== Unreal and technical vocabulary ==
Crash: Unreal crashes very often compared to other games.
Prepare for some frustration, but once you love it you won't care :P
The error messages are usually not very useful...
Dodge: Hitting a movement key (e.g. RIGHT or FORWARD) twice
(double-click style) will immediately perform a so called dodge-jump
into that direction. It requires lots of training but once you get the
hang of it you won't want to miss it ever again...
Dodge Loss: Packet Loss can disable your dodge, to reenable it
you have to jump successfully ONCE. This is a very strange Unreal bug.
Hardcore Damage: If you have set "bHardCoredamage" in your running
game to "true", all damages will be multiplied with 1.5 - but this will NOT
apply to TEAM games, even if stated otherwise elsewhere it's wrong!
Master Server: This server is not a common Unreal server, it is a
management server which tracks all internet Unreal servers (or other game
servers). Master servers only manage the general presence of game servers,
but no details (because of the sheer mass), so only IP, gameport and some
identification is stored from each server, usually no more (cannot say
this for sure since I am not totally familiar with the GameSpy protocol).
MOD: Short form of "Modification". A MOD is an additional package that
uses the original Unreal game for the purpose of something new. This can be a
simple weapon mod, giving you a gun not available in normal Unreal, or complete
conversions to create totally new games using the Unreal engines (well known
larger mods are: Infiltration, Serpentine, RealCTF, Unreal4Ever).
Mods can be written by anyone, many are of 3rd parties and not by the makers
of the original Unreal game.
Packet Loss: Short "PL" is likely the most evil thing a player can
have in Unreal. Typing "stat net" in the console will show you (among
other thing) your packet loss. When PL occurs, the result is that maneuvers
you perform just get forgotten. E.g. you press fire or press jump and nothing
happens. Generally your dodge will fail very soon too...
Usually even small packetloss between 1% and 5% are already lethal. Everything
above that can make your game unplayable. PL is much more evil than a high
ping :(
Ping: this a network term and is the time a signal needs to travel
from one machine to another, it is usually measured in milliseconds. On a
game server, ping has impact on the quality of gameplay. The moment you
perform a maneuver (e.g. fire a shot) the command to do this maneuver takes
one ping time from your game machine (client) to the server, and only when
it has arrived at the server it will be executed, not before. As a result,
the higher your ping, the longer it takes for you to perform actions.
Also, it takes longer for YOU to see what others are doing. So as a matter
of fact, a low ping player will always have advantages over high ping players
as these players can just react faster...
Excellent pings for Unreal are between 0 and 50, very good pings are
between 50-100. Unreal remains very well playable even between 100 and 150,
but above 150 you will start to notice that your player now really starts
to behave sluggishly. Very good players will still kick some ass even with
high pings, truly skilled players are not totally lost even when put at
such disadvantages. When watching players, you may notice totally different
playing strategies depending on the ping they have, e.g. with a ping of
200, usage of precision guns like the Rifle will be more rare as you will
have to "aim ahead" of your target (guess where it will be in one ping time
and shoot there)...
Replication: is the technical term for network machines exchanging
data. When a value is transferred from one machine to the other, you say
the value is being replicated. For example, the server replicates
all playerscores to all clients, and clients replicate all
movement commands of the players they represent to the server.
Reinstall: Should you ever need to reinstall either your operating
system or Unreal, you should keep your old Unreal installation somewhere.
You can actually use ALL your old files - you could even run Unreal
without installing it at all, if you just keep your old files and double
click on Unreal.exe.
This is very good to know so you never lose your old configuration
(Unreal.ini, User.ini) and all downloaded files etc...
== Back to the [UNREAL REFERENCE] Index ==