Bad News! mutator - Fixed

[MrLoathsome]

I have been using the old Bad News! mutator by Major Disaster for years on a
few of my servers.

Knew it had a few issues, but did not realize how many until I took a look
at the source code a few weeks ago.

Almost everything in the original badnews.txt file is still valid, with these
exceptions:

1. Flies and Mantas will only be spawned individually, not in groups of 2 or 3.
(After my rewrite, that bit was just putting too many Flies and Mantas in the game.)

2. There is no Umod install for this version. Just drop BN3.u and BN3.int into
your UnrealTournament/System folder.

3. There is no need to place this in the ServerPackages section of the ini if you
are running this on a server. Simply add BN3.BN to the mutators= section of
the server command line.

Issues that were fixed:

1. Original version would break the mutator chain whenever a Cow or LeglessKrall
was killed.

2. Occasionally, it would spawn an invisible monster that would not die.
Seemed to happen once every 5-10 matches. This has been stopped.

3. It was broadcasting duplicate messages on deaths. This has been fixed and
I have added a bunch of new messages on monster deaths. (23 of them)

4. The SetupMonster function he had, was doing a whole lot of unnecessary
things, most of which served only to fill the log file with scriptwarnings
and errors, and slowed down the spawning considerably.

i.e. --> monster.bIsPlayer=true; <--NEVER DO THIS!

That is pretty much it. I made an attempt to contact the original author, but message
was bounced back with a full mailbox error. I am assuming he is no longer available
or active with UT.

Enjoy !

[EvilGrins]

Only problem I ever had with Bad News was the Warlord that spawns in the game. Unlike other monster mutators it employs the teleport function so if it gets weak the Warlord teleports out of the game...

...but never reappears anywhere.

Personally I feel if the thing is going to teleport it should be to somewhere else on the map.

[MrLoathsome]

I believe the warlords spawned by this no longer do that teleport retreat.

Not 100% sure, as I have been working on several other things at the same time, but dont
recall seeing that in testing or play.

Try this version out for a while, and let me know if you see that.

[Dr.Flay]

Just downloaded, and will be trying as a replacement.

[EvilGrins]

Bad News is like my 2nd all time favorite 'consequences from killing a character' mutator. Not that it's better or worse than the other but they're both cool.

I don't know who made the other one but it's called ExplosiveMode. If you frag another character to gibs, they explode like a redeemer. It's the other option I liked best, not really a choice though, as I've never been fond of snipers.

If someone gets a headshot on you, a redeeemer launches straight at the source of the shot from your decapitated body!

[Dr.Flay]

After playing with this in for a while now, you get a definite
Much better balance than the original.

[MrLoathsome]

Thanks. Glad it is working well for you.

Nice to get some feedback.

[Dr.Flay]

Thanks. Glad it is working well for you.

Nice to get some feedback.

That's cool. I thought someone better

[MrLoathsome]

I did get a bit more feedback last month here: http://ecoop.ucoz.com/load/bad_news_fixed/1-1-0-31 from the original author of the mutator.

Total comments: 2
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1 Major Disaster (20-Sep-2011 4:59 PM)
Hi, I'm the original author of Bad News. As you correctly surmised I am not much active with UT nowadays, but I stumbled into this post and I just had to drop in.

First, thanks for taking over my code and going through all the issues. The original was hastily cobbled together as a practical joke targeted to the players of a specific event (on on the NGI servers, iirc), and I never got around to polish it properly - I do remember the invisible monster, the duplicate death messages, and also some monsters (mostly Titans) never appearing in some maps. Anyway you did an awesome job of fixing all these and then some, so congrats and keep up the good work smile

Major Disaster

I was doing some playing/testing today, and was getting annoyed by some of the bugs that exist in the "stock" unreal/UT monsters that
this mutator spawns. Primarily their failure to attack bots, but they have other issues as well.

Currently considering an update, where the mutator will load up a list of all the various monster classes that it spawns, from an INI file.
If the ini was absent, it would default to the current stock monsters.

This would enable use of the "fixed" versions of the monsters Asguard included with MonsterSpawn, or the ones included with the
excellent EXU2 Demo4 by Waffnuffly & UA over at UnrealSP.
Or any other scriptedpawn classes you put in the ini..... i.e. The Jurassic dino's or Asguards spiders ect.

It would need separate lists for what would be spawned for each type of spree or other event, to make it stick with the original intent.

Adding an INI to the mutator would also let me make it a bit more configurable. i.e. Make the random monster sizes optional. settings for
min/max monster size, min/max health etc.

Won't be making any changes to when things get spawned. That is what makes BadNews unique.
If you have any suggestions regarding the above, now is the time to post em up. Will probably look at this in the next week or 2.

If you are looking for a mutator that spawns other(any) actors on any player/pawn death, check this out:
http://ecoop.ucoz.com/load/the_dropper/1-1-0-36

BadNews will only be spawning scripted pawns, and only at the same times the original did.

Stay tuned......