may have trouble switching between players to view using primary fire.
• When performing a seamless travel between levels and changing NumTeams, some teams may still exist after the transition and provide "phantom" HUD elements amoung other effects.

Planned Future Features:

• Classic Domination gametype
• Announcements for the Green and Gold teams
• Team color materials for vehicles
• Colored translocator
• Fix regression to the default character so often when changing teams in online play.
• Better configuration options

[Tahngarthor]

Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou :bow: <3 <3


By the way, I had a thought. For the ECE bonus pack, Epic gave the female-announcer-voice treatment to the community-made assault maps that were included with it. Have you considered asking Epic if they could provide matching green/gold team sounds for all the announcements for your mod?

[iycgtptyarvg]

Catalyst, you Mega Sex God!!! I love you... in a platonic kind of way, naturally

I will test this right away.

*****  *   *   ***   *   *  *   *   ****
  *    *   *  *   *  **  *  * **   *    
  *    *****  *****  * * *  **      *** 
  *    *   *  *   *  *  **  * **       *
  *    *   *  *   *  *   *  *   *  ****

Ok here are my points:
1.
Why is there a Classic TDM [2-team] gametype? I couldn't find any difference between this and the normal TDM.

2.
Why are there 3 gametypes? I would very much prefer 1 gametype, with a setting stating how many teams you want.

3.
When a green or gold member dies, (s)he fades away in blue instead of their own colour.

4.
The Red and Blue members are MUCH more visible than Gold and especially Green members (giving an unfair (dis-)advantage)

5.
A settings GUI would be nice (if possible)

6.
I guess this requires special maps, but how do I test (v)CTF and WAR?

[Catalyst]

Thanks for letting me know

By the way, I had a thought. For the ECE bonus pack, Epic gave the female-announcer-voice treatment to the community-made assault maps that were included with it. Have you considered asking Epic if they could provide matching green/gold team sounds for all the announcements for your mod?

The provided announcer sounds for the Deathball mod as well, which was nice of them . I've considered that option, but I'd rather ask once I've got the kinks of the gametype worked out and more time to work on it. After all, there's no harm in asking, is there?

1. Why is there a Classic TDM [2-team] gametype? I couldn't find any difference between this and the normal TDM.

I kept that in the menus since there are a few changes which apply to the 2-team gametype that aren't in vanilla UT3, for example it doesn't reduce your teams' score when a player switches team, etc. There isn't really much difference, it's for the sake of completeness.

2. Why are there 3 gametypes? I would very much prefer 1 gametype, with a setting stating how many teams you want.

I would too - underneath it all it *is* only a single gametype, the class UTMultiTeamContent.UTMultiTeamGame and on the command line you can specify ?NumTeams. However, there's a limitation with the menu system for gametypes in the current version of UT3, in that you cannot specify your own settings screen for them, so for the moment three menu options it remains .

3. When a green or gold member dies, (s)he fades away in blue instead of their own colour.

Ah, I've seen this one before - does it happen offline at all or is it only in online play you see this?

4. The Red and Blue members are MUCH more visible than Gold and especially Green members (giving an unfair (dis-)advantage)

I think this is partly because a lot of the environmental textures are green and gold and partly an artifact of the way the skins are generated - unfortunately, if I boost the colors, it makes everyone's skins oversaturated. I intend to have a fiddle with the colors in future version anyway, but be glad the teams are even a different color at all . Could you provide screenshots of the difference in visibility and do you have any ideas as to what would make them more visible?

5. A settings GUI would be nice (if possible)

Yes, I agree. Any settings you looking for in particular?

6. I guess this requires special maps, but how do I test (v)CTF and WAR?

There is no (V)CTF or WAR gametype with 4-teams at the current time, that would require more coding!

[Grim]

Awesome stuff.

Happy new year btw

[ColdfireRik]

Great start of the new year!! Happy new year to all of you Really love 4 team dm ^^

[Chief-Justice]

Luv It!

Hey Catalyst,

works great so far! Really loving it!

Got a few pictures with some funny questions:


1st:
What team colour you guys think that bot has got?






Answer: GREEN



PS: If anyone knows any settings to make the color even on close range more visible then I appreciate any hints.
**** UT3!




2nd:
Does that bot with his Belt belong to Green or Yellow?






Answer: GREEN




But on distance the colours are cleary visible!





EDIT:
Got it installed on my clan's private server and we'll test it tonight

[iycgtptyarvg]

Catalyst, thanks again for TDM4... it makes me extremely happy.

1. Why is there a Classic TDM [2-team] gametype? I couldn't find any difference between this and the normal TDM. I kept that in the menus since there are a few changes which apply to the 2-team gametype that aren't in vanilla UT3, for example it doesn't reduce your team's score when a player switches team, etc. There isn't really much difference, it's for the sake of completeness.

2. Why are there 3 gametypes? I would very much prefer 1 gametype, with a setting stating how many teams you want.
I would too - underneath it all it *is* only a single gametype, the class UTMultiTeamContent.UTMultiTeamGame and on the command line you can specify ?NumTeams. However, there's a limitation with the menu system for gametypes in the current version of UT3, in that you cannot specify your own settings screen for them, so for the moment three menu options it remains.
5. A settings GUI would be nice (if possible)
Yes, I agree. Any settings you looking for in particular?

It seems the above things are all dependent on Epic's will and capability to fix the GUI in a patch. The guy who made the Last Man Standing gametype (he calls it 'Elimination') also has the problem that he can't create a custom settings menu.

3. When a green or gold member dies, (s)he fades away in blue instead of their own colour.
Ah, I've seen this one before - does it happen offline at all or is it only in online play you see this?

I saw it offline (haven't check online yet). It's not a huge problem, but it's a bit confusing.

6. I guess this requires special maps, but how do I test (v)CTF and WAR?
There is no (V)CTF or WAR gametype with 4-teams at the current time, that would require more coding!

Ok, no problem. It's important to get TDM4 working 100%. Other gametypes can wait.

4. The Red and Blue members are MUCH more visible than Gold and especially Green members (giving an unfair (dis-)advantage)
I think this is partly because a lot of the environmental textures are green and gold and partly an artifact of the way the skins are generated - unfortunately, if I boost the colors, it makes everyone's skins oversaturated. I intend to have a fiddle with the colors in future version anyway, but be glad the teams are even a different color at all . Could you provide screenshots of the difference in visibility and do you have any ideas as to what would make them more visible?

This is a crucial problem. As you can see from Chief-Justice's first screenshot, it's quite hard to discern the Green members. Not only is the Green team 'more hidden', they are also difficult to tell apart from the Gold team. This will make it harder to hunt down a specific team (I played a mod on UT2004 where you had to eliminate a specific team to win).
I don't know how to fix this, other than trying out different colors to see which colors stand out best. Alternatively, you could tone down the Red and Blue teams a bit to make it at least fair.

I also have a new point:
Is it possible to turn this into a mutator instead of a gametype? As it is now, it's impossible to have 4 team LMS (Elimination). By making your TDM4 gametype into a mutator, it could be used with all sorts of gametypes.

[Taboen]

I am so loving this mod!
First get TDM4 completely working before you start on any other 4-team gametypes.

[Tahngarthor]

4. The Red and Blue members are MUCH more visible than Gold and especially Green members

You can (at least partially) address the difference in color visibility by using the color correction mutator that removes the de-saturation from maps so all colors are at full intensity. Green and Gold will always be a little closer to eachother than red and blue, however improving the color saturation will reduce this problem.

[Kaiwa]

Awesome! Thanks for this awesome gametype

Can't wait till full release, hopefully some good online server will come up!

Thumbs up!

[Catalyst]

It seems the above things are all dependent on Epic's will and capability to fix the GUI in a patch. The guy who made the Last Man Standing gametype (he calls it 'Elimination') also has the problem that he can't create a custom settings menu.

Well, both yes and no to that one. The real problem is that the gametype settings screens are embedded in the UIScene for the gametype menus and there's no easy way to add a custom screen. I'm still convinced there's a way to get a custom settings screen in for a gametype, just not worked out what it is yet .

This is a crucial problem. As you can see from Chief-Justice's first screenshot, it's quite hard to discern the Green members. Not only is the Green team 'more hidden', they are also difficult to tell apart from the Gold team. This will make it harder to hunt down a specific team (I played a mod on UT2004 where you had to eliminate a specific team to win).

I don't know how to fix this, other than trying out different colors to see which colors stand out best. Alternatively, you could tone down the Red and Blue teams a bit to make it at least fair.

This has bugged me all through development to date, actually. I intend to try out some new methods of recoloring to try and make the team colors more obvious. I tried using a dark green for the green team but all this achieved was making them hard to see in the dark! I've got a few ideas for this, I'll get you some screenshots when I've had a go at them, but it might not be for a couple more weeks.

I also have a new point:
Is it possible to turn this into a mutator instead of a gametype? As it is now, it's impossible to have 4 team LMS (Elimination). By making your TDM4 gametype into a mutator, it could be used with all sorts of gametypes.

You know, my first thought when I saw this was "no way, that's not possible". Then I realised that mutators can hook things like scorekill. I still very much doubt that it can be done, but I'll have a look into it

[ikarus]

congrats m8, and thank you for this

[agentq_71]

I also have a new point:
Is it possible to turn this into a mutator instead of a gametype? As it is now, it's impossible to have 4 team LMS (Elimination). By making your TDM4 gametype into a mutator, it could be used with all sorts of gametypes.

I don't believe it would be possible to do this with a mutator. However, you will be happy to know that I will be using Catalyst's mod to create a 4 team version of Team Elimination.

[Tahngarthor]

The gametype needs to be specifically written to support 4 teams, and often, so do the maps. U cant just randomly plop 2 more flags in a map for CTF for instance. What if someone enables this mutator for a warfare match? how is that gonna work?
The gametype needs to be coded for 4 teams, a mutator just doesnt make sense.