Newbie questions

[Misel]

hello,

today I started learning unrealed (1 week w/o gf will surely be boring images/icons/wink.gif ) so I looked for a tutorial, found one and started.

then, when I added an extra room and a floor to reach it I suddenly couldn't walked through the floor in UT although I did nothing different from that what I've done before when I created such floors. there must be something that blocks me but I don't know what it is.

it must be there somewhere
http://www.misel.de/stuff/nothing.jpg

download the map from here (http://www.misel.de/stuff/miseltest.unr)

Somehow I think that this is a typical newbie error so probably you can help me images/icons/smile.gif

[Wild Falkon]

Oh man, it looks like it is one of those "invinsble brushes" that you can never find or repair.

Try to copy all your level geometry, create a new map, and paste it. Recompile, and see if it worked.

[Misel]

erm, how do I select all the brushes etc to copy them?

[Misel]

nevermind

[NutWrench]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Misel:
nevermind<hr></blockquote>

Forgot to re-build your level, huh? images/icons/smile.gif

[Misel]

no, I just realized, that it wasn't a big deal to mark and copy the whole level into an empty one.

But it didn't help anyway images/icons/frown.gif


I know there are tons of newbie guides for UnrealED out there. Is there a special one you would recommend?

[ 10-21-2001: Message edited by: Misel ]

[smattbac]

Hmm..couldn't get rid of it. Maybe try delete some of those brushes, rebuild and then add them again.. Doh, could've tried that myself. images/icons/smile.gif

www.planetunreal.com/unrealed (http://www.planetunreal.com/unrealed) is good start. images/icons/smile.gif

[NutWrench]

Oops, I didn't see the link to your map, Misel.
I'll take a look at it. images/icons/smile.gif

[Tip]

Invisible barrier aye?
I don't know why those happen but for me they usually disappear as quickly as they show up.
Not as bad as when half your map turns into an automatic death zone though.
One time I played on of my maps to test it and for some reason as soon as you hit this one area you died and it said that you cratered. It was crazy (and yes I had rebuilded).

My best suggestion is that you just keep working on your map adding stuff. Most likely it will go away after a bit of changes to the map.

Tip

It's just one of those things.

[NutWrench]

Well, I took a look at it. I found at least 2 brushes that had been double and triple stamped (i.e. a subtract brush that had been subtracted from the same spot 2-3 times) and the stairway had been added twice.
I got rid of all the duplicate brushes but I still couldn't get that BSP spot to go away. I even deleted every single brush except that one room and it was still there. Even deleting and replacing that one brush didn't work. It's as if there was a hidden brush somewhere in the level.
Finally, I tried re-making the map from scratch and it worked fine. images/icons/smile.gif

[Misel]

oh well, thanx for all the efforts but it was simply a test map to learn how to make maps with UnrealEd.

I simply didn't know what it was and that's why I asked.

Thank you

so what are some good guides to learn it - I remember there was one on a Duke site to learn it to be ready for DukeEd but I can't find it anymore

[Kalki]

UnrealED Newbie here. I'm using Deus-Ex's editor.

Btw, what's the best way to connect two rooms with a corridor?

1) Construct a corridor of precise length between the two rooms, touching the ends of each room, and subtract, right?

2)In this one tutorial(Basic Room 2 in the UnrealED reference collection), I read that you could build one of any length, and <copy-pasting> "make it LONGER then will be needed to join the two rooms - but not long enough to reach the opposite side of either room. And place it between the two rooms. Now press the "deintersect" button"</end paste>
Now that didn't work for me. When I hit deintersect, it disappeared except for the parts of the corridor within the rooms!!

I've used Method 1 with no problems. That's ok, right? I mean, it shouldn't have performance problems or anything?

[NutWrench]

Hit the Intersect button instead of DeIntersect. That should chop away the brush sections inside valid player space, leaving just the connection between the two rooms. Now you can subtract this brush to make the coridoor.

[Kalki]

Brilliant! Thanks NutWrench! I just tried it out. You Rule! I finally figured out what Intersect and DeIntersect are for. *smooches* images/icons/wink.gif

[Kalki]

Btw, you never which method is better! Are there performance issues or is it basically the same? I don't want my levels to slow down or anything.

[NutWrench]

Don't let Subtract brushes overlap. Subtract brushes are structural brushes that distinguish the inside of a level from its outside and letting them overlap can cause BSP/HOM problems later on. It's ok for Add brushes to overlap each other or stick into the level from the outside, allthough I usually try to use Intersect/Deintersect to avoid this. If you are using a simple brush like a cube and you accidentally hit DeIntersect when you should have Intersected, you can get back the original brush by clicking the Cube icon again.

One handy use for a touching Add brush is if you wanted to make designs on a wall or floor. For example, if you are making a warehouse and you wanted to put a thin, black-and-yellow stripe on the floor, you could take a cube brush, stretch it out into a long thin rectangle and Add it to the level so that the top of the Add brush comes into contact with the floor of the subtract brush. Now, you have a seperate area on the floor that you can texture with the black-and-yellow stripey texture. images/icons/smile.gif

If you've used Build before, there are some simularities with UnrealEd. Both editors assume that you are starting with a world made of "null-space." Subtract brushes in UnrealEd are like the white walls in Build: they are both one-sided walls that seperate the valid, inner, player space from the null space outside the wall. The Add Brushes are similar to the red walls in build in that they are used to add detail inside the level.

P.S. You can improve performance in a level by changing your Add brushes from Solid to Semi-Solid and by adding Zone Portals which optimizes the way the engine draws your level. Check out those chapters in this excellent series of tutorials (all combined into a single help file (http://planetunreal.com/osx/help.html#ued)). This is the last UnrealEd reference you'll ever need. images/icons/smile.gif

[ 10-28-2001: Message edited by: NutWrench ]

[Kalki]

Wow thanks for the advice. Don't let Subtract brushes overlap? Check.

Never used build before though. Have it, but never got around to using it. UnrealED seems very simple. Regarding that use of the add brush- Is that the only way you can add location specific textures? Because at this point in my learning, it seems that texture application is brush specific and that I can't add a small poster on a brick wall, unless it's an add brush that's been fixed on the wall like you said. Right? Got it. Though I wish there was an actual texture application tool which you could resize, like in editors for RTSs, which I could tile across a floor or wall on a specific area of the brush and not the whole brush.

[NutWrench]

You can add a poster by adding a Sheet brush (right-click on the sheet brush icon to choose a vertical alignment). 2D sheet brushes are also used for the masked decorations like hanging vines, etc.

You can give a wall more than one texture either by:
1) Adding a thin Add brush that covers the area you want to texture or

2) You can stack two subtract brushes on top of each other or next to each other. For example, if you wanted to make a hallway with one type of wall texture on top and another type on the bottom, you could stack two rectangular brushes on top of each other that add up to the same height as your original coridoor. Now you can texture each surface individually.

Manipulating textures is easy! Click the "T" icon that has the arrows pointing away from it in 4 directions. Then click on the texture surface to highlight it. Now hold down the Control key and left mouse button and you can slide the texture around on the surface. I'll let you try the other "T" with the circling arrows yourself. images/icons/smile.gif
You can also hit F5 after you've highlighted a texture and change the textures scale, alignment to other textures, etc. If you hold down the Control key when you select textures, you can highlight several textures at once (and then perform one operation on them all at once)

Copy and Paste textures. Click on a texture to highlight it. Then, hold Alt+RightMouseButton to copy. Highlight another surface. Alt+LeftMouseButton to Paste.

[ 10-29-2001: Message edited by: NutWrench ]