Unreal Dev Kit : Research and Development Thread

[SonicXtreme]

Hey all , i decided to start this thread , in hopes of getting everyone to share their UE3 modding info , even if its from tutorials , stuff like Kismet layouts and Material structures being shown off can always help develope something new , therefore i thought i would start this thread off by showing the kismet tree for getting your level to play as a 2d Platformer , just the basic camera set up as shown in the Demo game that comes with the engine.

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/8613/testln.jpg

Set up the Kismet like this , then place the camera in the right place , and it will attach to the player , thus giving you the base for a 2d platformer. If it does not work , i found that its because instead of using level load , its better to use "Level Startup" that way it ensures it starts when it loads.

I whipped this up in like 5 mins so its not that hard.

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/7591/test2gi.jpg

[t3h m00kz]

wow.

bad ass.

I'll mess with this after work

[Saggy]

The Whizzle Creation Document (http://udk.com/elements/downloads/Whizzle_Creation_Document_1_2.pdf) is a great start for learning how to build your first game. I'm guessing this is where you got the 2D side-scroller info from. Thanks for that btw.

[flibitijibibo]

Once I'm better equipped, I'll start looking into the sound whoosit. If anyone has info on how it works on the codan side already, lemme know... don't want to be too far behind.

[Trulife8342]

You guys need to either join snaf's Panic Room Studios, and My Dimension Gaming. So much potential to make an actual video game instead of a bunch of different people doing their own thing.

[flibitijibibo]

I do like that idea... We could always make the forum a fake company too: "Conspiracy Studios".

Also! We should put all of the stuff we gather here on the Modacity wiki to keep our findings organized.

[Trulife8342]

Do i smell of hint of sarcasm?

[flibitijibibo]

... Now that I read my post, that does look sarcastic. Naw bro, the first part was for srs. The Conspiracy Studios part was a joke though, XP

The more important part is the wiki thing though. We may as well get as much use out of it as we can.

[SonicXtreme]

The Whizzle Creation Document (http://udk.com/elements/downloads/Whizzle_Creation_Document_1_2.pdf) is a great start for learning how to build your first game. I'm guessing this is where you got the 2D side-scroller info from. Thanks for that btw.

Yea i did get it from there , problem was , the way they said it didnt work , thats why i decided to put up the bit about putting start level instead of load level at the beginning.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

conspiracy studios would be epic.

[Saggy]

Yea i did get it from there , problem was , the way they said it didnt work , thats why i decided to put up the bit about putting start level instead of load level at the beginning.
Yes, thanks for that bit. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working until I read that part in our post :P

[SonicXtreme]

Editted:

Just showing off a preview of stuff you can easily do in 5 mins if you have premade meshes , dont mind the lighting its crappy because its only a test piece.

(yea i know it has no significance , i took it down now)

[Inferno]

http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/8238/halo2dlul.jpg

Just showing off a preview of stuff you can easily do in 5 mins if you have premade meshes , dont mind the lighting its crappy because its only a test piece.

I don't see anything in that picture...
Explain.

[SonicXtreme]

Its just a picture i quickly whipped up with one of Lightnings levels that was ment to go in CE , it was just to show that with premade stuff , simply getting it ingame and working takes little time or effort.

As for the part of the convo before about establishing a wiki , it would be good to keep all the information in one place like that , aslong as its more detailed then the UDK page , they go over things in most of the detail but leave bits out.

[Inferno]

Okay so what does this do that the regular unreal EK doesn't do?

[SonicXtreme]

It does standalones inferno , so you dont have to make the stuff as part of Unreal or use UT as a base , you can create your own game effectively from this and release the exe and source for people to play without needing UT or UDK.

[Phopojijo]

It does standalones inferno , so you dont have to make the stuff as part of Unreal or use UT as a base , you can create your own game effectively from this and release the exe and source for people to play without needing UT or UDK.To clarify in point form:

1) It's an updated version of the Unreal Engine... past Gears of War 2... so it has a few extra features like global illumination, flocking for large masses of AI, Ambient Occlusion...

2) Your players don't need to own anything... just download your game and play.

3) You DO NOT get source code of Unreal Engine 3... so you can't play with the C++

4) You CAN NOT use assets from any other game in it... normally Epic doesn't mind using Unreal assets in Unreal Tournament 3... or UT3 in Gears of War -- etc -- but you CAN NOT do that with the UDK. Everything needs to be from you or someone who lets you use their stuff.

5) You ARE allowed to sell your game... though after 5000$ of revenue, Epic takes 25% of revenue.

[t3h m00kz]

4) You CAN NOT use assets from any other game in it... normally Epic doesn't mind using Unreal assets in Unreal Tournament 3... or UT3 in Gears of War -- etc -- but you CAN NOT do that with the UDK. Everything needs to be from you or someone who lets you use their stuff.


http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d27/Stefansawad/trollface.png

Well, a while back, back durring UT2004's HaloUT mod I believe Microsoft said they had no problem with the Halo 1 assets being used in the Unreal Engine.. same with the MC model for UT3. Don't quote me on that, it's just what I've heard.

[Phopojijo]

If they let you, that's a different story. Epic apparently is NOT letting you use UT3 assets in the UDK... probably because they want UT3 mods to be for UT3.

[flibitijibibo]

Not to mention that using assets from one of their games would probably cost a wee bit more than what they're asking for.

[Trulife8342]

You know, come to think of it Snaf did want to do a collab with both companies, I don't see why the whole community couldn't be involved.

hmmm this could be good.

[Phopojijo]

Decided to unlock some extra features of the UDK (through INI tweaks), such as DX10 mode (and consequently, MSAA) -- seen in Gears of War PC, but not UT3.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/Phopojijo/DX10UT_01thumb.jpg (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/Phopojijo/DX10UT_01.jpg)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/Phopojijo/DX10UT_02thumb.jpg (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/Phopojijo/DX10UT_02.jpg)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/Phopojijo/DX10UT_03thumb.jpg (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v342/Phopojijo/DX10UT_03.jpg)

Oddly enough even DX10-based Antialiasing seems to have problems antialiasing between two very-different-intensity (sub)pixels.

Regardless... there's a lot of items in the INIs that have yet to be turned on/up. Should be worthwhile playing with.

[Inferno]

Hawt.

[SonicXtreme]

which inis you been messing witbh Phopojijo?

[Phopojijo]

/UTGame/Config/UTEngine.ini -- I also did UTInput.ini to play with keybinds but yeah.

UTEngine -- AllowD3D10 = True... then I changed the number of samples of both multisampling AA and Anisotropic Filtering... made it get kinda piggish but <shrugs>. Thats why you can tweak with it.

[Trulife8342]

There's a lot of stuff that needs to be edited to truly make your own game, The offer is open, Me and snaf are working together so if anyone at all is interested in joining up and actually get paid for making a game P.M. Either me or snaf.

[SonicXtreme]

There's a lot of stuff that needs to be edited to truly make your own game.

If you know what your doing , there really isnt.

[Trulife8342]

Yes there is, my programmers have been stripping all the traces of UT from editor. Trust me there is a ton of modifications that need to be done (all of which once are completed I will post in a thread here) for people to make and build their own stand-alone game.

[Limited]

Hmm this looks pretty interesting, might look into this.

[Higuy]

Been playing with it, trying to get the new lightmass to work. Every time I build lighting with lightmass, udk freezes up. I added a volume for the lightmass which apperntly fixes some errors with it, but no luck. Either my pc can't run them? (I can run this game at 60fps locked; max settings so uhh) or something else.

[Phopojijo]

Uh, the LightmassImportanceVolume just limits the effective volume that Lightmass works on... it doesn't "fix errors" or anything. ((Soon it will reduce lighting quality outside the volume... right now it just cuts off lightmass lighting outside the volume apparently)).

[Higuy]

Uh, the LightmassImportanceVolume just limits the effective volume that Lightmass works on... it doesn't "fix errors" or anything. ((Soon it will reduce lighting quality outside the volume... right now it just cuts off lightmass lighting outside the volume apparently)).
I realized that, though lightmass still never works. I have 2 lights and one static mesh, running it on preview settings, does nothing. The bsp isn't hi res it all, something I simply made out of subtracting boxes to test this. The swarm agent dosent seam to do anything either though it comes up and starts. The builder is stuck on "collecting the scene".

[neuro]

did you even read up on HOW to use those entities?

a swarm agend doesn't DO anything, it's just something which is spawned, and does some pathfinding, which (As far as i know) uses navigation meshes. it doesnt even do collision checks.

mind you, i didnt even test anything yet, since my computer is fucked, i only skimmed a single page about it.

[Higuy]

did you even read up on HOW to use those entities?

a swarm agend doesn't DO anything, it's just something which is spawned, and does some pathfinding, which (As far as i know) uses navigation meshes. it doesnt even do collision checks.

mind you, i didnt even test anything yet, since my computer is fucked, i only skimmed a single page about it.
been using this.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Lightmass.html#LightingTimings
The swarm agent comes up every time when I load lightmass, so im guessing it has something to do with it? Also in the launch trailer when they showed lightmass, it had swarm agent running and showing the lightmaps being complete. even in swarm agent is shows the progress of the lightmaps, and in this case for me, is alwats 0%.


The Swarm Agent also tracks lighting build progress and keeps you up to date with which machines are working for you, what they're working on, and how many threads each one is using. The bar near the bottom shows how much of the build is complete.

[Disaster]

Swarm Agent is the UDKs task distribution program.

IE: Distributed lighting calculations.

[neuro]

oh my bad, i got confused with the agents which work in the npc flocking system.

[DEElekgolo]

New hotfix out
(http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitBuildUpgradeNotes.html)

[Limited]

New hotfix out
(http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitBuildUpgradeNotes.html)
Hmm

Added check for GPU being below minimum requirements.
Not sure if I want to apply update.

[neuro]

wont stop it from running, it'll just inform you that its below minumum (i guess)

[DEElekgolo]

Anyone else getting problems with speed tree under windows 7 x64?

[neuro]

i'll tell you when i get my new computer.

[Saggy]

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/VideoTutorials.html#3D%20Buzz%20Video%20Tutorials% 20-%20Using%20UDK

177 Video Tutorials brought to you by 3D Buzz. I love those guys.

[t3h m00kz]

Holy fucking shit I'm gonna post that in the tutorial resource k?

[SonicXtreme]

Adding to the research thread as I have only just got back into UDK dev ,so for anyone who doesnt know, change the LOD groups for the textures in the ini file so they are double their normal value , otherwise they look completely shit when they go ingame , because UDK will cut their res in half by default.

[neuro]

just a small piece of information or people using normalbakes off highpoly meshes.
since all that shit is sensitive to smoothinggroups, it's important to know that unreal doesnt support more than 1 smoothinggroup per poly.

for example, you can apply SG1 to a poly, and SG2 to another, but not SG1 AND SG2 to one poly.

[Roostervier]

also unreal doesnt support mirroring of normals except horizontally, and the seam must be perfectly straight. so basically, uv your shit using the 3/4 rule or fix the seams accordingly.

just something else to add

[Inferno]

just a small piece of information or people using normalbakes off highpoly meshes.
since all that shit is sensitive to smoothinggroups, it's important to know that unreal doesnt support more than 1 smoothinggroup per poly.

for example, you can apply SG1 to a poly, and SG2 to another, but not SG1 AND SG2 to one poly.

The fuck? Why not?

[Roostervier]

p sure unreals method of smoothing is simply to separate the verts by smoothing group, and give each group of faces within the separated verts a single smoothing group or whatever. basically, that makes it impossible to have more than one smoothing group per face. (thats why if you import a static mesh with multiple smoothing groups, the static mesh will have more verts than it did in max)

[Phopojijo]

I never really understand smoothing groups -- in Maya it's simple -- is the edge a hard edge, or is it a soft edge.

[neuro]

does the exact same thing. it's just a different method of applying the effect.
most up to date exporters/importers also convert smoothing groups to hard edges and backwards when working between max and maya.

[Llama Juice]

^This

Some fun things I picked up during my demo reel creation class will be piled in here shortly... as soon as I get around to making a few tutorials... gunna talk to my school and see if I can get an internship position so that I get some sort of credit out of it :P

[SonicXtreme]

Nice llama I look foward to anything you manage to get done tutorial wise , like most other people here.