Concept - Automatic Map Checkpoints

[LOL_PEANUTS]

Alrighty, I've had this multiplayer-oriented idea for a while.

My home is Shivaxi's Da Noodle server, he runs JcoopZ. Often times, on large maps, especially those with dramatic long walks at the beginning, like the Sunspire or Bluff, us admins find ourselves summoning a JZplayerstart after the walk, or when we get closer to the end of the level, for the sake of good gameplay.

I know next to nothing of UScript, but nevertheless I was wondering if it would be possible to make a new "checkpoint" trigger subclass actor. The only changes from a normal trigger are as follows. A manually assignable value in its properties, let's call it "LevelCompleteness," would exist. This value would reflect how far into the map trigger would be, higher numbers being further in the level, lower numbers being closer to the original start. The other difference is that When players came in contact with the trigger, it would spawn a new jzplayerstart, and it would destroy other checkpoint triggers with lower "LevelCompleteness" values, so as those couldn't be activated in the future, setting the jzplayerstart back closer to the beginning, a most undesirable thing.

[Shivaxi]

wow....good idea lol....and thanx too

i may be wrong...but didn't Cheese have somethin' like this in his server? :-?

[Bane]

You'd be putting that trigger into the map itself? Then yeah, you'd do it exactly like you said. Add the triggers to the map. Use a variable to keep track of the order. An int would work best. set the first checkpoint you could encounter to 1, 2nd to 2, etc. When the trigger is triggered, check that trigger's Completeness var to the global version that keeps track of what has been done already. You can use the class's default as a static variable, which will easily let you keep track of what has been triggered.
e.g.

Code: Select all

if (LevelCompleteness > default.LevelCompleteness)
       {SpawnStarts(); default.LevelCompleteness = LevelCompleteness;}

You should be able to spawn the starts using DynamicLoadObject to avoid needing a reference to JCoopZ1. It's obduscated so you can't make new packages that are dependent on it.

Doing it like that should work.

[jackrabbit]

could you add the triggers without creating a version mismatch on the original maps? If so, how is it possible?

[Bane]

erm, oh, I thought he was doing it with custom maps. It'd be possible to do it by summoning them at the map start from a config file. I did something like that with HideNSeek. It spawns a bunch of new playerstarts all over the map at pre-set locations. It's a real pain in the ass to set up though .

You should probably take a look at HideNSeek to see how I did it. I could send you the source file for PSManager if you want. It was a huge pain to set it all up, and it'd probably be too troublesome to explain it here. I basically have a config'd list of mapnames, each corresponding to a section of playerstarts. On each map, it finds the current mapname, then goes through the list of playerstart locations and spawns them all.

Another option, if you can add new commands, would be to make a SummonAt command for the triggers, then make a text file containing all the desired locations and LevelCompleteness and have an admin exec that. Either way, it won't be fun

[TCP_Wolf]

You should probably take a look at HideNSeek to see how I did it. I could send you the source file for PSManager if you want. It was a huge pain to set it all up, and it'd probably be too troublesome to explain it here. I basically have a config'd list of mapnames, each corresponding to a section of playerstarts. On each map, it finds the current mapname, then goes through the list of playerstart locations and spawns them all.

UTF-Domination works the same, ini file contains location of the Domination points. Works like a charm, but is not completely easy to setup the first time....

[LOL_PEANUTS]

It turns out Cheese was working on this before I suggested it.

Uber-Coop now has fully functional checkpoints, and might I add the server is far more fun to play now.

[Shivaxi]

well ill see if Cheese will gimme his code for it

[deathpax]

My server also has had a checkpoint system working for quite a while now