UNreal Editor

Games Design

Brief can be found HERE.

Proposal

The Brief for this asked us to make an Unreal Tournament CTF map, we were given tutorials of how to use UT2004 editor but we were allowed to use the newer Unreal3 one if we wanted to. We also had to create some sort of sequence called a Matinee within unreal which could show anything such as a pawn moving to and opening a door aswell as a 1000 word essay comparing any 2 game levels of our choice. For this i decided to make a CTF flag using the older UT2004 editor as due to the tutorials we had on them i thought i would be able to make the most of the tools i had.

Research

Didnt really have much research for this, i have played UT2004 a lot in the past so i remembered what most of the maps looked like however i did open a lot of them up in the editor to have a look at how certain things were made which i wasnt sure about. Apart from this we looked as previous years work to see what was expected of us especially the Matinee sequence as personally i wasnt even sure what this was, nor did i know anything like this even existed in the game.

Planning(and putting into action)

MAP

I did a few sketches on paper as to rough map layouts but it wasnt really working so i thought the best thing would be to mess around in the editor and build some shapes and try and get a good flow to the map as thats very important in a quick paced game like this. I originally made my rough layout but on trying it i discovered i had made the whole thing about 3x bigger than it should have been and it looked ridiculous when trying to run around however i did like the layout i made so i went with this idea but remade it smaller.

To start with i built the large central area just the shape using the BSP tool and then made 1 of the sides with the flag room. Once having the rough outline of the map how i wanted i started to add textures and include some static meshes to fill up the rooms. A lot of my rooms were fairly large so i went back afterwards and cut out sections to make them more complex shapes instead of just large open cubes. The map still felt small however so i extended the flag room out further and added another section at the side of the central area as well as an underground passage which gave the map an extra route to the other teams flag. It was a lot more work to do but i felt it needed to be done instead of just a small map with only 1 way to go.

After i got the textures how i wanted them as well as the meshes i worked on adding the lighting, i had to read up on some tutorials of how to make a good looking flame as due to my map being medieval/gothic themed i couldnt just put a normal light in or it would have ruined the theme. I set about adding light meshes all around and then adding the actual lights to give the map a much darker theme using orange and red glows. Once i was fairly satisfied with all this i duplicated the rooms that contained the flag to the other side of the central area to make it a symmetrical map and having the same base for the red and blue team. I changed some of the graphics and made the lights blue so you would be able to distinguish the difference between the red flag room and the blue flag room.

After this i went about adding lava all over my map, my central area was rather large and it looked bare so i made majority of the floor into lava with jump pads around. i think this works well as i wanted a fast paced map but still wanted dangers to keep players reflexes sharp. I put some lava under the flags aswell to make it a little trickier to escape with the enemy flag.

Once i tidied up all my textures, aligning them and checking for any meshes that were not in place i added sounds to the lava and the flames and then gave the map some general music from one of the ingame choices. Then it was just a case of adding the final spawn points, weapon/general pick up placements and bot paths. Bot paths needed a little bit of work as they refused to take the underground passage so i had to include an assault path, even now they dont use it much but in my testing i still do see quite a few bots down there so it seems to have worked.

MATINEE

As for the matinee i decided to use my own map so i couldnt do it till i had finished this. Once it was done my idea was to have the camera floating around the corridors while bots were fighting constantly i just wanted to show how it was a dangerous map with all the blood and shooting going on. I had to get to grips with the camera tool which itself took numerous hours, after doing so i was able to set up a very rough guide of where i wanted the camera to go. Once i finished this rough guide i went back and changed each of the points and the timers to try and make the camera flow as smooth as possible but there are still some changes i couldnt make smooth.

As for the bots i just added a lot of xPawns and then set them to go to different points on the map which should make there paths cross and result in small scale fights however in previews due to them following my bot paths they seem to take a different route to there destination each time so sometimes the camera catches 1-2 pawns and other times 5-6 but as i had left it so work due to not being able to start it till i finished my map i didnt really have time to sort this out so i decided to leave it as it was.

The Work.

MAP

Due to sizes and server storage limitations i will only include some screenshots of the map instead of the actual file.

CTF-Eradicate

 

 

 

 

 

MOV-Eradicate

 

Review/Evaluation

Overall im pleased with how the map turned out. Id like to think i havent done anything too stupid and extreme and it could be something you would possibly see as a proper map for the game. The room could maybe be a little less square and my downstairs rooms are rather bare but i couldnt find many meshes that fit the theme properly. My matinee im not really happy with, if i was to do it again i would probably make a new map for the matinee section and just do something simple like opening a door then i dont need to rely on trying to capture my bots fighting at the precise moment that the camera flys by. I also have a mesh stuck at the end of my matinee in the floor which i cant find in the editor to delete so ive somehow made him invisible and unable to get rid of him, obviously if i did it again i wouldnt have him there which kind of ruins the sequence but it was too late to do anything about it.

The one thing i would say about this project is that i wish i had used the Unreal3 engine instead as the students that used that, their maps look far superior just due to the changes in graphics and some of the things you can do the engine. I spent 100's of hours on my map and it looks like ive spent about an hour on it when you compare it to a UT3 map.

NAvigation

 

Copyright John Ezard - Venom 2008