Expert UT version 1.06

Documentation by A. Barlaam ("Major Disaster")

IMPORTANT:

This mod has NOT been made by the makers of the original Expert mod for Quake, and they are NOT responsible for supporting or mantaining Expert UT, so please do not hassle them with E-Mail requests.

All questions/support/feeedback E-Mail regarding Expert UT should be sent to mdisaster@galactica.it.


THANKS TO:

... Charles Kendrick, the author of the original Expert mod, for allowing me to use the name "Expert UT", and of course for the original Expert idea.

... Casey Crabb "Airog", the author of the Grappling Hook Mutator, for allowing everybody to reuse his excellent grapple code, which I did :)
crabbkw@rose-hulman.edu
http://floobin.cx/~crabbkw/umods

... Parish Mason "BarfRetchPuke" himself, for suggestions and spotting a bug in my code.

... JKidd, L.Musso, Brian McComb & al., for testing and suggestions.



Disclaimers & legal stuff

- You use this software at your own exclusive risk.

- You are welcome to reuse the code in this package for your own projects

- Expert UT is made freely available to the community, and must be distributed for free and complete of this file. You can not distribute Expert UT on CD-ROMS or other non-free media without my written permission - this also applies to CDs bundled to magazines.



WHAT'S NEW IN EXPERT UT 1.05




1. Introduction

Thanks for downloading this mod :-)

Expert UT is a server-side mutator that attempts to focus the game more on "deep skills", and less on other techniques such as item-grabbing or chance-shooting. I can't take credit for the basic concept - actually the concept has been tested for years with Expert Q2, a cult mod that is still one of the best reasons to play Q2 imho, and all I did was attempting to implement the concepts described in this excellent Game Design article by C. Kendrick:




2. How it works

Expert UT strives to remove or tune the aspects of the game that are irrelevant to combat skills - basically it balances the power of different UT weapons, reduces the damage so that no weapon will kill with only one shot, and removes powerups and spam weapons. Here is a list of the changes made by Expert UT:

This means that to frag your enemy you have to engage him on a fast and furious combat, and be better at it than he is. Lame tactics such as camping the powerups, blind spamming or respawn killing won't take you far. And even if you are targeted by a aimbot, at least you can hit back...




3. Installation

Before or after installing Expert UT you should uninstall the previous version, otherwise you will have two Expert UT mutators in your system (this will NOT create any problem, but can be confusing). All espert UT files have the version number in their names, so to unstall Expert UT 1.00 just delete all the expert100.* files from the System folder, and if you run a server you should delete any ServerPackage=Expert100 line from unrealtournament.ini. This naming scheme is necessary to prevent autodownloaders from getting "version mismatch" errors.

To install Expert UT, just click the UMOD file and follow the directions. If you can't start the install clicking on the UMOD file, then some program you used changed the UMOD file associations - you have to rebuild the file associations or reinstall UT.

NB: you don't really need to install Expert UT manually, because you can get it via autodownload when you join a Expert UT server (the filesize is under 30Kb). However the UMOD install is necessary if you want to play online with bots, or set up a Expert UT LAN server.

No special configuration is required to install Expert UT on LAN or Internet servers, but you may want to go through the options in expert105.ini.



4. Quick Start

Start a practice session, select your favorite DM map, click on the Mutators button and select Expert UT, along with any other mut you want. Or just join a server that runs Expert UT, you don't even need to have Expert installed to play it online!



5. Configuration

My original idea was that no configuration should be necessary, however I caved in and add some self-explanatory option to the expert106.ini file. The primary reason why I did it was to allow admins to disable aimbot-friendly weapons, such as the Minigun and the Sniper Gun.
When setting up a Expert UT server, keep in mind that deaths are much less frequent that in regular DM, so you should set a low fraglimit, good values are 15 and 20. Otherwise matches will last too long and casual visitors will leave the server.


6. The Grapple

Now Expert UT players have a cordless grappling hook that can be used to climb walls and disembowel people. The grapple looks like the translocator, however it shoots a magnetic grapple that will embed in walls (and other players) and pull you to its location.

The grapple can be disabled if the admin sets UseBuiltinGrapple=False in the expert105.ini file, this can be useful if you want to use a custom grapple mutator, or if you are using the Expert UT on a non-DM gametype - you probably don't want people grappling away with the flag in CTF-Face...

Basic grapple usage
To shoot the grapple just press fire, and release when you are on destination. You may use the grapple as a weapon too, a grapple hit makes the same damage of a Enforcer hit.

Advanced grapple usage
You may want to bind the grapple to a key to have it always available. These binds should help:

GetWeapon XP_GrappleLauncher | Fire | On Release SwitchToBestWeapon | OnRelease Mutate KillHook
Will switch to the Grapple Launcher, shoot a grapple, and switch to the best weapon once you release fire.

GetWeapon XP_GrappleLauncher | Fire | OnRelease SwitchToBestWeapon
Same as above, but you remain stuck to the wall and may shoot dudes below you.

Mutate KillHook
Disengages you from the wall, useful when the dudes below notice you

You can assign the binds to keys in different ways, the easier is from the advanced preferences menus - open the console, type preferences, click on Advanced, click on Raw Keys Bindings, and add the bind string near the key you want. Be careful to write the commands exactly and with the same case, or the binds will not work.




7. Things I could do if someone asks nicely

I had a couple of alternative weapons, such as a secondary-only flak, a railgun derived from the Instagib Rifle, and a different RL, but I didn't want Expert UT to become a weapon based mod, so I froze them. I could still add them as a option, though...