Legacy:Porting UT2003 Announcers

Introduction

Announcers are the voices you hear so often in UT2004. There are two types of announcer, which can be independently configured: the Status and the Award announcer. Some mods (e.g. Jailbreak) have their own announcer. There is a minor change to how UT2004 detects an announcer: you have to declare and compile a class.

Converting the Announcer

Having a UT2003 announcer mostly means having a UAX package. As described in the original instructions ofmost UT2003 announcers, you must put this file into the Sounds folder of UT2003; do this step for UT2004 too, but don't edit the INI file; it won't help much. Instead, create a subdirectory in your UT2004 directory and name it AnnouncerName, e.g. AnnouncerZeus. In here, create another subdirectory named Classes. Then, open your favourite text editor and type this:

class *name*Announcer extends AnnouncerVoice;
 
defaultproperties
{
     SoundPackage="*UAXPackage*"
     FallbackSoundPackage="*FallbackPackage*"
     AnnouncerName="*MenuName*"
}

Time for a little code replace. Replace the *name* with the name of your announcer, *UAXPackage* with the name of your UAX package (without the .uax extension!), *FallbackPackage* with the package you want to use if your announcer doesn't have the given sound (basically, for male voices, use AnnouncerMale2k4 and for female voices AnnouncerFemale2k4), and instead of *MenuName* the name of your announcer that should show up in the menu.

Here an example (ZeusAnnouncerSounds.uax is the name of the UAX package):

class ZeusAnnouncer extends AnnouncerVoice;
 
defaultproperties
{
    SoundPackage="ZeusAnnouncerSounds"
    FallbackSoundPackage="AnnouncerMale2k4"
    AnnouncerName="Zeus"
}

Save the file as *name*Announcer.uc, in my case ZeusAnnouncer.uc (as the class declaration says).

Now, it is time to change your .INI file. Open up your UT2004.ini (in your UT2004 System directory) with your favourite text editor, and look for the block of EditPackages= lines (section [Editor.EditorEngine]). Here, limit the list to this:

EditPackages=Core
EditPackages=Engine
EditPackages=Fire
EditPackages=Editor
EditPackages=GamePlay
EditPackages=XInterface
EditPackages=*AnnouncerFolderName*

Replace *AnnouncerFolderName* with the name of the directory you put your announcer into. Now, open up your command line and go to your UT2004 directory (using CD to "Change Directories"; typing the drive letter with the colon and pressing Enter will switch drives on Windows computers). Here, type

ucc make

for Windows, and

./ucc-bin make

for Linux and Mac (not sure about this). Wait for the compiler to compile your files; if "Success" and "Announcer exported succesfully" appears, you are done. Start UT2004 and check out your announcer.