Gav Cooper's Blog: UT EDITOR 2004

With the last project finished I've had a few days off relaxing and as always playing games. I have also started to draw my focus back to making games (much more satisfying) this time with the Unreal Editor.

UT isn’t my kind of shooter, It’s a little too sci-fi for my liking, but I’ve been playing them ever since the first in 1998 and I can defiantly see why it has become so popular amongst FPS fans.

I am currently reading through “The Art of Level Design” by the 3D Buzz guys Busby, Parrish and Eenwyk and watching a series of video tutorials by the same people.

Through following their guidance and tutorials I have created my first map with the UT2004 editor. I decided to keep things simple so I can get accustomed with the editor’s user interface, so I just created a single room. Yeah, yeah easy I hear you say, well it is… but there are things you NEED to keep in mind before starting out…

The collision radius and height of your character for example… how tall they are when standing and when crouched and how their measurements in UT relate to real world measurements, the technicalities of scale basically.

There are other aspects and work flows that I needed to familiarise myself with before I started to create my first map, i.e. the UT2004 editor is a subtractive tool, so essentially you are carving out your map from a solid block.

I also learnt about the use of snapping to the grid and that by doing so prevents BSP errors and the nasty HOM effects at the seams.

Below is a screen shot of me running about and firing off a few rounds in my room... it’s a lovely room isn’t it... (click to enlarge to full resolution)