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papercoffee wrote:What about a better map?
A whole army doesn't have to approach the player in one wave.

Always good for a more long term situation, but that one is ideal for basic testing.

As to waves, was going for Nelsona's edit of my edit - https://unreal-games.livejournal.com/105687.html

Basic testing revealed some issues:
- StoneWoman only walks, it doesn't dodge or jump. So if something is in its way it can't get around whatever it is.
- The test map has lots of mounds with an area inside for weapons or health. Inside a mound, StoneWoman can't get out.
- StoneWoman's only attack is ye olde Chuck Norris' roundhouse kick... but that's not so helpful except in close quarters.
- May be the outer framework doesn't fully fit on the model, but StoneWoman looks like it's wearing pink gloves. Weird.

It is a living statue so you can't expect it to be able to act like a regular pawn for everything. - it's meant to be used in certain thematic situations only or mostly, all of which were featured by the test map.

As for pink gloves, I dunno. I'm what you'd describe as "colorblind", in fact its likely I see in two basic colors instead of three (so not RGB).
I made several variants of the skin but this is the one codex said was best. I dunno.

EvilGrins wrote: StoneWoman's only attack is ye olde Chuck Norris' roundhouse kick... but that's not so helpful except in close quarters.

She's best used, as Leo says, in situations like those in the test map - in ambushes in relatively confined spaces like small rooms, corridors and stairs where the player can get backed into a corner or otherwise be unable to escape her kicks and punches.

Of course, if you want to make her even more formidable you can increase her groundspeed, acceleration, health and the damage caused by the kick/punch somewhat. Moving at speed, she is surprisingly difficult to hit because of the way she moves; even then though I wouldn't put her in locations where there are obstacles to her movement or where the player gets too much of a long range view of her.

EvilGrins wrote: May be the outer framework doesn't fully fit on the model, but StoneWoman looks like it's wearing pink gloves. Weird.

There are pinkish tints to parts of the exposed skin though I don't see much on the hands. I suppose it is a matter of individual taste whether she should be completely silver-grey or not.

A light bit of evasion code for incoming projectiles would make her much more dangerous. This isn't a monster useful in an open field but if you had a few of these in temple maps placed where you would have trouble retreating...she would rearrange your inventory for you.

JackGriffin wrote:A light bit of evasion code for incoming projectiles would make her much more dangerous. .

Yes, that would be VERY interesting. I have speeded her up somewhat and I get the impression she does sidestep if she takes a hit; will have to have a closer look. She is relentless in pursuit and it could be that her sideways moves are actually following the player's movements. Anyway, like I say, with faster movement she is difficult to hit; with some evasion code she would be even more formidable.

JackGriffin wrote: This isn't a monster useful in an open field but if you had a few of these in temple maps placed where you would have trouble retreating...she would rearrange your inventory for you.

Spot on.

She was made in mind for the temple maps so yes.

Anyone is free to make a subclass with any changes really.

Her limited range of animation made it unthinkable for her to have a support for dodge and such though, though it coul have been theoretically made by cutting short the kick animation as some kind of pseudo dodge but probably would look weird.

Given that I saw the woman being used in official maps as oversized statue, and given her animations this was really the natural choice.

They never updated the mesh even though they still used it all the way up to 1997 but by the time of 1997 it was already decided there will be a new mesh (femaleone) so they didn't bother modifying the old woman mesh further.

The Kick/Punch was used by the player at some point, the thing is we have missing any betas in the period it was implemented however even the late 1996 betas of Unreal have a key reserved for "kick" still. So it was simply a key one would press for melee attack with the player. That's at least the origin of the animation.

Upon seeing screenshots from evilgrins: I see what you meant by pinkish bits.

That's a masking bug and didn't appear on my end. It's supposed to be transparent if your renderer works right. I guess some renderers don't have a proper masking support or you need to use maskedtexturehack or something.

In situations where there's a lot of them I've found nuking them is effective but problematic.

Apparently them breaking into tiny stone bits, if there's enough (20 or more) of them, causes a brief but noticeable memory lag.

EvilGrins wrote:In situations where there's a lot of them I've found nuking them is effective but problematic.

Apparently them breaking into tiny stone bits, if there's enough (20 or more) of them, causes a brief but noticeable memory lag.

I don't suppose anyone envisaged that they would be used in situations where one would want or indeed need to nuke them . Still maybe the lag suggests they shouldn't be used like that - bit of a waste really when the StoneWoman can be triggered for surprise ambushes/attacks.

Leo(T.C.K.) wrote:Upon seeing screenshots from evilgrins: I see what you meant by pinkish bits..

I don't get anything like that, maybe it's the renderer being used. I just see a pinkish tinge on some parts of the skin.

Okay well, if it's not the hands being unmasked, then I simply can't see what you describe due to my sight/vision.

I wonder if the other skins I made didn't have it. I did like another one better, not this one specificaly. Perhaps I'll later upload the skin variants just so you can see what was avaiable to choose from.

Leo(T.C.K.) wrote: ...Perhaps I'll later upload the skin variants just so you can see what was avaiable to choose from.

That would be good. Just as a matter of interest, this is what I see. Like I said, in certain maps there can be a pinkish tinge to parts of her exposed skin - possibly due to the nature of the lighting in those maps?

EvilGrins wrote:In situations where there's a lot of them I've found nuking them is effective but problematic.
Apparently them breaking into tiny stone bits, if there's enough (20 or more) of them, causes a brief but noticeable memory lag.

That can be mostly fixed by preloading the bits and also scaling it back some if slowdown is detected.

I also noticed the odd skin tone but I had planned on reskinning anyway if I used her. The entire color scheme needs to be more stone and less metal. I like the texture itself, it just needs tweaked a bit. Also the walking sounds are too metal and not stone for me.

Hey let's all upload edits and have a mini-contest for best version (If Leo gives the OK).

I suppose codex saw an opportunity in it to make it more metal like - like the chorizo I mean torixo statues in SM.

I will show the selection of the skins in a while. He must have picked the more metal loking one anyway I guess for sense making.

It's fin with me also just make sure the expanded mod names are different than the original. So the packages must not be named "StoneWoman" again.

EDIT:
I can't bloody find it. The earliest I can find is already compiled stuff. What directory did I work on the skins anyway? Didn't locate it yet.
Okay I found all my original skins that served as a base for the mod I think. I'll post a link later.
EDIT2:
Please keep in mind that these probably have masking issues since they weren't altered afterwards yet. That only happened with the "skin of choice".

Download link here

The pink...

EvilGrins wrote:The pink...

That's due to your renderer. I'm using D3D9Drv and have not been seeing this pink, as shown by a previous screenshot. So, as an experiment, I set MaskedTextureHack=False and immediately got the 'pink gloves'. So check the settings of your renderer in UT.ini and, if present, set MaskedTextureHack to TRUE (as Leo(T.C.K.) says here).