Unreal 2004 Engine , still good for mapping.

Most of the people here know me as a minor part of the Custom Edition community and producer of the Sonic Mod, but aswell as working on Halo , i have been working for the past 1 and a half years in Unreals engine , Unreal Engine 2 and 3.

I am posting here , mainly because of the fact that even though Unreal engine 3 is great , for those who dont have a strong enough computer to run it , there is always the alternative of UT2004s engine (Unreal engine 2) its still good for modding , and i would just like to prove this by showing you some of the stuff i have worked on.

Project : Soleanna , Multiplayer Deathmatch level (First map)


Soleanna was my first UT2004 map, based on the New City level from Sonic The Hedgehog for the PS3 and 360 using the same textures but i modeled all of it myself in low poly to make sure it ran fine , aswell as having secret areas i am pleased with how it came out.

Project : Vengeance , Physics Demo level (Second Map)

(Old video)
Vengeance was my second map , based on the city levels from the Darkness for the PS3 and 360 i model it rediculously high poly for a University project to try and blow up the engine , what i ended up with was a level that because of smart design choices was about 500.000 polygons ingame , had realistic physics similar to Half Life 2 and also ran at 60-120 Fps fine ingame. My tutors turned it down because they said that the Cartoony art style i wanted for it would not suit it , and thus they made my scrap it.

Project : BreezeGale , Cartoon Spectator level (Third Map)


BreezeGale is my third map , based on the first level from Klonoa Door to Phantomile that is soon to be re released for the wii , using some minor meshes and textures from ONS Toon Country , i was able to achive a nice looking level that i am submitting to University to replace Vengeance for the module i am studying so far.

Nice looking stuff overall.

First one - what exactly does this add to UT2004's gameplay besides a third person view and some flipping animations?

Second - Looks ok, although if you were going for something with a Sin City type effect you should have used textures with contrasting shades of light and dark. From the looks of it the stuff you have is untextured, correct me if I'm wrong.

Third - Nice cartoon effect, although the bell seems out of place due to it's realistic shiny-ness. Also, not sure if this was the intended effect or not, but the smoke seems a bit too large. Perhaps make the chimney a bit larger/more exaggerated to make it fit better?

BTW, what school are you currently going to?

The first one is simply a multiplayer map , part of an assignment which was basically just to make a map , it doesnt really add anything apart from another level to play on , as for the third person and flips , they already come in UT2004 i was simply filming them in spectator camera so i could use the video as a show case for the map.

The second one , yes it is mostly untextured , i never finished it (even though i intend to) my tutors at University said even though it was high detailed (which they originally wanted) that it looked crap and told me to scrap it :/

The third one , yes the shine is an intentional effect as i had not used shaders before until this level in Unreal Ed, that and this level was rushed in about a week as it was the only time i had left over from putting all my effort into Vengeance and then burning out and having to take 3 weeks out to recover :/ .

As for what school , i am studying at Huddersfield University in the UK.

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Originally Posted by SonicXtreme

The first one is simply a multiplayer map , part of an assignment which was basically just to make a map , it doesnt really add anything apart from another level to play on , as for the third person and flips , they already come in UT2004 i was simply filming them in spectator camera so i could use the video as a show case for the map.

The second one , yes it is mostly untextured , i never finished it (even though i intend to) my tutors at University said even though it was high detailed (which they originally wanted) that it looked crap and told me to scrap it :/

The third one , yes the shine is an intentional effect as i had not used shaders before until this level in Unreal Ed, that and this level was rushed in about a week as it was the only time i had left over from putting all my effort into Vengeance and then burning out and having to take 3 weeks out to recover :/ .

As for what school , i am studying at Huddersfield University in the UK.

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OT, but does it meet up to its reputation as one of the best Unis for game design in the UK? I've been looking to go there, and I've heard great things about it. Also, what requirements are needed for the course other than the UCAS points?

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Originally Posted by legionaire45

First one - what exactly does this add to UT2004's gameplay besides a third person view and some flipping animations?

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He's spectating other players. Not actually playing the game. It's a built-in feature. And besides, modifications are not built into the map, but into the game itself, with appliable "mutators" that can be used in any map with any gametype.

UT has always had a bunch of awesome built-in features that alot of people overlook... spectating being one of them

They were the first game franchise to my knowledge to have demo playback, very similar to Halo 3's theater mode.

I know Starcraft was before UT3... not sure if anyone was before them though.

Demo Recording was kinda popular on the PC side of games for a while... but kinda fiddled off recently. Even UT3's demo recording mode is kinda -- meh.

I was referring to the entire franchise, Demo Playback was available in the first UT, and probably the original Unreal as well. I'm not sure, I haven't played around with the multiplayer in it. The original Unreal and Starcraft had literally a few months between each other's release, but StarCraft DID come first. StarCraft came out in March 1998, Unreal came out in May 1998.

And yeah the demo recording in UT3 makes me kinda wanna cry.

There's some awesome Rypel Cam or something that lets you mess around and make it look all cinematic, but I haven't really bothered looking into it.

Also, SonicX, I had no idea UT2004 was capable of the kind of physics you showed in the second video. That's honestly a bit of a breakthrough. It's really interesting, I'm suprised I haven't seen more of that stuff in-game, I always thought the engine was just not capable of it because I'd never seen it around.

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Originally Posted by JunkfoodMan

OT, but does it meet up to its reputation as one of the best Unis for game design in the UK? I've been looking to go there, and I've heard great things about it. Also, what requirements are needed for the course other than the UCAS points?

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University related Post

Its good , could be better though , when i say that , i say it because they only teach you the basics, in the first year they teach you basic modeling,basic drawing , and basic map building. I have been a distinction student ever since i joined the course , i was a distinction student for 2 years prior to the course , and according to my tutors i am on track for another distinction this year , as for UCAS points , i think they expect atleast 200 points , but i got on with that and with a good portfolio that showed off my skills prior to the course , so i was able to get an unconditional enterance.

After that they expect you to go it alone and build apon what you have learned , problem is with my class only a set few of them are learning anything the rest have forgotten what went on in the first year (i am a 2nd year). If your like me and you have background experiance then it`ll be a cake walk , thanks to modding CE for so long and learning how to model correctly i was able to submit some really nice stuff , all the work you see above is for 2 modules , both called "spatial awareness " 1 & 2 (1 being first year 2 being second).

We have had Sony visit and give a lecture to us twice which resulted in us crashing their pre release demo of Wipeout HD which my Fiancee managed to do , which gave us lulz.

As well as the spatial awareness modules , heres some other work i have done whilst on the course.

Module : Introduction to 3d modeling







Actual submitted piece for Introduction to 3d modeling module


Next week i am supposed to be starting advanced 3d modeling in which we are going to model a character hopefully , so i am really hyped up for that , hopefully i will benefit more from it , then we are rigging it and texturing and animating that same figure , then closer to the end of the year we are working with Sony on a project apparently , god knows what it will be yet though.

Fiancees work


^ That is what my fiancee did in the first year , (one year before i joined shes a third year now) in a week , i had to help her with the buildings and stuff because they where still learning how to model , and the meshes where awfully high poly because of too many cuts and such , but for a weeks worth of work its not bad.



^ Thats her second year work , she made a level that was comprised of 3 enviroments with in 2 months i think it was , again it doesnt look half bad :) remember this is coming from someone with no previous experiance with any of the tools like 3ds or anything like me to have progressed this far in a year.



^ Thats the final assignment they had to do , texture an enviroment and render a fly through of it , and she ended up being a distinction student and being top of her class , and also ended up being featured in an exhabition the University was throwing for Games Design.

UT2004 Project Vengeance related post

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Also, SonicX, I had no idea UT2004 was capable of the kind of physics you showed in the second video. That's honestly a bit of a breakthrough. It's really interesting, I'm suprised I haven't seen more of that stuff in-game, I always thought the engine was just not capable of it because I'd never seen it around.

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Well , basically theres a really funny story behind that , basically i saw this kinda physics when i was playing Killing Floor (UT04 zombie mod) i did some research in UE and found that they had another special KActor actor called KNetActor or something , and i was wondering what was with that , so i opened up the code and looked through it , and the modders that work on the mod had actually gotten the code from the guy that was making the KActor physics mod at the time (It was open source for a long time), and they had improved on it , giving it raytrace lighting for an actor , able to project shadows and also move realistically like in HL2 , and i was suprised about this.

So i went to Epics UT04 forum , and i asked about weather anyone was interested in backwards engineering the last released code (Beta 2) with the one from the mod , to make a more up todate one , and the reply i got back was amazing.

The original maker of the KNetActor Open source mod , actually found my post and decided to open source every beta and version of the mod because he is not working on it anymore , so i grabbed Beta 4 from him and started working with it , doing extensive tests on various physics based objects , and the physics video i showed before is a result of that research.

Heres some more parts of project Vengeance just to give you an idea of what went into it...

I tested frame rate , polygon count and a few more things , concidering i was trying to push the engine rediculously , i made everything quite high poly , the subway on its own is around 40.000 polygons because each floor and wall tile is modeled individually to work with physics (never got round to applying that), after i got the hang of zones i applied 1 to the subway to occlude the polys above ground and below ground when you walked into a different zone , and also applied zone fog which occludes everything behind the fog , by choosing this as part of the design phase what i actually accomplished was a level , that could have as much detail as i wanted in it , because it was able to manage the poly count due to the ammount of portals and such that had been placed and the fog that worked so well to occlude alot of things on screen.

Aswell as all the above i also managed to nab hold of a Bloom modifier for UT04 , so i was testing bloom on all of this too , that gave it a very nice look.










At the end of Project Vengeance when Uni forced me to scrap it , it had more detail than in the vids , more buildings , textures , better lighting , and alot more physics based stuff , hell i had a copy of the companion cube ingame for a laugh that i modeled with physics on it that was fun , we even play tested it , we had fun throwing dumpsters at each other with the flak cannon and taking cover behind objects and then pushing them to use them as moveable cover , it was amazing , that and of course blowing the odd wall or two to smitherines so that we could shoot through the holes , that was fun too , getting hit with a brick in the face that causes you to loose 30 HP is quite annoying when theres like 5 bricks flying towards you though.

UT2004 Project BreezeGale related post

With the collapse of Project Vengeance like i said , i took 3 weeks out to rest from the fact that i really burned myself out working on physics and detail models for a month and two weeks constantly with 4 hours sleep each day for the ammount of time because i was working hard.

After which i was left with a week left before the hand in date (28th of Nov), so i had to come up with some idea fast to impress my tutors and to get going so i could finish and pass the module , so i sat down and played some games , what i ended up doing was a tribute to Klonoa , using ONS ToonCountry as a base for the art style and then did some models based on screenshots of Klonoa for the Wii , the videos undernieth show the work flow of the map.

UT2004 Project Soleanna Related Post

In Jan 07 we had recieved an assignment to make a level in UT04 , i was eager to show off what i was capable of , but i did not know how to use the engine so for the first month we learned how to get stuff ingame , the result led me to create this test level.

Using mostly my own meshes and textures that i had created , and some minor UT2004 meshes , i had gotten the hang of mapping easily before anyone else , so i then moved onto my real idea , to re create a huge Sonic level , for my first map , everyone else was doing indoor maps , and i wanted to be different and push myself , so i began work on what would turn into Soleanna , the videos below are progression of the level and the result of the work i did until around the end of July 08.

Other UT04 maps and mods related post

Aswell as my physics stuff , theres alot of other good stuff that can be done with UT2004 , just check out some of the videos below for examples.

UT042D

FoamZilla

Gun Real

Realistic Ragdoll Physics

Monkey Matrix and Ballisic Weapons


Ashura Dark Reign


Overtone

wow, that has to be the biggest post i have ever seen

maybe so but it answers all the questions raised originally :)

Ballistic weapons <3