Creating "Ending Scenes" in Assault Maps

By Silencer

FOREWORD:

For this tutorial you will need an in depth understanding of UnrealED as well as an assault map ready. You also, will need some ideas of what you want your "ending scene" to be in your assault map.

PARTS:

- Part 1: Formulating an "Ending Scene"
- Part 2: The Neccessities
- Part 3: Explosion Scenes
- Part 4: Explosion Chains
- Part 5: Adding Smoke
- Part 6: Adding Sounds
- Part 7: Creating an Example Ending Scene

DIRECTIONS:

Part 1: Formulating an "Ending Scene"

Basically what this section is about is, is what you want your "ending scene" to be. Every assault map is different. For example, in AS-Bridge, the ending scene in that was a bridge blowing up. This was done because the main objective in the map was to place explosive materials (C4?) inside the bridge and then blow it up. Hence, the ending scene in AS-Bridge was a bridge blowing up. Your assault map's ending scene should follow its storyline. For example, what if the ending scene to AS-Bridge was a ship flying into outer space. Everyone who would see it would go, huh? It would have nothing to do with its storyline. That is why your ending scene must stick with the storyline.

Most of the ending scenes I have seen in assault maps consist of movers and explosions. Actually, I'd say about all the ending scenes in assault maps have either an explosion or a mover at the end (even both). Right now you should have some kind of idea you want your ending scene in your assault map to be. For example, if you had a space scene in which you had the attacking team get out of the base and into a ship, then you'll probably be thinking in something similiar to that of AS-Asthenosphere. Or, if your attacking team was supposed to blow up a dam, then you'll be obviously thinking of a dam explosion. So right now, take a look at your assault map and think of a cool ending scene to go along with it when the attacking team wins.

Part 2: The Neccessities

These are the things that are required in an ending scene:

- A Fortstandard
- A Spectator Cam
- Movers and Explosions (Not totally neccassary but used 99% of the time)

Other things that are commonly used in ending scenes:

- Triggers, Dispatchers, and Special Events
- Ambient Sounds
- Smoke

A Fortstandard:

No need to go deeply into the detail of this object. In case you don't know what this is or are unfamiliar with it. Go read my other tutorial on Creating Assault Maps. Basically, what we will be doing with this is taking your final fortstandard. The one that the attacking team must reach in order to win, and assigning it an event and a string for the EndCamTag. I will go into this with more detail later.

A Spectator Cam

Without this little thing, everybody's final ending scene would be looking at themselves like in CTF and Deathmatch maps. A spectator cam brings all the players in that game to look from it. For example, if you put a spectator cam in your level and faced it at a pyramid, and then assigned it as the final cam, and the attackers won, everybody would look through that spectator cam and not at themselves. For a better example at this go play AS-Pyramid and beat it. I will talk about setting up and finding the spectator cam later.

Movers and Explosions

Hopefully if you are reading this then you know about movers and exploding walls and such. If you don't know how to set up and exploding wall, no biggie, I'll explain it further down the line. If you don't know what movers are, go learn them first! Ok, now onto what these two things can do, explosions are exactly what they sound like. During an ending scene, you might was to have a wall explode and a tank come through the opening. What you would do is set an explosion to blow up the wall, and then have a tank (your mover) roll through that destroyed wall and into your movie. These two things basically make up your entire ending scene.

Triggers, Dispatchers, and Special Events

If you are gonna have an ending scene with sounds, smoke, and explosions, your gonna need to know how to use triggers, dispatchers, and special events. Without these objects, either nothing would set off or start, or everything would start at once making it look stupid. (ex. A tank goes through the wall before the wall is exploded) Many ending scenes use these three objects. In case you don't know how to use these objects, please find out how. Wolf's Tutorials or UnrealED.exe has tutorials on this.

Ambient Sounds

So what do these do in an ending scene? Well, ambient sounds help bring life into your ending scene. They make it feel just that much more realistic. When used correctly, ambient sounds can really boost up the performance of you ending scene. Epic has provided us mappers with lots of ambient sounds to choose from. Such as explosion sounds, elevator sounds, and even a waterfall sound. Ambient sounds can also be used in your level as well.

Smoke

Ok, lets say that you are making an ending scene and you've made it so that there's a large explosion and a building is destroyed. Now normally, in reality, there's a bit of dust and smoke after the explosion. So what smoke does in your ending scene is exactly that. It too, like ambient sounds, adds to the feel of your ending scene. Imagine a house burning down and there being no smoke rising from it, see, you get my point. Smoke is make with UnrealED through objects called SmokeGenerators which I will go through later.

Part 3: Explosion Scenes <<Download Test Map>>

Because later in the tutorial I will be going through making an example ending scene, here I will tell you how to set up an explosion. First off, make whatever it is you want to have explode. Then, make a large brush and intersect it. (Note: I'm not going to go through all the details as I suspect you already know this because this tutorial is an advanced tutorial.) Once intersected, right click on the brush and go to "Polygons", then click on "To Brush". Now move that brush to where you want the explosion to happen and create a mover. Set the first keyframe to somewhere outside your level. I will explain why later. Now go into the Actor Class Broswer and click on the plus sign next to "Effects", then scroll down until you see something called: Exploding Wall. Do not click on the plus sign next to that, just click on the Exploding Wall. Now place that near your mover. Now right click on your mover and go into its properties menu. First go into Events and set up an event tag with a unique name such as "gorilla" or whatever ;) Then, if you want this explosion to be triggered only and not shot, then set a unique Tag on it such as "ape" or whatever. Then go into the Mover section and set the following properties:

- bDamageTriggered = True
- bTriggerOnceOnly = True
- bDamageThreshold = 20.000000 (Note: If you want this exploding "Thing" to be hit and damaged and not just triggered, make it a number like 20 - 40)
- MoverEncroachType = ME_IgnoreWhenEncroach
- MoveTime = 0.000000 (This is why you set the first keyframe to someplace outside the level. The mover doesn't really "explode", it just dissapears and chunks form.)

Ok, with that all set, go into the Objects section and set the InitState to TriggerOpenTimed. Then you're all set with the mover so go ahead and close its properties menu. Now right click on the Exploding Wall object and go into its properties menu. In the Event section, set the Tag to the event that you set the mover too. For example, I set the event in my mover to gorilla so I will set this tag to gorilla. Now go into the Exploding Wall section and do some testing with the following properties:

- BreakingSound = Set this property with an ambient sound (an explosion one reccommended) - Ex. "Sound'DDay.(All).explo1" << This is an ambient sound found in the DDay.uax file
- ExplosionDimensions = Test out different number sizes until you get what you want - Ex. 120.000000
- ExplosionSize = Test out different number sizes until you get what you want - EX. 200.000000
- GlassParticleSize = Set this to a number you choose for the sizes of the glass chunks - Ex. 12.000000
- WallParticleSize = Set this to a number you choose for the sizes of the wood chunks - Ex. 12.000000
- WoodParticleSize = Set this to a number you choose for the sizes of the wall chunks - Ex. 12.000000
- GlassTexture = Set this to the texture you are using for your glass.
- WallTexture = Set this to the texture you are using for your wall. - Ex. "Texture'Crypt2.Ceiling.C_clng1'" << This is a texture found in the Crypt2.utx file
- WoodTexture = Set this to the texture you are using for your wood.
- NumGlassChunks = How many glass chunks you want. - Ex. 8.000000
- NumWallChunks = How many wall chunks you want. - Ex. 8.000000
- NumWoodChunks = How many wood chunks you want. - Ex. 8.000000

Now close the Exploding Wall properties menu and press F8 and Rebuild Geometry. If using UnrealED 2.0, click on Comput Geometry, Compute Lighting, and Compute Paths. Once done with that test it out! (Only test it out if you made the explosion object (the mover) have a DamageThreshold for shooting out.) Unless you wanted to set the explosion off by trigger, go ahead and test it out, otherwise you have on more thing to do. Place a trigger into your level and go into its properties, under its Event section, put the name of the tag you put on that mover earlier into the Event property. Now, if you already had a level ready for this then put whatever event it is that sets off this trigger, otherwise go down to the Trigger Section in the Trigger properties menu and next to TriggerType, put TT_PlayerProximity. Now test it out after rebuilding geometry and lighting!

Part 4: Explosion Chains <<Download Test Map>>

Explosion Scenes and Explosion chains are very similiar, the only difference between the two is that explosion chains can be more than one explosion (hence the "chains") and they don't blow up chunks all over the place. To add an explosion chain into your level, go into the Classes broswer and click on the plus sign next to Effects to bring a new list down. Scroll down until you see something called: ExplosionChain. Now add about five of those in your level where you want the explosions to happen. You can add as many as you want but for this example, I'm using five. Ok, now, right click on one of the ExplosionChain objects and go into its properties menu. Now go into the Events section and give it a unique tag such as "boom" or something. Now, place the same tag for all the ExplosionChain's you've placed in your level. For this example, I would now have five ExplosionChain objects with their tag marked "boom". Now go ahead and select two or three of them and go into their properties menu. Under the ExplosionChain section, you'll notice some properties as listed below that you may want to play around with until you receive your desired effect.

- Damage = The amount of damage it gives to a player/bot if near it when it explodes. - Ex. 60.000000
- DelayTime = Time after the initial triggered event has been set before the explosion erupts. I believe it is in seconds. - Ex. 1.000000
- Size = The size of the explosion. Keep this fairly low. - Ex. 1.500000

Now select the remaining ExplosionChain objects and set the properties to the same that you set the others but instead, change their DelayTime poperty to a higher or lower number. Now you will have a set of two explosions in the same explosion chain. Now that your ExplosionChain objects are tagged and set, add a trigger somewhere in your level where you want the person/projectile to be to set off the explosions. For example, if you wanted have a player walk through a booby-trapped hallway in which when he was in the middle the hallway's ends would be explode and therefore leave him dead. You will put your ExplosionChain objects on the ends of the hallway and put your trigger in between them. After you have found a good place for your trigger and have placed it there, go into its properties menu. Now, go into the Events section and under event, put whatever you put for the ExplosionChain tags; in this example, the Trigger's event would be labeled "boom". Now, under the Trigger section in the Trigger's properties menu, look down until you see something called TriggerType. Now, in trigger type you have five choices. One of them is TT_PlayerProximity and another one of the five is TT_Shoot. If you choose TT_PlayerProximity, the bot/player must run near the trigger to activate it. If you choose TT_Shoot, you must shoot near it to activate it. So choose which one you want. Now, rebuild geometry, lighting, and pathing and test it out!

Part 5: Adding Smoke <<Download Test Map>>

First I'll start off with explaining how to add smoke to your level/ending scene. To add smoke, go into your Classes broswer and select on the plus sign next to Effects. The scroll down until you see something called "SmokeGenerator". Select on that and place it at the exact spot where you want your smoke to come out from. Now, right click on the SmokeGenerator and go into its proprties menu (Note: You can always have more that one SmokeGenerator in your map). Now, because you'll need something to set off the smoke, you'll need to put a Tag on it, so go into the Events section and put a unique tag on it such as "smokin". Now go into the SmokeGenerator section and look at some of the following properties:

- BasePuffSize = The median size of each smoke "puff" - Ex. 2.000000
- RisingVelocity = Not positive on this one but I believe it is how high your smoke rises in units before it dissappears. - Ex. 75.000000
- SizeVariance = +/- the range from the BasePuffSize - Ex. 1.000000 (This meaning that with a 2 BasePuffSize, the size of the puffs can be anywhere from 1 - 3)
- SmokeDelay = Once triggered, this is time that it will wait before it starts. - Ex. 0.150000
- TotalNumPuffs = Pretty Self-Explanatory, once this number reaches zero, the puffs/smoke stops. - Ex. 1000000.000000 (This will take a looooong time to run out)

Now that you've got your SmokeGenerator set up go ahead and make some more if you like following the same procedure. Once you've added all the SmokeGenerators you need, go into the Classes Broswer and select the plus sign next to Tiggers and select Trigger. Now add a trigger into your map and open ups its properties menu. (Now, the way you activate this trigger is up to you, whether or not you want it to be shot at or touched.) Now, while in the trigger properties menu, go into the Events section and put the name of the Tag you put on your SmokeGenerator into the Event property. Then you're all set, rebuild geometry, lighting, and paths and test it out!

Part 6: Adding Sounds <<Download Test Map>>

Ambient Sounds are very, very easy to add into your level/ending scene. First, go into your Classes broswer and select on the plus sign next to KeyPoint, then select on the item at the top of that list called AmbientSound. This is what we will be using to create our sounds. Now right click somewhere in your level where you want a specific sound to come from and add it there. Now right click on the AmbientSound object in your level and go into its properties menu. Now the only thing that we will be working with in here will be in the Sound section, so go ahead on open that part up. Now, before touching anything in the sound section, you're gonna have to find the right sound first for your area! So go ahead and open the Sound broswer. Load up the .uax file that you think would have to right sound in it and test it out by pressing the Play button to see if it is the right sound. If so, then keep it selected (the sound) and minimize the Sound broswer. Now go back into the Ambient sound properties and into the Sound section. Click on where it says AmbientSound, then click on the little button on the right of it that says "Use". There, now you've got the sound set up. Below you now are other properties that you can set to help your AmbientSound, sound more realistic. SoundPitch, SoundRadius, and SoundVolume all have to do with the area that you can here the sound and it's volumn. For one of my older levels, I put these all at 64 because I put this sound in a corner (It was a cricket sound). Once you are all set, rebuild geometry, lighting, and paths and test it out!

Part 7: Creating an Example Ending Scene

Now it's time to put everything that you've learned so far into an assault ending scene. To get everybody on the same page I've created a functional assault map that is complete with everything except the ending scene. While it may be crap, the ending scene that we'll make with it won't be. So "Click here to download the Map". Once you've downloaded the map, play it by yourself and just run around in it a bit so you see what it looks like and where the final objective is. Then open up UnrealED and open it up in that. Ok, now that's it's opened up, we can start creating our ending scene. First off, we need to think of what would be a good ending scene for this map. Well lets see here....Ok, what will happen is the sphere in the middle will have too much power/energy in it causing it to explode. This is why I put the computer terminal in the map, it is controls for the amount of power going through that sphere in the middle. Once the attacking team hits that terminal, the power will switch on to max power causing the sphere to explode. Once the explosion has occured the pieces will then fall into the lava below and will be burned up, so we'll put some smoke in there too. Ok, first off, adding the spectator cam. Go into your Classes browser and go into the KeyPoint area. Then scroll down until you see something called SpectatorCam. Select that. Now right click on the top 2D view. You'll notice for a split second that a red arrow appears and then disappears (excuse my spelling if it's spelled wrong). Now, click on one of the blue brushes in the map and then right click on it in the top 2D view and then click on Select All. See below for example:

Then hold the Ctrl key and click on the red arrow to make it disappear again. Then click on the Invert Selection button on the left side of the screen. (It looked like a button that is half black and half white cut in diagonal. Making sure that everything, including your red brush, is unselected, and that you can see the red arrow; hold the Ctrl key and the right mouse button and position it (the red arrow) in the 2D views to look at the sphere. See below for how I positioned mine.

While still having the red arrow (our SpectatorCam) still selected, right click on it and go into its properties menu. Then go into the Events section and put the following tag on it: "finalcam" (without the quotes). Now you can unselect that. Now go to where the computer thing is and select on the FortStandard right near it. This is our final fortstandard so we will be putting and EndCam property on it. Right click on the FortStandard and go into its properties menu. Now, go into the FortStandard section and scroll down until you see something called EndCamTag. Now place "finalcam" without the quotes into that property area. See below for example.

Once you are all set with that, save your level and start up UT and test the level out. Beat it and then it will take you to where you placed your SpectatorCam. If you feel that it is in a good position and is looking at the sphere and the lava, then great, you're all set. If you feel that it isn't positioned correctly enough to see the whole sphere and the lava below, go back to UnrealEd and reposition it by doing all that selecting stuff I said earlier. Ok, now that the hard part is done, it's time for the more easy and fun parts. First, lets set up the easiest thing, the smoke. Add SmokeGenerators around the lava area. See below for how I did mine. (Note: For more information on how to set up smoke, please go here.)

All those little black things are SmokeGenerators that I've placed on top of the lava. Now we have to set up all the SmokeGenerators. Select them all and give them all this tag: "Smoke1" - without the quotes. Now change their total number of puffs to about 500 and their smoke delay time to about 0.500000. Now go ahead and deselect those. The smoke is now all set, so save your level. Now we need to make the sphere in the middle explode so here's what we are gonna do. First set the sphere's first keyframe to somewhere outside the level. (Note: For more information on how to set up explosions, please go here.) Ok, now that's all set go into your Classes broswer and add an ExplodingWall object near or inside the sphere. Now all we gotta do is set their properties. Go into the sphere's properties (which is the mover) and put this Event on it: "explodeme" without the quotes. Then put this tag on it: "boom" without the quotes. Now go into the Mover section and set the following properties:

- bDamageTriggered = True

- bTriggerOnceOnly = True

- DamageThreshold = 1000.000000

- MoverEncroachType = ME_IgnoreWhenEncroach

- MoveTime = 0.000000

And leave everything else alone. Now go into the Object section and set the InitialState property to TriggerOpenTimed. Now close the mover properties on open up the ExplodingWall properties menu. In the Events section and under Tag, put "explodeme" without the quotes. Now go into the ExplodingWall section and set these following properties:

- ExplosionDimensions = 240.000000

- ExplosionSize = 500.000000

- GlassParticleSize = 0.750000

- GlassTexture = Texture'Coret_FX.Base.A_Base1' (Explained Below)

- NumGlassChunks = 50

- NumWallChunks = 75

- NumWoodChunks = 25

- WallParticleSize = 0.750000

- WallTexture = Texture'Coret_FX.Base.A_Base1' (Explained Below)

- WoodParticleSize = 0.500000

- WoodTexture = Texture'Coret_FX.Base.A_Base1' (Explained Below)

To set the Wall, Wood, and Glass textures, open up your Texture broswer and open Coret_FX.utx and select on the texture named A_Base1. See below for picture:

Then while selected, minimize the texture broswer window and go the the GlassTexture, WoodTexture, and WallTexture properties in the ExplodingWall object and select Use. Then you should be all set so close the ExplodingWall properties menu. Ok, now go back to the final fortstandard near the computer terminal and go into its properties. Go into its Events section and set the Event to "Time", without the quotes. Now close that and go into your Classes broswer. Go into Triggers and select on Dispatcher. Then add one of those into your level. Now go into the Dispatcher's properties. In the Events section under Tag put "Time", without the quotes. Now go into the Dispatcher section and select on the plus sign next to OutEvents to bring a list down. Under [0] - put "Smoke1", under [1] - put "boom" (both without the quotes). So now your Dispatcher properties should look like this.

Phew! Finally finished. Compute geometry, compute paths, and compute lighting and then save your level and test it out! If your level doesn't seem to work correctly, "Compare it with my Finished One". Good luck!

CONCLUSION:

Well, judging that what I said was all correct, you should now know how to make ending scenes in assault maps and know how to set up Exploding Walls, Explosion Chains, Sounds, and Smoke. There's so many possible things you can do when creating ending scenes so experiment! I hope to be seeing some great assault maps soon! :)

OTHER:

-=[Copyright/Permissions]=-

Questions/Comments email me at Murphy149h@mediaone.net .

This tutorial is Copyright (c) 2000 Matt "Silencer" Murphy.

This tutorial is not supported by Legend Entertainment or Epic Games.