DISCLAIMER: I am by no means a professional in the art of coding. Please feel free to flame or troll.

UnrealScript is incredibly versatile, and its also fairly easy to use. The only problem is getting to know all of the different classes that you will have to base your own classes on. I have recently picked up quite an iterest in this language, and in the few days that have now gone by I've also recieved quite a few good tips. As a result of that, I thought I should share it. Keep in mind though that this is really aimed at the newbies of UnrealScript, and the hardcore 1337 übers will probarbly laugh their pants off.

My idea when learning UScript was that I needed something to work up against. Simply playing around and memorizing class layout and content wasn't very productive - and lets face it, it isnt too rewarding either. So I wrote up a small design document for a mod I call "Creature Evolved", which basically is a deathmatch game with different creatures, evolving their abilities through gameplay by nurturing on the other players (gone are the frag count). I started simple by describing two of the creatures and their basic movement abilities. Seeing as I want the creatures to move in completely different ways, it would require a lot of coding and testing. Thats when I got the great suggestion about incorporating it through mutatuors.

For those unfaimiliar with mutators, they are a small piece of code that works with the existing game types. You simply make a mutator, then select to include it before gameplay. My first task is now to make my Goramp monster able to jump extremely high, then make him able to stick onto walls, where he can then take a second jump (or third, for that matter) to any other location on the map. By breaking this single feature up into several "stages", I can then make the jumping code into a mutator, include it before I play and playtest it. No need to make any other gameplay code that might break your new feature, making lots of more code to browse through to find the error. As a newbie UScripter, I found this possibility to increase my productivity greatly.

Bottom line, I would advice new UScript coders to make a small design document, even if the intention isnt to release any mod but to learn the language. Break the features into stages, make mutators of them and when you have enough new code you can start creating your own gametype, GUI and so on... and lots of the code is done already!

As I learn more from exploring UScript, I will throw it all into one large document, so that people that (in the future) are at the same place I am now - a bit lost but with a lot of time and devotion, can easily get down to business without the hassle of decrypting script tutorials aimed at those very same über 1337 guys that wrote them. The current document only holds a bit of OOP info (through examples in java), but it will increase with time. Hope someone might find it useful someday

http://forums.beyondunreal.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=101

Good stuff AC. As a 'newb' to that type of stuff myself, a basics guide like yours will come in handy. I'll look forward to reading you updates to this.

One thing I found immensely helpful when doing US coding for Unreal Tournament (Not 2k3, I don't even own it) was the documents here:

http://unreal.epicgames.com

Especially the US Reference, and the Black Magic document.

I printed them out for easy reference while coding.