	/=======================\
	|	HANDICAPPER	|
	\=======================/
		version 1.01

Author: Jeff McClain (Jhondra)
Email:  jmcclain@micron.net
Date:   01/03/2000


Installation Instructions:
Unzip all files into your UnrealTournament System directory (so if you installed Unreal Tournament in D:/UT, then place all files in D:/UT/system):
	Filename		Where it goes	Description
	Handicap.u		System		Compiled code for the mutator
	Handicap.int		System		Meta-class declaration
	Handicap.txt		Help		this readme


Mutator Description (What it does):
This mutator was developed to give more play balance on a LAN with widely varied experience.  Often I play with friends that have little to no knowledge or play experience with UT (or any FPS for that matter).  It is disheartening to play against veteran players who spend little time doing anything but fragging you the moment you respawn with your naked little body and then gloating...So, this calculates the ratio that you are losing by (versus the overall score) and rewards the losing players with more health, speed, and invisibility.  It slows down the better players and lowers their health, as well as making them more visible and fatter.

Now, this isn't much different than some of the other mutators out there, but what I do, is I included feed back into the equation for handicapping and I think it works quite a bit better.  It keeps it competitive and fair.  Additionally, I included menus for fully customizing the "impact" of each handicap (in other words, maybe you want to only handicap on Health, or maybe you want to handicap heavily on visibility and not as hard on health).  You can also scale the maximum and minimum limits for each category.

All you have to do is pick "mutators" from the Start Practice Match menu, and double click or drag the "Handicapper" mutator over to the right screen.  A new menu should also appear on your Unreal Tournament main menu bar, called "MODS".  Under this, you can fully customize the Handicapper in all 4 areas of:
1) Visibility
2) Health
3) Fatness
4) Speed


Notes:
This mutator works in all modes of Unreal Tournament, and I've tested it out on a server.  Be aware that your score may not necessarily be indicative of how well you are doing as a team (like CTF) and it might not indicate how good you are doing at killing others.  It might also provide undo advantages for one team that can figure out how to exploit a low score (such as invisibility) and then that person could easily steal the flag, but drop it before making the capture for one of his team mates to score with...shrug...use at your own risk.


Credits/Thanks:
Many thanks to Tim Sweeny, Brandon Reinhart a.k.a. GreenMarine (brandon@epicgames.com), Jpb (jpb@planetunreal.com), Squidi (howard@mailer.fsu.edu), Bane (bane@unrealized.com) and planet Unreal (http://www.planetunreal.com) for all of the community development support.  This is my first mutator, and it was a bit confusing, simply due to the lack of any real compiled source with good documentation.
I also spent god knows how much time trying to learn how to use ucc and fix some STUPID warnings in a default properties area simply because UCC didn't like SPACES or TABS between the variable and the equal signs, as well as it didn't like SEMICOLONS in the default prop area...stupid...


Disclaimer/Legal stuff:
Copyrite Jeff McClain, 2000.  Don't use this for commercial/profit purposes without the author's express written consent.  You are free to look at the code and use for learning purposes.


Send all comments, questions, etc. to jmcclain@micron.net

Release History:
v0.90 - The Initial Release without any user configurable menus.  Never publicly released.
v1.00 - Added user menus and tweaked the handicapping calculations.  Improved scale of useable ranges.  Never publicly released.
v1.01 - Managed to put in a few more tweaks to many different game play conditions, tested on server, polished help bar text.  First Public release.

Improvements/Next version:
Make the class more inherited to abstract common code up into the parent.  This should make it easier to add "new" handicap items.  Improve responsiveness to team games.  Try to make it a .umod distribution.


(C) Jeff McClain 2000
