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.