What's the deal with the Titans?

The Titan mutator requires that UT3 Patch 2.0 (or higher) is installed. The current Patch and the Titan Pack can be downloaded from the Deviants' Maps Page.

"The Titan mutator brings a fresh game mechanic to all the classic Unreal Tournament gametypes. Fill your Titan meter by killing enemies (with bonuses for multikills and killing sprees), capturing flags or nodes, and completing other game objectives. When your meter is full, you can transform at any time into a giant with a super powerful rocket launcher, massive hit points, and a devastating ground pound attack. Killed Titans self-destruct after a short countdown, so get out of the way if you assassinate one! Once you’ve become a Titan, fill your meter again to transform into a Behemoth. Behemoths are huge (almost 30 feet tall) walking mountains of destruction, but they self destruct after thirty seconds. It’s important to pick the right time to transform into a Titan, as this mode also has several limitations. Titans can’t drive vehicles, or carry flags, orbs, or Greed skulls. Titans also can’t capture Warfare nodes, or pick up any weapons or powerups." — Sir Brizz, BeyondUnreal

While the Titan mutator was inspired by the Titans of the original Unreal, you do not become an Unreal Titan. You maintain your own UT3 character skin.

Since the Titan is a mutator, to use it you must either activate it when configuring your Instant Action (IA) game or you must join a server that uses it when playing on-line. When you join a game that has the Titan mutator activated, you will see the Titan-meter in the lower right corner of your HUD, above your ammo-meter, as shown below.

Your Titan-meter begins to fill as you accomplish various objectives of the game-type you are playing. Fulfilling an objective gives you one or more points. Killing an enemy is worth one point. Getting First Blood awards one bonus point in addition to the point for the kill. As you earn points the number you earned for meeting the objective is displayed on your Titan-meter. The point value of the objective goes away after a few seconds but you can keep track of your progress by noting that the Titan icons in the meter begin to fill — notice the difference in the feet of the Titan icons below as compared to the ones in the shot above.

Here I got a point for killing the enemy, shown on the Titan-meter and the meter icons have filled a bit more. I now have 4 points — 2 for getting First Blood plus 1 for my second kill plus 1 more for the 3rd kill. I am playing 1 on 1 TDM against a novice bot — I'm not trying to show off my skillz; I'm showing how the Titan mutator works.

With my 5th consecutive kill, I get a Killing Spree award and a bonus point for it on the Titan-meter. I now have 7 points: 2+1+1+1+2, again notice the Titan-meter filling. I will now get 2 points for every kill...as long as I maintain my killing spree. If an enemy ends my spree, I will go back to getting 1 point per kill. Playing 1 on 1 makes it difficult to get double kills, multikills, etc., so I didn't even try but bonus points should be awarded for these as well.

Accumulate 20 points and you can transform to a Titan. You don't have to if you don't want to or if you want to wait until later to do so. As a Titan you are 15 feet tall. Once you transform there will be some areas in the maps where you will not be able to go because you are too big to fit. If you happen to be in a small room where there is little room to move around or that you would not be able to leave, you might choose to wait on transforming until you are in a more advantageous location.

If you do not transform to a Titan immediately and get killed before you do so, you do not lose the ability to transform. You can transform to a Titan at any time during the remainder of the map, once your Titan-meter has filled.

Note that when you can transform, your HUD informs you of this by flashing the key you need to press down by the Titan-meter. By default this is the "R" key. When configuring your keys in the Settings Menu, this is the last key setting. I have mine set to use the number pad 0 key (zero) ... I mouse close to the keyboard and hit it with my thumb.



After transforming to a Titan your view changes from 1st person to 3rd person-over the shoulder. You will now move more slowly, you can jump but not very high or well, you cannot pick up any weapons or other goodies — you cannot drive vehicles, carry a flag in CTF or the orb in Warfare, you cannot capture a node in Warfare — you can, however, damage nodes and cores . You will have a rocket launcher and a shock rifle and cannot obtain other weapons. The weapon damage you inflict is like constantly having the Berserk power-up. You get 400 shield points and 400 health points...essentially you are as hard to kill as a tank (800 health points).

If you should get killed while you are a Titan, you still are not done with your enemies. A few seconds after you die you self-destruct (explode) and cause damage to any enemies in your immediate vicinity. Keep this in mind should you kill an enemy Titan or if you are around when a teammate kills one...he's gunna blow up. If your Titan corpse kills any enemies when it self-destructs, you get the points for the kill(s) but these kills do not register in your new, now empty, Titan-meter.

In this shot you can see two things: 1) the rocket launcher has its lock-on feature, which activates faster and holds better than normal, and 2) it cheats. Notice that the bot is on the elevator and already starting up. The rocket is almost there and I have not moved my aim point since firing. If you are at all familar with the game, it is obvious that the bot was not in the immediate vicinity of the crosshairs when I fired. For that matter he wasn't really even close to the crosshairs when they locked on...he could not have moved that far away from me that fast, even dodging all the way...and remember this is a novice bot.



More cheating by the rocket launcher. Notice where the crosshairs are. Once again I did not move my aim point after locking on. It locked on when the bot was more or less on the dark spot on the floor directly behind where he is now, on the plate in front of the pillar that the rocket is about to pass over. He has his back to me and is heading to the ammo. As the bot moved toward the ammo, the lock-on was lost (by the time the screenshot was taken) but was still good enough — I got him without moving my aim point. If the bot had been Skilled instead of a Novice, I probably would have missed. Nonetheless, there is no question about it: the lock-on cheats... said better...Titans cheat.

Very, very cool!! Do you remember the Unreal Titans pounding the ground and sending boulders flying in every direction? In addition to the rocket launcher and the shock rifle, as a Titan you have the "pound the ground" melee attack available to you. Yours is even worse than Unreal Titans'. Yours sends out a shock wave all around you. An enemy inside the shock wave is dead meat. An enemy at the edge of the wave will be damaged and knocked down. When knocked down, it takes a couple of seconds or so to recover and get back up...very much like falling off a hoverboard.

Notice where the shock wave propogates: pretty much horizontally. Here in Morbias it is reachig out so that it go underneath the 2nd level ledge, but it will not damage anyone who happens to be up on the 2nd level; it has a very small vertical component. You can avoid it by being (or getting) above or below it. Like the Redeemer, it is blocked by walls, pillars, boxes, and other such obstructions...hide behind these if you see a Titan raising his arms/weapon in preparation to pounding the ground; the window for reacting to an impending melee is short, but there is some time.

To activate the "pound" melee attack, use the same key that you use to enter a vehicle..."E" by default. When configuring your keys in the Setting Menu, this key is called "Use." I use the number pad Enter key ... again, I mouse close to the keyboard and hit it with my thumb.

After you become a Titan, your Titan-meter resets to zero and then starts to fill again. Once again 20 points are required to fill it. When it is full, as before, your HUD notifies you that you can transform again, as shown in this screenshot. As before, you don't have to transform or can choose when and where to do so. This time you will grow to be a 30 foot tall Behemoth, your shields and health will ramp up to 800 each, and you will be one badass mofo. Your limitations as a Behemoth are similar to those of a Titan. You are twice as big, so there are more places you cannot go and you move more slowly.

It is also probably worth mentioning that you will self-destruct (explode) 30 seconds after transforming, once again damaging enemies in your vicinity. Like a Titan, a Behemoth also self-destructs if somebody gets lucky and manages to kill one. Killing a Titan or Behemoth is worth 6 points in your own Titan-meter. After any self-destruct occurs, you respawn as your normal puny self with an empty Titan-meter ready to start filling it again. The self-destruct explosions Titans and Behemoths are quite similar to that of the Redeemer, both in power and range. Like the Redeemer and the Titans' pound the ground melee attack shock wave, you can avoid or minimize damage to yourself from the self-destruct explosions by either getting far enough away from them or getting behind an obstructing object.

In conclusion, Bersy (a contributor in the official Epic forums) has created a six minute YouTube video (opens in a new window) that demonstrates the use of the Titan and offers suggestions on effective deployment of them. The video also enumerates the various ways of gaining points for filling your Titan-meter, and how many points are awarded for each — for example, killing a Titan gives you a six point bonus.

When playing DeathMatch or TeamDeathMatch, an opponent Titan is difficult to contend with. The mutator is really more intended for use in Warfare and CTF where it provides an on-foot counter to vehicles. At the same time, the vehicles make fighting a Titan easier. For example, a Manta can pancake a Titan, and, of course, the vehicles' more powerful weapons make it easier to kill one.

As a final note, Bersy also created YouTube videos demonstrating the two new game-types introduced with Patch 2.0 and the Titan Pack: Betrayal (4:11) and Greed (3:51). He is also the creator of the custom UT3 logos used on the Deviants' website homepage and on the UT3 "goodies" page.

Copyright © 2009, Clan Deviants and {DvT}JonahHex. All rights reserved.