DynaMO: Breathe New Life into Old Maps

Hey server ops and single-player Quakers... Ever wondered, "if only the weapons and health and ammo weren't always in the same place?" Know how when you first played Q2, you didn't know what monster you were going to run into next? Ever wanted to have just a supershotgun-only deathmatch?

Hey mappers... Ever wanted to really be able to visualize where you were putting all your entities? Ever set your targetname wrong and have to recompile? Ever discovered just one *tiny* weapon balance problem after it took 12 days for your map to be VISed?

Well, find out for yourself... With DynaMO. Formerly codenamed Project Plumber, the Dynamic Map Organizer gives server operators and mappers unprecedented, easy control over the placement and organization of Q2 entities such as weapons, ammo, health, and powerups, all without having to recompile maps or using a map editor. On top of all that, it's a server-side-only mod. What can DynaMO do?

Chicks and Brains: On The Edge

Check out this picture. Notice anything different about it? How about the fact that there are monsters in a single-player game that's happening on the Q2DM1 level?

The chicks, brains, tanks, and lasers were all added to the Q2DM1 map. Rich Wills' "Chick Patrol" script, the first complete DynaMO script in existence, uses about 25 commands to accomplish this task. While Rich edited the script manually, he could also have used the walkthrough editor to more easily place many of his items.

DynaMO is Your Dynamic Map Organizer

Julie may be Your Cruise Director, and Gopher may be Your Yeoman Purcer and Isaac may be Your Bartender, but none of them can act as Your Dynamic Map Organizer like DynaMO can. Plus, there is a 100% guarantee that it comes with no bad 70's music or has-been actors.

Add, Remove, or Replace your weapons, ammo, health, powerups, teleporters, even your info_nulls if you know what they are.
Switch your entities around. Toss 'em all in a bin, shuffle 'em, then see where they pop up. Randomness guarantees you'll never see the same map twice.
Group your entities together for easier management.
Change spawnflags, angles, and other attributes of entities. Want to tone down that laser strength a bit? No prob. Almost all entities and attributes are supported. (Sorry Charlie, no worldspawn.)
Convert deathmatch maps to single player or coop maps, and vice versa.
See your changes as you make them with DynaMO's walkthrough editor.
Share your best scripts with your friends.
The source code will also be made available for inclusion into your favorite mods, assuming of course that your favorite mod authors are willing to do it.

DIESEL

DynaMO's Interpreted, Easily Scripted Entity Language, called DIESEL, makes all this cool stuff possible - and more. The distribution includes a DIESEL script which converts the Q2DM1 level to a single player level, complete with monsters, a laser, etc., just like in the picture above.

The People Speak

"The thing is awesome! ;-) And you can quote me on that. I can hardly wait to implement it within ServerConfigMOD." - Patrick Stepp
"THIS MOD IS COOL." - Rich Wills, mapper extraordinaire, after writing the first real DIESEL script. Rarely prone to capitalization.
"WOW!!" - SteQve, after seeing what Rich did. Rarely says "wow" since his collegiate days of herbal indiscretions.
"WOW. I actually bust into shoolgirl-y giggles" - drw, dedicated beta tester.
"Release it release it!" - X, visionary.
"DynaMO: The next VWEP? Maybe." - anonymous

OK, that last quote was mine. I just want it on record that I believe VERY strongly in this mod, with an almost unhealthy and dangerously unbalanced zeal.

DynaMO 2.0 Preview Demos

For those of you who know what DynaMO is, DynaMO 2.0 will be released before 12/25/98, with a nearly full-blown programming language. But in the meantime, you'll want to check out the new demos showing off DynaMO's latest capabilities, including but not limited to:

scripted entity movement (e.g. to move a weapon around the map)
event scheduling (e.g., perform a weapon switch every 2 minutes)
entity groups (group your entities together)
better querying capabilities
ability to reference spawn flags by name instead of number
and an extension to DIESEL to make it a full-blown programming language with:
- subroutines
- loops
- variables
- comparison operators (equal, less than, etc.)

Not sure what all this means? The demos will show you.

Demo Instructions

Download dyndemos.zip
Unzip in your quake2\baseq2\demos folder. (Create the demos folder if you have to.)
Start up Quake 2.
In your console, type: map dyn1.dm2
After the demo, do the same for the other 3 demos:
- map dyn2.dm2
- map dyn3.dm2
- map dyn4.dm2

Here's a description of each demo. It makes sense to go through them in order, but dyn3.dm2 and dyn4.dm2 are the coolest if you're impatient.

dyn1.dm2 shows weapon replacement, spawning a new Quad, and moving the Quad all over the place... Q2DM1 map.
dyn2.dm2 shows a mode where only one kind of weapon is in the map at one time; it switches the weapon every 10 seconds. E.g., first it's all rocket launchers, then all railguns... on Q2DM2.
dyn3.dm2 Has to be seen to be believed. Incomplete at this moment, but it's a whole new mod almost - entirely coded in DIESEL. On the security map. The title of this script is "Laser Jump"
dyn4.dm2 Me, using God mode, playing Rich Wills' *Chick Parade* script - i.e., single player on q2dm1!!

OK, So Download it Already

Well, OK! Sorry, it's Win95 only for now, but that will change in the near future.

Go back to the No Frills page

This page has been accessed times. It was created on 11/7/98 and updated 12/13/98.