I will not be posting the entire diary as most of this is hand written but some of the separate sketches/drawings I will scan in and show you :)
The first Picture is a birds eye view of one half of my map. The entire map will be symmetrical which continues the theme of UT3 (Part of my criteria) plus this will halve build time which is always good.
It's only a first draft so may not be 100% accurate to what I finally make but 95% sure this will be the final result.
Map shows weapon placements, general structure of buildings and object positions. The design was based on a map from another game that I liked the layout of and then modified to fit the criteria of an interview I had with a hardcore Unreal player which can be found in the diary.
One Half Of Map
I have also quickly added to the same picture showing directions a player can take showing 3 main routes a player can take
One Half Of Map (Directions of Play)
Here is the first draught of my Light placement on the map. All though the map will be set at night time there still has to be many many lights. In fact I am estimating the Light map you see below will end up having atleast twice as many lights at the end.
Light Map
The next Layout I made was to try and work out the scale of my map. This proved very difficult as there are no real metric units in UT3 Editor just unreal units which don't really amount to anything.
My aim was to get this as close as possible to help speed up the build process, but the first attempt was so far off the mark I entitled it 'Rubbish'
Size Map 'Rubbish'
The reason for this is that a medium size room in unreal is 1536 unit with and according to this map my entire playing area was only 960 units in width!!
So I decided to look at this from another angle. Reference pictures are some of the most important and useful things to have so I created my own. Going into the editor, I created 4 cube boxes with lighting, texture and a character for height reference.
256x256 Cube
512x512 Cube
1024x1024 Cube
2048x2048 Cube
All Cubes
These gave me great insight into what size rooms should be and so helped me create my second Size Map
Size Map 2
This was much better than the first but still had problems. The width (From top to bottom in this view) is still wrong and I could start to see that without getting stuck in this was going to be difficult. So I decided to start Blocking In my scene using standard BSP just to get an idea of scale and gameplay. No texture would be added at this point or weapons etc... Just lighting and BSP
*A quick note*
If your reading this and are 'hey, what the hell is BSP please explain' here goes...
In not too much detail, BSP "Binary Space Partitioning" is geometry in the level. It can be very expensive to use (Memory etc.) but is very useful for Blocking In a scene and getting a general idea of what your map needs to look like. For the actual final build of the map I would use static mesh's for almost everything and not BSP.
BSP Standard
Beta01
Right here is a link to download my first beta for you to test.
http://qdrive.net/CrazyBertElite/file/190940/4bd09
54a1a1d7b11352b3849e628227a
Just unzip the file and copy CTF-SpacePort_Beta01.ut3
CTF-SpacePort_Beta01_LOC_int.upk
CTF-SpacePort_Beta01 (Type Configuration setting)
Copy these files into Documents > MyGames > Unreal Tournament 3 > UTGame > Published > CookedPC > Custom Maps
And then start the game. It should be in the Capture The Flag menu at the bottom now so enjoy!! :)
Feedback will be great please... The UT3Readme.txt which came in the zipped file you downloaded gives you some details and what kind of feedback I need
Thanks to everyone who helps!
Some screen shots of Beta01
Click on all Images to maximise
Earth Shot
Flag Shot
Repair Shot
Tower Shot
Update
So it has been along time since I have actually updated this blog simply due to the fact that I have been so busy at uni. Now though, it's almost xmas and I am free for a little while so I can catch up with personal projects
Beta 1 Feedback
So beta 1 went well but there were a number of suggestions which was fantastic. Here is the feedback list:-
Good Things....
1. Lifts.... "Insane" but in a good way "Do not change these, I love them."
**Due to the fact the lifts are really fast and would give you whip lash in real life! But I found lifts to be really slow in the game and considering they are the only ways to get into the bases they needed to be fast.**
2. Teleporter's....These were also liked as much as the lifts
So.. Really glad about the lifts and teleporter's being liked as these are the main points on the map to get to the flags.
Bad Points....
1. Weapon placement...."Can't find weapons" - Although there are 4 weapons on each side of the map he had problems finding any???
2. Hole...."I can get out of map" - Missing blocking volume near flags
3. Lifts...."Stuck on lifts" - Due to one person at bottom and one at top where the triggers are
4. Doors...."They go black when they open/close" - Only have static lighting on mover's currently to help with FPS
5. Layout..."Don't know where to go! I have found our flag but where is their's?" - Answer - Turn round!!!!
6. Tower room...."The boxes for robots don't have glass" - Erm very picky will explain why when I talk about my optimisation techniques
7. Terrain......"Terrain is pointy, you will lose marks." - A student trying to be a lecturer!! - my explanation was simple...This is my first beta and is being tested for game play only not how the map currently looks...hence why basic lighting and no height fog etc
Beta02
So went through the feedback and added the following..
- Missing Blocking Volume added near flag
- Changed centre lifts to jump pad
- Dynamic Lights added to all movers to stop shading affects (Doors and lifts)
- Base arrows added in more places to help with navigation. Also added base symbols
- Post process volumes inside bases, which I have changed the property values of the shading to tint a blue/red colour respectively.
- Terrain smoothed out
- Changed slime volume to have Bio weapon blob texture as I always wanted it to look like it was radioactive
- Foliage Volume....added to Fire Hydrant with 2 Bio weapon static meshes to multiply around the hydrant giving a leek effect
- Removed weapon locker which was for test purposes only and replaced with rocket
Beta02 Feedback
So once again this has been tested with all the new improvements and feedback was given
- "Terrain still too pointy."
- "Needs health in centre of map."
- "All this open space and no guns!, just ammo and armour."
Added the following
- Smoothed out Terrain even more
- Added Health in centre of map. Positioned this above the slime as I felt it was not needed but as it was requested I obliged. With this being above slime it gives the player a penalty if they miss the health they could land in the slime and further injure themselves.
Well it came a time that this needed to be handed in so no more beta versions could be fully tested.
In the final handed in version I did however add a few more things for visual effect that would not effect game play
Height Fog
- Sun Height fog (Tinted yellow)
- A grey misty fog for sky and mountains
- A lighter grey mist on floor
These gave the map more depth and more of a night/dusk look which is what I planned for
Problems to improve in the future
- Bots seem to have problems with the Jump pad section (Getting up and down). A simple fix to help bots getting down would be too add path nodes on each ledge
- Lighting....Although in editor mode before cooking the lighting was exactly how I wanted it. After cooking however, the lighting all seemed to darken.
- Bio rifle texture/Static mesh. I was rushed to cook the final version and hand in at the end and forgot to create and save this to my own package. So when in editor mode when you try and close this it will ask you save this package.
Optimisation
- Dynamic Lights. Unamed_1 channel selected in light settings and movers so the dynamic light only affects these static mesh's and not everything within the light region
- Textures. Most of the textures on the map which took up the most space (memory) were selected and Light map resolution was overridden 32
- Skydome. Turned off blocking Volumes and Shading Properties
- Static Mesh. Selected all static mesh's that do not need dynamic light and switched off any properties that had to do with dynamic lighting...bacceptdynamiclights, bcastdynamicshadows etc
- Earth and Moon. Would only accept dynamic lighting so I added an extra directional light to the sky. Changed it to a dynamic light and changed properties for light, earth and moon to also use the unamed_1 lighting channel.
Final Video
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