I'm a doctor, not a mechanic
Legacy:BOZO
BOZO:Howdy folks and welcome to my page. I plan on adding some stuff in here when I have time and helping out on the Wiki. It has actually come in handy a few times for me so I feel obligated to help right back.
I've been messing with Unreal since Unreal I. My first clan was the <NDP> clan - The NewDefinitionsofPain. Bunch of good buddies there - had a totally blast. I then discovered the Unreal Editor and Pandoras Box was opened wide. I started out trying my hand at Mapping - I laughingly recall some of my first "Maps" now. Pretty cruddy if I say so...anyways I got better and actually made a decent level or two before discovering the joys of scripting. I took to that like a fish in water. My first public project was the very first IP Logger/Ban Tool for Unreal I called, interestingly enough, "IPLogger". It actually got used on quite a few servers when I released it. It taught me lots about Replication - the bugbear of learning how to program in UnrealScript. Another fun bit people may not be too familiar with is that there are currently 4 different versions of Unreal I (builds) that you can commonly come across running on servers today. Each has its own benefits/drawbacks - I had to learn how to write stuff that worked across multiple versions also. Helped me learn a bit more indepth package stuff...
I then got involved working on a mod for Unreal I called "Crystal Castles" that was loosely based on the old arcade game of the same name. Myself and a couple of other folks did work on it and released it in 2003 to the General Public. I still run a server to this day. It had the distinction of being the first TC Mod to be released in several years for Unreal I. UT2003 had already been released by this time. Note: I totally skipped the UT phenomenon. Was having too much fun with Unreal I. For this mod I ended up doing most of the Programming, Model building, Animation, and Map construction.
Again a great learning experience all around. I ended up doing lots of stuff that had never been done before in Unreal.
About two months prior to our "Crystal Castles" Unreal I release, the "Make Something Unreal" contest for UT2003 was announced. Just after our release I jumped in to start our UT2003 conversion now titled "Crystal Chaos". We worked diligently to convert our stuff - some of the old team kinda drifted away - a new member joined. Anyways I again got to do most of the Programming and Model building. Unfortunately all our old stuff was vertex mesh and animation thus I had to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to convert stuff to the new skeletal and static mesh formats. I was using Milkshape as my Modelling tool - as you may know the custom Animation export never got working correctly - thus I spent tons of time wasted there trying to figure that out. Then decided to mess with Maya PLE - guess what you can't do custom Animation there either. Thus I was stuck for our weapon models so no real good animation going on....I finally gave up until later.
Anyways this whole time I was doing this - I was also totally rewriting our Weapon code from scratch - we have multimode weapons in our mod - No stock support for that so I was reinventing the wheel - again... Also our big bit from Unreal I was our bunch of custom Inventory Items. I had to recreate all that stuff once again for UT2003 since it really does not provide 100% stock support for activatable and carryable inventory either - looks like they almost included enough to make it work - anyways I filled in the gaps. Also had to split all our stuff into the seperate Pickup and Inventory classes.I spent some time adding some new items and functionality not in our previous Unreal I release.
We finally had enough converted just a little before the Phase 3 entry deadline for the contest to actually submit something that was recognizable as a game. (Big change going from Unreal I to UT2003) They changed the rules though and you suddenly had to make things work for UT2004. I of course waited til the last minute to do the conversion and promptly got bit by the WeaponFire object base snafu...darn Epic...
So even though we were VERY buggy we entered what we had for the Phase 3 entry. None of our weapons worked over the network. Someone must have seen through the glaring problems though since we got an honorable mention for one of our Gametypes!!
My team and I kept plodding on to correct all our outstanding issues and actually created a stable and halfway polished mod in time for the Phase 4 contest entry time. We entered "Crystal Chaos" as our TC FPS Mod entry. Maybe they will ask us to enter the Grand Prize contest - not holding my breath though...
So all that brings me to today. Now that my spare time is no longer totally consumed in my fruitless pursuit of a "kudos" for my mad programming skills - I find that I might actually have time to pass on my hard garnered knowledge...
Enough of me lurking in the backwaters of the Unreal realm. I'm coming out into the Light...
Greetings!!
BOZO
bozo@newdefinitionsofpain.com
Comments[edit]
MythOpus: Welcome To The Wiki BOZO. Enjoy Your Stay Here.
El Muerte: its BOZO. And welcome.
EntropicLqd: Hi, Welcome to the Wiki. Enjoy your stay here :)
BOZO: Thanks for the welcome folks!
