Mutators for Alien Swarm

[lightfoot]

Be greeted, marine. You have arrived at the very best place to look for info about

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There is this old document. But it seems to be dead, it doesn't get updated anymore.

So here is another attempt at a complete mutators list. Tell me if I forgot anything. Preferably by writing me a personal message. I will update this list if there is any news.

Links to all the respective threads are provided.

You can download most of the mutators mentioned here at the IAF Database. EDIT: IAF database is dead, for now. Most of the stuff I talk about is still at www.alienswarm.de
If you are interested in anyhing not availiable there, you may think about posting here.

If you absolutely can't find a certain mutator as regular download, just connect to a server running it. Your server browser will show what mutator configs run where.
The resources used will be downloaded to your cache. You can (and should) retrieve 'em from there, see post nr. 4 as to why and how.

See at the and of this post for a small 'How to activate mutators' instruction.

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The List:

- I am glad to announce the Options Mutator. A Space Engineers production. It does a lot of things, too numerous to list up here. So may just this be said: it bundles (and improves) quite a bunch of the following. Consult the documentation to know more.

-The Custom Campaign Mutator!!! -- allows for the creation of Custom Campaigns from any maps. This great mutator is built into Alien Swarm since 1.3. On most servers it allows bringing custom Telic and EFR stuff to all maps and campaigns (including Sigma and Ortega, if you vote the maps of those as a CC).
The CC-mutator also enables you to build predefined custom campaigns, consult this document for instructions how.
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-Pestcontrol's Mutators! -- reserved slots, fixed voice communication, and more.

-The Alien Swarm deathmatch mutator! BigD coded it long ago. Obsolete now, since an improved version is included in the MutAoOptions. The original just ends the mission as completed, as soon as there is only one player left. If a server runs it, it will automagically work on DM-maps.

-BiG D's mutator pack! Including the 'more marines' mutator, allowing you to play up to 8 marines in single player mode. And a 'No-FF-mutator', that will work in single player mode. And a 'Stick-together-mutator'. And other funny stuff. Mostly obsolete now, when using the MutAoOptions.

-Uarch coded a SlotSwap mutator, giving you two extra slots and one normal. It had problems with some telic equip, if I remember right. (EDIT: Uarch posted links for his SlotSwap mutator and other interesting projects, see post nr. 2 right after this. But alas, the links seem to be nonfunctional now. I got my hands on the uaamuts.u, giving the admin summoning powers, but have not yet received that TrailOfDewm and others mentioned there. I don't have those mutators and I don't know who has.)

-The Telic mutator, which actually is a bundle. Adds support for quite a bunch of nice extra stuff. Was written for (and comes with) the Telic campaign originally, but works nice on any map. It is especially popular for adding the extra stims not taking equipment slots. Most of the servers run this mutator, or even the EFR mutator including it. Consult the Telic Campaign manual for detailed information.

-The UTWeapons mutator! This one is hidden in the telic bundle. With it you can use all standard UT2K4 weapons in AlienSwarm, and would even be able to use (external) custom UT2k4 weps. I never saw it documented anywhere, but then X told me about it and after some looking I found it in the Ed's actor tree. It is mentioned in the Telic credits page at campaign end. EDIT: as a result of some research, more sick uses for this mutator are described in post nr. 3, down there.
Load it with eg. 'open Ao-TE-Underneath.ut2?mutator=AoTelicBeta.UtMut'. Once in the map, console-type 'loaded', to get you all the UT weps by cheating. Drop all your AS stuff and switch through your shiny UT weaponry by using your 'nextweapon' and 'previousweapon' keys (I think it is the scroll wheel by default)

Likewise hidden in the Telic bundle is the 'Reduced Friendly fire mutator', AoTelicBeta.AltFF. Using it, it should be possible to scale the damage marines take from friendly fire. An improved version of this is included in MutAoOptions.

-Butters' Infested2K4 mutator! It adds support for automatical and map-optimised camera tweaking, in the beautiful AlienSwarm:Infested style. This mutator produces some great views on every map, and a really nice playing experience on some (especially Telic and EFR). Just try one of the examples in the following HowTo.

-The Unlox mutator! Made by Butters, with a fix by NoData. Unlocking the Hardcore, Carnage and Uber modes in campaign missions. Obsolete since MutAoOptions.

-The EFR mutator! Donator's work, invented for and coming with the Escape from Rhea campaign. Adds even more nice equipment and stuff, though you could argue that things like the AKIRA warbot are out of balance.
If you run this, you don't have to worry about the telic mutator, it will be called without further fuss.

-Then, the RiftCode. Even more weapons. Don himself called this unfinished, and it sure contains a good handful of glitches. It also tends to crash the server at times, eg. if the GLRMod clustergrenades are used extensively.
I think I am not alone with feeling that this weaponry is altogether way too sci-fi. Also, it seems to disturb the balance quite a bit.
Take this as experimental. Making these weapons selectable from the briefing room sure is a great way to test stuff. And with a nice map, included into a story, some of the Rift guns could be nice as extra pickups on maps, much like in Daylight. But apart from the fascination coming with new stuff (which wears off after a while) it isn't so very good for the gameplay.

Another word about the Telic/EFR/Rift stuff. You could say that these are hierarchical. The EFRmut will call the Telic mutator automatically. So there is no good reason to run both at once. The RiftCode mutator includes both the others.
The AoOptionMut running will call all of these (Telic/EFR/Rift) into action.
'Includes' or 'calls' should be read as 'needs to be installed, but not to be activated'.
In other words: if you do run two or three of these together, then you have misconfigured your game/server. Most things will run fine still, but there may be irritating results. Like eg. more extra stims
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Some of those mutators mentioned here have alpha status only, I think. Means: they work, but are not free of glitches. Some have inherent problems.

Even if there is no bug or incompatibility, there may be small problems.

Like eg. the old maps with equipment restrictions. DM-maps mostly, but others too.
Those have been mapped before Telic and EFR stuff was invented, so having this mutators on when playing them will result in equipment availaible at briefing that the mapper would have backlisted, if he had known it. This problem will re-appear over and over again, with every weapon invented. Until someone codes a whitelist equipment actor.
(This problem is reduced somewhat when using the AoOptionsMut, giving the players complete control over the allowed weaponry)
Likewise, the Infested mutator is a great work, but only some maps play good with just the auto function, or have the camera cylinders that optimise the camera tilting. The rest of the maps would need some camera cylinder work to be really enjoyable. I would call this an inherited problem, it is definitely not a coding fault. Butters even provided tools for easy updates of old maps, should you want to run them with the different angle, or add something to the Infested2K4 project.

I didn't test all of the above. So I would be glad about comments. Things that work and things that don't. And additions. And corrections, of course.

I wouldn't expect all this mutators to be 100% cross-compatible. Some surely aren't, without further modding, like UTweapons and Infested2K4.
For the technically interested folks: the reason is that these both use their own child of the AoPlayer class.

About other combinations, only trying will help.
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How to use:

Activating a mutator can be done in different ways. You can normally start Alien Swarm, and type a command in the shape of 'open Ao-AnAlienSwarmMap.ut2?mutator=Package.Mutatorclass' at the console.

You wouldnt want to type that or an even more complex line every time, but there is better methods.

First, you can, as always, bind such a long command to a key, with 'set input <key> <command>'

As with the StartTelicCampaign.bat, you can as well build small .txt type files and save them under names like My_Favourite_Map_My_Favourite_Mutator.bat (very uncool name, but you see what I mean)

You could have several of those small start-bats in your Alien Swarm folder. Examples coming:

Sulphure.bat: (will start it single mission, Telic mutator on)

start ..\System\ut2004.exe AO-Sulphure-SE.ut2?Mutator=AoTelicBeta.MutTelic -mod=AlienSwarm

Infested_Uplink.bat:

start ..\System\ut2004.exe AO-Uplink?Mutator=Infested2K4.MutInfested -mod=AlienSwarm

It even works to row up several ?mutator=... flags in one line, so you can have several mutators active at the same time.
Separate the two or more Package.Mutatorclass arguments with a comma and no space inbetween.

This example will make you play Tunnel with the Telic and Infested mutators at once:

Infested_Tunnel.bat:

start ..\System\ut2004.exe AO-Te-Tunnel?Mutator=AoTelicBeta.MutTelic,Infested2K4.MutInfested -mod=AlienSwarm

Should work in a campaign as well. Like here:

Start_8Marines_EFRCamp.bat:

start ..\System\ut2004.exe AOL-TelicCampaignLobby.ut2?Game=AoCustCamp.AoCCLobbyGameInfo?CustCampStr=AoEFRCamp.AoCCEFRCampaignInfo?CampaignSlot=12?NewGame=Yes?SlotName=EscapeFromRhea?CampaignType=Custom?Mutator=bigDMuts.MutMoreMarines,AoEFRCode.MutEFR -mod=AlienSwarm

There would, in principle, even be the possibility of stuffing a whole mutator package into a map, using the myLevel. Of course it may blow up the map size, but it could be a 'standalone mut(il)ated map' then. This would be what they call an 'embedded mutator'. Possible, but not easy to do. Needs a careful and systematic myLeveling procedure, and some extra code to call the mutator into action, and check for several instances. Not easy. The myLevel pseudopackage is known to have strange issues.

The main purpose of this would be to activate a mutator on a server, as a normal player, ie. without needing an admin to do it. There could be another way to do a similar thing: a custom lobby. People could vote into that lobby, and thereby activate a certain mutator configuration. From there, folks could now vote this or that map or even campaign, and again the mutator would stay active. Again, this is possible, but not easy.

[UArchitect]

you forgot some!

BadIdeas: - http://uarch.dyndns.org/muts/aobadideas_v1.zip

badideas is a collection of..well..random (be it good or bad) mutator ideas, most of which brew in the depths of irc, often with a little help from BiG_D (you aren't escaping this one.)

BadIdeas: DewmTrail v1.0
BadIdeas.DewmTrail
use by logging in as admin and typing "mutate dewmtrail on" and "mutate dewmtrail off" mutator auto-deactivates after each map is finished

depending on the marine count, the mutator spawns a t75 at the location of each marine at fixed intervals creating a "trail of dewm"

special care must be taken not to set off this trail...or all dewm will inevitably happen!

this mutator is genuinely a blast on tunnel and reactorcore, a blast..get it?..bwahahaha...anyway yeah, its quite fun on some maps believe it or not!

AoSlotSwap - http://uarch.dyndns.org/muts/aoslotswap.zip
aoslotswap.mutaoslotswap

working link for slotswap mutator, still has the bugs with the telic panel and possibly other small issues

UAAdminMuts - http://uarch.dyndns.org/muts/uaamuts.zip
uaamuts.aouaamuts

use by logging in as admin and using the following commands:

mutate dropbomb <playername>
mutate gibfest <playername>
mutate gib <playername>
mutate infest <playername>
mutate spawn <playername> <package.class>

uaadminmuts is a small admin mutator (no it doesnt have backdoors...well..maybe a few...just kidding) which allows the admin to be a little more imaginative than just slapping bad players and also has a very useful spawn command

have some fun by dropping t75 on their heads, infesting them, gibbing them, and of course...the almighty gib+infest

in addition to destroying those who seek to do evil, you can use this mutator for good! since summon commands are a bit...crappy online, even as an admin this mutator allows you to summon things with ease, and you can even summon them in front of another player

go natural selection on your fellow marines! take the commanding position in your glorious spectator spot and spawn turrets ammo and health in front of your fellow marines to help them survive!...or you can just summon a wave of parasites, its your choice!

[lightfoot]

More mutators

Writing an updating the list made me try some more things.

Here is what I found, in short. I add it here, 'cos the mutators I will talk about here were surely not made with AS in mind...


1. 'Internal' mutators coming with UT2K4

There is a bunch of mutators built into Old Betty. If you want to know exactly what is installed on your machine, and to find out the package and class names, open our Editor, and in the actor class browser, unclick the 'Placeable classes Only' option. Now have a look under ->Actor->Info->Mutator, you will find all the mutators there. Should look like in the left thumbnail pic at the bottom of this post.

Click on a name, and the package name, which you will need for starting the mutator, will be displayed in the Actor tree window title. The right thumbnail shows an example.

Of course, nearly all the mutators there would be quite senseless to run with AlienSwarm .


2. 'External' mutators.

As Unreal is a very mod-friendly game, there is lots of custom stuff out there for UT2004. Some of it MIGHT work in connection with Alien Swarm. You won't know until you try.

Again, if you know the name of a mutator you have installed, you can call it from the command line, or via a small Start.bat.

There would be ways to pass values to the mutator, too. If you don't do that, the mutator will run with default values.


An example: I managed to make the JunkWar mutator run under Alien Swarm. Made by Runestorm, get it here.

That nice mutator was written for normal U2K4, it implements quite a bunch of melee weapons/throwable weapons. If you never did that, go install the JunkWar mutator. Under 2k4 it will have a nice config screen, too.

Now build yourself, for example, a 'Littered_Salvage.bat' with this text:

start ..\System\ut2004.exe AO-Salvage.ut2?Mutator=AoTelicBeta.UTMut,JunkWar.Mut_JunkWar -mod=AlienSwarm

If you start this, you will find yourself being in need of all those Junk now lying around on Salvage, cos all your standard AS weapons will have disappeared! You will need to use what you find. But as you will see, you CAN use those stuff...


What happens here: the JunkWar mut, by default, takes away your normal weapons, and litters the map with Junk items. And the Telic UT mutator makes it possible to use that stuff, even with the respective weapon's alt-fire (right-click!), and without slowing you down to snail pace.


Of course, the Junk doesn't fit right into AlienSwarms inventory system. It can't, until a lot of subclassing and editing would've been done. So there will be no HUD icons or ammo count, you will have to switch weps using the 'nextwep', function, the right-click menu is re-routed to the middle-mouse key, and such.


But: if used like this, the Telic UT mutator can be like a demo mode for custom unreal stuff.

I mean, apart from having fun with things never seen before, you could easily have a look if a certain custom UT weapon would be worth doing a proper porting to Alien Swarm.

[lightfoot]

Getting stuff from the Unreal cache

Most of you will already know this. But as I have set out to make this thread a HowTo, I will shortly mention it.


If you connect to a server with stuff running that you don't have on your local PC, that stuff will get downloaded into your UT2004\Cache folder.

Every file you d/l like this, from a server, will be renamed to something cryptic, like "5D63184C4CF71767A5190F8E804CF7A3-1.uxx"

Problem is, UT erases its cache from time to time (after 30 days by default, the value can be set in the game's .ini, under PurgeCacheDays). Even if not, a re-install will clean the cache. If that happens, you may lose data, forcing you to d/l the same stuff again, at moments when you just want to play.

To prevent that, you just have to rename those files in the cache (preferably to their real names), and move them to their proper destination folders. That way, those files are saved, and availiable for offline play as well.

The real names of everything you ever downloaded from a UT server are logged into your UT2004/Cache/cache.ini, a txt-type file. So, you only need to do a search inside that ini, to retrieve the real name.

This goes for maps, and all other kinds of Unreal recources. If you don't know where a certain file type should go, see here.

You can put all these files into either the respective UT2004 subfolders, or, in most cases, if you rather want to keep AS stuff isolated from vanilla Unreal, into the AlienSwarm subfolders.

If you want to have it all perfect, you also need to delete the respective entries from the cache.ini, after having moved a file.
If you don't do that, you may get errors in your log, like 'Warning: failed at exporting AO BehemothTournament...'

There is programs out there that automatically do the procedure I described here, for you. These are called 'cache extractors' or something similar. Google is your friend.
I for my part prefer to know what happens, and what goes where.

[tchatzi]

Possible trouble

Keep in mind that if you do move these items to your UT2004 folder and they happen to be still under development, you'll most probably get a ``version number mismatch'' when connecting to a server running a different (probably newer) version of the mutator.

Under linux and possibly mac (?) the cache folder lives under .ut2004 directory in your home dir (along with .ini files) and I've never had it erased under my nose. And different versions got properly overwritten during EFR development as far as I can remember.

[BiG_D]

In order to keep this thread useful, the chatter has been removed. Please keep any posts in this thread informative.

If you've got questions about mutators or would like to discuss something, please use another thread. Any such posts in here will be removed.

[Felix]

Options Mutator