UnrealEd 2.0 Tips

By: Dean "Goldabar" Tate

goldabar@planetunreal.com

General Tips

Here I'm basically going to ramble (in point form) some rules and general stuff that I follow when I'm mapping. As I learn more and more about mapping I'll be adding stuff to here (maybe even some tips on Real Life maps) so make sure to check back here every now and then! These are just general tips so I'm not going to organize them in any particular fashion, so grab some popcorn and get ready for a long read!

-Lately I've found that the best way to get inspiration for a particular map theme that I'd like to do is to surround myself in anything that has to do with the chosen theme. For example, the map I'm working on at the moment is gothic themed, so I've been looking at websites such us this to gather inspiration and ideas. Once I have a collection of pictures and art from websites such as this, I start sketching ideas that are a "mixture" of elements I've collected. Once this is done, I look at the plan of my map to decide where these different elements can be placed.

-Design your maps around different gameplay elements, such as weapon placement, and strategical elements such as cover from fire (from things like pillars and winding corridors, etc. These be fun when being chased by rockets, heh). One of the largest mistakes I made with DM-Spiridian was that it was in no way designed for gameplay, it was designed to see what sort of pretty pictures I could make in Ued (Heh, I should've said this in the ReadMe file, I've gotten a lot of backlash over this. Oh well). Never make this mistake unless you too just want to have some fun making architecture. Below you can see the plan for the map I'm currently working on, the layout for it has pretty much been dictated by what items will go where (take a close look, I've labelled the item placement):

-I guess there are certain rules that most people follow when placing certain items into a map. For example, I always place shield belts in high risk areas that are difficult for the player to reach, like the water trap in Spiridian. Its also good to make sure that there's only one entry and exit point to an area contain the shieldbelt. If you take a close look at the above plan, you'll see that once a player has grabbed the shieldbelt they have no choice but to jump from a large platform, that could lead to danger below (you know, large bears and crocodiles, that sort of stuff. Lions and Tigers and Bears. Oh my). This helps towards making the map just a tad more strategical. Also, place weapons such as the flak cannon in cramped spaces, where they're useful.

-I've noticed in a lot of maps that sometimes items such as the shieldbelt and basic armour are placed in complete dead ends. Personally, I don't do this, although I'm sure the more hardcore players out there may love it. To me doing this can just completely disrupt the flow of the map. I've played maps like this and heard the call from other players saying "Why the hell are these dead ends here? They're annoying" and I'd have to agree.....why are they there? It's just as easy to make a difficult and high risk area for these items to be accessed, without disrupting the map flow.

-Make your architecture as "three dimensional" as possible, without breaking the poly limit (you, in the back, screaming out "Hey what about Spiridian?"......shut the hell up) What this means is, don't use too many brushes "flatly". Let them jump out at the player so that they can see that "yes indeed that's a brush, not a texture". For example, try out different styles such as what I did here:

This was one of the few areas of Spiridian that stuck to the 250 poly limit (in fact from most views it didn't go over 150-200) but still managed to look great because of some interesting design elements. Here I have a ton of simple cube brushes stretched out all over the place, criss-crossing over each other to give a true sense of solidity to the area. Here you don't just feel like you're in a very nicely painted cube, there's a lot more going on. Try this as much as possible, as it leads on to my next point.

-Lighting. I suck at it, but I'm learning. As I said in the above point, its great to make interesting architecture this way. But what I have yet to learn (well, what I'm learning and doing at the moment) is to make good use of this type of architecture for some interesting and varied shadowing effects. Once architecture such as the above is in place, it's crucial that you make good use of it in your shadowing with clever light placement. Surround the architecture in brighter lights so that shadows will be created, and then if you wish to light the shadowed areas, put much more softer lights near them (brightness of say, 20-30, depending on the texture set). Don't let strongly coloured lights make your map "pretty". Sometimes its best to use even a saturation of 220 for some soft colouring effects. A saturation of 0? Avoid, avoid, avoid. Most of the time. Heh. Of course it depends on what sort of effect you're trying to achieve, but for the most part it's best not to go below 100-150 saturation, maybe even 180.

-Create contrast in your map with your lighting. Allow areas of the map to be completely dark, this will make the map much pleasing to the eye (unfortunately, as Akuma has told me tons of times, I didn't follow this correctly in Spiridian so please don't take it as an example). Make your map well lit so that players can easily make their way around, but be sure to keep small pockets of dark shadow around the place to add a little spice (erm......spice? I dunno what else to say. Oh well I'll edit this part later. Or maybe not. I'd say not)

-Try to use the 2d Editor as much as possible for the architecture in your map, and failing that, try not to use too many "flat" primitive brushes. Most of the time when I'm mapping I never use a simple cube, unless for example I'm just starting a new area in my map. Use vertex editing as much as possible, this is the only way you'll stop your map from being too blocky.

-Use semisolids on every single fricken' solid brush that you possible can (i.e. any solid brush that doesn't have a brush subtracted from it). This will help prevent BSP holes for the most part, and cut down on the node count of your map (I won't go all technical here on why it does that, so you're just going to have to trust me that it does. You do trust me, right?). Make sure the vertices of your brushes always stay on the grid. One thing I've noticed that lots of mappers tend to do is "combine" as many of their brushes as possible by intersecting/de-intersecting. I tend not to do this..well....ever, and so far I've had no problems. In fact I seem to get less BSP holes doing this, for example Spiridian is made up of over 2000 brushes and I only ever found 2 holes during the entire building of the map, and these were fixed in 2 seconds each by re-ordering some brush BSP orders. Easy.

-Use meshes to add detail to your map, but keep in mind that you shouldn't use too many (more than 800 poly meshes in a scene is bad if I recall correctly, you can check this by typing "stat mesh" into the Ued2 command prompt).

-It's good to use a small layer of water just above the players feet in different sections of your map to add strategy. This can be used as an audio clue to other players in the level to give away the location of other players as they trounce through the water puddles. This is best used in areas that hold powerful items (the Rocket Launcher, the Shieldbelt, etc). The same can be done by placing strings of 1 or 2 Healthvials around the map. These won't give the player all that much advantage when they pick up the tasty little treat, but what it will do is give out a huge audio clue to other players in the map (Healthvials are loud when you pick them up. Very loud).

-Create geometry that's designed to use your chosen texture pack, not the other way around. When designing a brush I always firstly take a quick look at the textures I'm using and work out ways in which they could be applied to some nice architecture. Spiridian is a good example of this, as most of the brushes were created after I had a quick check of the texture browser.

-Try to be creative, don't just recycle old ideas into new maps. When this is done an entire style of mapping can become tired and old in the gaming community very quickly. Try coming up with innovative new gameplay and design ideas of your own without just taking a look at other maps and thinking "oh that looks good, I could use that". For me personally I can't see the fun at all in recycling old ideas, if I had done this from the start of my mapping days, I wouldn't be here anymore. I would have simply grown bored too quickly. Try to develop your own style (in map making and basically....everything else that you do I guess (I'm referring to art, stuff like that)). Be individual with your work, but please if you're going to be an "individual" just in general, don't be one of those A-holes that takes "individuality" as another word for um..."A-Hole". Heh. I hate those people).

-I stated in my earlier tutorial (below) that I make my maps piece by piece without doing a "rough map" first off (making the entire map layout with basic brushwork). Well, I've changed my ways. Now I do tend to make the whole map out of basic brushes before starting any serious work. What this allows me to do is have a quick run around the map to see if it'll play well before I've spent a hundred hours working on detail only to find that the layout is in fact terrible, no matter how good it looked on paper. So now I can't stress enough, plan your whole map out in Ued before doing any detailed work, trust me, this will save time and trouble in the long run.

Inspiration

HA! You thought I was going to talk about planning the map first didn't you? (Well I was going to then I went back and wrote this). One of the most important keys to building great looking maps (and anything artistic for that matter) is the gathering of inspiration. With inspiration you can find the will and the stamina to do whatever you want. Basically I gather my inspiration from everything around me, for example any art that I look at (classic and modern, also stuff like cartoons, cool movies, comic books, any sort of feedback from people who play my maps, and even just other games that I like to play). With inspiration you will be able to come up with fantastic ideas for what you'd like to build, whether it be an awesome Sci-Fi spaceship map (just 'cause you've been watching too much Star Trek or something.....although I never watch Trek, it's too boring) or an Egyptian temple, or, well, anything (A giant dog house? A giant bathroom? Hmmm I remember a map like that....)

Planning

I still find it hard to believe that there are people out there that don't plan their maps out before going into Ued and building stuff (although I do have some good friends that make great maps, but don't plan them out. I don't know how they do it to be honest). I like to spend a lot of time drawing up ideas and plans for my maps before I start making them (this takes a long time, but I start doing it just as I'm finishing the map I'm currently working on. For example, once I'm up to the finishing touches of a map, I start thinking up ideas for what I'm going to do next, jotting down sketches and ideas in my sketch book. Go check out the artwork section to see what I mean). Once this is done, I find that it's best to take a look through Ued to pick and choose which textures I'll be needing, and thinking up clever ways to use them on my geometry. I find this is good for getting a clear idea of how the finished product will look, and how it will work.

Next: Its all in the Details!

Next up I start slowly building up my map in Ued, adding detail as I go along and then, once an area has been textured, adding lighting. I know that most people like to build a rough outline of the map with simple brushes before they start adding any type of detail, but this is not how I do it (although I am starting to use this method more and more). I prefer to build the map area-by-area, this allows me to focus on the detail throughout development. This is useful because in this way my mind is always ticking over, thinking up ideas for cool details and brush work. If I went and stuck all the detail into my map near the end of the development, I think I'd get burned out pretty quickly and run out of cool ideas. The reason that I do my lighting right from the beginning of the development is that it keeps the map looking cool, and that spurs me on to keep working. I've tried building maps before without lighting them right until the end (I did this in SFTDM-Greyskies) and to be honest, once I was around half way through making the map I became extremely bored with it. I was sick of looking at dull, lifeless, unlit textures. One of the keys to building a good map is keeping yourself interested in it. Without interest and inspiration, you're.....well.....stuffed. Also, seeing as I do the lighting this way, I can continue to get opinions on it right throughout the development, from friends and of course my mapping buddies. Which brings me to my next point.

Opinions and Why They Matter

The best thing you can do while building your map (at least once it gets close to completion) is to share it around with friends and to get a clean new opinion on it. Once I have a map around half done I start sending it to my close friends, getting opinions on it and making changes to the map as I go along. The good thing about handing the map over to other people is that they can much more easily point out mistakes that you've made and improvements you should implement.

The Finishing Touches

Once this is all done, the the geometry, lighting and layout of your map is complete, it's time to finish it off. This usually involves getting the map pathed for bots (never underestimate the importance of this step, most people I know only play UT offline, including myself) and fixing any small errors you have made, for example BSP holes and badly lit areas. Now it's time to test the map. It's best to upload your "final" version of the map to an FTP (I call it "final" because this never ends up being the final version) and then send a message off to your to any mappers that you know to have a play around in the map for a bit of beta testing. Once all the kinks have been ironed out in your map, keep testing it because trust me, you will have missed something. Then it's time to add a screenshot to your map, and release it to the world!