Nali Weapons 3 - Release

[Feralidragon]

Ok we better have a separate thread.
Can't find my original posting with the list I made at the time (oh, could be in the dev section).
I'll copy what I have so far in my IRPR config anyway.

Yeah, you can start a topic in the dev section of the mod or post in an existing one.

For some sort of context; Have you used Runestorm's Ballisics gore mod (2K4), or the Ballisics gore for U.227
http://www.unrealsp.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1887
and if so, how would you compare it ?
The U.227 version produces such a heavy load, when used with the new 227 features switched-on, or combined with another 227 mod such as the Hi-Res weapons, I can only use it on it's own.
I am guessing this will be much lighter on the CPU, as UT does not have the new shadow options etc.

Well, I have played with the former in some UT2k4 servers in the past (there were pretty good RSB mod servers back then), but I only saw the ballistics gore in the link you have shown (the videos).
Comparison? Well, in one hand is lighter (less CPU and probably less memory needed), but things can get laggy pretty quickly if there are too many bots in a small amount of space.
Affects wise, my gore is just different, it isn't better nor worse per say imo. Runestorm focused in gibs and blood decals, the U227 one is focused in decals, carcasses and blood itself (dripping and whatnot), while mine focus in diversity and believability (bones, meat, hanging guts) and makes perhaps some things seem a bit disgusting if I may add (since all the meat parts are fluid and they slide down the walls and all, and there's a whole sound on the meat ripping apart), but it's also worth to mention that I am a bit limited here relative the ones you mentioned (I can't have alpha channels, nor particle emitters, nor vertexes I can freely manipulate with joints).
Also, I don't know about the Runestorm or U227 ones, but the NW3 gore is mostly client side, therefore the gore a client sees may not be exactly the same as what other client sees (since it has a bit of randomness in it to feel more dynamic), just like the debris effects, which means that the gore has almost zero-impact server-side.
Soon, after I finish the docs and advance a bit on the new weapon, I am planning to do a short preview on the final version of mod and then it will be easier to show in what the gore is all about.

I assume it will also be as configurable as NW3, so I imagine everyone will be able to use it. Even on minimum it will be better than standard.

Yes. It can be toggled, and adjusted to meet your hardware or simply your taste in gore. You can scale up or down the parts themselves, or change the number of parts, toggle the sliding decals, blood decals lifespan (can be set to forever ofc), etc, etc...

How about scripted events ? Can a mapper easily add a configurable gore event ? (time/direction/volume/colour/blood/gibs...)

Not really. From the player or admin, they can configure the pawns and the kind of gore they want, blood color and such (just like the IRPR heat list, but a bit more featured), however a mapper cannot specify those himself.
A mapper can setup a pawn and then kill him and the gore system does the rest though. But, as I intend to release a standalone version of the gore (since it doesn't rely on the NW3 system that much, it's mostly independent), one can later on enhance it for a mapper to have such scripted events, and it wouldn't be difficult at all to do so.

Also I have raised a question with Loathsome in the past, and would like to ask the same here.
If the blood decals are textures, can they be set with friction like ice or polished surface ?
A floor covered in blood should be slippery.

That's impossible to do. The floor friction is defined by the zone itself and not the surface, plus decals are actually normal actors with some native mambo jambo behind them to attach to BSP surfaces, and adding to that, they're client-side only and depend on the player's decal settings (which means that in online play it would be impossible anyway even if the other former problems didn't exist).

Will it be compatible with normal weapons?..

Yes, the mod is not dependent on the weapons themselves. I am actually going to release a standalone version of it after the final release.

also .. because some people play with Gore=UltraLow , will that disable these effects for these players?

I don't see those gore settings, therefore if those players want to disable gore, they have to go the NW3 client menu and do so themselves.
This gore system is independent from the rest, therefore it has its own toggling settings.

Oh this is nice http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthre ... ost2588075

Yes, it was nice of him indeed.

[papercoffee]

hmmmm... how will the robot parts look like ?? ............................

[Wises]

@Dr.flay .. Sorted

I don't see those gore settings, therefore if those players want to disable gore, they have to go the NW3 client menu and do so themselves.
This gore system is independent from the rest, therefore it has its own toggling settings.

UT99 > Options > preferences > [game] > Gore Level?

[Feralidragon]

hmmmm... how will the robot parts look like ?? ............................

The robot parts are pretty much the same as human ones. The difference is their color: the skeleton is dark grey, the blood is black/silver-ish, the parts are silver-ish too, the guts are dark grey "cables", etc.
I can customize it a bit further though later on before the final release (like making the skeleton have some shiny metallic parts, and also have some solid parts which spawn sparks instead of that silver "blood").

I don't see those gore settings, therefore if those players want to disable gore, they have to go the NW3 client menu and do so themselves.
This gore system is independent from the rest, therefore it has its own toggling settings.

UT99 > Options > preferences > [game] > Gore Level?

I think you misunderstood what I said, I do know where the setting is, what I meant is that this gore is an independent system and therefore it doesn't read the game gore settings.
This new gore system has a whole set of new settings, therefore I cannot simply define its behavior by the gore level alone, as that would take away all the customization this new system has.

[Wises]

re: robots.. perhaps terminator styles lawls.
^_ naw.. no more Watermellons.. bouncing around..HurHur..

also.. cows.. skarj (green blood perhaps) and habougi guy with 4 arms?

that about covers all the stock meshes?..

[Feralidragon]

also.. cows.. skarj (green blood perhaps) and habougi guy with 4 arms?

Blood-wise, the only pawn with green blood is the mercenary, since it's the only pawn with such kind of blood, everything else (excluding the "robots") have normal red blood.

that about covers all the stock meshes?..

As for skeletons, the Nali have the regular human one (the one with 2 arms, let's pretend the other 2 are always blown away...), the mercenaries also have a bigger human skeleton (but greenish). As for the rest, they only have gibs and such, as I am not up to do skeletons for every single standard pawn due to filesize and the time I would have to spend in doing so, to not mention that they would lag the hell out of the game in MH games, more than the gore itself due to the potential poly count in order to look decent enough.

[papercoffee]

...to not mention that they would lag the hell out of the game in MH games, more than the gore itself due to the potential poly count in order to look decent enough.

This leads to another question ...can this skeleton be separately disabled in the NW3 gore menu?

[Feralidragon]

...to not mention that they would lag the hell out of the game in MH games, more than the gore itself due to the potential poly count in order to look decent enough.

This leads to another question ...can this skeleton be separately disabled in the NW3 gore menu?

Well, from the menus directly no, but you can disable them from the .ini file itself (and since this time the final version comes with detailed docs in all the settings, it should be easy to find it).
The reason for not including into the menu is because the system is made in a way that the skeleton is just a generic type of gore that is defined to be part of normal players, making that sort of thing an "advanced setting" that probably most players won't change.
However, in normal gameplay and even in MH, as it is, it shouldn't lag with the skeletons alone as I configured everything for the best performance/quality ratio (probably most potential lag may come from the sliding decals, which can be disabled from the menus).

[Dr.Flay]

Nice answers.
I thought I'd try and cover a good range of stuff in 1 post

I would argue that we should not just copy the existing blood-colours, just because that is what we already know.
Robots should actually have black blood (oil). Only Cyborgs would have red or green (General Black-blood of the ABC warriors knows all about robot blood )
We are used to red because most species on our planet have a high iron and oxygen level in the blood.
Even here on earth there are many species that do not have red blood, because of a lack of iron.
(Strictly speaking we should also have yellow, orange and blue blood, as these actually exist)
Spider-crabs are a good example, they have bright orange blood.

Many people favour setting the pupae and slith as green blood (I agree after testing with Loathsome's mod. It looks good for spiders etc.).
I think we've all been too short-sighted over the years, and limited our imagination based on what we see on TV.
This isn't Star Trek, there is more out there than Humans and Vulcans

The only way to keep everyone happy is to have the colours user configurable, as everyone will argue one way or the other.
You can't win, so I'd say if you can leave it open for addon or config, great.
If it has to be built-in, so be it.

Obviously without the appropriate coloured textures, there is little that can be done, but as long as people can add or tailor it later I don't see a problem.


... anyway back to my idea about configurable gore events.
If I were to place a small static actor eg. cockroach or fly (though I guess any will do if you remove the texture) on, or in a destroyable deco, would I get the volume of gore relative to the size of actor ?
I would like to add robot-gore to items such as cash-registers, TVs, vending machines and phones.

Calling a generic robot-gore for destroying a vehicle, would also be an advantage, but obviously they move around a bit
Would work well with the X-Vehicles maybe ? Players could see how damaged a vehicle is, by how much oil and parts are spewing out of it.

As ever, I'm just "thinking-out-loud" so take from it what you will.
Looking forward to a gore-fest

[Feralidragon]

I would argue that we should not just copy the existing blood-colours, just because that is what we already know.
Robots should actually have black blood (oil). Only Cyborgs would have red or green (General Black-blood of the ABC warriors knows all about robot blood )
We are used to red because most species on our planet have a high iron and oxygen level in the blood.
Even here on earth there are many species that do not have red blood, because of a lack of iron.
(Strictly speaking we should also have yellow, orange and blue blood, as these actually exist)
Spider-crabs are a good example, they have bright orange blood.

The gore system right now has only red, black/silver-ish and green "blood". It can certainly be expanded later by anyone ofc (I try to do my stuff as flexible as possible), but I decided to not add more because the filesize would get huge (unlike newer engine versions, I cannot modify the textures hue to change their color is realtime, which is a real limiter here).
I didn't make the "robots" "blood" completely black otherwise they would look like normal explosion/energetic impacts (no alpha blending nor specular maps would make it look bad).

Many people favour setting the pupae and slith as green blood (I agree after testing with Loathsome's mod. It looks good for spiders etc.).
I think we've all been too short-sighted over the years, and limited our imagination based on what we see on TV.
This isn't Star Trek, there is more out there than Humans and Vulcans

The only way to keep everyone happy is to have the colours user configurable, as everyone will argue one way or the other.
You can't win, so I'd say if you can leave it open for addon or config, great.
If it has to be built-in, so be it.

My problem with setting the pupae blood to green is that their blood isn't originally green, nor are the skaarj nor queen (which are the adult forms of pupae).
As for slith and bugs, perhaps I can change that by default,but even if I make them red by default, one can change that in the configuration file at will, so yeah, it's open for anyone to change later on.

... anyway back to my idea about configurable gore events.
If I were to place a small static actor eg. cockroach or fly (though I guess any will do if you remove the texture) on, or in a destroyable deco, would I get the volume of gore relative to the size of actor ?
I would like to add robot-gore to items such as cash-registers, TVs, vending machines and phones.

That's quite an imaginative way to use the robot gore, and yes, the volume of gore depends on the size of the actor, although that's too much work to do such an effect and due to the gore visual nature, it wouldn't look well imo. It would be far easier to get, modify or model some of those parts for that specific purpose.

Calling a generic robot-gore for destroying a vehicle, would also be an advantage, but obviously they move around a bit
Would work well with the X-Vehicles maybe ? Players could see how damaged a vehicle is, by how much oil and parts are spewing out of it.

The X-Vehicles already have their own parts when they get destroyed, and players can already see how damaged the vehicle is by some effects (white smoke with some damage, black smoke with severe damage and black smoke and flames with critical damage).

[Feralidragon]

A small update on this:
I have the docs nearly finished (9 different documents, all together have 150+ pages), all there's left is for me to finish formating the pages to leave them as clean and organized as possible, and write a few extra things.

Now, the thing is: most of the info covered in these docs apply to the first release as well, thus I am thinking to release a first version of these docs here (by tomorrow or so) so admins and players (and developers?) can finally have some base to look into when it comes to the existing settings of the mod, and also to gather some feedback to correct or modify anything in the docs as needed for the final release.

Currently, the docs cover the following:
- FAQ
- general description of the mod and its features
- server setup
- profiles
- commands
- keybinds
- all the .ini settings explained
- content within it
- plugins (for developers)
- existing classes, functions and properties (for developers), but it's not extensive (which means: only info I deemed important to show and explain are so, not all of it)
- and a few more not-so-important things (like permissions and so...)

My question before I make an initial release of the docs: is there anything else you would like or need to see covered by these docs?

I am asking this now, because after I post those, I will immediately advance with the last thing to finish the final version, which is the new weapon, and during that time all the feedback and doc requests will go to my TODO list until I finish the weapon (which will take some time).

[EvilGrins]

Been playing NW3 on MH maps a lot of late, which is why I noticed this one thing. Again, going with the NW3 defaults, no alteration.

NW3 seems to largely only switch ut99 weapons to the upgraded versions. It doesn't change Unreal1 weapons or other customized weapons...

...I got a map with Goa'uld staff weapons on it. Everything under Nw3 changed except for those.

I had SkaarjGunners spawn onto a map from a triggered MonsterGenerator, each armed with Unreal1 rocket launchers that NW3 didn't switch.

Just sayin.

[UTDeath]

This is fantastic, I like all of the weapons and the weapon modifications are awesome, my favorite is mixing up the WRE with a Fast Modifier for a headshot party.
I just have a slight problem with all the shaking the nukes make, my computer is not that good and the whole place lags like hell, is there a way to turn this off? I turned off the shaking on launch but I don't know how to stop the shaking when it explodes.

@ EvilGrins
There is an option to change the old Unreal weapons as well, I was fighting Skaarjs armed with the Graviton.

[Dr.Flay]

The U1 weapons are re-mapped (or should be).
It will not re-map custom weapons, that are not sub-classes, of the ones it knows about.
Anything spawned after the game starts will not be re-mapped.

[EvilGrins]

@ EvilGrins
There is an option to change the old Unreal weapons as well, I was fighting Skaarjs armed with the Graviton.

I've got a kind of mix. Monsters on a map with weapons from the start under NW3 will have NW3 weapons, whereas monsters that spawn into a game, usually from a trigger, pop into an NW3 game with Unreal1 weapons.

It really varies from map to map, depending on how the monsters are loaded onto the map.