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[Upd:13JUL2015]RX Commander Mutator [beta][v0.56d]


yosh56

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  • Totem Arts Staff

Considering the size of it, I don't even think this constitutes as a mutator anymore.

Current Version: 0.56d

Current Useablilty: Functions mostly as intended for now

Known Issues:

Highest on the radar:

-Commander Interface outside of the binoculars

-Using Binoculars specifically just to set targets

Changelog:

--------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------

[0.56d]

[Major] Added RCon command for server admins to assign commanders. "forcec"

[Minor] Target eliminated/removed, etc messages are now infinitely more reliable.

[Minor] Command text is displayed slightly higher and reduced to 4 messages max.

[Minor] C-messages now clip and wrap appropriately.

[0.56c]

[Major]: Fixed that catastrophic Framerate-killing error in the objective box when it would look to update player locations. It now only even runs the command if the box is open, and only updates every second or so.

[Minor]: They're buggy and don't always work, but target update messages now know the difference between 'decayed', 'removed', 'eliminated', and 'updated'

[0.56b] [06JUL2015]

[Major]: Added vehicle composition and Special infantry composition to the mission info box. The numbers read as [current/suggested], and the ability to commanders to set custom suggested numbers of tanks is coming eventually.

It also displays the current commanders in the top left corner.

HarvAsTarget.jpg[/attachment]

Defense and TakePoint can both set waypoints. Defense sets a waypoint if you don't select any targets or buildings. Takepoint sets a waypoint as long as it's not cast on the sky. If you hold TakePoint all the way to 100% it will set an objective to actually take that point (nearest spot marker)

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu__by_Yurynp.jpg.0513590edf5f234873a3201bc896d61e.jpg objective to attack that that building. For infantry and vehicles, it doesn't set an objective, however it 'marks' them as attack targets. It can mark up to 3 targets at a time. These targets are visible to the entire team from any distance, but attack targets are the only targets that decay over time, eventually being lost after a certain amount of time. Right now that time is like a minute... but I have plans to play around with that and see about making it more like 15-30 seconds. Their decay timer is visible as a bar over the targets head.When attack targets are initially set, everybody on the team receives a text flash in the middle-upper screen of "Attack Targets Updated". EDIT: Decay time set to ~20 seconds. Server and client times may differ a bit, so the bar may run out faster on the client but still have the target for a second or 2.

Defend: Just like attack except used to mark friendly targets to defend. These targets have a green target on them, and they do not decay. I do however, still need to incorporate a way to clear them. Marking defensive targets sends a flashing text of "Defensive Targets Updated" across player screens briefly. On buildings, defend will flash "Defend 'structure' NOW" across friendly HUDs, as well as setting the defence of that building to the commander's objective. Additionally, if no targets are selected while scanning in defensive mode, the commander sets a defensive waypoint, which is one of the only 2 waypoints available.

Repair: Same as the others, except it draws a wrench icon on the target and flashes "Repair Targets Updated". For buildings it sets the commander's objective to repair the building, as well as flashes "Repair 'structure' NOW" over friendly HUDs.

TakePoint: Sets a waypoint, and if held down will set the commander's objective to "Take (nearest spot location to waypoint). This doesn't take any targets.

Objective Box: Added an objective box to the HUD to show current objectives. It sits between the right of the middle-bottom information (with mines and building icons), and the weapon info block. It can toggle through 3 states using 'O'. Those 3 states are normal (where it sits at its regular size down where I mentioned), maximized, where it moves to the middle of the screen and expands, or hidden...which is self explanatory. In its normal state, some objectives are too long to fit, so they will require the box being maximized to see it all.

Removal of targets via 'E' while zoomed in with binoculars added.

[/color]

Planned/Still need to do:

-------------------------------------

-Go with a custom vote system, as I honesty don't like the standard one, but it will do for now. [Maybe]

-Add Rally beacons that show up on player HUDs and can have customized text (E.G Gunner Rush, meet here... etc etc). May not need now that I introduced the special Text options for the commander.

-Add in a Harv-Controller usable by one of the Commanders, probably Support, as I don't plan on giving them binoculars. Controller would simply stop/start the Harvester to keep it from getting whored/in the way.

-Adjust Q-spotting for commanders to make their Q-spots VERY obvious and easy to discern from normal players'. Would also allow the ability to pin-point targets even whilst in a vehicle, even if not quite as powerful.

Control groups to separate players into. 3 control groups, one for each commander. They are separated by default, but commanders can link them when necessary to share targets and do group tactics.

------------

Possibly adding after awhile:

-Make objectives actually worth something: E.g a team-wide credit and/or point bonus for actually killing marked targets, and destroying/capturing structures when there's an objective for it. Targets/Objectives would have had to have been live for at least seconds however, so Commander's couldn't just 'snipe' targets for bonuses.

Support Powers that aren't necessarily too game-breaking. UAVs to make units show up on radar, and maybe mark all enemy targets for a short time. At most, a cruise missile because I really really really want to use that cruise missile sound sitting around in the game files.

Maybe... just maybe... but highly unlikely.................. a map. Nope... saying it now.... NO.

HarvAsTarget.jpg.b16524506e29799661085b3ca4b7f982.jpg

DWaypoint.jpg.8fb4168810b6c9c1f73f7d3cb7328e53.jpg

CText.jpg.adbd1e83b17d293195c87af54e648e53.jpg

RushLong.jpg.ed8b001bf61084184a01b2e176d9a30d.jpg

2015-07-05_00002.jpg.7210d1b594d48a34c678a3372aa3d04b.jpg

Edited by Guest
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  • Totem Arts Staff
Agent/the Unreal community even figured out a way to make mutators download faster

Yep. Maybe you'll get your top down map BS, but honestly I feel like it just completely removes a player from the game. Might incorporate it for waypoints only though.

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  • Totem Arts Staff

That awkward moment when you release something, then find out it is HORRIBLY broken in an area you thought was completely fine. Basically re-writing how targets are handled now so that no matter when you join, or if you join and leave, they will display correctly. I only fear it may be a bit more load on the server.

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Feel free to hop on the ConstructiveTyranny AOW server to test it out. Agent/the Unreal community figured out a way to make mutators download faster ;)

How, without switching to internet protocol over unreal's own protocols?

If by "internet" you mean http, then yes, that's how it's done.

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Yeah, UDK supports two built-in download managers (unless there's more that I haven't noticed/heard of, but I really doubt it).

The first one, Engine.ChannelDownload, is enabled on every server by default; this transfers files directly from the UDK server to the UDK client. Since this is a direct server -> client transfer, no additional setup is required for this to function. However, ChannelDownload is generally limited in speed (seems there's probably some sort of hard-coded value in UDK, limiting transfers to about 10 KB/s).

The other is IpDrv.HTTPDownload. With HTTPDownload, the server redirects the client to a server-configured HTTP server to download files. Since the files are transferred from an external server to the client, the only speed limitations are the HTTP server's upload speed, and the client's download speed. This would be a perfect solution for downloads, if not for one elusive bug that I can not seem to narrow down: downloads seem to just stop/fail after 30 seconds. I have not yet found any solution nor work-around for this.

Regardless, you should be able to anticipate this prompt in the upcoming patch:

KkO7.png

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  • Totem Arts Staff
Would really like to see how it works out on a crowed server.

I actually need to test-run it on a 20v20 to get it all right.

Control groups for multiple commanders probably needs to happen though, as trying to pin all of this on one person is hard enough at 10v10 .

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Three questions:

1) Does this work on AI bots?

2) Was this mutator something that all UT games have..... something you command to the bots (or an individual bot) and they do it as you say such as Attack The Base, Defend the Base, etc.?

3) No download link on giving it a try?

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Agent, would this be the thing that stops the content from downloading? It's in UDKEngine.ini

ConnectionTimeout=30.0

Feel free to move this on another topic

Already aware of that one. At this point, I don't recall if I tried fiddling with that or not, however:

Even if bumping that variable up increases the timeout threshold, it would not resolve the actual underlying issue that players can timeout during a download.

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  • Totem Arts Staff
Three questions:

1) Does this work on AI bots?

2) Was this mutator something that all UT games have..... something you command to the bots (or an individual bot) and they do it as you say such as Attack The Base, Defend the Base, etc.?

3) No download link on giving it a try?

It has nothing to do with bots at all.

3) It's up and running on the Constructive Tyranny server most of the time for as long as it's in beta. When I feel like it's good to be completely distributed for release, I'll get on that. For now, it's not close enough to where I want it, and not beta tested enough, for me to feel comfortable having it updated for public release.

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Yosh: I don't know anything about make a mutator so maybe this is way to much work, but what do you think about this?

Let commander chose a gamestyle (like in Generals):

- attack (boost attack strenght with x percent, lowers defence

- defend (opposite as attack)

- resource mode (more credits)

- recon mode (better visibility)

Just a broad idea for an overall tactic a commander can use if you like it.

Also thought about this:

- prioritize a certain class off characters / vehicles (like when BAR is down kill techs / hotties) or when WF is down kill harvester etc.)

It would give a commander a way to prioritize certain things and setup a strategy instead off making him / her only tag targets. Targets within the desired range can also unlock things or bring in more credits.

Just some thoughts..

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  • Totem Arts Staff
Yosh: I don't know anything about make a mutator so maybe this is way to much work, but what do you think about this?

Let commander chose a gamestyle (like in Generals):

- attack (boost attack strenght with x percent, lowers defence

- defend (opposite as attack)

- resource mode (more credits)

- recon mode (better visibility)

Just a broad idea for an overall tactic a commander can use if you like it.

Also thought about this:

- prioritize a certain class off characters / vehicles (like when BAR is down kill techs / hotties) or when WF is down kill harvester etc.)

It would give a commander a way to prioritize certain things and setup a strategy instead off making him / her only tag targets. Targets within the desired range can also unlock things or bring in more credits.

Just some thoughts..

The top part is a consideration.... I'll think about it when I start building an actual interface for commanders.

The second part with prioritizing should be handled after the next update. Adding in the ability to just set custom objectives.

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Isn't this already one of the points of commander-binoculars, marking which buildings to defend/repair?

Also, commander could send whole team that message that displays in middle of screen about what the priority is.

While I agree that better commander interface is very welcome, you can't say those things you suggested are not in mod already.

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  • Totem Arts Staff
Haha great, just thinking out loud (is that even proper english). Maybe you could even prioritize buildings (like PP down, ignore AGT and repair other buildings)

Probably going to work on something akin to what you're talking about next. Currently getting attack targets to be worth something, but after that I plan on incorporating an actual commander interface (which sadly, probably won't use the mouse) that will let you set more common objectives, and those off-the-wall Renegade ones like killing off all Hotwires, or destroy all vehicles and things of that nature.

Will likely be a 1-9 hotkey system.

@Goku:

Will public release when I get a bit more introduced and confirm a lot of kinks are ironed out.

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  • Totem Arts Staff
I notice that there's huge performance spike on full server in CT. I didn't get this much in EKT tbh. Perhaps something in your mod?

Also, the mod downloads at 10 kbps. takes about one + minute to download

(The web-server might be acting up... we've been doing things with it. I had to download it slowly as well)

Yeah I've been notified. Not 100% on what causes it, as I have no performance issues offline, and I don't think it's visible when the server is running light.

Anyone know of any tools that let you monitor just WHAT is utilizing so much CPU in an Unreal game (Will Google after posting this)? Might need to really check and see if it's a server-side issue or what.

From what I've noticed, the only drastic change I've noticed between running and not running on the C-mod is the time in (ms) for the Tick events, which I'll post screenshots of below.

Video Memory Stats, none of which are all that much higher (The textures for the Objective box and targets only seem to add up totally to 4mb).

nowip.jpg.cbbcb1b85784a41f6ba5c7eac5d97f0c.jpg

57c9ee98c3e79_Rx_WithCM.jpg.fc2b6f1bf2646cd83bb68089db341b97.jpg

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You consider it may be the CT's machine is under huge network pull from the downloads? It was running crisp for me, but started shuttering later in the day, leading me to believe as far as on-server play, it may be the stress of the download mirrors. They have had 800 downloads as of only 5pm yesterday.

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  • Totem Arts Staff
You consider it may be the CT's machine is under huge network pull from the downloads? It was running crisp for me, but started shuttering later in the day, leading me to believe as far as on-server play, it may be the stress of the download mirrors. They have had 800 downloads as of only 5pm yesterday.

Could be. Like I said, I get literally NO DIFFERENCE no matter what I do in single-player... and my FPS was roughly only +- 5 the same as it was on EKT when I joined later in the day. In the morning it was like ...10fps tops. It very well could have something to do with the server functions, as the server has to do a good chunk of work (I tried to limit it) in order to accurately hand out targets and track objectives/targets. Doing it client-side gets out of sync very quickly.

EDIT: There's a good chance I can point the problem towards the new objective box. Getting all of those numbers (Vehicle numbers/Pawn types/Pawn locations) every single tick.... I totes did not mean to do that. Basically it has to iterate through every single Rx_Pawn, then every single vehicle and check what type it is for every single tick just to update a number, then finds any Pawn's location to determine if it is . It also performs the actual math for that even when minimized (in the current version). So basically that would also explain why there's such a drastic decrease in performance when the server gets heavily populated and more vehicles are spawned.

This is just a theory, but from the looks of it, testing and disabling the actual function to retrieve the vehicle/infantry composition did net me 5 more frames, and re-enabling it in-game saw an immediate degradation in performance by about 5-7fps.

EDIT to my EDIT: Confirmed that the pawn functions were extremely expensive. Ran a game with 40 bots, sat in the War Factory looking at the ground. Got 40 fps solid while bots ran around doing their thing. Enabled the box updating unit composition and immediately dropped to 17- FPS. If those aren't obvious results, I don't know what are.

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This is awesome, I was telling my brother this game needed something like this just 4 hours before I joined the ConstruciveTyranny server for the first time, what a coincidence.

The amount of votes needed to assign a commando when there is none should be less though, people tried becoming commando but not enough people helped with the voting unfortunately (they didn't vote at all).

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This is awesome, I was telling my brother this game needed something like this just 4 hours before I joined the ConstruciveTyranny server for the first time, what a coincidence.

The amount of votes needed to assign a commando when there is none should be less though, people tried becoming commando but not enough people helped with the voting unfortunately (they didn't vote at all).

The voting is also something I plan on working on. Currently it just uses the stock voting system used by RenX.... annnd well, I've never liked how that worked. I'll eventually get to building my own, probably when I start building the commander interface.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Excellent work, Yosh!

I'm excited to see where this goes. I've always thought that renegade had so much more potential to add on to what was already a excellent gem in the command and conquer series.

On that note, I figure I might as well throw out some of my ideas, even if they are a bit far fetched:

Basically, I feel like the commander mode could operate excellently as a toned-down imitation of the commander mode as seen in the game Natural Selection 2

The commander position could be accessed via a special terminal in the HON/Barracks. I figure there could be an extra room added that cannot be accessed by enemy players or by anyone if there is a commander occupying it.

Obviously the commander could be voted out of the position for various reasons (trolling, afk, poor tactical performance, etc.. ) and not able to return to the commander position for the rest of the match.

While in commander mode the players view would resemble that of your typical RTS top-down and special HUD elements would appear.

Illustration:

commander_illustration_overview.jpg

The Icons in the upper left corner are to exit commander mode, write a message to the entire team, and a tab to view and select objectives for the team.

The 4 icons in the bottom right are Repair (functions just like in RTS), Sell (same as RTS but only works with structures the player builds), Defenses Tab, and Research Tab.

From here, the commander could do a number of activities:

1.Select players/units and give them attack or movement commands exactly as you would in a traditional RTS.

-This could be extremely useful for bots, but players obviously would not have to obey the commands. -Controlling the harvester would especially be useful.

-Selecting a player on the battlefield and then clicking to attack a enemy player could for example highlight that enemy for 15 seconds or so with a special marker (to clearly recognize its a commander attack request), even if the enemy is outside that particular players field of view.

-There would probably need to be some sort of fog of war or vision range for the commander based on your units on the battlefield so he is no too over powered.

Illustration:

commander_illustration_unit_selection.jpg

2.Purchase and construct base defenses (pre-defined by the map).

It would get pretty crazy if you could just place structures wherever you wanted, so I figure to keep things in some form of balance you should only be able to place them in pre-designated locations.

-For instance, in my mind those metal infantry barriers that (seemingly) no one uses would be excellent candidates for locations to place defenses down without interrupting much of the actual terrain.

-A limit to building additional base defenses could be made by restricting available power and/or increasing the cost for every additional purchase of active defenses.

-It might even be really cool to require engineers to "construct" the structure into existence rather than it just appearing out of nowhere in a plume of dust.

Illustration:

commander_illustration_turret.jpg

3. Purchase and Research upgrades for infantry, vehicles, and power.

This could be a real game changer if done right. The idea is to be able to select a structure, such as the HON, then click on the Research tab and have a couple upgrades available to purchase.

-The upgrades would most likely be expensive and give the team an incentive to donate credits to the commander and/or protect the harvester more.

-They would also take a decent amount of time to actually research and take affect after purchased (purchase timer illustrated below).

-If the building is destroyed you still keep the upgrades that have been purchased, but cannot purchase any more.

-I figure the upgrades should be tailored to NOD and GDI respectively to suit their styles. NOD for example could get laser gun upgrades from HON and flame upgrade from Airstrip, while GDI could get infantry explosives projectile upgrade from barracks and Tank Shell upgrades from warfactory.

-The power plant could be upgraded to allow more power for more base defenses.

Illustration:

commander_illustration_research_hon.jpg

To balance the commander out a bit, it might be wise to make his credit gain only 1 credit per second, and mostly rely on harvester loads, and make repairing a building cost credits.

A cap on the amount of credits you could accumulate might also be wise.

I think that's probably as much detail as you need about my ideas. This post is already much larger than I wanted it to be hahaha.

I know they are big ideas, but I hope they are something to consider in the future at least.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • Moderator

This are some really great ideas IMHO and I would be very happy if they got implemented.

I would like to use this oppurtunity to point out to devs that there is interest in community to make game more FPS/RTS hybrid (read: to have gameplay more like Natural Selection 1&2 / Savage 1&2). It's not rare to see threads about this.

I know that developers think of this as

, but it seems that community doesn't completely agree.

However, I don't think that compromise between "C&C FPS/RTS hybrid" and "stay true to original Renegade" should be made. I would like to point out that currently there is only one game mode implemented when playing Renegade X. When you open server browser, there is only "Command and Conquer" game mode.

I think that compromise should not be made, because it would be best to have two game modes, one for FPS/RTS and one for gameplay of original Renegade.

Also, is there a roadmap devs have that we could see?

Would it be good idea to implement something similar to UserVoice (or something less expensive), where community could provide suggestions/ideas and vote for them?

It would be bit more practical to see general direction of community feedback than having detailed forum discussions with walls of text.

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  • 2 months later...

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