UT3 Fixes (Beta): A UT3 Bugfix Mutator

[tarnationsauce2]

Have not tried the 2nd build. But on the 1st I had problems with the Paliden shield disappearing but still active. I would go to fire and instead release the shield pulse.

A few suggestions/fixes:

Fix redeemer pickup bug where if you were on it while it spawns the pickup still looks like it's available when it really is not. I think this only happens online.

Increase Palidin primary fire rate a teeny amount!

All vehicle carcases have zero collision for players, vehicles, and even for weapons.

I know of a MAJOR exploit on a map that would destroy the map if people knew about it - not sure if you can add collision (actor) to a specific map at a specific coordinate? I would have to show you a pic over PM.

The "tallness" bug after respawning from levi explosion should apply to redeemer and Titan explosion too.

Deployables can be dropped on top of each other if you are high enough.

AVRL bug where lock oscillates between two targets then fails to hit either of them.

[Bubble_Damage]

It's an added feature; I put it in because vehicle healing deserves a reward IMO. I like the taxi idea.

[geronaho]

• Warfare: Healing friendly vehicles now provides a score bonus (much more slight than the bonus for healing nodes). Note that this bonus is only given when healing a vehicle occupied by a team-mate.


Let me know what you think!

Is this a fix? Maybe give a bonus point for taxis and weapon throwing sniper to me :+)

[Bubble_Damage]

Build 2 of the beta version is now released. I have updated the original post.

Changes

• Longbow AVRiL: The vehicle suicide bug is now fixed by causing the AVRiL to lose its lock, rather than preventing it from dealing self damage.

• Hellbender: The gunner seat's charge bar looks better on the HUD now.

• Nightshade / StealthBender: These vehicles now deploy bug-fixed deployables instead of old ones.

• Paladin: The shield stay feature is now activated by pressing space, rather than by double right clicking.

• StealthBender: The StealthBender was broken in the last build, and would not appear in the game. This is now fixed.

• All deployables: The Throw Weapon bug was not fully fixed before. Hopefully this release will fix it.


New Fixes

• X-Ray Field: Fixed the nearby deployables bug. It is no longer possible to place other deployables inside or near an X-Ray Field.


New Features

• Warfare: Healing friendly vehicles now provides a score bonus (much more slight than the bonus for healing nodes). Note that this bonus is only given when healing a vehicle occupied by a team-mate.


Let me know what you think!

[Veggie_D]

reduce the update interval as much as possible

(should have said "reduce the update frequency" ... but you get me)

[Bubble_Damage]

I did think of one more thing:



While this a neat idea and definitely does look nicer, you might want to keep an eye on this feature, if not roll it back, just for a technical reason ... changes to a vehicle's health is a piece of data that the game must broadcast immediately to all clients across the network ... and, as per-client bandwidth is a scarce resource that needs to be conserved at every opportunity, any time you have a game mechanic that involves a sustained, predictable change, it's good if you can reduce the update interval as much as possible ... since, of course, as a server fills up, network consumption accelerates (compared to hosting 8 players, a server with 24 players, while it's 3 times the size, it costs up to 9 times the bandwidth).

IINM this is also the reason certain classes of updates in UT3 (e.g. Power Core flooding, updates to the scoreboard, etc.) are intentionally not delivered continuously or instantaneously, but rather delayed by an interval of one second or more.

Thanks for the heads up. I've never really known anything about client/server communication, so I'll look out for this.

[Veggie_D]

I did think of one more thing:

• Link Generator: This deployable now heals vehicles more smoothly, which looks nicer on the HUD.

While this a neat idea and definitely does look nicer, you might want to keep an eye on this feature, if not roll it back, just for a technical reason ... changes to a vehicle's health is a piece of data that the game must broadcast immediately to all clients across the network ... and, as per-client bandwidth is a scarce resource that needs to be conserved at every opportunity, any time you have a game mechanic that involves a sustained, predictable change, it's good if you can reduce the update interval as much as possible ... since, of course, as a server fills up, network consumption accelerates (compared to hosting 8 players, a server with 24 players, while it's 3 times the size, it costs up to 9 times the bandwidth).

IINM this is also the reason certain classes of updates in UT3 (e.g. Power Core flooding, updates to the scoreboard, etc.) are intentionally not delivered continuously or instantaneously, but rather delayed by an interval of one second or more.

[Veggie_D]

Wow, great work Bubble!

I think your decisions are sound on every single issue.



Apart from "wow great work!" I can think of only one question: have you definitively determined that Scorpion balls damage randomly in stock UT3? I only ask in case of the possibility that damage is proportional to how accurately a shot was fired....

For example, consider a projectile whose trajectory would have it miss a Manta/Hoverboard/etc., except because of the projectile's attraction effect, it hits anyway — now, could it be that in such a case, the damage is reduced proportionally to how sharp an angle the projectile had to cut to divert itself into its target?

If this isn't the case (I'm sorry I'm being lazy; I should check myself), then ... maybe that could be a neat additional feature to explore. I think it's good to reward accuracy, and good to have a Scorpion that's still strong but less spammy, if possible.



Oh and did I say GREAT WORK BUBBLE

[RattleSN4K3]

I was actually going to ask what you guys think about this. Placing spiders in an x-ray field has become a common strategy to protect your Greed goal (sort of like vehicles in prime on Downtown) so I decided to keep this bug for the time being. I imagine it would be a pretty easy fix, though, if you think it's a good idea.

I would say it's a bug, as they (Epic) simply check for UTSlowVolume (which is not a Deployable).

static function bool DeployablesNearby(Actor MyActor, vector MyLocation, float CheckRadiusSq)
{
//...
//Check for slow volumes too (they don't derive from the same hierarchy)
//...
}

It's generally been considered a bug. What I find buggy is that it stays locked on once you've turned the enemy vehicle onto your team; normally, AVRiLs cannot be locked on to a friendly vehicle. I'll try to fix it by causing the AVRiL to lose its lock instead, because I agree that you should always damage your own vehicle.

Way better to just remove the the LockedTarget of an Avril rocket.

The maximum charge level is still 153 (or 180) damage on a full charge, Berserk or no Berserk. Since the berserk doubles the damage output of every other weapon, I figured it should do the same for the bender gunner.

Not every weapon is doubled - Impact Hammer, as far as i notice the Link AltFire, Deemer (the build up time a the deemer is ready to be shot). The gunner shots as twice as fast if keep shooting without charging.

The problem with this is that enemies can throw their mantas at you if you threaten them with a hammer. Right now, if they get out of their vehicle while it's moving in your direction, your EMP hammer will launch it in the other direction and prevent it from running you over. Fixing the bug as you suggest would break this ability, which I feel would weaken the hammer.

Okay, some proper checks should do it.

Perhaps you misunderstood. Suppose you have your shield open and facing forward. There is a team-mate sheltered in the space between the front of your vehicle and your shield. A enemy tank (on the other side of the shield) then fires a shell into the shield. This fix prevents your team-mate from dying from the tank's splash damage, because in reality, the shield should be blocking it if the shell hit on the other side.

You mean the shield is now absorbing any kind of projectile's energy? Shooting a rocket/tank shell next to the Paladin which having the shield on (but not facing the explosion) would still damage the Paladin?

The major cause of the classic "invisible dead vehicle" bug is the Scorpion, though. Unlike other vehicles, the scorp leaves an invisible block behind that stops other vehicles from moving. With every other vehicle, you can actually see what you are going to run into.

I face this problem more often on other vehicles than the scorpion.

The Scavenger isn't exactly that powerful to start with, I think it's a nice addition. Let's see what others think.

A Scavenger player can now continuously kill/damage vehicles like Manta, Scorp, Tank, DW without fearing being killed suicidally. Scav is by far the most underrated vehicle, but it's really really powerful. Removeing this damage makes me happy to be more powerful ( lol).

Axon vehicles should be compared to Necris vehicles. If you remove such damaging, you should also remove Scorpion's damage increase on boosting.

I haven't really changed anything with this fix. I noticed that Scorpion globs usually deal between 30 and 60 damage to drivers of Mantas and Vipers. Since everything in UT3 is generally predictable (e.g. a hit with a shock rifle always does the same amount of damage), I figured this should be too, so I took the average and went with it.

I'm not sure what you mean. I did fix the exploit with vehicles that enables you to damage unlinked nodes, if that's what you mean.

Sry, I read SelfVehicleExplosion as SelfDestruct. ^^

[Bubble_Damage]

Speaking of Nightshade/Stealthbender.
Do a deployable-placement-check for all deployables. The ones from UT3Gold aren't checked. You can place any deployable into Xray Field.

I was actually going to ask what you guys think about this. Placing spiders in an x-ray field has become a common strategy to protect your Greed goal (sort of like vehicles in prime on Downtown) so I decided to keep this bug for the time being. I imagine it would be a pretty easy fix, though, if you think it's a good idea.

I don't feel like this was a bug. You should always damage your own driven vehicle if you shot it - same for locked Avrils. Don't like this fix.

It's generally been considered a bug. What I find buggy is that it stays locked on once you've turned the enemy vehicle onto your team; normally, AVRiLs cannot be locked on to a friendly vehicle. I'll try to fix it by causing the AVRiL to lose its lock instead, because I agree that you should always damage your own vehicle.

I think it is considered as feature like a bright screen for flashbacks. Same bug occurs for deemer/hero explosions. However, its kind of a bug as you don't shot the crosshair (physical shooting position stays, only the visible position / crosshair is changing).

It's not an intended feature. It's a bug with the camera shake effect, where your view doesn't get re-centered after the effect ends. It does happen with deemers, but only like 5% of the time. It happens nearly 100% of the time with the levi, so I simply swapped the levi's shake animation with the deemer's and it's mostly fixed.

Could be over-powered as a fully charged shot makes a lot of damage.

The maximum charge level is still 153 (or 180) damage on a full charge, Berserk or no Berserk. Since the berserk doubles the damage output of every other weapon, I figured it should do the same for the bender gunner.

Same bug exists for ShockRifle's shock balls/cores. You can't shoot balls/cores which are near walls.

I'll look into this.

Instead of removing momentum you could have check for a empty/non-powered vehicle (or lowering the momentum for team vehicles). I would say it is a feature for teamplay to knock-off teammates into the air.
You can explain this features by explaining what an EMP could do to an engine. If the EMP would electrify the engine (theoritically) the engine could have a boost which forces the propellors to rotate faster which propels the manta into the air.
Currently, you're are only removing it from own team vehicles. But you're still leave it for enemy (which is good). IMO, it should affect powered but not non-powered vehicles (regardless of their team belonging).

The problem with this is that enemies can throw their mantas at you if you threaten them with a hammer. Right now, if they get out of their vehicle while it's moving in your direction, your EMP hammer will launch it in the other direction and prevent it from running you over. Fixing the bug as you suggest would break this ability, which I feel would weaken the hammer.

Might me over-powered. A single foot soldier isn't able to fight against it on close range as the Avril reload time is longer than the time for building up the shield after a shot. You can use the shield to block anything, wait for the player to shoot an avril, block it, try your own Paladin shot and re-trigger the shield. Makes it kind of impossible to hit.

I see your point. The problem is, the Paladin is pretty weak with this bug in place (generally considered one of the game's worst vehicles). Fixing it makes it stand a fighting chance against groups of players attacking it. It's also very counter-intuitive that your vehicle's shield can actually increase your risk of taking damage.

Hmm. Isn't that the deal that you have to rotate the shield towards the projectile/shot. Splash damage should be affected. Real life comparison: A sun blocker would also remove making you hot while laying in the sun.

Perhaps you misunderstood. Suppose you have your shield open and facing forward. There is a team-mate sheltered in the space between the front of your vehicle and your shield. A enemy tank (on the other side of the shield) then fires a shell into the shield. This fix prevents your team-mate from dying from the tank's splash damage, because in reality, the shield should be blocking it if the shell hit on the other side.

This bug exists for many destroyed vehicles. The collision model is still enabled after the "dissolving effect" starts.

The major cause of the classic "invisible dead vehicle" bug is the Scorpion, though. Unlike other vehicles, the scorp leaves an invisible block behind that stops other vehicles from moving. With every other vehicle, you can actually see what you are going to run into.

Overpowered.

The Scavenger isn't exactly that powerful to start with, I think it's a nice addition. Let's see what others think.

Overpowered.

I haven't really changed anything with this fix. I noticed that Scorpion globs usually deal between 30 and 60 damage to drivers of Mantas and Vipers. Since everything in UT3 is generally predictable (e.g. a hit with a shock rifle always does the same amount of damage), I figured this should be too, so I took the average and went with it.

Did you remove the self-destruct damange on nodes (at least for Scorpion)?

I'm not sure what you mean. I did fix the exploit with vehicles that enables you to damage unlinked nodes, if that's what you mean.

Bubble is a god! Now please oh please make a score board that shows kills and deaths in Greed.

Haha, I'll try. My HUD-modding skills have proven not too great though, so don't be surprised if I can't make it happen.

[Unreal.Inc]

Bubble is a god! Now please oh please make a score board that shows kills and deaths in Greed.

I repeat kind sir

[RattleSN4K3]

Speaking of Nightshade/Stealthbender.
Do a deployable-placement-check for all deployables. The ones from UT3Gold aren't checked. You can place any deployable into Xray Field.

I tried your mutator. And here are my concerns/notes about some of the tweaks. Everything i did not mention works fine.

• Longbow AVRiL: Fixed the vehicle suicide bug. If you fire an AVRiL then hijack an enemy vehicle, the AVRiL missile may still come back and target you. However, it will no longer deal damage if it hits you.

I don't feel like this was a bug. You should always damage your own driven vehicle if you shot it - same for locked Avrils. Don't like this fix.

• Leviathan: Fixed the camera bug, where the main cannon's explosion causes all nearby players to have badly-centered vision for a few seconds.

I think it is considered as feature like a bright screen for flashbacks. Same bug occurs for deemer/hero explosions. However, its kind of a bug as you don't shot the crosshair (physical shooting position stays, only the visible position / crosshair is changing).

• Hellbender: The gunner seat is now affected by the Berserk power-up. The Berserk will now cause the gunner seat's weapon to recharge at twice the original rate.

Could be over-powered as a fully charged shot makes a lot of damage.

• Hellbender: Fixed the wall bug, where skymines detonated near a wall or obstacle would fail to continue the chain reaction.

Same bug exists for ShockRifle's shock balls/cores. You can't shoot balls/cores which are near walls.

• Manta: Fixed the hammer jump exploit. Players can no longer propel themselves into the air by using the Impact Hammer's alternate fire on their Manta.

Instead of removing momentum you could have check for a empty/non-powered vehicle (or lowering the momentum for team vehicles). I would say it is a feature for teamplay to knock-off teammates into the air.
You can explain this features by explaining what an EMP could do to an engine. If the EMP would electrify the engine (theoritically) the engine could have a boost which forces the propellors to rotate faster which propels the manta into the air.
Currently, you're are only removing it from own team vehicles. But you're still leave it for enemy (which is good). IMO, it should affect powered but not non-powered vehicles (regardless of their team belonging).

• Paladin: Fixed the shield damage bug, where the vehicle would take all of the damage incurred by its shield while the shield was opening. The shield now blocks all damage as soon as it's visible.

Might me over-powered. A single foot soldier isn't able to fight against it on close range as the Avril reload time is longer than the time for building up the shield after a shot. You can use the shield to block anything, wait for the player to shoot an avril, block it, try your own Paladin shot and re-trigger the shield. Makes it kind of impossible to hit.

• Paladin: The shield now protects from splash damage. Large projectiles such as tank shells can no longer damage players on the other side of the shield.

Hmm. Isn't that the deal that you have to rotate the shield towards the projectile/shot. Splash damage should be affected. Real life comparison: A sun blocker would also remove making you hot while laying in the sun.

• Scorpion: Fixed the invisible dead vehicle bug. Exploding scorpions no longer leave behind invisible remains that block the movement of other vehicles.

This bug exists for many destroyed vehicles. The collision model is still enabled after the "dissolving effect" starts.

• Scavenger: Players in the Scavenger can no longer kill themselves by blowing up a nearby vehicle. Many players like the ability of the Scavenger to "maul" other vehicles. However, if this tactic succeeds in blowing up the enemy vehicle, the resulting explosion can cause significant damage to the Scavenger. I removed this damage in response to complaints about this.

Overpowered.

• Scorpion: The globs fired by the main gun now deal a consistent 45 damage to manta and viper drivers. The damage used to be unpredictable, usually somewhere in the range of 30-60 HP. This meant that it would take anywhere from 2 to 4 shots to kill a manta/viper driver with 100 HP, with no real way to predict how many. I figured that since the typical number of required shots is 3 (2 and 4 are more rare), I would make a successful hit reliably deal 45 damage.

Overpowered.

--------------------

Did you remove the self-destruct damange on nodes (at least for Scorpion)?

--------------

@tarnationsauce2:
This mutator uses own Pawn/PlayerControllers classes which breaks the compatibility to many mutators (like UT3x).

[tarnationsauce2]

I love the manta hammer jump!

I used to until an admin saw me do it to get the redeemer on Confrontation. He said he would ban me if he saw me do it again. This was years ago though.
--------------------

Can't wait to try this mutator out. Hopefully many admins will see this and try it out. I'll help spread the word.

This combined with UT3x for team balancing would make a WAR server awesome!

[Cybis]

Now that I think about it, I love the hammer jump too. The only problem is that it allows for some pretty nasty exploits on some maps (for example you can get above an invisible ceiling on Onyx Coast where you are invulnerable to hitscan weapons). I felt like if I'm making a bugfix mutator, I should probably get rid of exploits like this when I can, even though they're certainly fun.

Ooh - I didn't know that was even possible. How often to people do that? Is it really preferable to get rid of manta hammer jumps because of one exploit on a rarely-played map that hardly anyone even tries to do?

I like this idea a lot. The one problem I see is that the hoverboard key serves as an "exit vehicle" key when you are in any car. I'd have to remove that aspect of it from the game to get the feature you're looking for, but I guess that's doable.

Who uses the hoverboard key to get out of a vehicle? It seems totally redundant to me, since the "use" key both gets you into and out of them. I just noticed that the hoverboard key already kamikazes too, so its functionality is currently identical to that of the use key when in a vehicle.

Ahh, is that what causes the faulty deployables bug? I knew that the mixing up glitch would happen, but I could never nail down what caused it. I'll look into this.

I've only seen this bug when trying to put down deployables using a hijacked enemy nightshade. I don't know if it's caused by having two shades on one team, or by putting down friendly deployables using a shade that already put down enemy ones, or something else, but it's definitely something along these lines.

[Bubble_Damage]

Thanks for all the kind words.

Hellbender Damage Phenomenon: This made it possible to kill a tank with a hellbender, albeit it was still an extremely difficult trick to pull off. Now the bender would have no chance against a tank unless it was badly damaged to begin with.

I see why you'd be concerned. I've always considered this an exploit though, since one skymine combo being able to deal ~400 damage seems quite excessive to me. Personally, I've succeeded in killing many tanks without the exploit by detonating a string of shock balls right over the tank, so I don't feel like the game would be thrown out of balance by much.

I love the manta hammer jump! Especially on Torlan, since it made it possible to get the redeemer with a manta. If more players knew of this trick, then (1) nobody would be tempted to take center just for the Cicada in order to get the redeemer, and (2) nobody would take the raptor just for the redeemer and leave the orb carrier to run it on foot.

Now that I think about it, I love the hammer jump too. The only problem is that it allows for some pretty nasty exploits on some maps (for example you can get above an invisible ceiling on Onyx Coast where you are invulnerable to hitscan weapons). I felt like if I'm making a bugfix mutator, I should probably get rid of exploits like this when I can, even though they're certainly fun.

If I can make one request: can you please convert the "hoverboard" key into a "kamikaze only" key when the player is in a vehicle? It's very annoying to have kamikaze and exit be the same key, especially when that beep / message indicating that the kamikaze mode is ready sometimes lies.

I like this idea a lot. The one problem I see is that the hoverboard key serves as an "exit vehicle" key when you are in any car. I'd have to remove that aspect of it from the game to get the feature you're looking for, but I guess that's doable.

P.S. - no mention of the "two nightshades" bug? If the same team is using two nightshades, then they won't always put down the correct deployable. For example, if you try to put down a spider mine then it will put down a slow-field instead.

Ahh, is that what causes the faulty deployables bug? I knew that the mixing up glitch would happen, but I could never nail down what caused it. I'll look into this.