Shagz
New Member
Check this out! If you never played the original, you don't know what you're missing. It was a great multiplayer game type that just didn't get the attention that it deserved. Now it's coming to UT2004 and I couldn't be happier!
XMP mod for UT2004!
- Thread starter Shagz
- Start date
Tek7 (Legacy)
CGA & ToJ President
*chuckle* I saw that post today on PlanetUnreal and immediately thought of you, Shagz. I imagine there was some variation of happy happy joy joy dance going on in your corner of the world today.
Shagz
New Member
Yea, very much so.
I really loved that game, just too bad not enough other people did.
Shagz
New Member
This is a good preview article about U2XMP, so you'll get an idea of what the game is about and what it looks like.
Basically it's "double flag CTF", where each team has two artifacts that have to be stolen from the other team and placed into your artifact node. The game is won when a team registers all 4 artifacts, or the time runs out.
However, it's not just straight up CTF as you also have to manage resources. There are several energy generators placed around the map. In order to do anything (drive vehicles, place auto-sentries, use manned turrents, place trip mines, etc.) your team needs to have energy, so it's kind of like Onslaught in that you have to capture and control these energy points before you can really do anything (if you don't have enough energy, you can't power your artifact node and capture artifacts, for example). Unlike Onslaught though, these energy points can be attacked and taken away from you at any time, so your team has to have coverage over the whole map.
You also have to be careful over the energy that you have. If you place too many auto-turrents or put up too many forcefields, you'll be using energy faster then you can replenish it, so you have to be careful in that respect.
Energy nodes (and other things like base doors and field spawn points) have to be "hacked" before they can be used by your team. To hack an object, walk up to it and "use". A bar shows up that tells you what your progress is like. You can't look around while you're doing this, but you can move around the object you're hacking, so long as you don't break the energy stream from you to the object. Certain player classes can hack faster and better than others (more on that in a bit).
Hacking also uses up your personal alotment of energy. The team has energy (for vehicles, guns, etc.) and each team memeber has energy, which is used for hacking and jump jets (see below). After hacking an item, your personal energy will be low, so you won't be able to use jump jets until it recharges, which doesn't take long.
There are 3 vehicles in XMP: you have your Raptor (two man dune buggy with a machine gun turrent), Juggernaught (two man tank with turrent and a flamethrower) and the Harbringer (3 man "pick up truck" with driver, rocket launcher and rear-mount EMP lancer). The physics for the vehicles are a bit wonky and you'll have trouble getting use to driving them. Hopefully this mod will fix that using UT2004 vehicles.
Each vehicle also has a nitro boost, which never runs out but needs to recharge after each use. The Raptor makes the best use of this boost. (Note: you can't repair vehicles in XMP. Hopefully they'll change that in the mod as well)
If you're on foot though, you're not totally without means of getting around. Players can do UT style doging, but they also have a sprint bar plus jump jets. Combine all three and you can cover long distances in short times (sprint, dodge then jump jet to really fly). Jump jets can be used to jump higher obviously, but they can also be used to break a fall.
Players choose to play one of three classes as well, each with a different load out. (Tribe players will probably find these familar)
The Ranger is the small, speedy and light armoured class. He has fast ground speed, but his jump jets are a quick, vertical burst, so dodge-jump jetting moves him more up then across. He's a sort of Angel of Life and Death, as he has the ability to heal teammates (which is VERY useful after you revive a teammate; everyone can revive fallen teammates, so long as that player chooses not to respawn, but they only revive back with 1 health), drop health packs but he also comes equipped with the Widomaker sniper rifle. Works great zoomed in or out, but of course takes a while to reload. He also comes equipped with a very accurate pistol (alt fire unloads a three shot burst), shock lance (fires single EMP lances and carries frag and smoke grenades (which look really really nice in this game).
The Engineer/Tech is both grunt soldier and utility guy. Middle of the road for pretty much everything (speed, weapons, armour), although his jump jets allow for a more horizontal, ground transversing dodge-jump jet.
The Engineer can hack the fastest, so he's best out in the field, nabbing generators. The Engineer also comes with a utility belt of defensive tools, including two types of auto-turrets (rocket and gun) and force fields. Engineer can armour his teammates and deploy armour packs as well. He comes loaded with a "duster" machine gun (alt fire is a single, rebounding shot), shotgun (alt fire uses flamable shells), gas and EMP grenades (great on anything mechanicle like vehicles or turrets).
The last class is the heavy guy, the Gunner. He's slow (in walking and hacking) but heavily armoured, outfitted with a rocket launcher (alt fire shoots smaller, guided missles that need to be locked on), flamethrower (alt fire shoots liquid naplam that ignites when touched), incendiary and white out (flashbang) grenades. He also comes with land and laser-trip mines. The land mines are a lot of fun, especially if you deploy them over a wide. Watch as a enemy raptor tries to drive over them.
Jump jets are a sustained burst. (Special Tip: if you use the Gunner in a space map, you can use his flamethrower as a propulsion mechanism, flying you across great distances of the map)
There you go, that's XMP in half a dozen nut shells.
Basically it's "double flag CTF", where each team has two artifacts that have to be stolen from the other team and placed into your artifact node. The game is won when a team registers all 4 artifacts, or the time runs out.
However, it's not just straight up CTF as you also have to manage resources. There are several energy generators placed around the map. In order to do anything (drive vehicles, place auto-sentries, use manned turrents, place trip mines, etc.) your team needs to have energy, so it's kind of like Onslaught in that you have to capture and control these energy points before you can really do anything (if you don't have enough energy, you can't power your artifact node and capture artifacts, for example). Unlike Onslaught though, these energy points can be attacked and taken away from you at any time, so your team has to have coverage over the whole map.
You also have to be careful over the energy that you have. If you place too many auto-turrents or put up too many forcefields, you'll be using energy faster then you can replenish it, so you have to be careful in that respect.
Energy nodes (and other things like base doors and field spawn points) have to be "hacked" before they can be used by your team. To hack an object, walk up to it and "use". A bar shows up that tells you what your progress is like. You can't look around while you're doing this, but you can move around the object you're hacking, so long as you don't break the energy stream from you to the object. Certain player classes can hack faster and better than others (more on that in a bit).
Hacking also uses up your personal alotment of energy. The team has energy (for vehicles, guns, etc.) and each team memeber has energy, which is used for hacking and jump jets (see below). After hacking an item, your personal energy will be low, so you won't be able to use jump jets until it recharges, which doesn't take long.
There are 3 vehicles in XMP: you have your Raptor (two man dune buggy with a machine gun turrent), Juggernaught (two man tank with turrent and a flamethrower) and the Harbringer (3 man "pick up truck" with driver, rocket launcher and rear-mount EMP lancer). The physics for the vehicles are a bit wonky and you'll have trouble getting use to driving them. Hopefully this mod will fix that using UT2004 vehicles.
Each vehicle also has a nitro boost, which never runs out but needs to recharge after each use. The Raptor makes the best use of this boost. (Note: you can't repair vehicles in XMP. Hopefully they'll change that in the mod as well)
If you're on foot though, you're not totally without means of getting around. Players can do UT style doging, but they also have a sprint bar plus jump jets. Combine all three and you can cover long distances in short times (sprint, dodge then jump jet to really fly). Jump jets can be used to jump higher obviously, but they can also be used to break a fall.
Players choose to play one of three classes as well, each with a different load out. (Tribe players will probably find these familar)
The Ranger is the small, speedy and light armoured class. He has fast ground speed, but his jump jets are a quick, vertical burst, so dodge-jump jetting moves him more up then across. He's a sort of Angel of Life and Death, as he has the ability to heal teammates (which is VERY useful after you revive a teammate; everyone can revive fallen teammates, so long as that player chooses not to respawn, but they only revive back with 1 health), drop health packs but he also comes equipped with the Widomaker sniper rifle. Works great zoomed in or out, but of course takes a while to reload. He also comes equipped with a very accurate pistol (alt fire unloads a three shot burst), shock lance (fires single EMP lances and carries frag and smoke grenades (which look really really nice in this game).
The Engineer/Tech is both grunt soldier and utility guy. Middle of the road for pretty much everything (speed, weapons, armour), although his jump jets allow for a more horizontal, ground transversing dodge-jump jet.
The Engineer can hack the fastest, so he's best out in the field, nabbing generators. The Engineer also comes with a utility belt of defensive tools, including two types of auto-turrets (rocket and gun) and force fields. Engineer can armour his teammates and deploy armour packs as well. He comes loaded with a "duster" machine gun (alt fire is a single, rebounding shot), shotgun (alt fire uses flamable shells), gas and EMP grenades (great on anything mechanicle like vehicles or turrets).
The last class is the heavy guy, the Gunner. He's slow (in walking and hacking) but heavily armoured, outfitted with a rocket launcher (alt fire shoots smaller, guided missles that need to be locked on), flamethrower (alt fire shoots liquid naplam that ignites when touched), incendiary and white out (flashbang) grenades. He also comes with land and laser-trip mines. The land mines are a lot of fun, especially if you deploy them over a wide. Watch as a enemy raptor tries to drive over them.
There you go, that's XMP in half a dozen nut shells.