Creating Big Ass Levels Zones, Portals and Anti-Portals and Volumes

Zones Air-tight areas of your level that constitute different areas.

Portals These are the windows between your Zones You can either think of zones as airtight areas, or pretend to fill them with water

Occlusion Planes (Anti-Portals) Either a plane, or a BSP brush Terrain is Occluded in 16pixel Chunks BSPs on a perPolygon Basis Static Meshes on a Per-Mesh basis If a player gets inside the Occlusion zone the Hall of Mirrors will come visiting portal-occlusion-diagram.png

RMODE and 4 This is your console friend to view zones and portals Well not exactly.... – The BSP brushes are coloured using different colours for each zone. – You just have to guess where the portals are based on this Demo: AS-Convoy

The benefits of Zones Zone Specific Reverberation Render Speed Level Complexity

Bad Portals.... There are two problems you are likely to encounter with poor portals Zones not separating – You can check this with the Zone/Portal view in UnrealEd or RMODE 2 ingame. The Hall of Mirrors – If your portal is recognized by the Engine, but players can see around it, they may look off towards infinity. wm_textures.Editor.ZonePortal

Creating Portals There are 2 tools required to create Portals – The Sheet Brush Tool – The Special Brush Builder The smaller the portal, the faster the processing of it

Using your Portals In UT to add specific properties to your zones, you needed to use ZoneInfo actors In UT2003+ Zoning has been detached from Volumes, so Zones are simply for Object Rendering (and skyzones still!)

Zone Specific Iterators ZoneActors (class BaseClass, out Actor Actor) Iterates through all actors in this zone.Actor LinkToSkybox ( ) [simulated] ActorEntered (Actor Other) Actor ActorLeaving (Actor Other) Actor

Creating Anti Portals This is the same as creating a Portal Do NOT let the player see the Anti-Portal = BAD

Volumes There are many uses of Volumes – The most common are Physics, Water, Blocking and Ladder Volumes – There are many more, but you can go for a code browsing journey to find out what they do

The End Almost.... And now for some console commands!!!

Useful Console Commands ADD BOTS [number] - Adds the specified number of bots BEHINDVIEW Changes to - from third person view DISCONNECT - Disconnect from current server EXIT or QUIT- Quits the game KILLBOTS - Gets rid of all bots OPEN [IP address] - Connect to a specific server IP OPEN [mapname] - Opens specified map RECONNECT - Reconnect to the current server SWITCHLEVEL [mapname] - Switches to the specified level SWITCHTEAM - Switch your player\'s team SUICIDE - Kills yourself PLAYERSONLY - Freezes \\ pauses the bots

Moving through the level fast / testing ALLAMMO - Gives full ammo for all weapons ALLWEAPONS - Gives you all weapons FLY - You can fly around GHOST - Noclip through walls GOD - God Mode LOADED - Gives all weapons, ammo, and 100 adrenaline WALK - You stop flying VIEWCLASS SUMMON KILLALL

Statistics MEM STAT - Displays Windows memory usage STAT ALL - Shows all stats STAT AUDIO - Shows audio stats STAT FPS - Displays your frames per second STAT GAME - Displays game stats STAT HARDWARE - Shows hardware stats STAT NET - Shows network game play stats STAT RENDER - Displays rendering statistics STAT NONE - Turns off all stats

Demo Commands DEMOPLAY [demoname] - Plays the specified demo DEMOREC [demoname] - Records a demo using the demoname you type STOPDEMO - Stop recording a demo

More Commands BRIGHTNESS [number] - Changes the brightness level to the specified number CONFIGHASH - Displays configuration info CONTRAST [number] - Changes the contrast level to the specified number DEBUG CRASH - Test crashes the game with an error DEBUG EATMEM - Tests memory allocation until full DEBUG GPF - Test crashes the game with a general protection fault error DEBUG RECURSE - Test crashes the game by infinite recursion DUMPCACHE - Displays the memory gcache contents EXEC [filename] - Executes a file in the UT2003 /system/ directory by default FLUSH - Flushes all caches and relights FOV [number] - Changes the field of view to the specified number GAMMA [number] - Changes the gamma level to the specified number GETCURRENTCOLORDEPTHS - Displays your current color depth GETCURRENTRES - Displays your current resolution GETCURRENTTICKRATE - Displays your current tick rate GETMAXTICKRATE - Displays the maximum allowed tick rate

OBJ CLASSES - Displays a list of object classes OBJ GARBAGE - Collects and purges objects no longer in use OBJ HASH - Displays object hashing statistics OBJ LINKERS - Displays a list of active linkers PAUSESOUNDS - Pauses all sounds PREFERENCES - Opens advanced settings RELAUNCH - Relaunches the engine REPORT - Copies a report of the current game to clipboard SET [class variable value] - Sets a specified class and specified variable with the specified value SETRES [WxHxD] - Sets your screen resolution to the specified width, height, and color depth SLOMO - Sets the speed of the game 1,.5, 2 SOCKETS - Displays a list of sockets in use TOGGLEFULLSCREEN - Toggles fullscreen mode (alt-Enter) TYPE [text] - Displays the specified text on the console UNPAUSESOUNDS - Un-pauses all sounds

References Game Design and Develoment, E. Adams & A. Rollings, 2007, Pearson Printice Hall Game Level Design, Ed Byrne, 2005, Charles River Media The Art of Game Design All Console Commands: – ConsoleCommands ConsoleCommands