Things you dislike but nobody else seems to care about

[gopostal]

For me it has always been the lack of ability to have per-actor gravity. There's a ton of modding to be done if that were ever possible but it's hardly been on the radar of anyone.

Can you imagine this as a DM map? Skip to 16:36


Oh man the things I could do with even Spider physics....

[Nalisavior]

Two things that come to mind are how when a Giant Gasbag creates a smaller gasbag if it accidentally hits it they will start fighting each other which just seems redundant and how if you accidentally cause splash damage to yourself all the nali in the map freakout.

[integration]

For me it has always been the lack of ability to have per-actor gravity. There's a ton of modding to be done if that were ever possible but it's hardly been on the radar of anyone.

I care. I once tried to make a small planet like in The Little Prince. I went for warp zones, the results were terrible (here's a basic built if someone is interested). Because of the 60 warp zones limit, my planet could only have 20 faces (Icosahedron), with a 42° angle between faces. BSP related bugs everywhere, especially if you go near the corners (the points where 3 faces meet). I don't know if customized gravitation directions would even work. In Unreal, actors are cylinders with fixed axes, so they behave differently under different gravitation angles.

Two things that come to mind are how when a Giant Gasbag creates a smaller gasbag if it accidentally hits it they will start fighting each other which just seems redundant and how if you accidentally cause splash damage to yourself all the nali in the map freakout.

Those bugs also annoyed me. They should be fixed now in Unreal 227, although that took too long for my taste (also not 100% sure about that Giant Gasbag bug). Two other bugs that were fixed too late: Krall carcasses having the same collision height as Kralls (I blew up myself way too often because of that bug) and secondary fire of the ASMD not doing any damage to Titans and Queens (however, GesBioRifle still does no damage to Titans if you hit them on the head or feet). The version I bought also came with another annoying bug: The amplifier multiplied damage by the factor 4000 instead of 4. I could kill Titans with only one shot.

A thing I dislike: the lack of Unreal references in other Unreal Engine games.
(OK that's kinda cheated because other people seem to have cared)
Unreal 2 is not a bad game. It's kinda short (if you try to use the editor you know why) but what bothered me the most was that it functions horribly as a sequel. Totally different weapons, different story, different style of music. No similarities except that one or two maps feature Skaarj.
The Unreal Tournament series also has not much in common with Unreal either. Sure (half-)Skaarj, weapons and music style but that's all. I once played Unreal Tournament because I heard that some maps are supposed to play on Na Pali. After I finished the ladder, I realized that I must have played those maps already. Seriously, just a few palm trees? That's all what you've got as reference? UT 2004 also has a mode with waves of Unreal monsters but they didn't put much effort in that mode. The Unreal Singleplayer community would have profited much from new models.

[Masterkent]

So why are not more people trying to port things to Unreal 227?

Probably, for the same reason you're not trying to do that. Porting is time-consuming.

For example, Project Zephon would profit much from getting ported to Unreal (because it's made for Coop).

It's available on some 227 Coop servers (f.e., unreal://69.64.59.248:12245) for several years.

also not 100% sure about that Giant Gasbag bug

Not fixed and unlikely going to be fixed, because it may be considered as a feature. BTW, there are much more obvious AI bugs, such as a ScriptedPawn keeping a friendly attitude towards an attacker ScriptedPawn having the same class type (e.g. Krall vs Krall on SkyTown or SkaarjTrooper vs SkaarjTrooper on ExtremeCore).

however, GesBioRifle still does no damage to Titans if you hit them on the head or feet

Fixed in 227j.

[integration]

[Project Zephon] It's available on some 227 Coop servers (f.e., unreal://69.64.59.248:12245) for several years.

Indeed. When I went online, map 1 was running on NewbiesPlayground Testserver. Played it until the end. Instead of UT weapons, you start with the full Unreal weapon arsenal. The giant 2 legged robots were replaced by Giant Mercenaries and the XanBots were also replaced (Zephon had those iirc). Not sure why not UT weapons - the server forced me to download Botpack.u iirc. Also: When I started, I saw 8 players on another coop server, so Unreal Coop is not totally dead yet. And half of the time somebody was on the same server like me. Those guys always had 227j installed. How comes? I don't see any 227j download on OldUnreal.

[Giant Gasbag bug] Not fixed and unlikely going to be fixed, because it may be considered as a feature. BTW, there are much more obvious AI bugs, such as a ScriptedPawn keeping a friendly attitude towards an attacker ScriptedPawn having the same class type (e.g. Krall vs Krall on SkyTown or SkaarjTrooper vs SkaarjTrooper on ExtremeCore).

Oh, didn't know about that. That's an even more obvious bug. A Giant Gasbag spawning a Gasbag and shooting the Gasbag afterwards is way more likely though - and easy to fix (just replacing an isGasbag check with an isSubclassOfGasbag check). If it isn't fixed because that would harm some online backwards compatibility, then fine. But if it isn't fixed because it is considered a "feature", then I don't understand the reasoning.

Since we are already speaking about bugs: The duration of the Mercenary's invulnerability shield is supposedly reduced by 1 second per 100 damage. But since it's an integer division, it's only reduced if you do at least 100 damage at once (which is unlikely to happen on Unreal difficulty). Is that fixed in 277j or is that also a feature?

very late edit: Another annoying mercenary bug that I would sadly consider a feature (changing it could make some existing levels too hard): mercenaries not hitting the player with the minigun if standing below or above you.

Two other small things:
- Skaarj & co not dying when they fall down (because they have more health than you, hm was that already mentioned here?)
- Using the Minigun wastes the valuable Automag ammo: Minigun has not only a worse accuracy than the Automag, bullets fired by the Minigun also do less damage. And the greedy part in me says: keep the ammo for the Automag. If a Skaarj is low on health and retreats, then I switch to the Automag! If there's an enemy far away and he isn't from the dangerous kind, then I switch to the Automag. So, I always want to have a big cushion in Automag ammo, so I don't have to waste the even more precious ASMD and Rifle ammo. As a result, I'll barely ever use the Minigun.

[UB_]

Zephon does not use UT weapons; 227j is passed around people privately.

As for the fall damage I already mentioned this in the stickied trivia thread. They are just ultra resistant to it for some reason, losing like 17 HP for a Nyleve-size fall. EXU versions of the scripted pawns seem less resistant to it, should ask Waff.

[integration]

Zephon does not use UT weapons

Oh lol, must have been a long time since I played it the last time.

As for the fall damage I already mentioned this in the stickied trivia thread. They are just ultra resistant to it for some reason, losing like 17 HP for a Nyleve-size fall.

Yeah, ScriptedPawns and PlayerPawns have own code regarding fall damage (function landed, probably the one in FallingState for ScriptedPawn). In the following jumpZ is 325 for both Skaarj and humans.

Code: Select all

ScriptedPawn:
            if ( Velocity.Z < FMin(-600, -3.5 * JumpZ) )
                TakeDamage(-0.04 * (Velocity.Z + FMax(400, 3.5 * JumpZ)), Self, Location, vect(0,0,0), 'fell');
                
PlayerPawn:
    if (Velocity.Z < FMin(-1100, -1.4 * JumpZ) )
                TakeDamage(-0.15 * (Velocity.Z + 1050), None, Location, vect(0,0,0), 'fell');

So Playerpawns take 3.75 times as much damage (0.15 compared to 0.04) and they take damage if they fall down at least 1100 uu each second (damage threshold for Skaarj is roughly the same). Players' fall damage is quartered on Easy, and halved on Normal difficulty. There's no damage reduction for ScriptedPawns if I am not mistaken (see UnrealGameInfo.ReduceDamage).

edit: should have mentioned that players die if there impact speed surpasses 2000 uu per second. There's not such a check for ScriptedPawns.

[ElectricIce]

Honestly, The changes to the sounds to weapons and stuff between an unpatched unreal version and the 225 patch(updated sounds right?) I grew up with the oldschool weapon sounds and the first time I played the updated game was jarring to my ears. I still love the old sounds to this day.

[Kajgue]

The over-rotund collision radius' that characters have, if you are using default/stock gametype/mutators etc then some aspects of the gameplay becomes liquidated; like being able to interchange between cramped spaces and for things to be smoothly navigate-able allowing interesting things to happen in those spaces aswel, like the way we can have stimulating occurrences inside more open spaces.

Thankfully 227 added actual crouching, which is a good thing.

[Krull0r]

Honestly, The changes to the sounds to weapons and stuff between an unpatched unreal version and the 225 patch(updated sounds right?) I grew up with the oldschool weapon sounds and the first time I played the updated game was jarring to my ears. I still love the old sounds to this day.

I also like the old weapon sounds more then the patched sounds. Good to know that I'm not the only one
thanks to the Unreal 227 Patch. there you can add the OldWeaonsMutator to play the whole game with old weapon sounds

[integration]

Honestly, The changes to the sounds to weapons and stuff between an unpatched unreal version and the 225 patch(updated sounds right?) I grew up with the oldschool weapon sounds and the first time I played the updated game was jarring to my ears. I still love the old sounds to this day.

Actually, I think the new sounds have higher quality. I liked especially that the Dispersion bolt graphics were updated. They not only looked better, they also caused less lag. On my old computer, I had much problems with transparent 2D sprites rendering (smoke coming out of the ground -> frame rate dropped to 2 FPS).

The over-rotund collision radius' that characters have, ...

A bit related: Collision with level geometry doesn't change in original Unreal when crouching but the hit area can. For example if a Nali is bowing to you, you can shoot over his head without hitting him. But there's one bad example where the hit area doesn't change: Skaarj Troopers using their shields. You can still head-shot them with Rifle and Razorjack but only if you shoot over their heads.

Also collision related: The collision cylinder of Slith doesn't change in water. If they are swimming towards you, you can still hit them if you shoot above and below them. But if you stand on land and try to shoot them from above, you don't hit them if you shoot at their tails. It always bugs me seeing a shot going through them.

I am running out of ideas. So here's my last thing:
the lack of interesting monster encounters
Most times, you'll only fight one enemy at once. Or there's a factory with some endless stream of monsters where you figure out the spawning points soon. I miss something like 2 monsters coming at you from different directions at the very same time. I think one reason is that Unreal's trigger system offers no way to pass the triggerer over to other actors. The only really positive example I remember is Unreality Episode One. It's just hilarious to fight multiple monsters charging at you at once. And the way the author achieved that is also hilarious: He made some platforms hidden in the sky with some monsters on top of them. If you pass certain points, then those platforms go down to the ground and the monsters get triggered simultanously.

Time for me to go back to lurker mode. See you in a year or so. Random shoutouts to Masterkent who is fighting some kind of lonely fight over at Oldunreal. What the Unreal 227 staff created is great but sometimes they lose track of the important things.

Oh wait. One very last very small thing: UMS Prometheus engine's unaligned textures
RTNP has a lot of unaligned textures. Honestly, I've never really noticed them. But those specific textures bothered me a lot.

[Masterkent]

And half of the time somebody was on the same server like me. Those guys always had 227j installed. How comes? I don't see any 227j download on OldUnreal.

One of those guys was me 227j is still under development and it's not officially released yet. There is a group of beta testers who receive internal builds (227j_1, 227j_2, ..., 227j_35) from the developer (Smirftsch). If you want to become a beta tester, you may ask him privately.

A Giant Gasbag spawning a Gasbag and shooting the Gasbag afterwards is way more likely though - and easy to fix (just replacing an isGasbag check with an isSubclassOfGasbag check). If it isn't fixed because that would harm some online backwards compatibility, then fine.

I presume, the only way the online backward compatibility could be broken is when someone would compile a custom subclass of GasBag/GiantGasBag with overridden function AttitudeToCreature against the modified 227j code of UnrealI.GasBag (that would include an overridden definition of AttitudeToCreature) and then hope that pre-227 users could connect to a server that uses such a subclass (pre-227 users won't be able to join the game because of missing UnrealI.GasBag.AttitudeToCreature). But I don't think this is a big problem.

But if it isn't fixed because it is considered a "feature", then I don't understand the reasoning.

If you ask me, I'd prefer to have it fixed. But some people may like the existing behavior. Maybe we should raise this question on the Oldunreal forum.

The duration of the Mercenary's invulnerability shield is supposedly reduced by 1 second per 100 damage. But since it's an integer division, it's only reduced if you do at least 100 damage at once (which is unlikely to happen on Unreal difficulty). Is that fixed in 277j or is that also a feature?

It's not fixed, I'd prefer to have it fixed, and, yes, some people may like the existing behavior. After fixing this, Mercs would be noticeably more vulnerable, hence this a significant impact on gameplay. I don't remember if this bug was ever submitted to the developer.

It's worth noting that the Merc's shield is totally bugged. In addition to that thing with integer division by 100, the script allows unlimited accumulation of invulnerability charge after the Merc activates his shield first time. If you make a Merc turn his shield on and then you won't bother him for a long time, you may notice that he can frequently reactivate his shield (which is deactivated by some timeout) as many times as he wants. But if you don't let him accumulate the charge, he won't be able to reactivate the shield so fast after each deactivation.

When you pause the game, charge accumulation and time before shield deactivation are calculated as if the game was not paused. So, after unpausing, Merc's shield can be deactivated even if it was activated right before pausing. A Merc can accumulate charge during game pauses (in combination with the previously mentioned bug, the charge can reach very high values).

If you rapidly hit a shielded Merc (using something like Minigun or Stinger), his shield won't be deactivated even when the invulnerability charge reaches zero (the shield becomes inactive after 0.3 seconds since the last damage). Hence a constant damage can make a Merc stronger, that seems completely illogical.

Finally, when the shield is deactivated while the Merc resides in a pain zone (such as slime or lava), he does not start to take damage from the pain zone (this bug was fixed in 227j).

[UB_]

I am running out of ideas. So here's my last thing:
the lack of interesting monster encounters
Most times, you'll only fight one enemy at once. Or there's a factory with some endless stream of monsters where you figure out the spawning points soon. I miss something like 2 monsters coming at you from different directions at the very same time. I think one reason is that Unreal's trigger system offers no way to pass the triggerer over to other actors. The only really positive example I remember is Unreality Episode One. It's just hilarious to fight multiple monsters charging at you at once. And the way the author achieved that is also hilarious: He made some platforms hidden in the sky with some monsters on top of them. If you pass certain points, then those platforms go down to the ground and the monsters get triggered simultanously.

EXU2 has an insanely well made spawning system and it doesn't use spawnpoints, just instead a node actor with a specific radius (cube radius or sphere radius).

[Kajgue]

The over-rotund collision radius' that characters have, ...

A bit related: Collision with level geometry doesn't change in original Unreal when crouching but the hit area can. For example if a Nali is bowing to you, you can shoot over his head without hitting him. But there's one bad example where the hit area doesn't change: Skaarj Troopers using their shields. You can still head-shot them with Rifle and Razorjack but only if you shoot over their heads.

Also collision related: The collision cylinder of Slith doesn't change in water. If they are swimming towards you, you can still hit them if you shoot above and below them. But if you stand on land and try to shoot them from above, you don't hit them if you shoot at their tails. It always bugs me seeing a shot going through them.

In the original version of Unreal, there is no feature to enable actual crouching, although 227 added 'realcrouching' which is a supplementary feature, that when enabled, allows the player to crouch under + navigate short spaces. I think it can be enabled by default under the properties menu somewhere, otherwise it can be enabled for custom maps through the level properties.

[Sat42]

Visible edges/seams in skyboxes.
Older renderers were fine, but the sharper renderers we use today reveal imperfections in some Unreal/UT skyboxes which piss me off

BUMP for excellent news: the so-called "imperfections" in some skyboxes supposedly revealed by more modern renderers have disappeared! The difference? A new graphics card (nothing crazy, just a GTX 1050). Man, it's good to see the integrity of the Tomb of Sesmar skybox restored! And here I thought the seams/visible edges that flicker were a product of bad design.

P.S.: not all skyboxes are without seams of course, some do contain errors in design, but at least the vast majority (incl. retail skyboxes) are free of such glitches.