Unreal Editor Vocabulary

           Provided by: unrealed.exe   

              Tomasz ‘Millennium’ Jachimczak 

              [email protected]

 

I will start this tutorial by explaining a little of how the editor actually works. This editor is unlike many other editor that are around. It also differs from many 3D Programs that are available for purchase. You will find that most programs that are available will start the screen off with a huge "empty" area. Thus if you would want to build something, you will have to "add" to the world. What makes the Unreal Editor different is that the world that you start off with is actually a huge great SOLID block. It does not have any empty or blank space in it. Thus if you would like to create a room in the world, then you actually have to "subtract" it from the world. If this may seem a little "backwards" with the way that most editors work, then I agree with you, but at the same time, I do also think that this does make a lot of sense. In most of the other editors, you would have to create a solid "wall" to show the last part of a level (or world) before the editor would allow you to actually see it. Thus you would have to create a large number of addition brushes simply to have a finite size of the level. With the Epic Editor (for Unreal) you do not have to create a "final" barrier to your world, but simply each time you subtract a room (or space) from the editor, then it automatically adds to the area that you can travel in the game. Thus, it does make our lives somewhat easier, and also does make a smaller load on the processor of the PC playing it, as it does not have to count and use as many brushes, as if you would have extra brushes to mark the final point of a level. Ok, now that we know a little of how the editor works, let's get into some of the more technical words that you will probably hear mentioned a lot in my tutorials and other people when they talk about the editor. The amount of detail I will go into will vary on how important I think something is, and if it is really important that you know what each word means.

• Brushes

  • Solid Brushes
    A solid brush is a brush that has been placed into the level, and the builder brush that created it was solid at the time. When you select the properties of a brush (from a primitive) you will be able to select one of two options. You can choose SOLID which means that the brush you create is a 3D shape that has got no "insides" to it. It is a basic shape that has got an outline, but no "inside" to it. If you add a brush like this, you will add in a new section to the world, and there will be no way to get into it.

  • Hollow Brushes
    A hollow brush is a brush that when created, actually is an outline, and has got "another smaller shape" inside it. Thus when you add (or subtract) it into the level, you will have a shape that appears hollow on the inside. This gets hard to explain here. Let me use an example here. If you create a cube that is hollow, you will actually have a brush that is more like a cardboard box, rather then a child's playing cube, that is entirely solid in the middle.

    • Builder Brush
      The builder brush is actually the RED BRUSH that you first see as a red cube when you open the editor. This will be your most important tool when you are creating and editing levels. While it might seem a little "primitive" at first, you should find that with a few of the things that you can do with it, you will be making it into whatever you like in no time al all. If you choose to click on any of the primitives (The shapes on the toolbar to the left of the screen) then your builder brush will change to that shape, and you can then add and subtract with that brush.
      This Tool, is only a temporary brush, and does not actually make any difference in the level itself. When you are "rebuilding" your level, you will find that it does not affect anything at all, as it is really only "a fake" until you use one of the other tools to make it permanent.

    • Subtracted Brush
      A brush that has been subtracted will show on the editor 2D views as an orangy brown color. This has been made from the builder brush at one time, and then the subtract tool has been used, to permanently place it in the level. If this brush has been placed in an area that was solid before, then you will be able to travel into that section of the game. If you subtract a hollow brush into the game, then you will be able walk inside the brush.

    • Added Brush
      When you "add" a brush into the world, you are actually creating another solid. Thus, you can only "add" a brush into the world where there is a hollow area, otherwise you will be adding something to a place where something already exists (This should mean completely useless) When you add a brush to the level, you will see it appear as a Bark Blue shape in the 2D views.

    • Special Brush
      A special brush can be added to just about anywhere in the world. You will see them as Green colored shapes in the 2D views. Special Brushes can be used to add water, a transparent "barrier" and many other useful things, although you will most likely find these out either for yourself, or as you start reading some more of the tutorials.

    • Mover Brushes
      A mover brush is a brush in the world that will actually move. This can be created by either joining a "trigger" to the mover, or by touching the mover, but that is all explained in the related tutorials. You wil not see the textures on a mover in the 3D view, but only see the purple outline and there will be no way to change the texture alignment or anything like that, so you have to be sure that everything is perfect before you create it.

  • Movers
    Movers are brushes that can be set to move in the level, and are explained in the Brushes section.

• Triggers
  A trigger can be used for a lot of things. The most common use it to activate a mover with a trigger. A trigger will appear in the editor as a little question mark next to a cube. To set a trigger to activate a mover, simply change the "tag" of both trigger and mover to be the same. Triggers are explained once again, in tutorials, so I will not go into to much detail here, although they can be used for just about anything in your level (world).

• Intersecting/Disinteresting
  You can create many things with the primitives that are supplied in the editor, although a lot of the time you find that your geometry will overlap. If you have things that overlap, you can find that your level may not rebuild properly. You can find that things will appear to have large "black" area that do not work properly. You can however use the two tools (intersect/disinterest) to make the builder brush either cut everything OUTSIDE the solid, or to make the builder brush appear only within the brush (s). This can be rather tricky to explain here in text without being able to show a quick animation, but what it means is that means is that your red builder brush will be "cut" to only what is either inside or outside the bushes that are in your level already.,/li>

• Rebuilding
  When you have created a brush (or more hopefully ;) then you will have to compile it into an actual level. When you press the rebuild function (Either press F8, or choose rebuild from the options menu) setting it to "rebuild" will take a few seconds to quite a few minutes (depending on the complexity of the level) and it will be all ready to play. There are a few settings within the window that you can choose to either turn on or off but they are explained under their own heading, although there is a list of them here. BSP, LIGHTING, GEOMETRY, OPTIMIZATION. When you rebuild make sure that you do save the level, as you will sometimes find that there may be errors and some of the can actually crash your system. Actually it is a good idea to get into the habit of saving the level quite often and having a few little "backup" files that are kept there just in case...

• BSP
  This is what will decide where the player will be able to go, and where they will not be able to go. Any SOLID brushes will affect the BSP of the level. If you have got an area that has got a large amount of adding and subtracting in the same place, then you may experience something that is called BSP holes, which appear as large black holes in your level, and most often also result in the player not being able to move through the area properly. If this is near the end of the level, or near an area that "ends" with a solid area, then you may also experience the dreaded HOM. (This is explained below).

• HOM - Hall of Mirrors
  This is the bane of all editors. You will have most likely seen eh HOM before, but simply put it down to bad level editing. It is - kinda. You will most often see the HOM where you have got an area or even maybe a transparent texture that is in the last place in a level. Ok, this is hard to explain, but for example, if you have got a room in the level, and there is nothing beyond the room. You would normally place a texture on the walls that is not see through right? If you placed a texture that has got invisible areas, when you try to play the level, the game engine will try to "cover" the holes there, and it does it by "mirroring" the last thing shown there. If you ever find a shimmering area where things have stopped moving and it looks bad, then most likely this is what has occurred. There is no "one way fix" to get rid of the HOM, but please check your textures to make sure that they do not contain any areas of transparency, and that in the 2D views bits of your map are not disappearing.

• Lighting
  Lighting in the level is pretty basic. It simply means that you will have some sort of illumination that is in your world so that the players will be able to see where they are and what they are doing. Lighting may however take the form of many different things. The easiest way to make a light is to right click in the level on a texture (in the 3D view) and choose "add light" from the drop menu. See also Dynamic lighting.

• Dynamic Lighting
  Dynamic lighting will greatly enhance the look of your level, although it may actually slow down the level, and cause some less powerful machines to drop frames. Dynamic lighting simply refers to lights that do things. You can create lights that shimmer, or lights that are spot lights and rotate, lights that pulsate, or lights that simply "strobe". There are a LOT of things that you can use, but as mentioned earlier here, they will use a large amount of resources (compared to a normal light that is) to use, and some lower end machines may suffer a large drop of frame rate.

• Geometry
  Geometry refers to the actual brushes that are in your level. These are the things that your players will walk over, and also where they will be able to see. To learn how to create brushes and geometry, refer to the Brushes section of this document.

• Optimization
  There are a lot of questions asked about the "Optimization" settings that can be changed within the rebuilder, although you should not actually change any of them in the BETA Editor that has been released by Epic with Unreal. I have played with the optimisation settings before, and the only good that it did, was to kill my level. Trust me on this one, until there is a fix for the settings - Do NOT change them.

• Zones
  Zones can be created in the editor. Zones will be able to hold specific areas in the map. A zone is really kinda like a level in itself. For example, if you have an area with water in it, it is actually a "water zone" or you can create an area with fog in it, and to make the level play faster, you cn restrict the area that the fog is visible from, then create a Zone around it. This will then allow the CPU resources to be used for other things in the game (like frame rate).

• Portals
  Portals can be created in the level, to allow players to simply "walk" (or fall, or fly or whatever) from one place in the level, to another place. These have a nice tutorial written on them, so I will not go into too much detail here.

• Textures
  Textures are simply images that are used to "paint" the brushes in your level with, so that people can actually see what is stopping them from going forward, or what is stopping them from falling through the ground.

• Wave or .wav
  This is a format for storing sound. It is the basic format that most people use to import sounds into the game and then save them for use in the levels. Wave files can be explained much more thoroughly in the Booklet of your Sound-Card, so I will not explain them here in any more detail.

• Texture Packages or .utx
  These are simply files that contain many images for use as textures in the levels. There are tutorials on this site, that will explain how to create texture packs and how to import files into the engine for use.

• Scaling - Textures
  When you have a texture on the brush, you can actually change the size of the display. If you have an image that is too large, or small for the brush, you can actually change the scale in which it is displayed.

• Scaling - Brushes
  Brushes just like Textures can be scaled to change the size of them, however, if you want to create a mover from anything, you CANNOT (and I can't stress that enough) used scales brushes during any part of the construction of the mover. If you do, everything will appear to be fine, until you actually try to use the mover or try to walk up to it. At this point, you will find that the brush that was scaled, will actually still be "unscaled" even though it may look like everything is fine.

• Skybox
  The skybox is the part of the map that is displayed whenever there is a texture 9or face of brush) that has been set to "Fake Backdrop". This is most useful when you have to make a "sky" or a background that you want seen from any part of the map.

• PlayerStart
  A Playerstart will be the place in your level that the player begins when you start the level. These can be placed just about anywhere you like, although it is a good idea to make sure that they are not in a place that the player can get hurt immediately.

• PainZone
  A Painzone is an area of the map that is zones all around, and when the player walks into it, they will start losing health points. This loss of health will continue until the player either leaves the pain zone, or dies. Water is actually a painzone, although there is a delay in it. The delay is there to allow the player to use the air in his/her lungs (i.e. hold their breath) and when they start running out, they will start to lose health.

• KillZone
  A Killzone is quite similar to the above zone, although rather then just making the player lose health slowly, they are actually killed in the spot. It does not make a difference if the player is in GOD mode or not. They will die as soon as they step into a Killzone.

• Frame Rate
  Frame rate is really simple. It refers to the number of frames that the computer can show in a second. The higher the number, the smoother the display will be. To try to improve your frame rate on a level, make sure that there are as few a number of brushes and as few a number of Dynamic lighting as possible. There are a large number of influences that will determine the frame rate, but generally speaking, try to use as little "goodies" as you can, and the level will play better.