#ut4

I had planned to finish the Ut4-level before the new year - that didn’t quite pan out...

I was stuck on the third major section of the level for almost a month. Did like 10 iterations before I decided to take a step back. Came back a week later and realised that the whole section wasn’t needed at all. Nuked it and focused on making the other two feel tighter.

Then I got sick and was unable to work for some weeks.

Then came christmas and christmas things.

Then the new year. And after picking it up again I’ve come to the conclusion that progress is slower than it should need to be (for reasons listed below) and that I need to start over to move forward. 

I will re-make it with this in mind:

1. Power of two. The 5x5 grid is nonsense. Haven’t found a good reason for it. It only slows me down. I try to stay on the 50 cm grid when blocking out stuff, but then when I need to do something smaller than that (usually half of that) need to switch to 5 cm grid, zoom in and count to make sure I am placing things on half of 50 cm. Might seem like a minor thing but it is enough for me to question why I force myself to not use a classic grid.

2. Blocking meshes. I’ll create several simple blocking meshes or a clever entity that has different options for shape and size. BSP just aint working anymore. I used to think Unreals BSP was superior compared to other editors 15 years ago but today it is too stiff and cumbersome. It needs to be as quick as placing meshes for me to use it.

3. Use the 3d-view only. I've rarely needed the orthographic views when level designing professionally the last 10 years, but that is also because I’ve relied only on meshes/entities with different snap options instead of BSP.

OH SHIT BOI, THEM DM-ZETO , FRACTAL / AS-HiSPEED FEELZ

DM-DeepBlue_20161224 is out!

https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament/forums/showthread.php?6469-Map-DM-DeepBlue-New-Version-20161224

I mentioned in an earlier post that I tried to limit the view between larger areas. The image above illustrates two cameras/players placed in separate halls with a connecting corridor in between. As long as the camera in the North hall stays in its own hall it should not be able see anything in the South hall and vice versa. And if they are in the Connecting area they should not be able to see both the North and South hall at the same time.

There are three reasons for doing this:

1. Gameplay. To avoid creating unintentional camper spots it is good to break up areas like this as they limit the view. Although you don’t want to make the transition area to narrow or maze-like as that could have a bad impact on the player navigation flow.

2. Optimization. If geometry and assets are loaded (or shown/hidden) by line of sight you might end up loading more than needed if you see only a small piece of it, which can affect performance badly. And if areas are loaded by area triggers you might accidentally show empty spaces or hall of mirrors if you don’t have enough transitional space between areas.

3. Cosmetics. If two large areas have very different environment light properties you will end with very obvious light fades as you go between these areas. And if for instance the North hall has an out-doors-y bright lighting with far fog falloff and the South hall has an in-doors-y dark thick fog it will still look out-doors-y if you stand in the North hall looking into the South hall. Therefore it is a good idea to block line of sight between these areas and also hide the fade between light presets with a transitional area.