THE DEFINITIVE UNREALED v2.0 INTRODUCTION AND GUIDE

"Machismo"
cool_machismo@yahoo.com

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to UnrealEd 2.0 the best editor for any game available out there. Take it from me none of the other editors like WorldCraft and Q3Radiant stand a chance in a comparison test between them and UnrealEd. The ease of use, the fantastic interface and the superb 3d views are some of the features that make it the best editor out there.

WHO THIS TUTORIAL IS FOR: I expect you to know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about editing and the UnrealEd in particular. If you do know that will not be a plus or a minus. If you have used the previous version of UnrealEd and are looking to just brush up on your skills you may just want to read that particular topic on which you want more information.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO THIS TUTORIAL:  UnrealEd v2.0 did not ship with the product (an earlier version made it), you need to get the Unreal tournament V425 patch (as of the writing of the tutorial v436 was the latest patch available) and above which includes this new editor. You could try to get it at the following sites:
The Unreal Tech Page - http://unreal.epicgames.com/downloads.htm
Unreal Tournament Official Page - http://www.unrealtournament.com
FilePlanet (look under the Unreal Series)- http://www.fileplanet.com
NOTE: This list is not meant to be exhaustive, these are some of the popular places to get the files from.

FIRE IT UP: Downloaded that massive patch?. Install the damn thing. Go to the ..\unrealtournament\system folder and locate and execute the unrealed.exe file that you will find there. This is the Unreal Tournament editor and will be referred to as UnrealEd from now on.

WHAT WE WILL BE DOING: We will be creating a small death match map from start to finish. This map wont be something great, but since we will be discussing the whole process of map creation we will deal with nearly all the topics you will need to know about to start making maps of your own. I suggest that you set aside around 1 hour (if you have that much time that is :) and work this tutorial end to end. Remember to keep the editor and the tutorial open so that you can go read one part and then go and work it out in the ED this will help to reinforce your skills. Excited?, so you should be!, a magic realm of exciting possibilities wait out there so let the creative juices flow and enter with an open mind.

WARNING: At the time of the writing of this article I am using the v436 patch, certain things could be added or changed in the next few releases. This tutorial should still be relevant then but a few extra buttons may be in other places and a few behind the view changes may take place I cant say for sure.

YOUR FIRST FIVE MINUTES

Fire up the editor and have a look around. This is how it should look like:

Whenever you create anything it will appear on the various views. What is the core concept of the UnrealEd?. The whole world is already "filled up" i.e. there is already a full solid area, any room that you want to make will have to be chiseled out of this solid cube (know as Constructive Solid Geometry). Once you have made your basic room you can add in all the stuff that you want. This is opposed to the Q3Radiant concept where you have to first make solid cube yourself and then you will have to chisel it out. Now take a look around the editor the tool bars default location is on the left these are the various stuff that you can use in the ed. The last group of icons - those pictures of the cube cylinder, etc are the base items that you can work with in your level. The 3d view of UnrealEd is superb you must make it your best friend. To move around in the 3d view hold down the left mouse button to move forward and backwards and turn left and right; hold down the right mouse button to look around; and hold down both the buttons to move up and down and strafe left and right move around in the 3d view now and get used to the feeling of this it is not unlike normal FPS game movement. You can hold down the left mouse button to move around in the 2d views and to zoom in and out hold down both the left and right mouse button.

THE FIRST ROOM EVER

Lets build your first room to get a sense of accomplishment. First and foremost load a texture package. The unreal texture packages are in the utx format, you load a texture package by hitting this button . There are some default textures loaded lets not bother with them. This is one of the fun part of the level building deciding the general theme of the level and all that. Lets load a package called UTech1.Hit the texture browser button shown here (its located near the top of the screen) and when it opens from the from the file menu choose open. It should immediately jump to the open texture package dialog box and show the textures on your system (if not browse to the ..\unreal tournament\ textures file and open it). Choose the UTech1.utx package and hit and hit open (since I have a high end TNT2Ultra ...... well at least it used to be......... system and 192 Mb ram I usually end up loading every single texture package on my system). The browser now shows the loaded texture package, like this:

Use the subclasses menu to view the type of textures that you want to use - for example you may want to see only the wall or floor textures that the package contains then you just need to choose it from the drop down menu. Once you are more familiar with the texture packages you can start to use the filter box, for example you can check the all radio box to show every texture and find all textures whose names start with c. I have also set the zoom form under the zoom menu to 256 so that the textures are nice and big and you can see what you are working with. Now from the subclass menu (incidentally this is a name that I made up it could be called something else) choose wall and pick a texture that you like by selecting it. Now let us create the first room from the primitive cube that is available to us. The picture below shows the primitives that are available to us. For now just consider the cube I will show you how to use the rest at another part of this tutorial. Right click the cube to access its properties:

For now enter the values of 512 in the height, breadth and width fields don't bother with the rest for now. The red brush is called the builder brush - using this brush you will be able to build various shapes. If you were to hit any of the previous primitive shapes you will see that they appear in the views. What is the purpose of the builder brush? - it defines the shape of the brush before you make any "final" moves so that it becomes part of the world. With just the builder brush sitting there nothing has changed in the level, lets rectify this now. Hit file new and when asked to save changes choose no. Ok now that the new map has loaded lets create that room. Remember what I said previously, since the world is already filled up we have to punch out the room from this piece that has already been given to us. Hit the cube button and the builder brush will appear in the various views. Now we are going to subtract this shape from the world so that the room is created. Just hit the subtract button from the tool bar (I will be explaining how to use the rest one by one so don't get scared off) or ctrl+s:

The room should appear like this in the 3dview now (note I am running in D3D mode to change from the default software rendering mode to D3D in the 3d view right click on the toolbar type and check D3D). Ok since I was not satisfied with the textures for the room it was time to change them. There are two ways of doing this - first select the texture that you want to use for the walls from the texture browser, next hold down ctrl and click on the four surfaces of the wall in the 3d view and with the texture browser still open double click that texture you want to use to apply it; or choose the texture that you want to use minimize the browser, go to the 3d view and while holding down ctrl select the four surfaces of the wall and while they are still selected right click and in the menu that appears choose apply texture : floor 3b for example. Now the room should look like this:

How was it done?. I just choose floor from the subclass menu in the texture browser and using the technique described above I applied it to the bottom of the box that was going to form the room, in the same way I choose wall and applied it and ceiling and applied it. The name of the textures that I used were: floor - floor 3b, wall - ClifCon7, Ceiling - nmceiling2lt3. Looks nice hah!. Well we now have a room. Lets add some thing into the room to make it look better.
HEADS UP: You should only add in things using the add button to that portions of your level where you have already subtracted something. For example if add in something outside the room that we created you would be effectively placing some solid where a solid already exists. This will create problems for you later.
NOTE: When you create the next primitive remember that you can use normal operators in the primitives properties. For example in the cube above if you wanted to create a cube with a height less than 512, you could have entered "=512-128" (without the quotes) in the height field and hit build. UnrealEd will automatically calculate this value for you. As you can see this will prove to be mighty handy as you don't need to keep loading the calculator. 

Lets add in some pipes to make the room look more complex. The pipe is nothing more than a cylinder on its side. I set the properties to (by right clicking on the cylinder in the tool bar) :- Height=512,OuterRadius=64 and Number of sides =12 ,leave the rest alone for now. Now the cylinder was pointing straight up. We want it to run along the walls so we will rotate it. First just in case you rotated the brush before by mistake select the brush in any of the 3d views by left clicking it. Once it is selected right click and scroll down the menu till you come to reset and  choose reset rotation. Now select the brush again and in the side view while holding down the right mouse button and control rotate it so that it is on the side now move the brush up and down if you have to, get it in the center of the room. Adjust it in all the 2d views so that you place it correctly and hit the add button. Move this down (you may want to do this in the 3d view by selecting the builder brush holding down both the mouse keys and ctrl and moving the mouse in the desired direction). now do it so that you have 3 pipes in the room or you could leave it a one so long as you have understood the concept of adding in solids and moving the red builder brush. And here's a final look at the end product of your very first room:

Is this baby ready to run yet? Nope still some way to go.
NOTE:- You may have difficulty lining up the brush if your gird is too big. You can change this by right clicking in any of the 3d views and under the gird menu selecting the one that you want. You can also choose the gird size from the pull down menu next to the command bar at the bottom of the Ed.

BRUSH MOVEMENT AND ROTATION

To move a brush around in any of the 2d views hold down control and left click and drag it around. To rotate a brush you need to HOLD DOWN CTRL+RIGHT CLICK and drag the brush around in one of the three 3d views depending on the way in which you want the brush to be rotated. You will notice that when you drag a brush using CTRL+left click you can just move it around and the views don't change - this is the one you will use most often. But if you want all the views to move along with the brush that you are moving hold down SHIFT+Left Click and move the brush - all the views will follow this .

LIGHTING - NORMAL AND COLORED - PART 1

AH! It feels so nice to introduce this concept in the very first tutorial that you are going through. In the old UnrealEd there was a need for a separate tutorial on how to use colored lights in a level because it was so badly implemented. In UnrealEd2 its so easy I decided this funky concept should be discussed at the start of your editing experience. You should be aware of the fact that lighting is what makes a level stand out. Sometime back I read an article on the importance given by game companies who want to hire designers when judging their work - attention to detail and color and lighting came out at the top. The Unreal Engine allows you to take lighting effects to the max and beyond.

At this point if you were to play your level it would be totally dark. Adding in lights is as easy as holding down L and clicking anywhere in the 3d view to place a light at that exact spot. Alternatively you can right click on any surface and hit add light there from the menu. Add one light to the ceiling, it looks like a torch, select it and drag it to the exact middle of the room. Just add in one more near the ceiling. We'll come back to this in part 2 after we discuss some other stuff.

REBUILDING AND PLAYING THE LEVEL

HEADS UP: What is an actor?. An actor is any item that can be added to your level from the Actor Class Browser. This could be any pre-made decoration, items, monsters and various stuff like triggers that let you control events. You can access any actors properties by right clicking on it and choosing that actors properties, or by double clicking the actor or by selecting the actor and hitting F4.You can hit this button at the top of the editor to open the actor class browser at any time - shown on the left.

 Lets go out and play this tutorial map. Before you play any map there are three things you have to do:
(a). INSERT PLAYERSTART: The player start is an actor that tells the game where to place the player when the game starts. If you play any level without a player start it will crash to your desktop with the message that your level needs one. So lets add one already!. First hit the actor class browser icon shown above (it is located next to the texture browser icon). The actor class browser will open up, now make sure actor classes only is checked (remember you can add in only actor classes to your level so there is no point in having the others shown). Now go down the list and locate something called navigation point - click the plus arrow to expand that menu. Locate the player start within that menu (don't double click it) just select the damn thing. The browser should look like the picture on the left. Lets just add it in the center of the room, minimize the browser and right click in the center of the room in the 3d view and hit add player start. Or while holding down A left click any where in the 3d view to place the player start there. The player start will appear as a small joystick in your level. Select and move it to the desired location (when you select any actor in the various views the selected actor will appear in green).

(b). REBUILDING THE LEVEL: This is also known as compiling the level. The various types of rebuilding options are: (from left to right) - - rebuild geometry alone, rebuild lighting alone, rebuilding paths (to add bot support), build as per settings in build options, build options (rebuild everything and set individual settings). Rebuilding a level is a very important part of map building. When you make any drastic changes to a level you should  immediately rebuild to see the kind of change that has been done to your level. For example when you added in lights previously you should immediately hit the bulb icon to rebuild lighting to see the effect. Lets rebuild the whole level. Hit the build options icon [] to bring up the rebuilder and check the following:

I will explain when you need to turn on BSP and define paths. For now just check geometry and lighting and hit the build key. See the 3d view now, this is how it will appear in the final level. Rebuild your geometry and lighting constantly to see what is happening to your level. NOTE: I hope you didn't forget to place a player start and a light in the room!.

(c). SAVING AND PLAYING: Time to save this baby. Hit file|save and in the save dialog save the map with an extension like DM-Delete. All death match maps will be in the format DM-xxx (where xxx is the map name), domination maps must be saved in the format DOM-xxx, Capture the Flag maps must be saved as CTF-xxx and Assault maps must be saved as AS-xxx. Now save the map as DM-Delete for now. There are now different ways of playing your map : a). Hit ctrl+p and UnrealEd will automatically launch and load the map for you; b). Hit this button at the top of the editor ; or c). The previous method tests even my system to the maximum so I usually load unreal tournament in safe mode with a half screen. Even though I have to go through a slew of startup screens my system is better able to handle itself so this is the method that I use, since I don't want to have to close and then reopen UnrealEd again. Now go ahead and play this baby its not much but don't worry we'll have this fixed in the next part of this tutorial.

THE CONCEPT OF INTERSECTION AND DEINTERSECTION

This is an important concept of the UnrealEd that you would do well to familiarize yourself with. Think of them as different types of scissors that you use to cut away the brush. Lets see how to make use of these concepts. Begin a new level by hitting the new level button. Lets build a room that has some beams running around the room at the top of the ceiling and that has a user made table. First lets build the room, create a cube height=512, width and breadth = 1024 and subtract this from the world. Now build a cube 64*64*2000 this is going to be the beams for you wall. What did you say? yes yes the beam happens to be larger than the room lets see how to rectify this. When we knew the measurements of the room why did we use a larger builder brush, well this just lends to efficiency and you are not going to know the exact measurements of the room every time. Now choose some wood texture (Nalicast.utx has some nice one under the Panel subclass) and lets create the beam. Now since the beam is larger than the room how do we shorten it?. Hit the deintersect button [] (just below the subtract button) or hit ctrl+d or go to Brush*>Deintersect, what happened now? the brush got shortened automatically to fit the room. Now hit the cube button and the intersect button []and see the shape that you get. After checking the stuff out we can say that the intersect button is like taking a pair of scissors and leaving only those outside the cube cutting away those inside the cube and the deintersect button cuts away everything that is outside the solid leaving only that part of the builder brush that is within the solid cube. Take a look below to see the various states:

Lets see another function of the intersect button. We can create a complex shape using separate brushes  and by using the intersect button create one single brush out of these separate brushes which can then be added/subtracted anywhere. Lets create a simple basic table to get the feel of this:
1. First lets create something we will call a building box. Frankly speaking this is something that you need to make for every level. You will always need to create complex shapes which you will do in the building box and then place in the level. For now lets create a cube the size of 1024*1024*1024, place this somewhere off to the side (usually at the very end of the level) and subtract this from the world. This will be called the building box and its texture does not matter.
2. Lets begin building the table. First build a basic table and texture it accordingly. I just made the table out of three cylinders - the table top was a big cylinder with a height of 20, the base was a smaller cylinder and the thing that held them together was just a cylinder on its side. This is how it looks in the various views:

3. Now just build a cube (it could be any primitive but its easiest using the cube) larger than the table and hit the intersect button. Viola you have a brand new brush that has taken the shape of the table that you just made and made it into one single brush. it looks like this:

Now you can just move this new brush around your level and add it in where ever you want to.

CONNECTING TWO ROOMS & COLORED LIGHTING

Well we got a bit deviated by all this intersection/deintersection stuff. Lets load up the previously saved map now and try to connect the very first room that you made to another room. Ok now build another cube of size 512*512*512 and place it some distance away from the first room doesn't matter how much and subtract it. it should look like this in the top view:

NOTE: This is as good a time as any to try this out. Say you want the second room to be the same size as the first room. Just select the first subtracted brush so that it is highlighted in yellow and from the edit menu choose duplicate (or hit ctrl+w). You will see a exact copy of the first brush with all the textures etc in place!. Now just move it to the desired position of the second brush. You will notice that the second room has not appeared in the 3d view because of the duplicating process - you will need to rebuild geometry to see the second room. Now build a brush 256*256*some value larger than the one separating the 2 brushes. Place the brush like I placed it in the picture given above, intersect and subtract and hey there two of your rooms are connected (unlike the drudgery work you have to go through to connect two rooms in other editors). Ensure it is in line with the two floors of the two rooms in the side view as well. Look what we have:

Now time to make the two rooms look better by using some nice colored lighting effects. First select the two lights that we place before (either right click on one light and hit "select all light" or hold down ctrl and click on both the lights) and delete them. Now add in fresh lights - about two lights in each room and one light in the hallway. Lets just make them red for now. Do a select all light again, now either right click and choose light properties or hit F5 or hit this button . When the light actors properties sheet opens up, double click light color to expand it like this:

Hit the small button called color that you see there, the standard windows color chooser appears either select the default red or drag the slider to get the desired effect (hey you should be able to figure how to make your own custom colors out right?). Hit ok and close all open dialogs. Now its just a matter of rebuilding lighting to see what the level looks like now. Hit the bulb icon now and when the level has finished rebuilding the lighting see whether you like the effect if you don't you may need to adjust the light brightness (decrease the value for the all the lights. NOTE: LightHue is the actual color wheel number for that color, LightStauration determines how much the surrounding textures reflect that light. This is how the level should look like at this point:

It does look a bit different from the default red that you would have got. I always set the color like this - I first pick the basic color that I want to use, see whether it suits the level (as it so happens it doesn't suit this level) so I change the brightness and saturations numbers. There is no need to set light hue again as we have already picked the color that we want to use. In the above example I set all the colors brightness to 40 and light saturation to 160. You need to really practice the art of colored lighting to get it right and as I said before it is very important to make a good level. So use it wisely. Now rebuild the whole level and enjoy it!.

That's the end of this introductory tutorial. I really hope that you were really able to grasp the fundamentals of the topic. I suggest that you go through the tutorial at least a few more times. It will be a lot better so that you need not ask stupid questions on forums and get laughed at. Have as good a time making levels as I had writing this tutorial. If you have any questions you can always email me. Have A Fun Time Editing! and be sure to check out the rest of the tutorials on this site.