Editor questions

[Bushido]

Hey, I'm trying to learn the Unreal Editor for the forthcoming Postal 2 and I just had some noobie style questions for ya'll...so here goes:

1)My weapons seem to "tear" through walls when I'm up close. I thought it was my less-than-stellar mod making skills, but it wasn't. It happened on a normal UT map. Any help on this?

2)My skyboxes look just like that....BOXES. Is there a way to smooth out the corners or is it just a matter of hiding the corners?

3)quikie: How do I disable the bots so I can just wander in my level?

4)Importing music...How is it done? Can I convert Mp3s/WAVs to the tracker extension that the engine supports? If so, what program should I use?

5)I seem to be confusing my self with making, let's say, a building. Should I "subtract" a cube brush and then "add" rooms? What's the procedure? I know I have to cut out a chunk of the world first...and then add the building "cube". After that do I subtract within that cube?

6) I printed out the birrabrothers tutorial and have been reading it at work just getting a general knowledge of movers,triggers,and other things. Any advice on what I should try to make first? I'm a perfectionist...that's my problem. I know when something looks like shit...

[NutWrench]

1) I've never made weapons for a mod, but I'm guessing that the weapon needs to be made blockable or surrounded with a collision cylinder.

2) The SkyZoneInfo represents your viewpoint origin in the SkyBox, the place from which you "see" the skybox. Try moving it closer to the ceiling of the skybox, so you don't see the edges. You can also reduce the radius of any lights in the skybox, so their light doesn't reach the edge. Or make the skybox taller. Or add some masked sheets that keep you from seeing the edges.

3) I assume your using Unreal Tournament. You can either play the map as a DeathMatch map and set the number or bots to zero, or go into the Classes browser. Go to Info-->GameInfo--UnrealGameInfo and left click on Single Player. Then go to the menu bar, select 'View-->Level Properties' Expand 'LevelInfo', left click in the DefaultGameType field, then click 'Use' This will paste the Single Player gametype into that field. Now, when you start the map, it will always start as an Unreal single player type map until you clear that field.

4) According to the UnrealEd Reference Collection (http://www.planetunreal.com/fordy/unreed.htm), Impulse Tracker and FastTracker 2 filetypes are supported. You should be able to import these types directly with UnrealEds music browser. Then, save the music as a Unreal UMX file.
It is possible to import an MP3, but you're basically importing the entire MP3 as one humongous instrument and playing it as a single note. Try ModTracker at www.modplug.org (http://www.modplug.org)

5) The workspace in UnrealEd is initially all "null-space", just like in Build. You use Subtract brushes to carve out useable space and Add brushes to fill that space back in. You can also use one brush to "carve" or shape another, i.e. use a cylinder to drill a round hole through a wall.

6) A small deathmatch map would be a good start. You'll also need to learn how to add PathNodes to the map so the bots can find their way around. (The editor can generate PathNodes for you, but it usually does a crappy job and adds WAY too many. Fewer pathnodes will make your map run faster and you can control this if you do the PathNodes by hand.)

Try to get a little Z-action in the map too: add ramps, ledges, things to jump off of. Avoid using the default light settings. Try different colors, tighten up the radius settings so that you have a few shadowy areas. In my opinion, a simple, light-colored base texture will "light" much better than a dark, complex one. (I usually use the Base11 texture from the DecayedS package as a default texture).

I think the hardest thing for me in switching from Build is realizing that you can have Add brushes anywhere, floating in midair. Neat! images/icons/smile.gif

[Bean]

Hey, I'm trying to learn the Unreal Editor for the forthcoming Postal 2 and I just had some noobie style questions for ya'll...so here goes:

1)My weapons seem to "tear" through walls when I'm up close. I thought it was my less-than-stellar mod making skills, but it wasn't. It happened on a normal UT map. Any help on this?

That is odd, but I remember it happening to me once. If you made the weapon yourself, you shouldnt need to make a collision cylinder because collision is handle by the player model itself. Maybe it's a bsp error?

2)My skyboxes look just like that....BOXES. Is there a way to smooth out the corners or is it just a matter of hiding the corners?

Crafty use of lighting should fix that. Keep light central to cloud textures to distract the player from seeing any corners

3)quikie: How do I disable the bots so I can just wander in my level?

press the ` button to open the console and type :

killall pawns

5)I seem to be confusing my self with making, let's say, a building. Should I "subtract" a cube brush and then "add" rooms? What's the procedure? I know I have to cut out a chunk of the world first...and then add the building "cube". After that do I subtract within that cube?

If you plan on making the inside of a building and nothing more, I would suggest you use subtraction to carve out the rooms and use adds to add the detail. If you subtract out the building interior and THEN add walls, etc, you'll be prone to much more errors, as the bsp (geometry, basically) is more generous towards subtraction than it is to addition when it comes to curbing errors

If you have an outdoor area and want to add a building in the middle, for example, adding a large cube and subtracting rooms seems to be best.

these are my thoughts. have fun!

[Tip]

To prove that I have no life and I read WAY too much I know two valid answers that eluded NutWrench and Bean (who are both huge UnrealEd nuts- no pun intended nutwrench images/icons/grin.gif ).
Anyways, question #1: I read about this happening, the problem is 16 bit color. Because of some weird coding the weapons stick right through walls occasionally when using 16 bit color. The only solution I have seen is switching to 32 bit color. I have a voodoo 3 so I just deal with it.
Question #2: You corners are probably most obvious due to the heavy shadowing that occurs in corners or due texture seams. To stop your corners from becoming overly dark highlight all of the faces of your skybox and go into properties. Click on "bright corners" and rebuild your lighting. I've made some maps with every single face set to bright corners just to give them a less unreal feel.
If your problem is texture seams go read a tutorial on aligning textures. images/icons/wink.gif
Oh, one other thing, a skybox doesn't need to be a box. You could make it a sphere if you wanted to (a blocky sphere).
Hope that helps.

[Bushido]

Yeah, thanks guys. That did help! And just to clear up question 1 here: I didn't make a weapon. You give me far too much credit. I'm just talking about normal weapons in UT. They keep going through the walls. I think it's what Tip said about the color. I'll try when I get home from work...

And also the level I want to do is a prison on an island (of course!) with three floors, but I want it to be an actual building meaning I can go out and see the exterior...damn..I think I'm in over my head! images/icons/shocked.gif images/icons/confused.gif

[Tip]

If you want that island to be in the daytime I suggest you give up right now. images/icons/grin.gif
Making an ocean during day would be damn near impossible in Unreal Tournament; I know because I've tried. I suggest you make your map night time because of lighting issues and it will also cover up most of the ocean in darkness.
One other suggestion, do something simpler to learn the basics. Come up with a small deathmatch map with multiple levels and rooms and corridors. Making that should be plenty of a challenge for now and should help you learn about building stuff and lighting it and you should also learn all the basics of weapon placement and setting up bots. Once you're done with that you might try making your prison map and you'll probably have a better idea of exactly how to do it.

[Bushido]

Well shit...this is F***ed up! I haven't used UnrealEd in awhile so imagine my surprise when I started it up only to see a white screen. Where the f*** are the viewports!? How do I get 'em back? I'm no idiot (I tried looking in the 'view' tab), but I can't figure it out...

so...uh...HELP!

(if I get it working I'll post it here)

[Bean]

view -< viewports -> close all

then

view -> viewports -> configure

select one and you're set!

[Bushido]

Hmm...If that works then yes...I AM an idiot! images/icons/grin.gif

EDIT: LOL! It did work! And here's a funny story: I was just about to go to EB and buy a new copy of UT 'cause I was gonna reinstall it and I gave my originals to my bro (he lives in Nove Scotia) HAHA!

Now to the editor I go!

/turns and trips over cape...

[ 07-16-2002, 06:27 PM: Message edited by: Bushido ]

[Bushido]

Bean, just some questions. How long have you been using the editor? How many hours do you think you've logged? I just want to be at a level of experience like yours by the time Postal 2 comes out (sometime in November I'm guessing). I got 2 weeks vacation coming up and I plan on diving into it headfirst. I read the entire BirraBrothers tutorials and I believe I have good understanding of the 'language' part of it. Like, you have to assign a trigger to music event trigger, and doors are two sided movers with keyframe 0 and keyframe 1.

...but putting it into practice is another story...

[Wild Falkon]

I don't want to butt into the convo but here goes....

I've been working with UnrealEd since mid-2000, and out of those times I have a few bits of wisdom I'd like to share.

1.) Mess around with the editor while you read online tutorials. Apply them to what you're doing. It helped me learn a lot.

2.) USE INTERSECT/DEINTERSECT!
All this is...is really the active brush conforming to gaps or BSP. It also is good for joining many brushes into one, because when you intersect, the brush textures, alignments, and sizes are copied with the brush shape in itself.
Intersect: Molds to the BSP
Deintersect: Molds between BSP, in the "air".

3.) Load up maps made by DE/Epic to see how they pulled off a certain effect. This helped me learn a lot.

4.) Keep light counts low, and don't clash too much with the surroundings. Short and sweet.

5.) Ask questions. (You have this down, thats good.)

6.) Keep maps you didn't do too much work in. You just may want to copy and paste work you did in that to another map.

Finally, don't worry about your technique. Like talent, it evolves over time, and everyone has a right to individuality.

Good luck, and have fun, because there isn't a greater feeling than having 20 guys playing your level at a LAN and saying "Wow! That's awesome!" images/icons/grin.gif

[Bean]

Originally posted by Bushido:
Bean, just some questions. How long have you been using the editor? How many hours do you think you've logged? I just want to be at a level of experience like yours by the time Postal 2 comes out (sometime in November I'm guessing). I got 2 weeks vacation coming up and I plan on diving into it headfirst. I read the entire BirraBrothers tutorials and I believe I have good understanding of the 'language' part of it. Like, you have to assign a trigger to music event trigger, and doors are two sided movers with keyframe 0 and keyframe 1.

...but putting it into practice is another story...<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I've been making maps since Duke Nukem 3D. Been using UnrealED for about 1.5 years. I log around anywhere from 2-20 odd hours a week easily (sometimes more). I lend a hand at UnrealED.exe and the UnrealWiki. I generally want to be pro. images/icons/smile.gif

If you want to be ready for Postal 2, just learn the basics of UnrealED v2 such as brushes, lights, movers, sounds, triggers. Don't go too in-depth, because you have to learn a tons of new features for the new engine.

With Wild Falcon's comments, I think 3 and 5 are most important. You won't pull map ideas out of thin air, you need to be inspired. Don;t be afraid to look at other maps and see how the pro guys did a certain thing.

[LeJimster]

1)My weapons seem to "tear" through walls when I'm up close. I thought it was my less-than-stellar mod making skills, but it wasn't. It happened on a normal UT map. Any help on this?

If you mean clipping im not sure about that, but some1 already mentioned a collision cylinder. It could be that, if your gettng a "tearing" effect in the game, thats down to the vertical-sync being disabled.

2)My skyboxes look just like that....BOXES. Is there a way to smooth out the corners or is it just a matter of hiding the corners?

The trick is to have the texture properties on the skybox "unlit" - this means that any lighting inside the box doesn't show up dark corners that make it look boxy. Instead the texture is whatever color it should be and needs no lighting.

3)quikie: How do I disable the bots so I can just wander in my level?

bring the console down or the quick console (tab) and type killall bot or just set no. of bots to 0 before loading the game up.

4)Importing music...How is it done? Can I convert Mp3s/WAVs to the tracker extension that the engine supports? If so, what program should I use?

There are several programs that do this, but since i hate creating music in this way im not gonna recommend any, besides future games on the Unreal engine use .ogg - a similar format to mp3

5)I seem to be confusing my self with making, let's say, a building. Should I "subtract" a cube brush and then "add" rooms? What's the procedure? I know I have to cut out a chunk of the world first...and then add the building "cube". After that do I subtract within that cube?

Yup, its quite mind boggling the first time you work with the unreal engine, but once you get your mind around the basics you'll work out your own ways of doing things.

6) I printed out the birrabrothers tutorial and have been reading it at work just getting a general knowledge of movers,triggers,and other things. Any advice on what I should try to make first? I'm a perfectionist...that's my problem. I know when something looks like shit...

Lol, thats exactly how i describe myself, maybe we should chat sometime - i've not been learning the editor that long - but being a perfectionist has its advantages and im pretty confident of my increasing skills.

If you wanna chat -

MSN - jimster@onet.co.uk
ICQ - 82701109

I'm on GMT (UK) time so bear that in mind.

[Bushido]

Cool guys, thanks! Nice to know there's a helpful UnrealEd community I can turn to when I hit some dead ends. I also plan on learning 3DSMax, but that's a whole other cup of sake...heh

[Night Hacker]

I realize this is an old thread and you may have already solved these problems, but just in case it may help someone else....

As for your weapons going partially inside the walls in a level, that is due to you running the game with 16bit colors, you have to use 32bit (yer out of luck Voodoo users). Either switch to 32bit or throw away that aging Voodoo card and buy a GForce2 at least, they are dirt cheap now and you can enjoy your 3D games in 32bit without these little problems (and better OpenGL support).

Someone already explained the skybox thing, I prefer setting your texture to "unlit" myself unless there is a special reason you need to light it up, in which case "bright corners" will do, if you use unlit you won't need a light source, which could increase performance a tad, not sure, haven't tested it but it makes sense to me.

If future Unreal versions will use ogg files that is really good news as ogg is almost identical to MP3s except you don't need a license to use ogg in your software, it is an open format, which is why it was created so software developers could use an mp3 like format without paying out license fees to someone. There is ogg to mp3 converters out there too, also, you might consider switching to ogg format, WinAMP supports it and ogg files are slightly smaller than mp3's, but the same quality.

As for mod music, they are different, I don't doubt that you could convert your mp3's to mods for unreal but it would probably be rather large, if it worked properly at all. You see, MP3s are basically a huge compressed sound sample (it is more complex than that but that is basically it), mod music is like a midi file that uses custom sound samples built into the mod as instruments, so basically it plays a select number of sounds each time it is called for, an entirely different thing than mp3s or oggs. BUT, there are tons of mod music out there, mods are smaller and there are editors out there.