PlanetJailbreak

Bot support makes up a fairly large part of the coding done on Jailbreak. More than just knowing where to go and what to shoot, bots have to appear to behave in sensible ways. Back with Jailbreak III, we had some trouble with bonus pack bot models wanting to run into jail doors. That's a thing of the past, now that in UT2003 all bots use the same AI controller class for their "brains", but this sort of attention to small detail keeps the Jailbreak coders occupied.

Over the last few days I've been looking at bot support for the Release Protection Add-on: have a think about how you'd expect bots to behave while you admire the lovely UT2004 Arena HUD Mychaeel has been working on.

(The answer is: bots shouldn't attack protected players, and a protected bot shouldn't attack anyone. The exception is the case when the Release Protection Add-on options are set to "drop when you inflict damage", and the bot thinks it can win the fight.)

I don't just post news you know. I make unl33t maps, I feed the moose and now and again I do a bit of coding. My latest project is called the Avenger Add-on. It's really an extension of the Berserker Add-on Crokx created: the winner of an arena battle is rewarded with a little something to help him go forth and sow havoc among the enemy players. The Berserker Add-on gave the winner a berserker power-up, but the Avenger Add-on lets you choose in the user options which of the four UT2003 addons to award to arena winners: berserk, boost, speed or invisible.

Meanwhile, Mychaeel has announced that he's done all the work porting Jailbreak to UT2004. From what I gather it's been mostly work on the HUD and the GUI. Here's a shot of half of the new HUD for Jailbreak 2004. If you're really good, I'll post the other half next week.

The final match of our JB3 Tournament took place at 19:30 CET last Sunday, between Team Parole and The Enigma Zone Crew. So the final results for the tournament are:

Gold Medal: The Enigma Zone Crew
Silver Medal: Team Parole
Bronze Medal: ][apitate

Judging from the thread about it on our forum, it's been a great deal of fun for everybody involved. Full details of all the matches are on the Tournament Page.

Mychaeel is currently working on adding zing-bang-whizz functionality to the JBCamera. Some of the latest features will allow players watching Jail executions and Arena battles to have a truly interactive experience. For example, several camera actors can be tied together to form a camera array, and spectating players can then cycle between these with their PrevWeapon/NextWeapon keys.

But this is just the start of it: Camera Controllers affect the movement of the camera actor, allowing it to rotate, sweep, or even track moving players. So when you're down to your last bullet in the arena and your opponent might be around the next corner, remember: you're being watched...