UT2004 Mapping Basics

[skinz]

Heres a quick & easy tutorial for making a basic map in UT2004. Serves for UT3 too.
A couple of things to bear in mind:
1. Unused space in UEd, the 3d world, is full, not empty until you 'subtract' space within which to construct your play/filming area. You then proceed to fill it up with interesting stuff.
2. Always create space within the power of 2. 256, 512, 1024, etc. otherwise you might as well start over.
Strat up UEd3, which is bundled with your game, just look in the UT directory for it.



1st, choose a box, set it's size. Click right on the mouse over this icon so you can enter custom dimensions. I chose 8192 square, but it doesnt have to be square.


Use this button to 'subtract' the box, and you'll see it with a tex on it.


Add a player start position by right clicking on the floor & choosing it from the popup.


Add light to the level quick & easy by going to Level Properties instead of adding lights everywhere.


You'll find lighting settings in Zonelight.


Open the texture browser (icons along top, just hover over them) and choose a texture you want. You can also open texture packages to use texs from them, theres many to choose from.Click the tex you want, if a wall is selected, it will change right away. Click another surface to highlight, and reselect the tex to change it.


You can adjust the image size, panning, etc by right-clicking the surface & choosing Properties.

If you want to use custom textures, DDS format is fine, import them when you're in the texture browser, but be sure to type 'MyLevel' in the import package, so the texs will be saved along with the map.


Go to the Static Mesh browser, in the same way as the texture browser, place the meshes where you wish by right-clicking and selecting 'Add Static Mesh (whatever its called) here" from the popup.


Before you save the map, you might as well 'Build All' from the Build menu 1st. If you don't do this, the map won't work. This process draws all the lightmaps, etc.
By default, the map will be a Deathmatch, but you have to include "DM-" at the start so the game will identify it in the menu, i.e. "DM-Mapname".

Hope you find this useful.

[skinz]

I've made a few maps in UT3, and can confirm that it's the same in UT3, with the exception that you must specify 'Subtractive' when you start a new map in UT3's editor.

[Skelch]

This is fantastic, my wife has about a million 'honey do's" for me this weekend, I hope to skip a few of them and see if I can create a new map following this tutorial