Mutators and Relics

[Dr.Flay]

I'm wondering how everyone feels about upgrading the relics and mutators ?

For me 1 tiny mutator I have has become notable in that I run it with every other mod and mutator.
Xanth-Realism http://www.ut99.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4773
It does not offer a major change in game-play, other than projectiles will turn you based on where you hit.
Small-damage, rapid-fire now becomes as defensive as it is attacking. You can make it very difficult for someone to get a clean shot back at you.
Extra physics is applied to the empty shell-casings and the hand around longer, and become movable, so they get kicked out of the way as you walk over them. This also can be heard by your enemy
Sounds awesome in a fire-fight with loads of brass rattling around. You can almost smell the gun-powder

There have been a few updates and addons for relics.
Some add new relics, some add new features.
Wormbos Enhanced Relics, replaces the relics with a framework to manage relics in.
It also adds some new relics and tweaks some of the originals. Also available for this, he ported a bunch of Quake team pickups.

Relics 2, adds 9 new relics, some of which are similar to the originals.

Relic Classes is very interesting alternative. This gives everyone all the original relics, and you cycle them instead of throwing away. Only 1 relic can be active at a time.

Predator/Blink Relic makes you phase in and out of visibility (with the spooky predator cloaking sound )

Wrath's Relics 3 very powerful relics.

DOWNLOADS: http://my.opera.com/Unreal-Tournament/b ... nd-pickups

[Hermskii]

Oh man! Put this on the change log section too. I will get to it.

[Dr.Flay]

I suggest you try them out when/if you get the chance.

The main problem I have found with all relics/pickups is the invisibility types.
Bots don't care what relics they see, so they are more likely to pickup another invisibility relic even though they may already be invisible.
This will crash some relics, but I can't tell if this is just due to UT actually trying to make you more transparent, or just going into a loop.

Players tend to chose if a relic is more useful, and often ignore something that will do the same thing.

Using the "Classes" mutator stops you picking up any other relics, so should be used on it's own, or with alternative pickups like "Runes".

Wormbos relics framework does seem more controllable, and maybe aimed at server use.

I Had a play with the Predator relic again. I forgot it also makes you faster and possibly stronger.

[Dr.Flay]

Just poking around Wormbos site.
I thought it may be useful to paste the blurb about Enhanced Relics.
The last paragraph is the important bit for server admins

http://www.koehler-homepage.de/Wormbo/E ... tml#Relics

Enhanced Relics

The relics coming with the first bonus pack for UT have two annoying bugs: First, when you have the AntiGrav boots and pick up the Relic of Speed, the boots get disabled. You still hear the jumping sound, but you don't jump as high as you should. With Enhanced Items and Enhanced Relics these two items work together properly.
The other bug is the relic hud mutator. This hud mutator does not allow other mutators to draw on the hud, unless these are specially designed to work with the relic hud mutator. But this means that mods using such hud mutators require the relics package to be installed. This behavior of the relic hud mutator is explained easily: The relics package was written to be compatible with UT v400 where there was a poor support for hud mutators so they had to "re-invent the wheel". Enhanced Relics uses the standard UT support for hud mutators and is compatible to other "normal" hud mutators.

Enhanced Relics comes with all the standard relics and the special ammo regenerating "Relic of Wealth".

Since Enhanced Relics are not selected through separate mutators but added via a special selection menu you can activate remote configuration support to select relics from the web-based remote server administration panel.
This also fixes the bug where not all mutators show up in the web admin mutator list.

To be honest, I think it may be worth adding the whole Enhanced UT mutator, and taking advantage of the fixes. I use it regularly with Chaos as it seems to suit it.
I just had a look in the archives. Nothing is even 1MB, so all the files will be tiny little UZ files.

[Hermskii]

I agree here. I did not know all of that. I may have to apply this to all of the servers now. Great find. Thanks!

[Dr.Flay]

At least we know Wormbo is still active, should we need any help

[Hook]

The realism part sounds kinda good, but I am not real into relics, of any kind.
I think that the game tends to revolve around getting the relics more than fragging when relics are used.
Maybe I wrong?

[Dr.Flay]

That Xanth realism mod is perfect for re-living that moment in the first Predator, when they cut down the forest
All it's missing is a mod that gives you the smell of gun-powder and the taste of blood.
I could honestly just stand on a ledge, and empty the minigun, just to hear the brass bounce.

It is also kinda cool when you are at ground-floor of a city map, and brass is raining down from somebody on the rooftop.
Try it yourself, it is tiny and configurable, so you can tailor the settings for the power of your PC.



I get what you say about the relics, and I think it depends on the player, map, choice and amount of relics.
Personally I think it only becomes the objective, when you have pickups built-in to the map and people know where they are.

I think relics can be fairer way of giving pickups for people who don't know the map.
Anyone who knows where the invisibility, jump-boots and triple-damage are in a map, can easily dominate.

You cannot camp a relic spawn-point.
Relics are more varied, and spawn on random path-nodes, so if you run past 1 you don't like you tend to ignore it, as you may find the 1 you want around the next corner.
As there are many relics now available, you can afford to be choosy if a relic does not match your style or current need or health.

They tend to be balanced with another relic that cancels-out any advantage.
eg. 1 player has double-damage, and the other has the defence relic, which halves damage.

They have the advantage that they are down to the server admin choice, and come in various flavours. With modern map voting, maps and mutators can be linked, so you can just add them for a certain maps.
To completely remove any chance of anyone rushing around looking for relics, you can opt for the "Relic Classes" mod.
Everyone starts with all of the original relics, and you cycle to what you need (imagine they are all stacked in a weapon slot).
They are not added to the map.
Also It will not mater if people have Chaos installed (no version clashes)

I had not thought about relics on CMM until now, but the "classes" mod may actually suit it, and everybody stays equal.

[Hook]

Ah, very good explanation!