Chaos has been designed (intentionaly, and with great effort) to be as flexible and as compatible as was reasonably possible, with anything and everything available for UT2004. This is also why we have provided a mutator version of our mod. Simply so that Chaos can be played and enjoyed in ALL standard UT2004 game types, in addition to most custom game types, and even when combined with many other mods or mutators
Hi. I wrote that bit from the manual, and I meant what I wrote. Chaos is in fact one of the most compatible and versatile mod/muts you will ever find. And always has been. But the "as was reasonably possible" bit was important too. It covers many topics.
For one example - I think (hope) we as a mod team in general have learned that "more versatility" is not necessarily a good thing. And btw, I even read an interview with Cliff B. once in which he essentially said the same thing about UT2004 (too many muts and game types and whatnot). But beyond that, let's look at one of your requests, just for chat.
In earlier days of Chaos, it used to be set up so that you could run the Chaos mutator in CTF, and choose to allow grappling while carrying the flag. Now, despite the fact that I actually enjoy that style of play very much, not once did I find a server running that option. Not once. Nor do I even recall anyone besides myself requesting that option on a server.
So for that - and other reasons - we simply followed the Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) logic, and made dropping the flag/ball the default option when using our mut in CTF and BR, and removed the option for it from the mutator GUI. Nobody outside of myself and maybe a few other hard-core grapple-monkeys seemed to be interested anyway.
To be honest, I'm just glad that the option to carry the flag while grappling is still in the mod at all. My cohorts could easily argue that it's unpopularity makes it not worthy. I myself however, am ever hopeful that someday some folks will enjoy it as I do. (I mean come on .... carrying the flag while hanging from a Raptor with your grapping hook ....
, sounds like fun to me)
And since bots can't use the grapple, at least at this time, the option is hardly needed (or balanced or fair, or even fun IMO) for offline play.
Anyway, we could go on and on, and possibly never agree. And it's also true that these topics, in one form or another, have been covered many times here. If you get bored one day read back thru some old threads and you'll see more and more discussion on why we are where we are today.
If you wanna chat more about it in IRC someday, I'd be happy too.
And yes, of course I can't argue with TKATK's point about the MUG (and it's not alone), and why you'd want to avoid that for FPS reasons, but ideally we'll get that corrected and that won't be an issue any more.
