OSMT Discussion & Ideas

[Lord_Simeon]

I recently tried it in MOV-Solaris and it works pretty easily.
You assign a material to overlay, then assign a time on and off for it.
I just used font on a masked background for the material.
Something like that with a custom texture would be handy so we can all make our various "you died" messages....heh heh

With the Hourences HUD overlay, i tried it already in a map but it has no on and off.
You assign a material in the MyLevel browser with a certain name and the MUT calls this as the overlay 24/7 while your playing.
Also, it doesn't work in AS ending scenes (which is what i wanted to use it for).
If it could be triggered and used with multiple textures it would be handier, but the way it is now it's a bit unusable IMO.

[SuperApe]

Originally Posted by Lord_Simeon

...You assign a material to overlay, then assign a time on and off for it...

Oh, is that part of Matinee? That would make it easy. That would mean I don't have to do anything special, just assign a default DeathScene Matinee trigger Event name.

Originally Posted by Lord_Simeon

With the Hourences HUD overlay, i tried it already in a map but it has no on and off...but the way it is now it's a bit unusable IMO

Yeah, I'm not a fan of using another mod or mut in combonation with this. And if we can do it with stock objects, why bother? I say keep it simple. If the Matinee stuff can do it and we just need to use it, that sounds like a done deal to me.

I'll try this out soon, maybe we can have this in place for the next beta release.


... LOL.
"You Died."

[n3m35i5]

Originally Posted by Lord_Simeon

trap maps would be good cooperative. Kind of like BT maps i guess, but with no other team and a host of monsters to slay on the way

I've played countless trials maps where an entire team worked together by trial and error to figure out how to beat a puzzle. there was one room which looked out on a massive grid of rooms that must have been larger than 4 deep and 20 long, but one wrong turn and you went into a room with posion gas or invisible mines. we nailed half the puzzle just by running and dying and remembering before the time ran out.

that kind of thing may or may not work for our puzzles, depending on the map... if somebody hits a wrong button and gets crushed by a trap, the next guy knows what not to do. there are many ways, however, of defeating this (if it should become a problem in the first place, in others it might actually be a good thing have the "answer" to a puzzle/trap change whenever it kills somebody, make it so that only one person can enter the room at a time (though this doesn't rule out chat) or split players up: a room with 60 cubicles. once somebody enters, their door closes fast enough to kill any following behind. the puzzle is the same in every cubicle but nobody can see what you're doing and chat is slow and unreliable, so this can add to the dificulty a little bit. it might be a good idea to make the first puzzle to be solved also unlock all the others, so you don't have one guy who can't figure it out.

[Lord_Simeon]

Yep, sure is
It's in Sub Action Camera Effect.

Once sub actioned you get a choice of motion blur (which doesn't work in UT2004, it did in UT2003 though) or Overlay.

I don't know what start alpha and end alpha do, but the main parts are

-overlay material

-disable after after duration - true or false
-delay
-duration

[SuperApe]

That's super easy.

EDIT: BTW, StartAlpha and EndAlpha will fade the overlay over the duration. To fade both up and down, two subactions are used: one to fade up (StartAlpha 0 & EndAlpha 1) and one to fade down (StartAlpha 1 & EndAlpha 0). Both have to be disabled after duration.

I'm going to set this up for the next version. A cutscene called, "DeathScene", if it exists, will be triggered whenever the player dies. A length of time will be specified to allow the scene to play. The mapper set up a matinee SceneManager with the "DeathScene" Tag and will give the InterpolationPoints and LookTarget some other matching Tag to identify these key actors, maybe "DeathPlayer". Then, when the player dies, these actors will be centered on the player's corpse and the DeathScene will play. The mapper will be able to set up a unique overlay, but maybe I should include this as a default.

[Boreas]

Yup... that one looks really cool

[JoystickMonkey]

You died.

[killedbycrimson]

so talk to me about sounds and music, been wanting to do some less beat based music and some nice soundscapes/panpipe sorta stuff...

[Lord_Simeon]

That's exactly what i was thinking SuperApe.
At least with the default, if people want to change it they can, but that looks like what i was planning on using anyway

Crim, yeah defantely do some tunes.

I want to keep mine like Cruciatus / HalfLife with burst's of music at set events, short tracks that pump you up then fade out after a minute or so.
Maximum impact stuff, but eery and moody in themes.

[SuperApe]

Originally Posted by killedbycrimson

so talk to me about sounds and music, been wanting to do some less beat based music and some nice soundscapes/panpipe sorta stuff...

OOoo, eerie ambient stuff is probably the order of the day with these SP maps. Thanks for the suggestion, crim. I think it's great.

Originally Posted by Lord_Simeon

That's exactly what i was thinking SuperApe.
At least with the default, if people want to change it they can, but that looks like what i was planning on using anyway

I can easily include this tex as a default. It's shaping up like this: You set up some matinee as your "DeathScene", doing whatever, but hopefully keeping it short and simple. You Tag the matinee and match that Tag on a new property on the OSMObjectiveManager. If the OSMGame finds something specified on the OSMObjectiveManager, it will run that DeathScene whenever the player dies.

EDIT:
BTW, SubAction MotionBlur does indeed work. It's a little counter-intuitive, because in the BlurAlpha field, less is more, as opposed to the StartAlpha and EndAlpha fields which show nothing at zero. Go figure. It looks very cool and I can see where all those "Special Combo Move" cutscenes come from in fighting games. It looks exactly the same.

EDIT2:
It's working 90%. The problem is there is a locked camera distance from the player upon death. Without creating a whole new PlayerController class, I'm having to try to read the distance between camera and LookTarget in your DeathScene matinee and set that each Tick(). That isn't working yet, so while the angle of the camera is the same as your matinee, the distance will either be constrained by the level geometry or the maximum camera distance, and it will not follow the distances your matinee reflects. IOW, it kinda looks like the motion you set up for your DeathScene, but not quite.

[Lord_Simeon]

Ah......didn't know that SA.
I used it once in UT2003 and it worked no problems, tried the same in UT2004 and i couldn't get it going. I thought it was disabled.
This could come in handy for some different cutscenes, also the slow time sub action too.....heh heh

Going to work on it today and i'll have a few screens later to show off
I'll start a new thread when i got something to show.

[SuperApe]

Originally Posted by Lord_Simeon

...also the slow time sub action too.....heh heh

I haven't done enough testing, but my first impression was that although you can control both SceneTime and GameTime with these subactions, effectively duplicating the bBulletTime feature the OSMObjectiveManager offers, there doesn't appear to be a reliable way to make sure you're not interferring with the GameSpeed mutator the player may be using. IOW, if the player didn't have that mutator, yeah, it appears that would be the way to go, but because the user can set any gamespeed to play with, my first impression was that you would mess their setting up after returning to "normal time" after a scene. That's why I account for this in the OSMObjectiveManager and I encourage it's use for "Bullet Time" cutscenes.

[SuperApe]

Lord_Simeon wanted this on his first OSM map; the ability to specify and force the player character model (possibly the name too).

Originally Posted by me

Okay, I'm strongly thinking this should be a standard option to OSM. Along with setting up an option intro scene, optional death scene, the ability for the mapper to set the player mesh in a SP adventure sounds like something mappers would want to do on a fairly regular basis.

There is a temp method on LS' thread to make this happen now, but I'm thinking this should be available in all OSM maps. I guess that means putting it on OSMObjectiveManager, which is quickly becoming a "catch all" for a bunch of OSMGame related properties.

EDIT:
At the same time and in the same place, there should be an option to specify alternative default weapons and inventory. A temporary method for this is further described on the Spawning Weapons thread.

[SuperApe]

Originally Posted by Lord_Simeon on another thread

Here's some things i wrote down at work last night that i need info on, or are ideas.

1. Vehicles. I added an SvehicleFactory with an ONSRV set to spawn, it's allways locked when i try and enter it?.

2. As well as the old creatures, can we use Xpawns with varying skins etc as enemies aswell?

3. Possesing player character during matinees. For my start matinee i'm using a normal xpawn then she is hidden. I'm wondering about later scenes how to have the matinee trigger my player for various cut scene animations.

4. Do you have to put in rudimentary path networks for the creature AI? All i have is home base, guard points etc at the moment but i want two Skarjj to jump from a laedge when triggered. I'm guessing jump spot, pathnode....is this correct?

5. I remember an old property from the Nali that had an item dropped when killed function. This would be very handy for the creatures rather than having ammo, health etc all over the maps.

And my response:

Originally Posted by me

1) Vehicles are allowed, but the standard vehicle factories expect to be playing a team game, etc., etc. Try a myLevel'd TeamVehicleFactory for now. I'm actually considering adding to this toolset a host of random custom actors I've made over the past year or so, like TeamVehicleFactory, RandomTrigger and VariableTimedMover.

2) I haven't specifically coded a bot-monster, but I think we had the same idea at the same time. The ability to have a villian character is very intruiging.

3) SceneManager's have a property to specify an AIScript that the player (Controller's) pawn can be made to run while the matinee is playing. I tried one test that didn't work, but I'm sure I just didn't do it right. IOW, I know there's a stock way to do this.

4) (you really need to take a look at the FAQ on the OSMT Level Design thread) Yes, you need a botpath network in order for the monsters to navigate properly.

5) This was suggested before on the public thread and I think it's a good idea. I think I came up with a stock way to do it, but I haven't tested it yet. In the Monster's properties, set UnrealPawn -> bNoDefaultInventory = true, UnrealPawn -> RequiredEquipment = (remove the default sheildgun and assaultrifle) something. I think it should work.

[SuperApe]

Originally Posted by Lord_Simeon on another thread

...I remember an old property from the Nali that had an item dropped when killed function...

Originally Posted by me

...I think I came up with a stock way to do it, but I haven't tested it yet...

That method does not work for anything except Inventory items; that is, weapons. To drop Pickups, like health, ammo, weapon pickups, etc., I've had to add a new property to ScriptedMonster called GoodieDrop. This gives the mapper a way to list any number of items the creature will drop upon death, similar to how players drop weapons. They last for a little while before fading away like other dropped pickups do. This is ready for next version, due out tomorrow.

In fact, there's lots coming in the version tommorrow:

(preview of changes so far)
Miscellaneous Actors added:

- ExclusionTrigger
- RandomTrigger
- TeamVehicleFactory
- VariableTimedMover

Features added:

- OSMObjectiveManager now also enables a mapper-specified DeathScene matinee to be played upon players death, which will center on the player corpse.
- ScriptedMonster now includes GoodieDrop property to set pickups that will drop when the monster is killed.
- Warlord now includes a bTacticalTeleporting property which enables teleporting at will. (True by default)

What works:

- Krall Strike attacks fixed.
- Warlord Mutilating state now ends with AlarmTag behavior, if set, once player is detected.

What doesn't work:

- DeathScenes have a locked camera distance from the player corpse and will not follow the distance from LookTarget set up in the DeathScene matinee.

I may also try to add the default character, name and weapon code in the OSMObjectiveManager for tomorrow.