MiniMTL 233a2

Previous latest MiniMTL version 233a1 caused occasional server crashes due to players time dilatation being too high. I have fixed this by implying maximal time dilatation. Server hosters should use latest version - 233a2, which can be obtained here. All other files are unchanged for now.

Urgent fix for server hosters

All server hosters running version 232, please use version 233 .u to get rid of server side log spamming bug.

You can download v233 .u file here.

Note, this is not official release, but a quick fix which will be included in next release. You will have to configure miniMTL.ini to version 233 manually.

Version 232 is out

Version 232 with following features has been released:

- added option to disallow behindview playing
- added option to force white crosshair on enemy players
- added option to disable augmentation/pickup notifications
- added CBPTeam and CBPDeathmatch game types
- SpeedFix disabled by default
- current time displayed on scoreboard

You can download it here.

If you are player, then read on. You can configure your User.ini whether to display Augmentation messages (turned on/off) and pickup messages. These messages are completely useless for experienced players and only garbage message log. To disable them, in User.ini add:

[MiniMTL232.miniMTLPlayer]
bDisplayAugMessages=False
bDisplayPickupMessages=False

MiniMTL version 230 is here

Download from HERE.

Speedups fixed

For past few months or even years, DXMP has been struggling with player side game speed-ups that were breaking gameplay not only for instigating players, but also other players (fast fire rates bugs and others).

Today, I have fixed this issue with idea of Poor (credits to him for it). How it works? Player calls server every second. If this call is too fast, server orders player to reduce TimeDilation property in Level actor, which affects speed of gameplay on player.

Note: Gameplay for certain elements might be altered. Report your likes & dislikes here.
Note 2: There is one bug; if time gets dilated too low, it is never fixed and to fix it, you need to manually rejoin server. Still looking into this, how to fix. But so far, testings have shown that using capped FPS will give you very good gameplay with no issues.
Note 3: Time Dilation is changed in small steps, so when joining the server, be patient - your game speed will be normalized over some time (seconds).
Note 4: Improved SpeedFix code. There should be no issues. Speedup detection is almost instant - should block cheaters using external tools for speedups.

MiniMTL228

Includes bug fixes from version 227. Go to download page to download it.

MiniMTL227 is here

Features are following:

• Vision Augmentation is properly visible in spectator mode (1st person)
• Inventory is visible in spectator mode (1st person)
• Added moderator mode with configurable password. Supported commands:
      * modlogin <password>
      * modlogout
      * kick <id>
      * tempban <id>
      * swap <id>
      * mutate nextmap
    Tempban command is available for admins too (it bans player for 1 map)
    Mutate nextmap works when MMNextMap mutator is active and properly configured
• MMNextMap mutator has option to configure ScoreToWin and VictoryCondition for each map
• fixed "LAM throwing in barrel" instigator bug
• lagometer feature (command: "lagometer 1" to enable)
• various features to help new players
• added bColoredTalkMessages player option

You can download it here.

Next version features

Several noticeable features of upcoming version are following:

1. When bHelpMessages is turned on (in Player Setup), each weapon has governing skill displayed, so beginners know exactly which skills to purchase to improve their chosen weapons.
2. When bHelpMessages is turned on (in Player Setup) and server has configured bDisplaySkillMessageForever to true, then "Skills Available" message is displayed very big and centered in the middle of the screen after 10 seconds of not entering skills menu.
3. Added lagometer. To turn it on, write in console: "lagometer 1". To turn it off, write: "lagometer 0". Green bars are ping measured, blue is servers performance (time between ticks), red is packet loss. For best gaming performance, green should be as low as possible (and steady), blue should be steady (with no high blue bars in the middle) and there should be no red bars.

MiniMTL226 available

 Features & improvements:

• fixed spectator switch bug allowing to play as spectator
• added 2 test gametypes:
      * CBPAdvTeam
      * CBPAdvDM
      these gametypes are same as ATDM and ADM, but have
      certain weapons changed a bit to balance the game
• added "CustomRecord" console command to perform demo recording with timestamp inside filename
• added bPerformZoomOnRightClick user side flag
• improved MMNextMap mutator 
• when MMNextMap mutator is used, next map is displayed on end screen
• added bReflectiveDamage option (to get rid of teamkillers)
• fixed grenades disappear bug

Download HERE.

Demo recording improvement

There has been request to improve demo recording, that would automatically add timestamp to demo file and get rid of necessity to write file name each time you wish to record demo.

With simple console command "customrecord", previous recording is stopped and new one started with current date and time implemented into demo file name.

Tip: bind command "customrecord" to a key and you will be able to record easily by just pressing a single key.

This feature will be available in miniMTL226.

Performance improvements

The upcoming MiniMTL will mainly focus on performance improvements.

There are 2 categories:

* Network performance improvements (lower servers CPU utilization, less lag, less bandwidth consumption)

* Client performance improvements (higher FPS in battles)

Network performance improvements

DXMP was very badly scripted. Certain guidelines about network replication were not followed. As a result, DXMP since ever has problems with servers CPU utilization, preventing it from hosting many players. Detailed analysis of scripted classes used in DXMP has shown  that there were following (critical mistakes) being done:

* BloodDrops, BloodSpurts, FleshFragments, ShellCasings, Tracers and so on all being spawned on SERVER side and then replicated to all relevant players. All mentioned actors are not gameplay important - are only visual effects and therefore SHOULD be always spawned only on clients. The server should perform check to see to which clients visual effects are important and then instruct selected clients to perform visual effects.

* All inventory items have bAlwaysRelevant set to true. There are many "pickups" in DXMP (all weapons inside weapons racks, medkits, skilled tools, additional ammo, grenades); due to bAlwaysRelevant=true these pickups are constantly being replicated to all players regardless if being near the player or not. The proper way to solve this is to set bAlwaysRelevant to false once the map loads up with all inventory actors inside. The result is very good - about 50% less replicated actors per player (less opened channels).

* For many actors, NetUpdateFrequency was never set and are using default value of 100.0. That value is recommended to use only for actors like Pawns. Reducing NetUpdateFrequency for certain actors results in lower CPU consumption on server side. This improvement will be included in one of later MiniMTL mods, because it still needs testings.

*  There are skills actors and augmentations actors. These are not needed at all, because every aspect of gameplay can be handled inside SkillManager and AugmentationManager actors, thus reducing number of replicated actors per player by ~30.

Client performance improvements

All applied network performance improvements will have direct and indirect effect on players performance. Less replicated actors can slightly reduce CPU load for networking on clients. Most important added feature is player's decision which visual effects should be spawned. This is now fully possible, since player has full authority over visual effects actors. In User.ini config, there are following variables:

* bSpawnBlood

* bSpawnTracers

* bSpawnFlesh

* bSpawnShellCasings

* bSpawnOtherVisualEffects

Setting all above to false should significantly improve your frame rate in battles. This would work only on servers running MiniMTL225 or higher.

MiniMTL224 is here

Following improvements:
- fixed shuriken bug
- fixed bug in CTF
- fixed join failed bug (not sure)
- fixed bugs with EMP and Gas grenade
- added SpawnPoint (tag: 'Spectator') recognition for spectators starting point

You can create maps now where you define where spectators start.
Just put SpawnPoint somewhere in map and set it's tag to: 'Spectator'

You can download MiniMTL224 here:
DXHOSTING.NET

MiniMTL222

Improvements are following:
- Console checker class is now fully protected
- Added option whether to force players netspeed
- Fixed known bugs from v220
- Increase NetPriority of the flags to fix flag location bug (but was not fixed)
- Increase flag retake time (to 60 sec) to avoid dropflag abuse
- In CTF game, spectators have to wait for respawn interval to join in to avoid respawn abuse
- Added MMNextMap mutator (selects which map to play according to count of players currently in server)

Download here:
DXHOSTING.NET

Bug fixes & info for mappers

There has been first few bugs reported, which I already fixed. Expect MiniMTL222 soon to arrive.

I would also like to share some info on how to do CTF maps for mod. Mod has default support only for stock maps and would crash the server if non-suitable map is loaded in CTF mode.

First of all, you should follow the rule of naming the map: DXMP_CTF_MapNameGoesHere.

Secondly, place 2 actors inside the map (mark where flags are). Actor class must be "SpawnPoint". Then configure each one:
- set Tag to "CTFFLAG"
- set ownerTeam to "0" for UNATCO flag and "1" for NSF flag

If you do not place these 2 SpawnPoints with exact configuration, server would crash and you can check server.log to find out why.

There is another important thing related to Spectator mode. All spectators are started at location 0,0,0 with rotation 0,0,0. If you would like to show some good part of the map to spectators when map is loaded, then you should consider this. I will perhaps add SpawnPoint even for that once in future where you could then configure location and rotation of spectators starting points.

MiniMTL220 is out

MiniMTL220 is ready. Lately, I have been working on weapon fixes (preventing fast fire bug and firing while not having weapon in hand). 7 most used weapons are fixed (some rarely used one are not in this release yet, but will be in next). Also the GPF bug in join menu screen should not be happening anymore.

Following game types are available from this version on:
    * miniMTL220.miniMTLDeathmatch
    * miniMTL220.miniMTLAdvDM
    * miniMTL220.miniMTLBasicDM
    * miniMTL220.miniMTLTeam
    * miniMTL220.miniMTLBasicTeam
    * miniMTL220.miniMTLAdvTeam
    * miniMTL220.miniMTLCTF
    * miniMTL220.miniMTLAdvCTF
    * miniMTL220.miniMTLBasicCTF


Only dedicated server has been tested to work! To start server using one of the above miniMTL220 gametypes, you need to add/replace "?Game=miniMTL220.XXXX..." to the command line of your server (but I guess you already know that).

Also, all important stuff is saved into MiniMTL.ini file (use that to modify instead of DeusEx.ini).

You can download the mod from one of the links below:
 DXHOSTING.NET

Capture The Flag game type

I have implemented CTF gametype into MiniMTL. That means 3 more game types are available to play:

• miniMTLCTF
• miniMTLAdvCTF
• miniMTLBasicCTF

Similar to TDM gametypes, in miniMTLCTF you can customize all following:

• SkillsPerCapture
• SkillsPerScore
• SkillsPerReturn
• AugsPerCapture
• AugsPerScore
• AugsPerReturn
• TeamSkillsPerCapture
• TeamSkillsPerScore
• TeamSkillsPerReturn
• TeamAugsPerCapture
• TeamAugsPerScore
• TeamAugsPerReturn

Deathmatch ready

Spectator mode is now compatible with Deathmatch game type. There were also some bugs fixed, one of the most important ones is medkit GPF bugfix.

New servers with MiniMTL215 online!

That's right! There are 2 servers equipped with MiniMTL215 beta version. One is THC ATDM server and another one is BEGINNERS ONLY (which you can monitor on the right - sidebar).

And here is one screenshot out of the game (camping place in map DXMP_DamnationAlley):

Spectating augs, skills and health

When spectating in first person view, you can now see augmentations (available and turned on), skills (by opening/closing menu with your favorite skill key) and player's health (including bio energy level). All displays are normal like if you are playing on your own.

Seeing player names

Latest improvement is seeing player names when spectating in free mode. Just check following pictures:

Now, it is time to show augmentations and skills :)