Legacy:K St TheJunior

K_St_theJunior's New Mods Recruitment Page

(placed in the Inbox on Aug 2, 2002).

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K_St_theJunior's New Mods Recruitment Page

This is a page from K_St_theJunior (a slowly aging adult) for material that doesn't yet have a home, concerning some of my mod ideas. I'll start with my main two mod ideas of the moment, and seasoned contributors will at some point find the material a home elsewhere in the Wiki.

Suggestion 1 - A Ringworld-Inspired Mod for UT2003

Hollywood has been talking for several years about possibly making a movie based on Larry Niven's mind-boggling "Ringworld" concept, but they never have gotten it all together. I think the UT mappers out there have a great opportunity to create a first-visualization of the "Ringworld" idea as a set of expansive 3D maps for UT2003 or even for the old UT. I'm imagining a great ring-shaped UT map which would be able to hold maybe 10 smaller location-maps within the circular interior side of the ring. I recently saw a great "2001 Space Odyssey" map that someone made which had two ring-shaped space stations within it for a CTF type game. The envisioned project would require a much bigger "space station" of a Ringworld-esque nature, rather like a mini-ringworld. I picture a gigantic map that incorporates 10 separate maps by 3 or 4 (or maybe by 10) different mappers, and it lets the player move quickly from one territorial map to the next as he travels along the inside of the ringworld. If someone could make a generic ringword map as a base and then use some coding talent, maybe it could even become a new gametype for UT where you can pre-select 10 of your favorite UT maps to be placed upon the inside rim of the mini-ringworld model that someone puts together. Here's a link to the Ringworlds Visualization page, not yet added. (By the way, my "EarthWarrior" skin might also fit in well with any mini-ringworld map-simulation's 3D adventures, since one of the characters in Niven's original novel was a heroic, ringworld-roaming adventurer named "Seeker," and Niven has often maintained that he too is a big fan of the old "pioneer s-f" literature!)

Foxpaw: I had an idea the other day of how you could do this, but there is also a problem. The problem, which is probrably obvious to you - running one map is hard enough on the computer that's running it, let alone 10 at once! That's the only problem with it. Kind of. UT had support for a thing called a WarpZoneInfo which allowed players to travel from map to map by merely entering this special zone, which changed it's own appearance to mimic the next area. (essentially creating a seamless transition from one level to the next. Projectiles could even go through them!) In UT2003 it is not as powerful and can't go from level to level, however you could probrably do this slightly differently. Each server can only serve one level at a time. However, there is nothing stopping you from running 10 servers at a time on one machine and having the client switch servers through unrealscript when they walk into an appropriate area. There would be a slight delay as the server was switched, but it'd still work pretty good. (except for the CPU/RAM/bandwidth implications of running 10 servers on one machine)

Suggestion 2 - A "Colorful Warriors Mod" for UT

I have just completed a umod SkinPack consisting of most of my "Colorful Warriors" skins (25 so far, v.2, with 4 never yet appearing at SkinCity), and it's already about 23 mb of stuff. It includes my GreenNali and WhiteNali skins, and even a "GreenNaliGiants" mutator that I've almost got right. If Atif Riaz ("eagleAR") is able to finish fixing it for me, I'll be posting this through SkinCity as a gigantic SkinPack in just a couple more days. (If he can't get it fixed for me, I may have to request help on that aspect from other coders.) Anyway, I am visualizing the possibility of turning it into a mini-mod with the addition of my little mutator – plus some flying vehicles, if someone volunteers to help! If some talented volunteer coder could assist me with the transformation, I'd like to also add one "floating airboat" model to it – or better still, SEVERAL "airboats" of various sizes, ranging from small to larger. The smaller size would carry a player and maybe one bot aboard, visible in third-person view (via hotkey) with ChaosUT swords drawn and ready, or with ray-guns unholstered, letting them travel through the air, around any map, and attack from above whenever they come zooming down or jump off the airboat. The larger of the "floating airboats" (like big floating rafts or rowboats, but much more modern/futuristic in appearance) could hold maybe 5-10 players/bots aboard, all visible standing on the deck of the airboat with swords/ray-guns drawn and ready for action.

People seem to have a lot of fun using the Strangelove mutator to fly around, and the Quantum Fighter Jets mutator of Zencoder likewise, and they like the "Mobile Forces" idea of moving vehicles within UT. So I think this could be a lot of fun in a similar way, allowing fans to recreate the old "pioneer s-f" of the earliest s-f literature. If Zencoder or anyone else would be interested in working on this for me (as volunteer work, for free) and sharing the credit, please contact me and let me know. This will be a free-giveaway mod, and I'm poorer than dirt right now, so your only real payment would be in appreciation from me and other UT fans. But let me know if you could help! Anyone who submits a suitable-looking "floating airboat" mutator to me will be considered for inclusion within the future versions of the Colorful Warriors SkinPack/Mod, and I would be really happy to be able to include such flying vehicles within future versions of the umod. If you want some hints or pictures revealing more about what kind of appearance I'm aiming for in the desired airboats, I can send you that upon request.

Thanks in advance for any help that any coders or modelers out there might be able to provide.

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Mychaeel: Hi K St TheJunior.  :-) Welcome to the Wiki. I noticed you added yourself to the Project Contributors list already. I suggest you put your mod ideas on the Mod Ideas page – that's what it's for, after all.

K_St_theJunior: I'm just copying your format here & don't have any idea what I'm doing in this effort at a response. Sorry, but I'm (don't tell) 51 and I haven't yet figured out how to add something to the Mod Ideas page – that's why I already sent these paragraphs initially to your "Inbox" page!! I was rather hoping that YOU GUYS would figure out how to put it in the right spot for me!! Thanks in advance for the help - I guess I must be reaching the "doddering" old stage or something.

Mychaeel: You can add stuff to the Mod Ideas page the same way you added it to the Inbox – just click "Edit text of this page" at the bottom of the page and insert your contribution wherever it fits. For Mod Ideas specifically, first create a link on Mod Ideas to a subpage by prefixing the page name within the ... with a slash (see New Contributors Quick Start), like Legacy:K St TheJunior/Ringworld. When you reload the edited Mod Ideas page, you'll find the usual link with a trailing question mark that indicates a page that doesn't yet exist; click the question mark to create the page and enter text for it. – In any case, don't worry that you break something. Every old page revision is kept, and if something goes wrong editing a page, it's no big deal to restore the original content.  :-)

Mychaeel: This is completely up to you, of course, but don't you want to remove the content that has been moved to Mod Ideas from your page?

Tarquin: Hello. Welcome to the wiki. :D

ZxAnPhOrIaN: Welcome aboard. ;) :tup:

K_St_theJunior: Thanks. I'm hoping I can entice some public-spirited or humanitarian coders and modelers in your modding community to help me with the labor end of my mod concepts. I'm a librarian, not a coder, so "I need all the friends I can get," as Charlie Brown used to say! So far though, as of 12:31 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 3, 2002, it looks like no one's even noticed the two new pages I added under "Mod Ideas\New Gametypes\Ringworld" and "Mod Ideas\New Gametypes\ColorfulWarriors"! Oh, well... maybe someone will add some thoughts to those pages by the end of the weekend... Anyway, thanks again for the welcome.

Tynan: Well, the Ringworld in the book was millions of kilometers accross and tens of thousands wide. You could do maps set on the ringworld, but you woudn't be going around the ring. Besides, have you ever played Halo? They directly copied the ringword idea and the entire game is set on a big spacering.