Mod Ideas/Civilians

The idea here is that you can add atmosphere to realistic maps by having civilians going about their daily business.

These would be somewhat like bots, but would not have any aggression, and you don't score points for killing them, they just go about their business and potentially get shot.

This really comes out of playing on sniper servers in big empty towns. Rather than adding movers into the map on the streets, it would be cooler to have bots and vehicles spawn out-of-map and just pass through. They would, for example, run people over who stepped on the road or get in the way of a player trying to shoot at another.

The immediate question is whether it is possible to have more of these civilians than the server allows bots. I think so, because I think the limit is on the number of players, not the number of controlled pawns.

In the long run of course it would be best to have a variety of civilian skins and animations, and civilian vehicles. But for now, a bunch of brocks driving hellbenders would be cool.

Sweavo: I don't know enough about bots and vehicle pathing to even make a start on this yet, so I put it here rather than on my own page.

SuperApe: Sounds cool. So, these would be NPCs? You're right, the limit is on players, not pawns or controllers. Looking ahead, although you describe driving civilians, it might be good to start with a fresh Controller, instead of Bot or xBot, just to avoid the overhead of unused combat code. That said, there's plenty of useful code in Bots for navigation, etc. Recently I've found it's the UnrealPawn PostBeginNetPlay() function that attempts to put the pawn on a roster; that's where the (player) limit would be. If you can avoid that, you should be able to add as many as you need. Coding the AI should be pretty fun. Looking forward to it.

Moofed: This is exactly what I will be learning monster scripting for, SuperApe. Civilian pedestrians and vehicles are needed to recreate the GTA2 feel.

SuperApe: Well, let's not hijack Sweavo's page, but that's good to know. I thought you were interested in Monsters. Let's continue discussion on another page. A UT2004 Monster Tutorial? Moofed? (PersonalPage)

Sweavo: no, please do hijack this. This does sound like exactly what I'm talking about. As I said, if I was able to go ahead and build this I would have it hanging off my page, not mod ideas.

SuperApe: LOL, very well. I gave a few comments. A UT2004 Monster Tutorial –> Moofed