OldUnreal (Engine)

Coop is my favorite mode in most games, and Unreal Gold makes for an awesome coop walkthru. This thread is intended to be the central location on OldUnreal for the vanilla version of Unreal Gold. The idea started at BeyondUnreal, and it should continue on OldUnreal due to the larger base of expert programmers and modders. If you know of any additional forums that can help with the idea, be sure to post it.

A PC game is a working coop when:

#1: Connection over LAN is possible

#2: It is possible to walkthru the entire game without glitches

#3: Saving and loading is enabled on both server and client

#4: Quicksaves and quickloads are possible, with synchronization between the two

#5: Players keep their separate customizations, including names, skins, save locations, and weapons.

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Captain Dinwitty's coop was the one I'd previously used for Unreal Gold, but updates to the mod have been non-existent for a while. The mod takes some effort to set up. His site has since been archived at Hyper.nl.

The 227 patch is a constant work in progress, but the latest edition of 227f can be found at Hyper.nl and discussion on the patch has a dedicated thread here on OldUnreal. The 227g patch is still limited alpha release and not currently available for public download.

Zombie, a senior member of Old Unreal's developer team, has created one of the most recent coop game modes based off on earlier mod by Joss, but I haven't tested it yet, especially for compatibility with RTNP. Given that Joss' earlier mod contained new weapons and enemies, it is probable that Zombie's mod is not a vanilla one.

[]KAOS[]Casey mentions four other coop mods (without links), the last one currently in private beta: xCoop, Unrealshare.Coopgame, koopgame2.koopgame2, and klondikecoop{unreleased to public as of yet} xCoop appears to be an AvP mod. lists several other coop mods, but these are all non-canon with new maps, features, or weapons.

Mental-Hunter has made a ton of mods for Unreal Gold and UT2003. One of Mentallity's projects is a coop mod. I haven't tested it for vanilla/non-vanilla status, compatibility with the 227f, or for whether it meets the five coop criterion.

A PC game is a working coop when:

#1: Connection over LAN is possible

#2: It is possible to walkthru the entire game without glitches

#3: Saving and loading is enabled on both server and client

#4: Quicksaves and quickloads are possible, with synchronization between the two

#5: Players keep their separate customizations, including names, skins, save locations, and weapons.

at #1 : LAN/online is fine for unreal.

#2 : unreal has no known game breaking in coop bugs that can't be fixed by DZmapM {or players who aren't trying to intentionally break the game}.. through normal play you would never find such game breaking bugs.

#3 : As far as I know, this doesn't work inherently on unreal but can be modified in with some work. at the moment you have to save on the server and the clients will download the maps, but you wont re-possess your playerpawn {small bug? don't know.} I've never personally gotten gamesaves to work correctly but regular online-coop is fine so no one has attempted to fix it that I know of.

#4 in unreal, quicksaves are not actually "quick". they're the same as a regular save.

#5 has the limitations seen in #3 that may be able to be fixed with a mod

The "mods" I listed.. in order..

xCoop's website is currently under reconstruction and isnt an AvP mod, although another one exists in AvP with a nearly identical name by coincidence, it can be considered vanilla for the most part, except adding crouch collision shrinking.

Unrealshare.coopgame is unreal's stock online coop gametype and is as vanilla as it gets.

Koopgame2 and klondike coop are my private mods for now, I dont see koopgame2 ever being released to the public, though I think klondikecoop can be considered finished, though I can't really release it due to it being built on 227g.

Most of mental hunter's mods are absolutely not vanilla.

227g has an option for server save inventory, which allows easily that a player can get his inventory back on the coop server. This should help already a bit for some things.

Most glitches should be covered already too, if not a flaw in the map, which we can't easily replace, but as Casey already said, in usual play these bugs shouldn't appear anyways.

#3 is a bit of impossible. How do you want to make it? The client saves it as singleplay then? Or do you want it to save as coop to make it possible play from this other machine as coopserver then ? That's not feasible I'm afraid.
Also, since you never really can rely on the same players at the same time (even in a LAN and perfectly planed it often fails ) it makes only sense that a server saves the current state of the coop game, while in combination with inventory save the server can be started in any map and the players can continue from there with there stored inventory.

#4 quicksave for coop? In relation to #3 makes only limited sense. But well quicksave means for the most games usually not more than saving without any more input required, like gamename etc. - just press one key and its saved, next time overwritten.

#5 the player is responsible for the most of these things, except the inventory of course. The save location however...see below.

A lot of these topics makes only sense in a "World like" coopgame like "WoW" or such.
The linear campaigns we usually have in Unreal doesn't allow to travel within the levels forward and backwards, also the current state of a map is usually not saved on a coop server and it makes not much sense to do so. That counts pretty much for all current campaigns and coop scenarios - once the map is played through, the map is over.
What you are probably seeking is a nice idea and maybe possible to realize but a hell a lot of work.
"World of Unreal"...mmmh...

Tbh I haven't really entirely understood yet what you want...

Most of mental hunter's mods are absolutely not vanilla.

Lol most? Don't you mean all

I havent seen all of them personally so I wouldn't really know for sure, so there you have it. ALL of them are non vanilla! lol

I havent seen all of them personally so I wouldn't really know for sure, so there you have it. ALL of them are non vanilla! lol

Don't bother anyway tho, all the mods on hyper's i made are low quality, very unstable, unrealistic( well that doesnt really matter but w/e) etc.. I really have no clue how i got mentioned in this tread. Sure, i like the nice words just as much as anyone else mentioned for something like this. But, my mods are not vanilla. This is just like that time there was this ridiclously impossible rumour that started in one of those Herd Coop servers that i made the UMSSpaceMarine mod..

EDIT: Yea, another thing, i don't know who told you this but, i have never made any UT2003 mods before. I wish i could :-?

Wow, thanks for all the great feedback, everyone! The basic premise of each of the five criterion listed is to make Unreal coop games easy for beginner players to start and stop a game with any friend they choose, and for continuity between play sessions. This means that a coop game will be as similar to the single player version of Unreal Gold.

[]KAOS[]Casey: according to Zombie in the readme for DZMapM, it is a "more thought out and featured version than my own personalized server mutator :-). However, I realize that Joss and }TCP{Wolf already have great mutators out that can do a lot of what mine does." It is unclear if it works with the RTNP pack, as Zombie lists compatibility with "Unreal 1." I haven't seen either of the two server mutator engines by Joss and }TCP{Wolf. I'm not sure which one of }TCP{Wolf's projects is an equivalent engine to DZMapM. The engine is basically a fall-back in case a coop match encounters a glitch; it allows the server admin to control things like map changes and item summons. DZMapM is controlled via the server's command console, so it takes a intermediate level of skill to -operate. Especially useful are the fixes to map change spots in coop mode.

The idea behind saving and loading on client and server, as well as quicksaves and quickloads is to give synchronization and decentralization to coop mode. The only difference in quicksaves and quickloads from normal saving is that normal saving allows multiple discrete saves, and quicksaves and quickloads allow users to "just press one key and its saved, next time overwritten." Synchronization means that if the client makes a mistake and wants to load, they don't need to notify the server. Decentralization means game progress saved on the client's machine can be used to host the game. This would be useful if the server computer is offline, and also if the client wants to continue the walkthru with a different friend. At any rate, client saves are not currently supported unless it is through a mod.

xCoop "can be considered vanilla for the most part, except adding crouch collision shrinking." Where can I get it?

Joss made a guide for the Unrealshare.coopgame mode. It takes intermediate skill to run, as it requires familiarity with the unreal.ini file and use of command prompts. Even though it is the official Unreal coop mode, it doesn't meets the first the five coop criterion. It is basically the same as if a server ran a DM game. Due to problems with UPak (which contains data for RTNP), it sounds like RTNP might not be supported. Is it?

Smirftsch: the more I hear about 227g, the more I look forward to it. #3 and #4 would simply take the same data that goes into an SP save and makes a second entry for the second player, including that player's inventory and spawn point. The client would automatically be sent a copy of the save by the server machine; the server would be sent a copy if the client makes a save.  #5 is already partially supported, as players can currently change skins and names with recognition by the server. You can change your name from "Name 1" to "Name 2" and the server will recognize your name as "Name 2." Spawn locations, weapons, and inventory should not be customized from session to session, and instead should be consistent. In the current incarnation, players start out with a level 1 Dispersion pistol with no other weapons, and certain weapons will continue to respawn in the same place, allowing for infinite refills of the weapon by the two players. While this does allow players to avoid fighting over who gets ammo, it does lead to a mode less equivalent to the SP mode. Maybe the best compromise would be two copies of the weapon only, able to be picked up once by each player.

"once the map is played through, the map is over." This makes sense if you are playing the map through in one session, and it also mirrors the SP fairly well. Where it falls through is if two players have a limited time window in which to play a map. A typical map on the highest difficulty setting can take an hour or longer to finish. It does not mirror the flexibility of starting and stopping that the SP mode has. I hope I've explained the goals of the criterion better.

srbassalot over at Hyper.nl created a coop conversion of RTNP. It is apparently a vanilla coop walkthru of RTNP only. Unfortunately, it is built around an old patch, the 225 patch, so there are plenty of features missing from it. The wiki for the 227 patch states that "Sorry, but due to legal issues Unreal 227 does currently not support RTNP (yet)." Does this potentially mean that no patch for RTNP beyond 225 will be forthcoming?

In the current incarnation, players start out with a level 1 Dispersion pistol with no other weapons, and certain weapons will continue to respawn in the same place, allowing for infinite refills of the weapon by the two players. While this does allow players to avoid fighting over who gets ammo, it does lead to a mode less equivalent to the SP mode. Maybe the best compromise would be two copies of the weapon only, able to be picked up once by each player.

The wiki for the 227 patch states that "Sorry, but due to legal issues Unreal 227 does currently not support RTNP (yet)." Does this potentially mean that no patch for RTNP beyond 225 will be forthcoming?

There is a mod here somewhere which makes Co-op just like SP, that is, all items always respawn but you can only pick each of them once. That eliminates any fighting and makes ammo matter.

No, there will be a 227 patch for RTNP, but first all the bugs in Unreal 1 need to be fixed, or else it would be twice the work to fix them in both patches. It will come soon, though.

The wiki for the 227 patch states that "Sorry, but due to legal issues Unreal 227 does currently not support RTNP (yet)." Does this potentially mean that no patch for RTNP beyond 225 will be forthcoming?

no no, 227g will have 2 versions, one for classic and one for UGold/Anthology version with RTNP included. Besides current 227f works fine with the upak conversion for 225 (which is without the dll bindings) but I can't offer that of course with 227 due to my contract with EPIC.

Ah, here's the mutator I was talking about:
http://www.oldunreal.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/ ... 439562/0#0

You all forgot about Roland's RTNP conversion which is more close to original without extra stuff:

http://www.rolandunreal.ismywebsite.com/unreal/rtnp.htm

I'm not sure which one of }TCP{Wolf's projects is an equivalent engine to DZMapM.

There are no direct equivalents on my side to any existing "coop" specific mods. Firstly I never was a coop dedicated modder - though I do appreciate the game mode - and second I am not in the habit of recreating existing code (why make another mod if one already exists that does the job just fine?).

However, lots of codes went back and forth years ago between me and others - also coop programmers. If you could compare sources sometimes you'd probably be stumbling over stuff that looked familiar in another mod as well (see credits of the mods!). Also, derivative work was more pronounced back then - example: Winged Unicorn made a Pawn Mutator for coop. The general mutation idea was based off WMutate for DM. It was later changed so drastically though that little similarity remained. More often than not, the development history of mods is forgotten.

A lot of fixes certainly came from Zombie which went into numerous other peoples' mods ("PawnGone"...), many other fixes are probably based off Shambler's work, and occasionally I may have come up with something reusable as well (how many people have studied the [in retrospect not very well] rewritten string-sockets parser from ServerDog ).

For bored people, later UTeamFix releases do have a coop mode too, but it was written for DM/TDM admins who only occasionally run coop and just don't want to bother with another mod for the few days they switch to coop. It's not really vanilla though, lol

As for RTNP in particular, in its original form it is quite a lot more bothersome than normal Unreal and definitely requires fixing. Whether fixing the maps directly, or creating a mod such as DZMapM to fix problems during runtime is the better approach is a matter of opinion. From a software design point of view, coop game mods themselves should be completely map-neutral, and map specific mods should be written in a reusable manner (mutator, serveractor, open API...).

I do agree with the majority here about saving/reloading server games: a lot more trouble than worth.

xCoop is available for download here. It includes more flexible mutator features than the official UnrealShare.CoopGame mode. It is intended for Unreal 1 only. xCoop is active in updating recently, with an update released 8.19.10. It is apparently vanilla, with the exception of crouch collision shrinking (which sounds like a good thing anyway).

Aside from xCoop, the closest to the five criterion so far has been the official UnrealShare.CoopGame with DzMapM for problems during runtime, and the OPPM mutator for single weapon pickup per person (with the addition of configuration changes to support items as well). By WoM only, the best RTNP coop are from srbassalot and from Roland. I don't know which one is better yet.

... are non vanilla! lol

This is stupid question but what is vanilla?? (in script/mods/maps etc).
Google couldn't tell me.
lol not this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanilla