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About Cosmic Unreal |
User Guide
Cosmic Unreal v300 Mutator for Unreal Tournament Developed by: Chris "kloc Thirteen" Stewart A "Pass the Mustard" Production Ó Copyright Chris Stewart 2000You use this software at your own risk. It probably won't work on your system. It probably won't do what you or I expect. It'll probably corrupt your saved games. Then it'll erase your copy of Unreal, followed by your entire operating system. It will then cause your monitor to explode killing your family, friends and favourite pets. Enjoy! Why are all characters the same? Why shouldn't some characters have certain advantages/disadvantages over other characters? And why must all battles be equally balanced? This is the basic premise behind Cosmic Unreal. Sometimes one player will have an advantage over you and sometimes you will have an advantage over another player. Cosmic Unreal (CU) is a special mutator for Unreal Tournament that allows for different mutations to be applied to different players and bots. So instead of a mutator affecting everyone/everything on a level in exactly the same way, it allows for mutators to affect individual players. Note that because CU is itself a mutator, it can be used with other mutators and with other game type. Cosmic Unreal can also be see as the ultimate in class based mods. Offering numerous configuration options, plug-in class types and lots of other bonuses. Cosmic Unrela As a very simple example: In a deathmatch, one player can run fast, one player can jump high, one player is stealthed, and one player has a more powerful gun. Of course this is just the beginning. In a team game, one player could have extra knowledge and be a leader, one player could be a slow but good defender, one could be disguised as an opponent, and the last could be a team doctor. It can even get so advanced as one player can steal another player's powers, one player can not use weapons but has a spell book with numerous effects, and another player can open up worm-holes in the fabric of time. CU is also available in 3 other langues : Spanish, Finnish, and Italian thanks to the work of Jim, Iiro Lempinen, and Major Disaster. Many thanks for there work. How to Install After downloading Cosmic300.umod, double click on the icon. Follow the instructions provided to complete the installation process. This will only install the Cosmic Unreal mutator and this help document. It will NOT install any individuals. Those are available in separate packages such as CUOrig16_1.umod, CUGeneric_1.umod, and others. Without these other packages Cosmic Unreal will not do anything. If double-clicking on the umod file does not work, do the following: 1. Place the Cosmic300.umod file in your unrealtournament/system directory. 2. Open up command window. 3. Change to your unrealtournament/system directory. 4. Type the following command: "setup install comsic300.umod" 5. Follow the directions in the installation window. If you know how, you can associate this filetype to "setup install "%1"" so that you can doubleclick umod files from now on. If you are installing an IM package file suck as CUOrig16_1.umod then be sure to change "setup install cosmic300.umod" in step 4 to "setup install cuorig16_1.umod". Cosmic300 (and the IM packages) will also be released in a non-umod zip distribution. This format is not supported, but is provided in case you can not get the UT setup program to work. Check the download section of the Cosmic web site for links to the non-umod formats. How does it work? Cosmic Unreal uses a special class of mutators called "Individuals Mutators (IMs)". Check out Cosmic Download for a list of available IM Packages. Developer's can also create their own IM's to add to the CU Universe. A separate developer's document exists that describes how the process works. First of all, (most of) these Individuals are also basic mutators. They will appear in the regular mutator selection process. When IMs are selected through the normal mutator selection process, their effects will be applied to all characters in the entire game. For example: an IM that changes the speed of the player could be applied as a normal mutator to effect the speed of all players. Second, these individuals can be applied to separate players. So the speed increase IM could be applied to only player 'one'. Although most individuals are also regular mutators, that does not mean that regular mutators can also be applied to individuals. Only IM's can be applied to separate players and bots. Hopefully, mutator authors will be willing to apply that little bit of extra effort to turn any applicable mutator into an individual mutator. Of course not all mutators are candidates for this process: a mutator that replaces all the MedPacks with Redeemers doesn't really make much sense when applied to an individual. However, if a mutator author wants everyone to jump three times higher, then they should make an IM. This way it can be applied exactly the same as a regular mutator affecting everyone, or it can be added to Cosmic and only affect certain players. Configuration To configure CU, bring up the unreal desktop and select "Cosmic Config" under the mod menu item. This brings up a dialog as shown below. The basic dialog consists of 4 tabs each with a number of control explained below. If other Cosmic Unreal components are installed then other Tabs could be available. You will need to check the help files that came with the extra Cosmic add-on to find out what the new tab does. The Help, OK, and Cancle button appear on all tabs and their functions are constant between tabs. The Help button will bring up this document. The OK button will close the dialog and save your changes. The Cancel button will close the dialog discard all your changes.
Tab One: Options This tab contains some of the general options available to Cosmic Unreal. This tab alos contains the ability to load and save Cosmic configurations. Show Enemy IMs: if this is checked then all players will have the name of their IM power apended to their name. This way you can tell at a glance what powers your enemy and teammates have. Add Server Previx: If this is checked it will add the prefix "CU |" to your server name. This way other Cosmic Unreal games can easily be found in a list of open servers. Icon Location: This specifies where you want the icon and IM name to appear on your HUD. You can select one of the 4 corners. Depending on what other mutators or games you have running, you may want to change the location of this information so that it doesn't overlap information from other mods. Cosmic Action Key: This is a new "fire" button created for use with IMs in CosmicV300. Some IMs will have seperate activation keys. For example, when the Antigrav IM presses it's action key, gravity will flip for a few seconds. To change this key, first click on the button below "Cosmic Action Key" and then press the key you wish to use as the action key. This will take effect once you leave the configuration screen. Homepage: This will take you to the Cosmic Unreal homepage at www.planetunreal.com/cosmic Info: This will give you information about the saved game listed in the drop-down box. Load: This will load the game listed in the drop-down box. It will overwrite all your options and configuration with whatever is in the saved game. Save: This will save the game listed in the drop-down box. If the game is read-only then this button will be disabled. Saving will save all your configuration options, and the configurations of your IMs. It will only save the configuration of the IMs you have selected to use, and also unforuntatly it will not save the configuration of IMs from Cosmic Unreal V200. It will save the list of IMs that you are using, no matter what the version of the IM. So for example, you can save that you want to use GenericA, but you can't save the properties of GenericA. This of course will not effect any new IMs, and old IMs will be updated to enable this feature. Tab Two: Human This tab (shown below) allows you to order the IMs you have selected and to choose the assignment style that you wish to play with.
First of all, you can click and drag an IM name to change the order of the Individuals. This is only imporant fore some of the assignment types. To add or remove IMs from this list you must go to the IM tab (tab #4). The following assignment types are available: By Team: Each team will be assigned a seperate power. So in the example picture above, everyone on the Blue Team would be a Slug, everyone on the Red Team would be AntiGrav, etc. By Order Joining Game: As each player joins the game they will be assigned the next power on the list. If there are more players than IMs then it will start assigning IMs from the begining of the list. By Order in Team: Similar to above, but each team has their own list. So player 1 on blue gets Slug, player 1 on red gets slug, player 2 on blue gets AntiGrav, player 2 on red gets AntiGrav. This has the feature that the teams will have equal powers. By Choice on Startup: A dialog will appear when a player joins the game, asking which power they wish to use. Once this IM is selected, it can not be changed unless the player quits and joins again. By Choice on Death: Like above, but the dialog will appear everytime you die. This way you can change which IM you play with. By Choice on CosmicFire: Again like above, but this time the dialog will appear everytime you press the CosmicFire button. This should not be used with powers that use the CosmicFire button. Otherwise, you will activate the power, and bring up the dialog to switch powers at the same time. Randomly: As each player joins the game they will get a random power from the list. Randomly(unique IMS): As each player joins they will get a random power from the list that has not already been choosen. If all IMs have been chossen then it will randomly select an IM that has only been selected once. Randomly(equal Teams): IM will be assigned randomly as above, but each team will also be equal. So if Blue Team randomly has a Shield and a Beans IM, then Red team will also have a Shield and Beans IM. Cycle each Player: When each player starts they will have the first power on the list. When they die, they will lose the first power and get the second power, etc. When the player reaches the end of the list, they will be assigned the first power again. Cycle each Team's Players: Each team will have a list of IMs. As each player joins a team, or as a teammate gets killed, they will be assigned the next power in that teams list. Cycle All Players: As each player joins or dies, they are assigned the next power on the list. First IM to All Players: All players are assigned the first IM in the list. Random IM to All Players: All players are assigned the same randomly choosen IM. Random on Death: All players get a random IM when they join the game and when they die. Tab Three: Bots In this tab you can override the IM that Bots will be assigned. So for example you can select Bot #1 - Archon to always use the Slug IM. Rather than the IM that would naturally be chosen. This way a Bots properties can be tweaked with skins, properties, and IMs to create a more interesting match.
The "Bot" drop-down box contains the names of all the bots in the game. The "Select IM" drop-down has only two options: "Override" or "As Human". If "As Human" is selected then no special action will take place when this bot is added to a game. It will be assinged an IM the same way another other player is assigned an IM (described by the Human tab). If "Override" is selected then the a list of IMs will appear in the "Override IM" drop-down box. When one of these IMs are selected then that bot will always have that IM power, regardless of which IMs are seleced and the assignment type. You can then change the mesh, skins, name, or attribute of this bot using the general UT controls. Tab Four: IMs This Tab will allow you to see the list of installed IMs, select which IMs you wish to play with, and to configure each IM. A picture of this tab is shown below:
The top half of the dialog contains the following controls: Available Individuals: This lists all the individuals installed that you can play with. To move an Individual from this box to the "Individuals Selected" list double click on your choice. Individuals Selected: These are the individuals you select with which to play the next game. Entries can be added here by double-clicking on the "Available Individuals" box. Entries can be removed by double-clicking on the IM. There are two important things to note. First an individual can be added more than once. This would allow multiple players to be assigned the same IM. Second the order in the list box can also be changed. By selecting an individual power and dragging the name up or down, the order in the list can be changed. This order can also be changed under the "Human" Tab. Add All: This adds a copy of all the available individuals to the selected individuals list. Clear: This removes all entries from the selected individuals list. The bottom half of the dialog contains the currently selected Individuals data. This includes the individuals name, a brief description of their power, an icon (if available), a history, and the author of this IM. It also offers a place to type in an alternate name in case the given nameis not descriptive enough, or you would prefer to change to it. The alt name is what will appear on the screen when playing the game, and what will appear when selecting a power during gameplay. If this IM can be configured then the config button will be enabled (as shown). If this IM can not be configured then this button will be greyed out. Pressing this button, when enabled, will pop up a different dialog based on the IM that is being configured. For example the config dialog for the GenericA IM is shown below.
Playing: When you start a network game or a practice session, add "*Cosmic*" to the list of used mutators. CU will then use the configuration you specified to apply IM's to all the players. You can add "*Cosmic*" with other regular mutators including other IM's. Many IMs can also be used as normal mutators and will appear in your regular mutator list. The *Cosmic* mutator will use whatever powers it has been configured with and this is completly sepearte from the extra IMs you might add as general mutators. So for example you can apply the "Warrior" mutator to all players instead of using Cosmic. You could even add *Cosmic* and Warrior to the list of mutators. Hell, you could even add *Cosmic*, Warior, Flash, Peacock, and Slug to the list of mutators. Each player would play with the warrior, the flash, the peacock and the slug power, PLUS whatever power *Cosmic* assigned to each player. Warning: the more wild you make the game, the more likely something Bad will happen. I can not test all 50 billion (literally) combinations. The speed of your game will also take a hit if you start adding tons of IMs per player. Unreal will play just like a normal game of any type. In the corner of the screen your individual name will be displayed. This will be your power for the game. Figure out how to use it to the utmost. All other players will have different (or possibly the same) power as you. Try to figure out each player's weaknesses and strengths. So start playing. Finish off the Freeze, but not before Poison gets a lucky shot in while you're frozen. As your health slowly decreases, chase Poison down the hall and kill him. Grab the closest MedPack to replenish yourself only to find that it was boobytrapped by the Terrorist. When you respawn use your Bat powers to quickly track down the Terrorist and get your revenge. The Cosmic Unreal homepage exists at: There you will be able to find news about CU, packages of released IM's, developer's resources, a message board, and other information. Or you can e-mail me at: Please put the word COSMIC somewhere in the subject line. See the disclaimer at the beginning of this document. You must ask for my permission to distribute this version of Cosmic Unreal. Please see the contact details above to send your request. Cosmic Unreal must be distributed with this document ("CosmicV300.doc" or "CosmicV300.html"). Credits Thanks go to Jean for not being around and giving me the free time to finish this project. Thanks to Robin for testing, pictures, editing, ideas, and food. Thanks to the creators of the original "Cosmic Encounter" board game and the fans that supported it, for the inspiration for this mutator. Thanks to JbP, drunken master, meltdown, Brandon Reinhart, and Tim Sweeney for tutorials, references and other documentation. And thanks to the nameless others who have written tutorials that I have probably forgotten to thank. Thanks to Jim, Iiro Lempinen, and Major Disaster for providing translations of the Cosmic UI. History Version 300 - Released Oct 17, 2000 Major UI overhaul - including ability to add-on UI Added Cosmic Firebutton Ability to load/save configurations Tons of new assignment options Ability to override bot IMs IM names appended to names Alterate name for IMs and other Minor bug fixes Version 2.0 - Released Feb 13, 2000 Minor bug fixes Added "Info" button to UI Allowed for IMs to be configured Added HUD mutation ability Spilt up Original 16 powers into a separate package Display power name/icon on HUD Added IconsVersion 1.0 - Released Jan 25, 2000
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