UberDuck 1.0
So, what is this "UberDuck"
thing?
UberDuck is a modification of makavelli's
Mid-Air Challenge (aka MADuck) training map. I altered
it to work with Classic mod phyiscs, fixed some bugs, and added some new features.
I've never heard of MADuck. What
was it?
MADuck's is a training mission for
Tribes 2 Base. When you load a LAN game with it installed it appears in the
training mission list. MADuck's goal was mid-air discing practice. Like Hak|Hakuryu's
sniping challenge mission, upon which it is based, MADuck has bots that
appear and fly at predetermined arcs so the player can try to mid-air them.
If you knew what you were doing, you could also get a shocklance and practice
lancing the bots.
So tell me about these changes
you made.
- MADuck was designed to work with
Base, where the gravity and air resistance are different. As a result, the
bots didn't follow anything like their original paths under Classic. UberDuck
fixes this. UberDuck has only been tested with Classic. It probably won't
work with any other mod.
- MADuck inherited some bugs from
Sniping Challenge. It did not properly clean up bots after they died.
As a result the server would create an ever-increasing number of bot players,
even though only the most recent ones were ever in game. This would make the
performance of the game become very poor after about 40 bots, and sometimes
the game would crash. Also, you were supposed to be invulnerable, and this
didn't work quite right.
- I also added a number of features
- see below.
New features:
- Improved difficulty.
After a while a player learns the arcs that the bots follow, and it becomes
much too easy to shoot them. At the highest difficulty level, the bots now
swerve considerably from their arc, more like a player moves (though still
not as randomly as a player who is actively taking evasive action). This makes
for much better training for depth-perception and reflex timing.
- Added weapons. You
are automatically armed with all the weapons in the game and 999 rounds of
ammo for each, plus 999 grenades and 999 mines. This makes it possible to
practice lots of different things - chaining, lancing, mid-air mine-discing,
even sniping. Should you need to, you can get more ammo by touching the flip-flop
that starts the bots up.
- No "duck" limit.
The original sniping and MA training maps stopped after a number of "pulls"
of bots that varied with difficulty. I wanted a map that let me train as long
as I needed to. Thus, there is no pre-determined end to UberDuck. You have
to end it yourself.
- Change difficulty in-game.
When you touch the flip-flop after the first time, you start cycling through
the three difficulties. You will see a bottomprint message telling you the
new difficulty level - 1, 2, or 3 (3 being hardest). At the lower difficulties
the bots swerve less, with almost no swerve on diffuculty 1.
- See how much damage is inflicted.
When you score a hit, you see a message line in the chat box for each bot
you damaged and how much damage you did. The lines look like this (the colors
will vary - these are about how mine look because I use UberChat):
Hit! makavelli: 68.02% (31.98%
left) with disc
This tells you you hit the bot named makavelli, did him
damage equal to 68.02% of his total health, and that after that hit he had
31.98% left. This is especially handy with mine-disc practice, as you can
tell what actually killed the target. It's kind of annoying with chaingun
practice, though. :)
- See when you hurt yourself.
Since you're invulnerable as a convenience, it would be easy to get into a
habit of practicing things that would cause you to kill yourself in-game.
So whenever you hurt yourself, you get feedback. First, the screen flashes
red, just like it would if you were hurt normally. You also suffer any kickback
caused by what hurt you, so you may go flying. And finally a bottomprint message
will appear that tells you how much damage you just did you yourself, expressed
as a percentage of maximum health (100%+ would have killed you). I find this
pretty handy - you can use it to find out how much damage things like falling,
a disc jump, etc. will do. Unlike the bot damge feedback, this is all the
damage as one number - so mine-discing yourself will show you the total damage
from doing that combo.
How do I use it?
Copy UberDuck.vl2 into your base
folder. Start T2 with the '-mod classic' command line (usually done by starting
it with the shortcut that came with the 25034 patch). When you start a LAN game
you should see 'Mid-Air Training" in your training mission list.
Do not install both the original MADuck and UberDuck, as the results
will be totally random and quite unsupported by me. :)
So is this thing really useful?
Yes and no. I think it is very useful
for improving timing and depth perception. It provides an environment in which
you can try something over and over until you get a good feel for it, but isn't
so repeatable as to not be totally unrealistic.
That said, there is a huge part of
mid-air shots in a live game that really can't be included in a training mission.
In UberDuck you usually are just flying up and down to get shots at targets
. If that's how you try to midair people in a real game, you are probably
going to get midaired. Also, most MA shots I try to make in live games are,
by neccessity, while on the move at high speed. In fact I'm usually firing at
right anges to the direction I'm moving. This is harder to do properly, since
the disc will fire at an angle when you are moving rapidly in any direction.
You also probably need to be dodging around, because that capper you're shooting
at will be trying to shoot you down. So ultimately there's nothing like
practicing the real thing. If you want to practice lots of midair shots against
real targets while on the move, play one of the Rabbit variants (LakRabbit is
good), Arena or Duel Mod. DeathMatch works too, though the scavenge for equipment
thing can be annoying unless you want to practice dueling in spawn gear.
I hope this is helpful. Any bug reports
or fixes can be reported to me here.
Also visit my website
for tons of scripts and other goodies.