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# Mod Ideas/KOTH

Mod ideas for UT 2003 – King Of The Hill

## Description

This is the classic mod that gives out points for players on the "hill" area of the map.

#### Proposed Ideas/Features

Have both a Team and non-Team versions. To provide for better KOTH play, frags should not be counted (other wise it will turn into DM) unless its a team KOTH game. Scoring should then be slightly adjusted for teams (players received one point for each second of hill time and/or frag but team score is based only off hill time). The reason is you may want to have some of your team setting up defenses off the hill and those should get some credit. For non-team games spawn some sort of indicator over the current king. Also to make it more fun, spawn with no weapon so players have to look for something to fight with. Off set this with spawn protection to reduce spawn camping. Maybe for non-team games have some sort of "Crowning ceremony" at the end of the game?

Ideally we want to make the hills flexible as possible. We could use either Hill Zones or Hill Triggers. I want to use both. Why? Neither is perfect. Consider a "hill" that has part if it under water or if is movable. Here a Hill Zone will not work. But if you have "hill" that has a geometry that is non-circular in nature, the triggers don't work well.

Bots? Hmm not sure how to best handle them. I would like to wait and see the code for UT2003 as I know the AI structures have changed. I would like the bots to defend the hill like we did for ChaosUT. Meaning setup some points inside the hill where a bot will wonder too (ie like a defense point). This way the bots can wonder around the hill while still staying on it.

DJPaul: I suggest playing the implementation of KOTH on 'Perfect Dark' (N64) - basically, the "hill zone" jumped from one place to another in the map by some sort of timeout value - this increased competition and cut down on a team of uber-players camping the only KOTH point.

#### Interested Scripters

Jb

DJPaul

## Discussion

Jb: The ChaosUT team was able to bring this to UT. We are commited to improve our UT version for UT2003.

DJPaul: If you ever need a hand coding KoTH for 2003, i'd be interested in lending a hand.

Jb: Great drop me a line at jb@planetunreal.com and we can go from there. I have learned a lot about KoTH as I worked on the ChaosUT version.

DJPaul: Sure will - in a few days. I'm in Canada atm, and internet is sporadic.

Tarqin: Yeah, the moose keep chewing the wires

Jb: Slighly re-layed out the page and added some proposed ideas.

DJPaul: Hola from Seattle. I'll be home in two/three days, not long now. Believe it or not, i've read your emails Jb. I've an idea to change the dynamic of KoTH slightyl - question is, i'm not sure you'll need much help re-coding it. I've looked at the 2003 UScript, and it seems VERY similiar to the UT version (as if it'd be diffeent).

I noticed on your website that you asked for some morehelp on TeamVortex's webpage. I couldn't figure out WHAT ChaosUT was - if I found out more, most likely i'd be interested.

Mychaeel: Team Vortex and ChaosUT? – How'd you get your insight into the new engine's UnrealScript, DJPaul? In any case, even though the language might be largely similar, much of the API has changed a lot. Just looking at the changes on UnrealScript language level misses some very importaint points.

Jb: Mychaeel brings up some good points. The game play rules aspect of it should not be hard to adjust to the new API. However the AI will be the sticky point. Of course this is just my feelings after reading some of the UDN stuff. I have often thought about writing a post mortem on how we finally got it to work for the Chaos version as we had to do several tries to get it to work. DJPaul, love to hear your ideas...

DJPaul: If anyone's interested how I "got (my) insight into the new engine's UnrealScript", email me. I haven't looked at the AI code part of it *yet*. How did you achieve this in UT, basically? Is there not some sort of special AttractPoint() function in a GameInfo that allows you to hack0rz the AI easily? Anyhows, i'll investigate this point in the 2003 UScript (UT2003 reads so clumbsy) - help of where to look'd be appreciated (i.e. gametype, or the equivalent of teh Pawn classes code.

Jb: What we did is have the game subclassed as a teamgameplus, tell the bots to do to denfend mode and give them the closest hill (or in our case defense point) as the object they need to defend. Once we did that the bots found the hill and did defend it rather well. Was that what you wanted to know or did I miss something?

EntropicLqd: A technique I used in the single flag mode of CTF+ when needing bots to defend the flag was to put them in roam mode until they were a certain (I forget what the value is now) distance from the flag and then put them back into defense mode. This had the effect of making them wander around the area containing the flag without simply sitting on the defense points.

EntropicLqd: Here's a quote from one of the Epic guys, taken from [the UT modeling thread] over at polycount.: "... Also, if you want to do a king-of-the-hill map, you just build a DOM map and but both DOM points next to each other at the top. I did a test map that way earlier and it works great!". An interesting idea. Now, if you could denote two or three places within the map where the "hill" is and figure out a way of turning control points on and off you'd have a storming mod.

Novacane: Ok... never posted to this website, the format is alien to me, but thought I'd throw in my 2 cents. I'm not a mod maker or scripter by any means, but way back when UT was new, I created one of the first single control point DOM maps under the name Post Mortem. It was called Hold the Fort. Basically, there was a somewhat large fort against the far end of a field, surrounded by a moat, and then an open field with a couple towers and bunkers. There was one major problem I encountered with the AI. It ignored defense points almost entirely (it almost seemed like a random thing. Sometimes they worked, sometimes not). If a bot tags the CP, he would remain there, which was quite useless since I placed it in a back room and wanted the front of the fort defended. The rest of the bots would wander aimlessly about the vicinity grabbing powerups they don't really need. A few would just run out of the fort and start fighting the enemy. Sometimes this completely distracted the enemy from even trying to get into the fort. However, the ai was pretty good at regrouping and storming all at once. I hope this info is somewhat useful if anyone wants to attempt a mod.
Some mod maker liked the idea and did create a mod for this style game, but it never really caught on as I recall. I think his name was Major Disaster, so if you can track him down, maybe he knows some things.
One last note. In order for a map like this to work either with bots or real players, the weapon distribution and spawn points is extremely crucial. Spawn points need to be equally far from the hill. I found that the game automatically spawned players of the same team near each other at first. Also, weapons should be laid out so that there are only lesser weapons near the hill, as well as no health vials or shields (regular health packs are ok). This way, the winning team will gradually be worn down and there is a nice back and forth tug of war.

ProjectX: "Major Disastor, if you can track him down, maybe he know some things" Geez it sounds like a James Bond Film

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