Legacy:AlphaCoop/Discussion

Mosquito: The map of your REALLY is screaming for a vehicle, its just so freakin' big. Also, there's not path nodes for bots, making computer teammates as usefull as a wet clam. I actually liked the ending bit, But I expected a big showdown with a mega queen in the bottom, not some loppy rockthrowers, The bridge bit's elevators are seriously broken, and the door for the "SURROUNDED" section is unlockible, I had to use a translocator to bypass it, and the fly cheat for the bridge. The weapons selection was questionable. No lightning gun or minigun? They'd work very well for the setup.

And in other news, my Moria map is coming very.. very... VERY slowly, considering I can't properly compile lighting and distance fog is non-functional, I think I'll just carve out a basic BSP level for now to use for testing in this mod, then when I get my new rig, add all the pretty.

AlphaOne: Wow, thats a whole bunch for the feedback. Here is what I have to say in return:

-no vehicles for this mod. It would just ruin the fun of fighting the monsters up close. It would be too boring to just be able to ram all the monsters. Yes I know my map is way to big, but what can you do? Its just a test map. I'm not even a mapper. Hehehehe.-

- That leads to the next point - since its a test map, I generally don't care if its all perfect and such. Thus I'm not gonna pay much attention to the path nodes. I just care that my code works.

-Thats true, the ending should be better. Once again, I was just testing my triggers and such. I'm also planning on coding special oversized verisons of the monster to be used as bosses and for the arena gametype.-

-btw, why don't you like the titans?? They are the coolest monsters in unreal!-

- the elevators are not broken, you just have to have more than one person to make it work - that was the idea.

-the 'surrounded' door is not working because I forgot to fix the roundrobin which activates it-

- weapons selection is another thing. I just choose the most used ones. I didn't bother taking the time to custom fit them for all areas, since the monsters are kind of randomly choosen anyways - it would be pointless unless I spawn specific monsters with a reason behind it. Giving all weapons is also not an option - I'd like to keep the gameplay consistent.

Good to hear that you are working on a map:) Its even better than you decided to do the layout/bsp first, which is far more important than eyecandy.

Mosquito: I'm an old style UT mapper, so nearly 70% of my candy sweetiness is in my lighting :(. Also, Titans Seem to have a thing for being slaughtered by Skraaj, Is there a way to set teams for the monsters? The phrase; "They have a cave Troll!" isn't as impressive when the troll turns around to get butchered by its comrade orcs.

Your map with alittle TLC could be a very awsome level, It would need a serious mofit facelift, but it could be very awsome. feel free to code a Balrog for me, A big mean firey balrog, Attach Smoke and flame emitters to the Warlord, give a flamethrower and a mean slash attack, scale him up afew times and slow him down and he'd be perfect. I'm still thinking of a way I could script the balrog to step on the bridge when he's out of health to fall to his demise. And SniperSkraaj with arrows, and another type with only melee would be nice too... (the shield thing fits perfectly with the LOTR thing)

oohh! And a redhead, with big breasts, really easy, I'd prefer a virgin, really naive, not to skinny or fat.. And some fries. thanks.

AlphaOne:

-Yes, I can change the monster's species so they can decide to fight each other, or not.-

-I dunno if I have the time, ideas, creativity, and the ability to do the mofit facelift...I'd rather focus on the code so that your maps can benefit from it!-

-I'll get to the monsters, when... I'll get to the monsters ;)-

Mosquito: I really didn't notice the lack of a specialevent actor until now! Why'd they take out that useful trigger, arg! My work around for the cave troll is to have the team need to kill all the skraaj snipers before facing the troll. I hope you can enable a squad function in a future release.

Update: I just played the tomb section of my Moria map, Might shit is it hard, the minigun is in the center of the room, with health and ammo on the side upper areas on it, because of the dozen or so SniperSkraaj that attack you, its a frantic dance around the level just shooting that these guys, which a problem arose (Note: when you shot a SniperSkraaj while he has his shield up, he still bleeds, confusing players) and I found myself relying lots of grenades and using the shield function of the shieldgun, (I think the shield should be implemented gameplaywise in a more important and useful fashion in AC). Because of the incredible close quarters of the room, the titan only need take afew steps to be in striking range. So far, this map with hit home with LOTR and haters alike... now only If I can fix this lighting problem, right now I have very VERY ugly standin lights to light up the meshes, so I don't need to use RMODE 6 all the time.

AlphaOne: What do you mean by enable the '...enable a squad function'?

Mosquito: To set teams, so you could have a group of Skaarj fight another group of Skaarj.

AlphaOne: Oh, ok. Maybe tomorrow.

Mosquito: I've got a full afternoon ahead of me, I might beable to finish moria today, layout wise.

AlphaOne: Sweet!

Mosquito: These glitches that are effecting my UED are really making this map a totally pain, and complete mess, I'm considering just dropping it all together and wait till I have a rig that can handle UED.

AlphaOne: Thats fine, no pressure. After all, you signed up to help me. You don't owe me anything. Plus, I haven't done much myself. I got nuf real life problems. Tell me what your problem with UED is. Are you editing terrain? If so, don't edit the very edges of it! \o/ Just a friendly warning: if you don't get good fps in the editor, that means the map has too many polygons. Might be time to consider if they are all actually necessary :)

Mosquito: No compiling of lighting on BSP surfaces, messed up distance fog, complete breakdown of the whole concept of x Event triggers actor with x tag, etc. Just all round asshatery that no one else on the planet has an issue with, hence no support. (it wasn't always like this either, it just happened out of the blue, no hardware change, now software change, nothing, drivers don't fix it, patches don't fix it, reinstalls, multiple installiations... all that there is left to do it to reformat, but I can't do that... So arggh!

Mosquito: errr... check Planetunreal.com, seems Alpha has doing public.... errrr? What? This isn't anywhere near a public release, I think someone slipped out the word, I highly recommend getting that off PU before the spammers of hell start ripping up this page.

AlphOne: No worries. I did it myself and I had some good reasons for that.

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EntropicLqd:Hope you don't mind me butting in like this but .... I've been thinking about your desire to encourage teamwork within your maps. You have to be really careful with that. I thought of one:

• You have to cross a large draw bridge. There are switches to raise and lower the drawbridge on either side. The bridge starts in the "up" position. In order to lower the bridge you have to get into the gatehouse and find the switch/lever/trigger. The thing is, there are monsters spawning on the other side of the bridge that will start the drawbridge raising again should a player start to lower it. You can't see the other side of the bridge from within the gatehouse so you need half your team sniping monsters on the other side of the water/lava-lake/chasm/etc and the other half to get into the gate house and lower the bridge.

There are real problems with this level of co-operation in that on pubs you may not have a chance to get things together enough to actually finish the level. The one thing in your favour is that the whole mod will be emphasising teamwork so people will expect to have to work together. I've built similar stuff in the past and people have hated the co-op aspect. Personally I think it rocks. Anyways - is that the level of co-op you were aiming for?

AlphaOne: Yes, thats exactly it! LOL How did you know? :) I just need some mappers to execute it properly. However, I might as well making up (designing) coop scenario ideas because I REALLY DO suck at mapping.

Enos: Every once in a while randomly browsing forums pays off. Ive been hoping that someone would make a co-op mod like sven co-op for HL, and here i find out someone is. I map, im not fantastic, but im not a complete newbie. If theres any way that i can help out, id be more then happy to. To Entropic: Ive thought of that same sort of scenario for an assault map, but i dont know how it could be implemented without custom scripting that i dont understand. The problem is since movers move between keyframes, you cant have one trigger that say moves the bridge from key 0 to 1, and another for the monsters to use that moves it between keys 1 to 0. Im not putting down your idea, it would be excellent, im just not sure how it could be executed.

EntropicLqd: I'd custom script it. Glad the original page was restored after the bit of vandalism it received.

veryhappy: I'd created a mover for UT that can be pushed in the two ways,i mean if you are near a button it will go go n -> n+1 if you are near another button it will go n+1->n (where n is the numbre of keys).I'd made it customizable so you can jump to the 0-> latest key or latest key->0 if you like.I'd lose all the work when i formated my PC but i think i can redo it for UT2004 without a lot of work(I hope)

veryhappy: It's more dificult than it was in UT.I must create a new trigger to send a custom event to the mover, the mover itself and learn a bit of mapping things :/.I think i can't do this at least till August (I've to study a lot).I was thinking about that and I'd an idea: Put a button in a sub that trigger the mover that way the player that push the button can't reach the mover so they must cooperate to go to the other side of the abyss :)

Plouj: I added some vague ideas. What do you think?

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Mosquito?:Alpha, you still working on this? with my new rig I've been hungering to work on a project.

Plouj: Righ now I'm not working on anything, but if anyone wants to continue AC, go ahead, I'll be glad to see that happen. Obviously my work/ides should remain credited as mine.

Plouj: Added a link to the source AlphaCoop if anyone wants to continue it.

Enos Shenk: If anyone takes up development on this, i would be more then happy to map for it. If i could comprehend object-oriented code in the slightest, i miht have a go at it.

lincore: Could someone post a link to the source? The one on AlphaCoop is dead and I'd like to have a look on the code.