Hey everyone.
I was going to put this in mods/mutators but this is neither a mod or a mutator but more of a general discussion.
Here's a little project that I worked on in "Top Secret" just until I could have some nice people beta test it to make sure it works. Special thanks go to Thunderstrike and TexasGtar for some beta testing!
The reasons I picked these two nice people for testing is 1) Thunderstrike needed some custom messages and TexasGtar needed some custom footstep sounds and 2) these two people are very objective and have a very good eye for spotting errors!
Before reading any further let me ask you if you've ever wanted or wondered how to change any message in UT? Like anything from weapon pickup messages to Cap the flag messages? I mean aren't we all getting tired of this same message "Alarik has the blue flag!"? Why not change it to "Alarik has taken the blue flag hostage!"? and that message that "so and so left a small crater"?. Why not "So and so left a HUGE friggen crater!"? Or you can replace those messages with different creative messages of your own!.
Also would you like to be able to change the default footstep sounds of the players? Well if this interests you then keep reading!
Okay. The attached map has 4 message actors in it that are already in the MyLevel package and they can all 4 be found directly under Actor in the Actor browser. No hunting and searching for them, just look under Actor for anything that starts with "Custom" or "CTF" and you'll be there. Just look in the C's.
There are also two different types of actors that change the default footstep sounds of the players. One is a normal trigger and can be found under Triggers -> TexFootStepTrigger (I made these for TexasGtar so they are named in his honor
) and the other one is a zone info actor and can be found under Info -> ZoneInfo -> TexFootStepTriggerZone. Now don't go hog-wild with the zone info one because you're only allowed to have a maximum of 64 zones in any one map so use them wisely. The zone info actor will change the footsteps to what ever sound you put in it on every player that is in it already or enters the zone. It will also replace their old footstep sound when they exit the zone. You can see how I have some zones set up in the attached map if you open it in the editor. The center point of the player *MUST* be in the zone for their footstep sound to get changed!!!. The regular trigger one is a lot easier than using the ole default Trigger to a SpecialEvent actor set to play a certain sound! It is also waaaay more accurate as these footstep sound actors really do change the footstep sounds of the players and are not just a trigger to play a sound effect!!.
The attached map is also very playable! It has 8 playerstarts and I think I put one of each weapon in it so you could see the different pickup messages. There is also a lava zone, slime zone, and a water zone so you can check out the different burned, corroded, and drowning messages that you can easily change.
There is also an elevator that goes all the way to the ceiling to jump off of so you can check out the new falling messages.
Alright. Now these actors are very very powerful! There is only one really strange side effect to using them in your map. Say for instance you load your map that has these actors in it and they change the default Epic messages to whatever you entered into them. Now try just loading and playing another map that you know does not have these actors in it and you'll see that the messages are still set to what they were before even though you've changed maps!. The only way to change back to the default Epic messages is to shut down your UT then restart it. Now this will also happen on a server! lol If a server runs your map that has say......the CTFMessager in it and it changes all of the CTF messages then they will remain set to your messages until the server is shut down then restarted!!!!. Every map on the server will now play your custom messages *until* the server is either restarted or another map on the server has the CTFMessager in it and it had different messages to yours. I have tested this on my own PC by starting a server and playing on it but I cannot test how it reacts if there is a server on one PC and a player connects to it using a different PC as I don't have two PC's.
I'm not thinking this will cause any serious problems on a server and if anyone out there would like to help test this theory on a server then you can add your name in this thread as someone that helped make things happen here!
Or not possibly! lol The footstep sounds that the footstep actors use do not remain once the map is changed though. Everything goes back to normal upon map change with the footstep sound actors.
The way to put these in your map is to load the attached map in the editor then without closing the editor immediately just load your map. Now look in the Actor browser and place at only one of the actors that you want to use *anywhere* in your map then save your map. DO NOT copy and paste these actors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. This can cause what is known as the "duplication bug"!. It's a very nasty thing so just select the actors in the Actor browser and place them instead of copying and pasting them!.
After placing them just look in their properties for properties that have something to do with either the name of the actor or "messages" and configure them till your heart's content!.
I have added some default messages to them just to show what kind of messages you can put in them and how to format the messages. Especially for the Death Messages like when Alarik kills kira with the ripper. That message would be formatted like %k killed %o with the %w. k=killer, o=the one that got killed, and w=the weapon used.
That's pretty much it I think. Be fore warned! The attached map took me all of 12 minutes to make so it's not pretty! lol
If anyone has any questions at all please post them here in this thread so we can all see and learn from them.
You may also use these actors in your map without adding even one word of credit to me in your readme file *if* you do not change any of the existing comments in the script for the actors. You may *add* to the comments if you change the script in any way but DO NOT take out any of the comments that's in them now PLEASE.
Enjoy......or maybe not who knows! Please let me know if you think these actors are useful or just rubbish or anything in between? Oh and thanks for reading this far!
Cheerz