UT2004 Bulldog?

[JohnnySix]

Searched around but couldn't easily find anything that'd been attempted before.

So I followed this tutorial and with an hour or so cleaning up smoothing groups,scaling and whatnot on an exported static mesh version, I reimported a boned up, animated (the back turret) version of the vehicle as a skeletal mesh.

All well and good, I've got it spawning, I've sound and I've got the headlight projector working, however, for the life of me, I can't get the damn thing moving.

I pretty much just copied the features across from the Hellbender as a starting point, sans the turret and custom number plate code.

What could be missing?

I'd love to get it working - it looks massive (even scaled 0.5) compared to the hellbender.


Current Status (Reposted from latest update)

Here's Beta 12

Got to figure a way to override the trails on the projectiles, but the speed/damage/homing is working now. I would prefer to have the original bulldog style rockets, but a slower version of the Levi ones does the job for now.

With the fully working weapon, it should technically be fully playable now, so feedback on balance would be much appreciated.

It's slower at destroying nodes than the Hellbender , it's a bigger target, the driver has no weapon, and it takes more driving skill to handle, but it's a lot faster, higher armour, and turns on a sixpence.

It may seem difficult to handle at first compared to the other vehicles which all move pretty slow, but just stay light on the controls, and make liberal use of the brake/handbrake to corner without going on two wheels.

Also as a homage to the original Bulldog, it won't toss you out when you go upside down, so you'll need to get out before flipping it.

Again, if anyone has a copy UT2003 installed, I'll love to get hold of the original vehicle demo map. There were two versions I found online, one was heavily modified with a lot of new deco/terrain modificaion, and the other required so much custom content, it wasn't worth installing.

And please, no more mention of cubes while this is still beta, placeholder stuff is still necessary for testing code stuff.

[JohnnySix]

Wow, got it moving! Great stuff, feels really beefy.

One minor issue, the wheels rotate on the wrong axis, making it look like the delorean from 'Back To The Future'

[JohnnySix]

w00t - success! Now to fix the weapon, the lights, the sounds, the flag carrying, the weight, armour, speed, turning etc.

YouTube - UT2004 Bulldog

[share_the_pain]

Cool J6. I know that some people have tried to get the Bulldog working in UT2004 before, but I don't know if anyone was successful.

[JohnnySix]

Originally Posted by share_the_pain

Cool J6. I know that some people have tried to get the Bulldog working in UT2004 before, but I don't know if anyone was successful.

Thanks!

I found hundreds of posts where people had just tried sticking the original bulldog straight into a map then complaining it didn't work, or trying to get svehicles using the smeshes - without success.

Still - one thing I don't have though is UT2003, IIRC - I believe the Bulldog had 4 wheel steering? If not, it does now.

It's a bit floaty at the moment, I'm hoping with some help from someone on the coding dept, I can make it much heavier feeling.

[JohnnySix]

Oh whoops - two wheel steering? Hmmm

Oh well, will leave it 4 wheel - prefer it turning shorter - just need to slow it down a bit.

Here's the original in the demo map :

YouTube - Unreal Tournament 2003 Vehicledemo

[SuperApe]

This was my attempt way back when:
http://www.wiki.beyondunreal.com/Leg...04_Bulldog_Fix

... but you're right, the steering was the killer. Four wheel steering is an interesting solution. It looks like it handles better. The 2003 bulldog would pop a wheelie and leave you going straight until your front wheels came down or you ran into something. Re-importing and rigging might have been the only way to truly fix this thing. Fine job!

[JohnnySix]

Originally Posted by SuperApe

This was my attempt way back when:
http://www.wiki.beyondunreal.com/Leg...04_Bulldog_Fix

... but you're right, the steering was the killer. Four wheel steering is an interesting solution. It looks like it handles better. The 2003 bulldog would pop a wheelie and leave you going straight until your front wheels came down or you ran into something. Re-importing and rigging might have been the only way to truly fix this thing. Fine job!

I tried it out, and see what you mean, don't know if UT2004 has altered it behaviour, as I don't remember it being so difficult to steer.

I realise now my Svehicle version is huge compared to the Kvehicle one- though I may just keep it the size it is, as it feels right in scale with the other UT2004 machines.

Would you be up for helping out a little on codeing? I can trade you some help in some other way in return - things I'm not so confident in doing right now are rigging up animations with code, and getting the eventual package into a mutator/single .u file among other miscellaneous things which are beyond my limited sphere of knowledge when it comes to uscript.

I plan to remodel the weapon and increase the skin detail, adding team colours etc, in addition to possibly adding a cockpit (though visibility may be an issue given how narrow the vision slots are!)

For the weapon fire, I was thinking of modelling up a larger version of the 3-ball ut rocket launcher , or possibly doing something like the UTIII scorpion and having it hurl large bouncing grenade things?

[Hawkwind]

so you talking about the bulldog in ut2004, or 2003, i can think of 2 maps that had it , back in the day, well 3 if you count that canadian fast food restaurant map, i loved to spawn the bulldog over their unsuspecting heads

[JohnnySix]

UT2004 - I'm working on making it a fully functional vehicle to work alongside the other standard ones.

Since the original was a little overpowered compared to the other vehicles, and since the Kcar/bulldog code was broken in UT2004 in ONS, I've started it from a base of ONSWheeledCraft, so the netcode etc will also be consistent with other vehicles.

I wish there was a way to get rid of the stupid crosshairs overlay that got introduced with one of the later patches for UT2004 , that's something I'd like to remove on the bulldog, as it looks stupid when you're viewing a vehicle top down in 3rd person.

[JohnnySix]

Having a tough time making it stay on the ground - a small bump and it flies into the air!

YouTube - Bouncy Bulldog

[JohnnySix]

Bounce, Boom!

YouTube - BetaHell

[share_the_pain]

Originally Posted by JohnnySix

Bounce, Boom!

Is there not a place to specify mass of some sort in UScript? I have never really worked with UT2004 vehicles so I wouldn't know, but it seems logical.

[JohnnySix]

Mass seems only to affect speed strangely enough, I can set the mass to 12 and it'll still float into the air after hitting a rock.

[JohnnySix]

Cockpit progress, Chair and Steering column from the hellbender to make sure everything is to scale.