ambershee Rantings of Programmerman #3 blog

Well, these rantings certainly haven't been rantings yet. Although I'd expect that to change in future...

Most notable, I put out a quick tutorial on getting started writing mutators for Unreal Tournament 3 today, prior to the release of the game itself. Hopefully that'll help some people get started with what is essentially a very rewarding aspect of modding.

Personally, I find that mutators can be some of the most rewarding things to program. They're very short term projects, with a much smaller workload than any pretty much any other kind of mod - a few simple lines of code, and maybe a little bit of extra media, and you're set.

Mutators don't require an enormous amount of effort, and can be a great testing bed for trying out new things without worrying about how much time you're going to lose to it. You can write mutators, and do some of the wierd and wonderful things you might have otherwise been afraid to try - although of course mutators do also have their limits.

It's writing tutorials for things like these that make you appreciate how useful such systems as the mutator are for learning experiences, something which Epic has certainly got right - and I'm sure we all love to try that new weapon replacemen or gameplay twist that someone has come up with.

There'll defiitely be plenty more tutorials in future - hopefully I'll be able to throw out at least one a week, and move into increasingly difficult ground, laying things down like the basics of creating new game modes, setting up frameworks for total conversions, and going through all those nitty-gritty sections that confuse everyone.

I'd love to set up a group of people dedicated to writing nothing but mutators, experienced and new alike. It's just the ticket, as people can learn from one another, work together to solve problems and of course, they're doing nothing but being creative.

Unfortunately, I get the feeling that the interest for such a thing just isn't there. People don't want to be writing the little mutators. These days it's all in the almighty total conversion; there's no glory for the small projects, and no appreciation for the and creativity behind them. New comers always seek to make the whole game, and never start small, something which is becoming increasingly impossible in this day and age.

So just how many fantastic small mutators are we going to see?