Thursday, November 23, 2000 - Happy Thanksgiving!

Here's a cool little turkey, well, mod for you all: Eavy's Monster Madness. Summoning Unreal monsters for Unreal Tournament has been a very popular topic on Epic's UT Servers mailing list. So I spent last night automating the process with a mutator to spice up the game with random monsters.

Features:

• It's a mutator, server-side-only, so players on your server won't have to download anything. It works with any gametype, any other mutator, and all maps. It can also be used as a server actor so it doesn't influence your ngWorldStats at all.
• You can turn it on or off at will, summon monsters at your command, and destroy them at once as well.
• Monster respawn rate can be customized, you choose how often monsters spawn, and how long they can stay.
• Of course you can also specify the maximum amount of monsters at any time.
• Best of all, as the administrator it's your choice which monsters can be called, list up to a hundred monster classes to determine the chance for a particular monster to appear.
• By the way, although the mod is intended to summon monsters, you can spawn any actor - including bots, items, and anything else.
• Documentation (you're reading it right now).

Setup:

Copy EavyMonsterMadness.u into UT's System directory. If you would like it to be selectable in the menus, copy EavyMonsterMadness.int there, too. The next step depends on your configuration.

• Single Player: Start up UT. Open the menu, go to Game - Start Practice Session. Click on Mutators and add EavyMonsterMadness to the Mutator List. Start the game.
• Listen Server: Start up UT. Open the menu, go to Multiplayer - Start New Multiplayer Game. Click on Mutators and add EavyMonsterMadness to the Mutator List. Start the game.
• Dedicated Server: A dedicated server can use the mutator in two ways, either as a normal mutator, or as a server actor. Using it as a server actor won't impact ngWorldStats so your server will get listed normally instead of as a mod. Using it as a normal mutator lets you use the Mutate admin command, to turn it on or off at any time, and players killing monsters will display death messages.
• Server Actor: Modify your server configuration file, UnrealTournament.ini by default, adding a new line to the [Engine.GameEngine] section like this:

  ServerActors=EavyMonsterMadness.EavyMonsterMadness

• Normal Mutator: Modify your server start-up script, RunServer.bat by default, editing the UCC line similar to this example:

  UCC Server DM-Morbias][.unr?game=Botpack.DeathMatchPlus?mutator=EavyMonsterMadness.EavyMonsterMadness

Admin Mutate:

Using the mod as a mutator lets you use the Mutate EavyMonsterMadness command while logged in as administrator. Type the command or bind it to a key. It toggles the monsters on or off.

Summon Monsters:

By default, monsters appear immediately in CTF, but not in the other gametypes. Monster appearance is controlled with the bNoMonsters property of the gametype. Either you set it from True to False by editing the INI, do it with Admin Set DeathMatchPlus bNoMonsters False (replace DeathMatchPlus with the gametype class name), or use the Mutate EavyMonsterMadness command to toggle it.

Monster List:

The mod is fully configurable. Here's an overview of all options. Change them to your liking.

• MonsterLifeSpan: Time in seconds until monsters disappear. Sixty seconds by default, zero means monsters stay until death.
• MonsterTimerCounter: Maximum amount of monsters, if there are less monsters alive, new monsters will be summoned. Ten monsters by default, zero means no monsters will appear.
• MonsterTimerRate: Time in seconds until monsters respawn. One second by default, zero means never respawn them.
• Monsters: Up to a hundred actors to be summoned. When MonsterTimerRate seconds have passed, if there are less than MonsterTimerCounter monsters alive, random monsters will be chosen from this list. Monsters can live up to MonsterLifeSpan seconds. The default list includes eleven Skaarj aliens, a fun selection, customize it as you wish.

Sample Configs:

The little mod offers a lot of possibilities, it's very powerful, toy around with the settings. Feel free to try some of the examples listed here. And make your own to share with others. Simply put the section you would like to try into your server configuration file.

[EavyMonsterMadness.EavyMonsterMadness]
MonsterLifeSpan=60
MonsterTimerCounter=10
MonsterTimerRate=1
Monsters[0]=Class'IceSkaarj'
Monsters[1]=Class'SkaarjAssassin'
Monsters[2]=Class'SkaarjBerserker'
Monsters[3]=Class'SkaarjGunner'
Monsters[4]=Class'SkaarjInfantry'
Monsters[5]=Class'SkaarjLord'
Monsters[6]=Class'SkaarjOfficer'
Monsters[7]=Class'SkaarjScout'
Monsters[8]=Class'SkaarjSniper'
Monsters[9]=Class'SkaarjTrooper'
Monsters[10]=Class'SkaarjWarrior'