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Mutator Week


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#1 ambershee

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Posted 13 February 2008 - 09:34 PM

What is Mutator Week?

Mutator Week is a simple idea. Every other week is a Mutator Week, and a theme will be mailed out on the Friday night. From this time, everyone is given one week (seven days) to write a simple mutator and commit it to subversion. The following week is for everyone to download the mutators and give feedback on the designs and technical application of the design, as well as review the source code in order to make corrections, bug fixes and updates.

It's not mandatory to produce a mutator every week, as obviously sometimes people get busy and have to deal with real life ™ and what-not, but I'm sure everyone else would appreciate you sticking around to help!

The mutator should be small, sweet and simple. There's no need to produce the ultimate epic mutator that does everything including make you breakfast - that's not the aim of the game. Whether you're making rockets bounce, creating a new power up or changing player movement, it's a little change with some relation to the theme. So how does this all work? Well, you have a theme, and you've come up with an idea. You start writing your code, but hold on! How do I do this or that?

The most important aspect of Mutator Week is that you help each other out. The forums are here not only to discuss what you're doing, but also to ask each other questions and more importantly, to answer them. By helping each other out as much as possible, you'll help each other learn, and that's what you're all here to do. Noone obviously has the time to sit down and teach everyone everything, and noone can be expected to even know all the answers, but collaborative minds can work well if all working towards a common goal.

To keep things competitive, we'll be running a little bit of a competition during the whole thing, where we'll all get to vote on which mutators are the coolest, which are the best written or the most novel idea. We'll be keeping track of these and awarding a few points here and there, and we'll see who comes out on top in a few weeks time (There'll even be a little prize). We'll also award a few bonus points to the people who are really helping others out of course, it's only fair.

When a week is finished, we can package the working ones up and offer them up for download for the general public too, of course, before moving on to our next topic. If you didn't finish a mutator, or there's a small bug, don't worry, we can always fix it up some other time and put it in a future mutator pack too.

Guidlines for Writing Code

Formatting is everything. You may have your own particular style, but in this case, you've been vetoed - the project will have all code written the Epic way - all those other little bits and pieces you sometimes like to rearrange. This organisation helps others read your code, and thus helps you improve it, as well as preventing potential annoying errors from occuring!

  • Parenthesis (squiggly brackets) always on their own lines.
  • DefaultProperties defined clearly at the bottom.
  • Tab out and indent your code to make it easy to read.
  • Always fully-qualify class names - this means means 'packagename.classname', not just 'classname'.

When creating classes, always prefix your class names with your unique two letter code - this prevents other people from creating classes of the same name and thus colliding with yours. Remember that each week everyone will be working on putting their classes in the same package file. Two other rules - never create subclasses of the pawn and playercontrollers - that is for the realms of game modes and can often break other mutators!

  • Name your classes properly - MI_Mutator_ClassType (My Initials, My Mutator Name, My Class Name).
  • Never create new pawns or player controllers.
  • KISS - keep it simple, stupid! You've got 7 days to write code, you don't need an epic configuration script of death, just a neat little feature.
  • It's all about experimental gameplay and cool code!

Keeping Score

Points are awarded for the two voted 'best overall' (3), 'most innovative' (2) and 'best implementation' (2). Points are additionally given every week for people voted 'very helpful' (1). Points are tallied, and scores are kept. Bonus points may be awarded for outstanding contribution to the project if we feel they should be. At the end of every eight weeks (or four mutator weeks). We'll be awarding the winner a small prize for their efforts, and assitance in keeping the project rolling (you won't be able to win the prize twice in a row)!

What Else?

Have any questions or additions to this guideline? Ask away, and add to the thread, and the main topic will be updated.

#2 xiongmao

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Posted 15 February 2008 - 09:04 AM

Why no pawn and no playercontroller?? You want these mutators to be used everywhere even in Custom GT (GameType) ?

#3 ambershee

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Posted 15 February 2008 - 11:39 AM

It's a common consensus that mutators should be able to function without creating pawns or player controllers - and has been since the original Unreal. The reason for this is that as soon as you replace the pawns / controllers, you will potentially break a lot of other mutators and game modes. It's considered bad practice to use mutators in that fashion - if you create a new pawn and controller, then you should be creating a new game mode, not a mutator. :p

#4 Bob Chatman

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Posted 16 February 2008 - 07:38 PM

So no consecutive prizes eh? Ill keep that in mind.

Cheers, This will be fun!

#5 Myles

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Posted 19 February 2008 - 05:53 PM

Hello All!
If any of you coders want your Mutator Week submission implented into a map or want to have a map based around your submission then Id be very happy to help any of you,
Good Luck to all and just shoot me an email if you are interested.

Thanks!

#6 BoomerET

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Posted 20 February 2008 - 04:57 AM

Myles,

That's very kind of you, and I plan on eventually being able to take you up on that offer.


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#7 xiongmao

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Posted 20 February 2008 - 08:44 AM

What Myles said is interesting, is the Mutator's week not too limited ? I mean, I'm pretty sure, we don't need any special map for a mutator?
I don't denigrate the mutator but after using
- checkReplacement()
- modifyPlayer()
- adding GameRule
- and some other methods

we will all covered the mutator mechanic.

I'll take for example the first theme "light", someone could create a fence with laser which match the theme. In this case, a map will be required. This kind of actor can be used and reused by several mappers.

The Mutator's week perimeter may be enlarged to contain custom actor (placeable in the map) ?

#8 ambershee

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Posted 20 February 2008 - 10:15 AM

Mutators should work with all game types and on all maps - therefore you shouldn't have maps with custom actors in for the mutator to work - then it's no longer a mutator, it's really a game type.

What is acceptable however, is to perhaps have for example, a Deathmatch map with a layout suitable for different player movement (such as flying players), or different lighting conditions (such as for a torch/flashlight mutator, hint hint). The mutators still work in stock maps and other custom maps - but they'll work particularly well in a map with a lot of open space (flying) or a lack of light (torch/flashlight).

Edited by ambershee, 20 February 2008 - 10:16 AM.


#9 xiongmao

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Posted 20 February 2008 - 10:41 AM

I see what you mean, everything's clear now :p

#10 BoomerET

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Posted 20 February 2008 - 10:32 PM

My idea was that there's times when I want a really small map for testing, to decrease the time waiting for a particular event to happen :thumbsupsmiley:



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#11 xiongmao

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Posted 22 February 2008 - 08:27 AM

What about download ?
If i remember your(Luke) mail, you were speaking about MutatorWeek package. I think it could be interesting that the first post of each Theme Topic contains a link to an archive containing all week mutator.
This first post can be completed by summary of each mutator given by the developer.

This is just organisation ideas.

#12 ambershee

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Posted 22 February 2008 - 09:28 AM

That's the plan - when all are handed in, I'll compile them all into a single package for a week of testing, where we can all download and play the mutators, take note of bugs and improvements to be made. Over the course of this testing period and the following mutator week, these bugs / improvements can be fixed. Then it'll be recompiled again, and released to the public :wink_new:

#13 ambershee

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Posted 12 March 2008 - 11:02 AM

Given that both weeks have had a low turnout, and that people have often had difficulty meeting deadlines, what do people think about making a 'Mutator Week' two weeks long, instead of one?

#14 xiongmao

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Posted 12 March 2008 - 11:22 AM

I admit that Mutator week deadline is quite hard. :p
I'd like to add that any code snippet is appreciated. We're here to share code and experience. Each Mutator week thread is not dedicated to release code only but also to ask questions :crazed:
Come On Guys !!!

#15 ambershee

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Posted 15 March 2008 - 01:02 PM

I've extended the deadline of the next Mutator Week to the 29th - this gives more than two weeks to write code.

Hopefully we'll see more / better submissions!

I'll be releasing Week One into the wild today as version 1.00 on ModDB / BeyondUnreal / UTForums - let's hope it's well recieved.

#16 ninjadave

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Posted 21 March 2008 - 03:33 AM

Well luckily for me I'm sort of late for these 2 weeks. I won't try anything for this one, but I'll try something for the next one.




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