Tutorial/Hub Map

This was a last minute decision, i cant do what i want in UIScene due to refusing to learn unrealscript..so it restricts you...a lot, so i thought the menu/quick prototype of the map/weapon upgrade system i could make in flash, nothing fancy just some buttons here and there but id be able to my own graphics instead of typing in unreal (crap font editor without unrealscript)

then it hit me..well how am i gonna show them..oh i know i can do a video in the background...ok i dont have a video of anything...so im gonna have to make the map. Well one of the first concept pics i drew was in a warehouse with some crates set up as a mini tutorial zone, this was also meant to be the central hub where you access the map and char/weapon upgrade systems.

I thought...well its only gonna be 1 room i can probably make it in a week or 2 aslong as i have the rooms in that i want to prototype in flash i can record myself running round here, interacting with the item and then with a flash overlay showing how that particular element would work.

So onwards!

Placed some bsp shapes down to get the basic shape of the factory/warehouse whatever it actually is which actually took hours trying to get the scale right, decided i wanted it to be more futuristic than the London enviroment ive made as this place is being used as a headquarters by some head engineers/technicians they would put up with 100 year old enviroments so this is going to be quite a futuristic looking place

Some early meshes/windows in place mostly to get a feel of the size of the place:



Still very early in development just from another angle:



The walkway up to the office which will host the map room:



Oh yeahhh i found some crates, ive got them laid out pretty much identical to how i had them drawn months ago, i may set it up with triggers so u actually have to complete the mini obstacle course, this is where uw ould be getting used to the controls you have to jump over the first line of crates, crouch to go under the next after navigating round some..then finally combining the 2 to get over the large pile of crates in the corner...it doesnt look very natural..but thats the idea, this was set up as a mini tutorial area:



Getting some more detail in, corrected the windows and tided it up a bit:



Went a little mad with the celing but its pretty much how i imagined it, very complex futuristic type thing with some beams, needed to adjust the height as the beams was lower than the door but im quite happy with how it looks, shame about the rest of it looking so damn square



The Stairs were annoying me you have to run round them from a silly angle to get up the ramp it just looked wrong, so after changing the floor material which probably isnt final but the tiled stones had to go i set to work on tidying up that section:



This is round the back underneath the office, this is probably where you will enter, yeah its quite small but that is the idea in kismet i may slow the chars run speed down as UT is way too fast its only meant to be a small warehouse not a large deathmatch map

Andd i know its empty im quicker than i used to be but im not up to detailing yet


Some more ceiling panels in and trying to add some shape to the place:



Mirrored on the other side and then got the office doors/window in the correct place ill put the door on a mover later so u can actually get into the office i just needed to see how it looks.


Even tho ive applied meshes to that side its still really bare i want to go a bit over the top on this map like the ceiling, crank up the details and see how it looks it should be a nice little piece for my showcase aswell and another "map" as such under my belt even if i am undecided what i want to do!

UIScene/Sounds and Post processing effects...shinyyyy

Well i havent had much luck with uiscene as it seems unless your prepared to get into unrealscript....which im not your quite limited on what you can do effects wise, anyway my old concept shot i made ages ago looked utter crap stretched in uiscene to 1920x1200 as the image id made was only 1280x1024 and unreal only imports file to the power of 2 so the best i could do was 1024x1024..end result = crap

i thought maybe i can run it through a vector converter then it wouldnt matter what size it was..but no..its too detailed and it also looks crap as a vector..so i thought i might as well just mock up another simple image but make it 2048x2048 so i came up with something of a similar theme:



Well the things you can do with the text in uiscene without code seems to be limited to - opacity/scale/alignment/colour...yeah its no photoshop..or even flash...and if you like fades your in luck..but i dont so this is just a real basic title best i could make in uiscene using the font ive decided to use throughout which needed to be imported....i may need to take this part of the project over to flash /sadface

But moving back over to the map its mostly polish now and adding some details in places theres no real big structures to do in the outdoor area 1 area that was annoying me was near bridge street where it had colapsed into the water..the water was running the wrong way as it was one massive brush, i went into the editor and had a look around and realised this brush was about 90% hidden under my roads/terrain anyway so i went to town and changed all that side around and also shrunk the map a tiny bit as it seemed a little bare, in game you cant really tell its any smaller but i think its about 1/5th or even a quarter smaller now and i think its better off for it.

less text more screenys so now the other side of the park looks like this:



Ahh no more rendering issues with the terrain clashing with the water making it look like the terrain was bobbing up and down, ive got in some broken brick walls reskinned with the floor texture and although its still a bit bare i think its much better off like this it still needs some work but the waters going the right way now and it doesnt look stupid so success!


Onto the main event, post processing effects, i knew roughly what it controlled but i wasnt sure how it would affect my map, you can edit it in world properties but then its hard to toggle on and off so you can compare so instead i just made a massive post processing volume that enclosed my entire map, my map previously looked...well it was a little foggy which i wasnt really aiming for that was more of a draw distance thing so you couldnt see the other side of the water and it also made everything seem a little dusty/blue i wanted a much more darker/gritty/night time realistic looking thing and i knew my map was missing something it looked ok but it didnt really look like i was using UT3 editor so i wanted to darken it up and make the shadows more profound and generally add some atmosphere to it so heres some comparison shots, i only played around with the settings for an hour but im quite pleased with the results

Eye test! which is better on or off

Off



On!



Off


On



Off


O..ah you get the idea



Much happier with the result

Ah also ive put the sound of rain throughout and some heavier waterfall effects when your near obvious places andd some river effects etc i may have to uploaded a video of it at some point to
prove i do actually have sound and as an edit here it is, its not very good quality and i left fraps numbers on but eh it gets the point across still think it could do with some background music tho

Updates!

Nothing huge here, or not really much noticeable but theres been some changes so its worth an update

Firstly after my months of facepalming at my lack of shadows, it hit me..what is a night time map missing..well mine...the moon!..and the moon should give me some shadows on the ground (well the directional light will) so for starters i needed to make a quick bsp sheet with a photo of the moon on, i couldnt use 1 of the stock images built into the skydomes as you cant even see my skydome because of all the fog so heres the moon and a couple of shadows on the ground from some of the buildings




I've also worked a bit on tidying up my shop area, the final area i keep taking this mesh with the orange light in and reusing it as i think it adds a nice bit of futurism!..but i couldnt keep using the same damn orange over and over, so i changed the material to a diff shade and tidied up the building a little theres still some finishing to do but its all much better now with the hand rail tidied up with curved ages and ive finished up the stairs down the side so u can actually climb up them without having to jump:




as i say it needs more work im not that happy with the structure yet but its much better than it was

Now finally my park looked pretty crap, the unreal grass sucks i could make my own but im not sure how much id need to spam it to make shadows look good, my texture was quite high quality but it was tiled to hell so ive gone back to the material and added a 2nd layer

OLD:


NEW:


Does look a lot better and i think i may be able to tweak it more maybe get some dirt in, still undcided about grass meshes, with the old more tiled material i was tempted to cut the park down quite a bit so i could bu mp up the quality in other places as it looks quite bare, however this much less tile look..im now undecided!

Steve!

I was curious how many npc's/possible enemies i could put in my map to give it a bit of life, after researching into it a lot..it seems not many! this engine doesnt really cater for single player games..(well this version at least) but still i wanted something in so i dived into kismet and managed to spawn steve!, steves great if you talk to him he will give you a rocket launcher, but hes stood there looking like hes about to eat, anyway an early shot of the ui with steve:




Very basic, default font, and thats pretty much it!.

Well kismets crap, at least in this build for spawning pawns unless i want to look at unrealscript..and no..no i dont, but apparently matinee opens a few more options, you can use the skeletal meshes within the game (although ive only really found 6-7) and then rig them up to whatever animation you want and make it loop, ive also imported the font i made the title screen with and just mocked up a background for the text to stand out on, aswell as making the UI hide when you trigger the conversation..so now steve looks like this!:



Backgrounds a bit better and ive got the rain in, but this looks better, its only a place holder as with kismet you could name the pawn, with a matinee animation you cant..or not that i know of so i may need to put the chars name in the text box, not sure yet - also ive fixed everything so it auto scales with resolution so even in the small preview windows it all fits:

Back to the main one (oh this will be a big one)

Braccceeeee...anyway,

I really do like v-ray..it makes any old crap look good, i was looking at bridge street near big ben, thought it seemed doable and quite landmarkish to add into my map, so i spent all day creating the bridge in a couple of pieces, ive made the pillar and half the support bit seperatly to make wrapping easier/not being as limited with the texture

Made in old sketchup! as usual, unwrapped in 3ds and tidied up, texture made in photoshop and all brought together in unreal

Chup shots!





Couple of Vray renders of these models:




Then when brought into Unreal, this is the bridge you will enter on, still needs correct lighting (story of my life) ill probably make a lamp post to go on top of the pillars but this gives a rough idea how it looks, not quite good the green Exactly how i wanted but in comparison i think its alright.



I couldnt find that damn crest anywhere, so i just found a "London crest" apparently, its obviously very low poly in comparison to the real one, but im no 3d modeller for me to create something fancy with all that decoration it would probably waste a week of my time, but its something else that should remind people of london and something that would probably still be there 100 years in the future, you can also see how the water level rising, its not that ive just made a really short bridge!




what else to report, right the bridge and bench i modelled ive textured and put in game, the bins giving me some stick actually so is the bench but the bins is more visible not sure if it will be alright as it is but this is part of my map that had the unreal bins in now with my bins:



I found some photos of stone benchs in harvard that were all fancy and had CITY OF LONDON carved into the back, so this is where my influence has come from, ive used the same "underground" font and gave it a carved look, the shapes different but then im sure more stone benches will have been made in the next 100 years!



Alright alright alright, its been a while since my maps been updated on the blog despite me spending another 100+ on it...easily so ill spam the hell out of some screenys i took to show some developement in areas

This is another statue, ill make a sign with london downtown redevelopment plans, the idea is this part of london was left a little behind in the past, due to the old technology being situated, the river levels rising etc, so other areas are more advanced and this is just another hologram type model thats meant to show how this part of london will eventually become - much more futuristic , this area still needs some decoration however!


Nothing too special here, round the corner in another quite bare area which i hvent got round to doing however ive put in some correct lighting to set the tone of another building that would be enterable if id the time, still needs a sign tho.



These 2 are round the corner from the previous shot, the other side of the building, have some decoration here, a wooden plank in the distance being used by bandits to navigate over the roof tops, some ladders on the buildings, some collapsed structures and another possible room/building on the left.


Also got some stone models you can see on the left here, this building would be from an older period so still has these features.


My first building everrr, brought into the future with some custom..well an emissive material..but i made it! makes it look a little more futuristic regardless, also got final lighting in for the majority of these screens, i gave up on what i had in mind as i dont think its possible with the size of my map so now im just focusing on getting the mood right and i spent a while constantly rebuilding the light, so this is pretty final.



Probably put something on that wall at some point, its still a little empty i dont want to keep spamming the rubbish meshes onto the ground but..


Subway entrance pretty much finished, i added a sign with the tube map but changed, well that was in an earlier blog post, the material ive made has a slow moving beam moving over it as its meant to be like an electronic panel/screen also changed the background to a more futuristic structure



Big Ben!, in his "correct" place, yeah alright it would probably be falling apart but i dont have the time to make a fully physics based destoryed/destroyable structure, from looking at it i think i might have made the material emissive but regardless, as you can see ive had to jump on the water for the first 2 shots so u can see the barrier of rubble that the tower is stuck on and all the water emitters etc instead of it just..stood there, the 3rd shot just shows how u would see it somewhere your actually able to stand


Quick overview of the main street, removed the old paths, widened the road, added small hedge/flower beds in the centre, was considering putting stone status on each of these islands, will see how the mood takes me but this street has more life now, lighting is pretty much final as far as im concerned.


Changed the lights on the row of shops/hotel also extended round the sides and added some balconys, gives the building a bit more depth


Jazzed the seedy back alley bar up a little, doesnt matter the towns flooding, theres always a bar with people who dont really care and will stay and drink regardless, even if itsjust bandits - this would probably be the first port of call in the real game.


Ive cut that bridge crash..thingy off now so you cant see it all boarded it in with more rubble probably have another small camp here in this area



Couple of shots of the apartment in, with possibly correct lighting and water flowing over the edges, still may put some sort of sign down the middle here but thats easy enough.


Finally! the end of bridge street sort of..collapses into the water here dunno how im gonna manage it to look alright but u can see the grounds falling apart and people have put up sand bags to slow it down, this is as i said where u will begin on the map



This is just where the sand bags end and there will be a small group of npcs here i would imagine, these would be "friendly" ish to you people who have been thrown out the apartment block and will give you the first mission


and thats that!