UT2341: Beta 3 Released news

Introduction

Azarael here. It's been quite some time, huh?

I was playing this mod recently and noticed a few things that really needed fixing, so here's a small update to deal with some of those, as well as some commentary on some discussion I've seen about this mod online.

Changelog

HUD

Fixed visual damage feedback. The screen flashes when being hit are now the same as in UT99.
Increased the size of the health, shield, adrenaline and ShieldMan HUD elements to be closer to UT99's HUD size.

Players

Added the missing 10% bonus to the player's acceleration.

Bio-Rifle

Fixed incorrect implementation of Bio-Rifle globs. Damage and damage radius calculations were completely wrong (too low).

Shock Rifle

Fixed incorrect Shock Rifle projectile speed.
Fixed Shock Rifle combo radius being too large.

Pulse Gun

Pulse Gun projectiles have larger collision.

Flak Cannon

Added the 10% speed compensation to flak chunks.

Commentary

A few of the lines in the changelog talk about a "10% speed bonus", and I've seen some misunderstanding of why UT2341's speed values deviate from those of UT99.

The reason for this is because UT2004 has a larger scale, by about 10%-12.5%, compared to UT99. Because the majority of maps in UT2004 are built for that scale, I felt that replicating UT99 parameters exactly would make those maps more difficult to traverse and have them feel too large, as well as causing issues if we had to reduce the player's eye height, mesh size, etc, to match UT99.

So, a decision was made earlier on to have players and weapons use at least a 10% bonus to any scale-related parameters, like explosive radius, travel time, move speed, jump height, acceleration, etc, when compared with UT99. It's not a mistake. UT2341 was not intended to be an absolutely perfect emulation of UT99, though getting very close is certainly possible.

Another reason is that I've taken some liberties when it comes to weapons and fire modes that were underpowered in the original game. Those are the Ripper primary, Pulse Gun primary and Bio-Rifle primary. These modes have a higher speed value than the original game to make them more competitive.

The Bio-Rifle was practically useless with the mistake that was made in its implementation, so it should be much more worth using now.

The HUD issues in particular were annoying me enough to make this update. Damage feedback is important, and with tiny health and very limited screen flash feedback, playing BETA2 and keeping track of health was a nightmare.

Online

We do occasionally play this and many other mods online.

The server IP for that is ut2004://217.71.244.71:9950 (European server.)