Pickup Charger

 

   

 

 

If you ever mapped or played Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 or Unreal Tournament 3, then you know what Pickup Chargers are. They are just a simple actor, that acts as “inventory centers”, where you can pick up weapons or another type of pickups. They act like as decoration as well, as a pickup charger has always good visuals and even some have particle effects.

 

So, let’s look into a PickupCharger properties, so you can know what you can tweak them and use in your maps:

 

bAutoAlignPickup: This setting tells if the pickup should be either or not aligned with the pickup charger rotation or inclination.

 

BeginDelayTime: This time, in seconds, tells the pickup when it has to spawn after the game start, in this case (by default) 2 seconds after the game start. To spawn the pickup even before the game start, set it to 0.

 

bRotPickup: Tells if the pickup should have bRotatingPickup enabled or not.

 

PickupClass: I wonder what this could be LOL. For the dumb ones, here is where you place the pickup class to spawn.

 

PickupRotOffset: Here you set the initial rotation of the spawned pickup, relative to the pickup charger rotation.

 

PickupRespawnTime: Here you set the pickup respawn time.

 

SpawnOffset: Here you set the initial location of the spawned pickup, relative to the pickup charger location.

 

 

 

 

You can also give cool particle effects, based on models by vertex.

 

bHaveParticles: It’s the global property to say if this pickup charger will have any particle effects or not.

 

bStay: When the pickup is spawned waiting for someone to pick it up, this property says if the particles sould stay or should disappear.

 

ParticlesEffects are where you can add and customize your particles. You can add a maximum of 4 “particle systems”, which I highly not recommend if you want to develop a map to lower end systems.

 

bHaveThisParticle: Basically tells if this system is added or not.

 

bRotating: Look at ParticlesRotationRate under.

 

bSpecialLoop: The particles animation are done in different ways. If True, at the end of the animation the last frame go straight to the first, without any tween time between the 1st and the last frame.

 

ParticlesDrawScale: Sets the particles draw scale, simple as that.

 

ParticlesOffset: Here you set the location of the center of the particles, relative to the pickup charger location.

 

ParticleSpeed: It’s the speed of the animation of the particles. Higher the value, faster animation and particles movement.

 

ParticlesRotation: Here you set the rotation of the center of the particles, relative to the pickup charger rotation.

 

ParticlesRotationRate: If bRotating is set to True, the particles will also be rotating at this rate.

 

ParticleTex: The particle texture.

 

ParticleType: There are several particles animations and movement types you can choose here. But you can set your own particle animation from another vertex model by setting this one to: PT_Custom. For more info about PT_Custom, see VertexAnim and VertexMesh under.

 

PSound: The particles can have an AmbientSound if you like when they are visible.

 

PSoundPitch, PSoundRadius, PSoundVolume: Used with PSound, like AmbientSound: SoundPitch, SoundRadius and SoundVolume.

 

VertexAnim: When PT_Custom is set at ParticleType, this tells which animation should the particle use from the custom vertex model.

 

VertexMesh: When PT_Custom is set at ParticleType, this tells which vertex mesh should the used by the particles (it can be any normal mesh).

 

 

Some particle types

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

 

There’s another important feature of these pickup chargers: triggering functions.

You can use this feature to trigger some events based on the pickup charger state.

 

bSpawnEventOnce: See bSpawnEvent under.

 

bSpawnTriggered: Instead of spawning the pickup based in BeginDelayTime (auto), you can opt to only spawn it when you trigger the pickup charger.

 

bTriggeredMachine: Think about those coke machines for example: you enter a coin and you get your coke. This setting just enables something like that: you trigger and the pickup will appear, and to have the pickup spawn again, you need to trigger it also again.

 

bTriggerToggle: I should have called this one “bSpawnToggle” instead, because it’s very similar to bSpawnTriggered. The difference is that that the first triggering spawns the pickup, and the 2nd destroys it, a typical toggling trigger function.

 

CollectedEvent: If you set this one, everytime that someone picks up the inventory in this pickup charger (weapon or other pickup), this pickup charger will trigger this event.

 

RetriggerWaitTime: Here you can set the time needed (in seconds) to be able to re-trigger the pickup charger. Once triggered the pickup charger won’t be able to be triggered again until this time runs out.

 

SpawnEvent: It’s like the CollectedEvent, but instead of triggering this event when someone picks up inventory, it triggers this event when the inventory (re)spawns. If bSpawnEventOnce is set to True, then SpawnEvent will be triggered only in the first spawn.

 

 

 

 

There are 2 other special settings you can set in the regular pickup charger:

 

bSPMode: Here you can enable Single Player Mode in the pickup chargers. This setting just allows pickups to respawn again in Single Player maps like in normal Unreal Tournament maps.

 

 

bNeverStays: This setting overrides the bWeaponStay and any setting in the game that tries to set bWeaponStay=True in all weapons. It’s used for super weapons such as Redeemer (WarHeadLauncher).

 

bWeaponStay: Just like in a normal weapon, you can set this up in the pickup charger itself. Of course, only used on weapons.

 

 

 

 

Still there’s even another feature in the pickup chargers, called WildCard, but to see that in detail, go to the WildCard section.

 

 

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