UT ModBuild Build System Template

Table of Contents

• 1. Pitch
• 2. Contents
• 3. Building
  • 3.1. Prerequisites
  • 3.2. Build
• 4. How to Apply
  • 4.1. Existing Mod
  • 4.2. New Mod
• 5. Documentation
  • 5.1. Auto-Releases
  • 5.2. Build Configuration
  • 5.3. Versioning
  • 5.4. Template Values
• 6. Background
• 7. Licensing
  • 7.1. Legal Copyright Disclaimer

This is a generic build system for classic Unreal Tournament projects, particularly mods. It lets you, the modder, spend more of your time writing your mod, and less of it dealing with building or releasing it.

May or may not be applicable to other UE1 games, such as Deus Ex, though it has never been tested.

1. Pitch

It is useful for the following reasons:

• Easily building your mod on Linux with a single command!

• Versioning your mod (see Versioning)!

• Having GitHub build your mod for you, and even release it for you if you tag it accordingly, via the Github Actions CI workflow (which includes checking possible compiler errors in your commits); yay for convenience!

There are, however, drawbacks, which can be more insightful than the strengths, ~and an exercise in humility~. See:

• Does not work natively on Windows: you will need WSL, or Cygwin or Msys2, or even a virtual machine or container. This build system is built around Linux, in and out. This does not mean you cannot use it from Windows, but if you want to build locally, it will require an environment that is compatible with what you see in Linux, including Bash. Or, just use CI!

• To me it feels a bit hacky…​ though, sure, that is subjective.

• The CI workflow only works in GitHub. I’m not shilling Microsoft, it’s just the one CI I know how to work with. Adding support for Travis CI, and maybe even GitLab CI, may be considered for the near future, but I wouldn’t hold my breathe if I were you.

• It’s difficult to update ModBuild once you start using it. This should be rectified in the near future. How? Good question.

It was still a hell of a lot of fun to work on, and I sincerely really hope that, if you consider using this for your mod, it helps you have more fun working on it too :)

For more info on the auto-releases, see the [auto-releases] section.

2. Contents

This template includes:

• A very tiny example mod, with a single mutator "My Mutator" that spawns non-aggressive Pupae whenever players take damage;

• A template.int Mustache template for the mod’s .int file demonstrating how to use Mustache, alongside a simple template-options.yml to parametrize it, in this case demonstrating adding mutators to said .int;

• A Makefile that is capable of automatically setting up a v469b build environment pretty much from scratch (if you have an Internet connection);

• A buildconfig.sh for easily changing around values used in both the build process and the CI script, letting you adapt the build system to your mod very quickly;

• A CI workflow that lets GitHub check (for compile errors), build, and even release the mod for you, with a latest-changes.md file you can edit to show up in the release.

3. Building

See this section for building from source.

If you instead intend to use this template on your project, see How to Apply below!

Note	This requires Linux or a Linux-like environment.

3.1. Prerequisites

If you want to build from source, make sure you have the build dependencies beforehand. You most likely already have curl, zip, tar, gzip, bash, and bzip2, as well as GNU make.

Optionally, you may install a Go package named mustache, however if it’s not found on your $PATH already, a pre-compiled binary will be downloaded on first build.

For manually setting it up, you can grab it by installing Go, and then running:

$ go get github.com/cbroglie/mustache/..

3.2. Build

Simply run make. The provided Makefile should automatically take care of downloads, setting up a bare UT tree, and building your mod in it, all for you!

The folder containing the bare UT tree, as well as the output subdr with builds of the mod, can be specified with the BUILD_DIR environment variable. It defaults to ./build.

You can then use DESTDIR=/path/to/my/UnrealTournament make install to install the mod.

4. How to Apply

Using this template depends on whether you’re adapting for an existing mod or making a new one.

4.1. Existing Mod

The mod should have a single Classes folder, within which the UnrealScript (.uc) files lie. This may require renaming an existing classes folder, such as Sources, prior to starting.

1. To begin, checkout this template anywhere. Try to be disambiguative and descriptive; for instance, MyMod-modbuild.

2. Copy the mod’s entire source tree (including Sources, and any .int files) into this template.

3. If applicable, copy the mod’s existing .int file into template.int, replacing any instances of package names in the latter with {{{package}}}-{{{build}}}, just as with the example template.int's mutator list.

4. Edit PACKAGE_NAME at the top of the Makefile accordingly. You’ll only have to do this once.

5. Edit template-options.yml accordingly, if you use any custom options. This template’s example uses a mutators list, but you don’t have to. Most options will come from buildconfig.sh, see the next step;

6. Edit the block of variables in buildconfig.sh to reflect your mod. This should be intuitive and simple enough, but the Build Configuration section gives some explanation for completeness’s sake.

Keep in mind that other

4.2. New Mod

If you’re creating a new mod, you can simply fork this template, edit buildconfig.sh to reflect your new mod, and template.int to change your mod’s .int file. Also edit PACKAGE_NAME at the top of the Makefile accordingly.

Templates can take values from both buildconfig.sh and template-options.yml files, though the value {{package}} will automatically include the build number suffix (e.g. MyMod-20214201).

Other folders supported by the build system include Models, Textures and Sounds. They’re simply copied when building, unlike Classes, whose contents are formatted.

For more info on template values, see Template Values

5. Documentation

Miscellaneous tidbits of documentation for completeness’s sake.

5.1. Auto-Releases

For your convenience, UT ModBuild includes a CI workflow file; more precisely, a GitHub Actions CI workflow file, which GitHub should pick up on automatically whenever you push a commit to your project on a GitHub repository.

Note	If you just created your repository and you see no CI workflow runs, nor an icon next to the commit name showing its CI status (yellow for pending, green for a pass, red for a CI failure), check the Actions tab in the homepage of your repository.

To make it clear, every commit to the master branch will trigger a CI run. This is useful for checking whether it runs, and will generate a build accordingly.

However, only releases that are tagged for release will actually be released by the CI, and only if they build successfully, of course.

To tag a commit for release, you must Git tag it with a name with the format releases/v$VERSION, where $VERSION is a version string. For instance, releases/v1.0.0. This should be picked up by the CI workflow when you push it to GitHub.

Note	Automatic releases will always be set as drafts. To actually publish them, press Edit, then near the bottom Publish release.

5.2. Build Configuration

Here are the options for buildconfig.sh:

name

Self-explanatory, the human-friendly name of your mod.

package

Self-explanatory, the name of your package internally.

version

Self-explanatory, the human-friendly version string of your mod.

I personally recommend sticking to Semantic Versioning, as does MushMatch, to be able to actually properly express the size of an update by its version number.

See Versioning for more info and guidelines on, well, versioning.

build

A build number, more internal than the version number.

A good build number format, which is used in Mush Match and also the default one here, is YYYYWWBB, where

• YYYY is the year,

• WW is the ISO week number (e.g. Wed., October 20, 2021 will have a WW of 42, but Sun., October 17, 2021 will have a WW of 41, since ISO weeks start on Mondays);

• BB is a suffix to discern from previous builds in the same week.

This format is very similar, for example, to what is used in Minecraft’s snapshot versioning format.

You don’t have to do it this way. Do it however you want if you’d rather! See Versioning for more info and guidelines on it.

debug

Whether this is the full release, or a pre-release. See Versioning on why you’d want this and how to do that.

Mush Match uses this in its Mustache-templated UnrealScript to display the build number within the gametype’s very name only in debug builds:

GameName="Mush Match {{{version}}}{{{namesuffix}}}"

makeint

Whether a .int file should be built for this mod.

This should be True for mutators and most other kinds of mods. If this is a pure package build, e.g. a sub-build of a larger mod, and no .int file is necessary, makeint may be set to 0.

incl_readme

Whether the README.adoc file should be included as a document within Help/ in the packaged up zip file for distribution.

5.3. Versioning

This is more of a general guideline or rule of thumb. UT ModBuild is useful to help you version each package without having to edit source code files manually. You only need to edit the version and build numbers in one place, buildconfig.sh. See [#build-config] on more info how to do that.

The general procedure, is that you edit the build number (and latest-changes.md) with each individual change (even if said change spans multiple commits), and the version number in a separate commit after each full release.

You also set debug to 1 after the release, then set it back to 0 on the commit of the release. The reason is two-fold:

• If a pre-release (debug=1) build is loaded into UT, this will set the namesuffix template value, which you can use, e.g., to allow players to see the build number next to the name, indicating that it is a pre-release and that it’s more of a testing version than anything. + See [[#template-values]] for more on those template values.

• Even if you use a release tag here, the CI workflow will automatically set the new release to be a pre-release, and to be displayed as such, if debug is set. + See [[#auto-release]] for more on auto-releases.

Of course, the only real purpose of the build number is to discern from other builds, to avoid the classic and frustrating Package Mismatch errors you can get if multiple versions of a mod are floating around with the same filename.

5.4. Template Values

UT ModBuild uses the Mustache template engine to process not only template.int, but also every single UnrealScript file you use. This can be very powerful, as it allows you to change a lot of things about your mod, depending on the versioning and the options you pick.

Options for templating are taken from both template-options.yml and buildconfig.sh. Only a handful of relevant variables are used from buildconfig.sh, and a few additional special variables are constructed from those.

Here are the notable options:

• package is automatically suffixed with the build number. So instead of MyMod, you can expect MyMod-20214201.

• A special namesuffix variable is created. If debug is set to 0, it’s empty. Otherwise, it is set to a single space, followed by the build number in parentheses, like ` (20214201)`.

  This is useful to e.g. add in front of mutator names in the INT template, and gametype names in UnrealScript. The former is exemplified in this example tempate.int; the latter can be seen in any prerelease Mush Match build.

The list of values that can be used from buildconfig.sh are name, version, package (but see above), version and debug. Most don’t go through any processing and are simply copied verbatim.

6. Background

This build system was originally created to make MushMatch easier to build from a checkout, as well as to enable checking, building and releasing via CI.

I realized that it could be truly helpful for a lot of people, plus it could be made a bit easier to port to other existing mods, so I decided to split this into its own template.

Hopefully this achieves in that goal.

7. Licensing

Files in the top level that pertian to the UT ModBuild build system are licensed under the ISC. For those, see the [LICENSE.md] file.

7.1. Legal Copyright Disclaimer

The build system does, indeed, download a bare copy of Unreal Tournament (1999), which is meant to have only the minimum assets required to run as a server. Due to its free availability online compared to other instances where said files occur (such as retail), it is presumed that no copyright infringement or other law infraction is inflicted by this.

Additionally, this project does not host this downloaded file; it is provided by UT-Files.com. Therefore, the authors, maintainers, and users of this project consider themselves waived of any liability or responsibility with regards to that.

In case any actual legal infraction is proved to be, consider forwarding legal proceedings and inquiries to UT-Files.com, the hosts of the file in question. In any case, it would be polite to notify the author of the project, at the e-mail address rehermann6046@gmail.com, so as to be made aware of this nuance and rectify the project to no longer be affected by it.

In case legal contention is had specifically and explicitly with this project itself, please send any legal inquiries or takedown requests toward the e-mail address rehermann6046@gmail.com. Response and/or action may be expected in up to seven days, after the which a DMCA takedown notice is more than polite, although there is little against otherwise other than objection.

In case a DMCA takedown notice is received, it would be preferable for the repository to be made private so that project files can be downloaded and backed up, at least temporarily.

The main author of the project, Gustavo Ramos Rehermann as of writing (October 2021), is not situated in the United States of America, nor under American jurisdiction. Please refer to the Brazilian justice system for appropriate research and proceedings.