Possible minor bug with eng awarness

Every now and then when I boost the shields of some of the higher level players my awareness bar shows that they are full, but I can still boost their shields (noticed by the sound boosting makes)
Does the engineer awareness bar take into account the players actual max shield, or does it max out at 150?
If the later, couldn't this be an issue when the new dc mod is released to the general public and the more extreme servers allow for a much higher levels of the sheilds up ability?
Currently this doesn't really affect the game play on the dc server though.

On a similar note, while playing around with the older dc mod on my server (experimenting with higher ability levels and sub-classing). I noticed that on some waves medics would not get experience from poison attacks from poison queens and bugs. The poison attacks did a significant amount of damage to a player, but the player would not get any healable damage added to their inventory. Was this intentional?
I also do not recommend making a wave of just poison queens...apparently their webs really tax the cpu.
- Greg11

Lots of thoughts there Greg.

greg11 wrote:

Every now and then when I boost the shields of some of the higher level players my awareness bar shows that they are full, but I can still boost their shields (noticed by the sound boosting makes)
Does the engineer awareness bar take into account the players actual max shield, or does it max out at 150?

Correct. For some reason clients are told what the max health is, but not the max shield. So the medic bar will adjust correctly, as it knows what the max is. Unfortunately, your HUD does not know what another person's max shield is, so all I can do is draw to 150. This is not perfect, but would require changes to core UT classes to fix, along with the associated extra network traffic. However, it does highlight who is low in shield, and they are the ones who need you most - so I decided it was worth having the skill even with its flaws.

greg11 wrote:

I noticed that on some waves medics would not get experience from poison attacks from poison queens and bugs. The poison attacks did a significant amount of damage to a player, but the player would not get any healable damage added to their inventory. Was this intentional?

It was not intentional. I will investigate what is causing it. I wonder if poison damage from a poison weapon gives healable damage?

greg11 wrote:

I also do not recommend making a wave of just poison queens...apparently their webs really tax the cpu.

All the nodes on the webs need to be communicated to clients, as the server needs to update their direction and state. So it could be network traffic hitting you rather than just cpu?

Szlat wrote:

so I decided it was worth having the skill even with its flaws.

Fair enough. It also lets the engineers focus on the lower level guys.

Szlat wrote:

It was not intentional. I will investigate what is causing it. I wonder if poison damage from a poison weapon gives healable damage?

I think the problem lies in the DruidPoisonInv class: Code:

PawnOwner.Health -= PoisonDamage;

I don't think HealableDamageGameRules gets to see it as damage.
Maybe a fix would be to use the pawn.TakeDamage function
Or something along that line.

Szlat wrote:

All the nodes on the webs need to be communicated to clients, as the server needs to update their direction and state. So it could be network traffic hitting you rather than just cpu?

I can't remember where I read this, but it had something to do with each node tracks each other...I haven't really done a controlled test...I haven't really played with it much this year to be honest, but I remember cpu load would sit at about 50% with a bunch of titans and warlords (about 25 each), but with just 10 poison queens it would cap at 100% and create bad lag.
Also I played around with the red gnats...if they grow to be bigger than the room or hallway can handle, the server goes nuts too.
Keep in mind my server is a hobby server. 800mhz via epia with <512mb of pc133 memory...nothing powerful.

greg11 wrote:

I think the problem lies in the DruidPoisonInv class: Code:
PawnOwner.Health -= PoisonDamage;
I don't think HealableDamageGameRules gets to see it as damage.
Maybe a fix would be to use the pawn.TakeDamage function

Agreed. The original one from Mysterial used TakeDamage. Druid changed it to take the damage directly off the opponents health - which he must have done for a reason. I would suggest that it was to make the poison weapons more effective against high level monsters, whose high Damage Reduction would reduce the poison damage to 1.
Also, the PoisonQueen is set to take about 35% of your health from a poison swipe. If the monster's DB was taken into account, one poison scratch could end up killing you even at full health - which would be a bit unfair.
Perhaps the best bet would be to see if I can just add the damage to the healabledamage value.

Szlat wrote:

Perhaps the best bet would be to see if I can just add the damage to the healabledamage value.

That would have been my other solution.
I think you will have to do that in the DruidPoisonInv since that is where the damage is calculated. Since you have to make sure that the damage isn't self inflicted couldn't you use the if statement for determining if exp is awarded.Code:

if(Instigator != None && Instigator != PawnOwner.Instigator) //exp only for harming others.

(also, Am I reading this right...It looks like the poison queens are getting exp for poison damage.)

greg11 wrote:

also, Am I reading this right...It looks like the poison queens are getting exp for poison damage.

I'm by no means expert, but maybe that's for when a Medic summons a Poison Queen as a summon? Unless that's dealt with elsewhere..

I think I overlooked the preceding if statement that checks for a controller.