
DM-HardFall
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A map for Unreal Tournament 3.


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General Info
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Title: DM-HardFall

Filename: DM-HardFall.zip

Author: Jesse [SuperAlgae] Banet

Email: jessebanet@gmail.com

Release Date: 2010 June 13

Version: 1.0.0 Final


Compatibility: Any version of UT3. This does not require any bonus packs.

Suggested Player Count: 6 to 12 for DM. More for Team DM.


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Installation
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Unzip DM-HardFall.zip

Move all files into C:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\My Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Published\CookedPC\CustomMaps

If the directory does not exist, create it manually.

Type "open DM-HardFall" in the console, or select the level in a multiplayer/instant action game.


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Credits
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- BeyondUnreal. Since the early days of the first Nali City, QAPete and the others have provided an invaluable resource to myself and the Unreal community.
- stevelois. Your continuous help was critical to making the map what it is.
- {BFG}Bl!tz~ for your positive comments, constructive criticism, and help in online testing.
- Thrallala for your keen eyes and ears.
- Diesalot for your comments on RC5. Like last-minute frags, last-minute comments still count! :)
- Grogan for your enthusiastic feedback.
- SkaarjMaster, Godfrey.Payans, WedgeBob, Lord PorkSword, Rulaman, and Odedge for your feedback and encouragement.
- 3D Buzz and their Old School UT3 Contest. That contest provided a much-needed injection of life into the UT3 community and was a great opportunity for mappers to share ideas and techniques.
- Pharion, Joker, and Twrecks for your repeated help early-on in the 3D Buzz forums.
- Kunakai, apoisonedgift, Mtg_Kirin, and XYZ8000 for your feedback and encouragement.
- Many others on the BeyondUnreal, UOF, and 3D Buzz forums.
- Members of the Unreal community that put in so much effort and ask for little in return.
- Epic for making some of the greatest games/toolsets and for their ongoing support of the Unreal community.


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Story
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Thanks to some seats Liandri acquired on the local antiquities board, they were able to gain rights to a historic building in sprawling downtown Akron. Its rooftop garden along with adjacent buildings made a perfect opportunity for some cross-rooftop jump-pad madness. But if you don't like the idea of flying across urban canyons, don't worry. The rooftops have plenty of less precarious areas as well.


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Author's Comments
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The story above describes a future where the small towns of today have become massive cities. In regard to the "historic building" at the center of the map, I designed it to have a rooftop garden like something more generally found at ground level. Perhaps it was once a park occupying valuable real estate, and when the space was needed, the park was preserved by placing it atop the new building constructed there. Of course, under the the Liandri regime, preservation of landmarks now takes a lower priority.

There are two buildings whose rooftops can be fully traversed and two others with small areas accessible. The two primary buildings are the historic "garden" building described above and a smaller building referred to as the "radio" building due to a radio dish and antenna on top. The main play areas get a lot of traffic, but there are also a lot of more isolated areas including small ledges around the garden building. The major power-ups are the U-Damage, Berserk, and Shield Belt. Getting the U-Damage is straightforward, but it requires two double-jumps (similar to DM-ShangriLa). The Berserk is isolated on a small ledge. The Shield Belt is on a rafter that is accessible in three different ways but none of which are obvious.

This map was started as an entry for the 3D Buzz UT3 Old School Contest. The goal was to create a map using only stock assets. They wanted to show that high quality, unique maps could still be created for UT3 in the way so many were done for the original UT-- using just the Unreal Editor with no expertise required in external tools. By the deadline, I had gotten a lot of work done but not enough to release. Once I was no longer on a short schedule I went back and added a lot more detail to the map. I have been working on the map on and off for more than a year since then. In the end, I am glad I did rush it, because the map is much better for it. Even though I did not complete the map for the contest, I stuck to the original guidelines. Except for a couple basic textures (like the preview screenshot), everything was created using only the Unreal Editor and stock assets.

I wanted to create a map with more of an original UT feel than most UT3 maps. This meant more BSP and heavier use of cast shadows (a strength of BSP). However, I did not abandon the strengths of the UT3 engine. The map contains more than 2000 static meshes and many customized materials. There is a lot of deco, but it does not cover every inch of space. The map has a cleaner look than most stock UT3 maps. This was surprisingly difficult at times given that this is an urban map, and those stock assets tend to be heavily grungified. If you like the look of the map but find it does not look like UT3, then I am happy with that result.

The following forum threads follow the map's creation.

http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?t=167492
http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=180996
http://unrealoldfriends.activeboard.com/index.spark?aBID=132572&p=3&topicID=35565656


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Technical Notes
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These are distinctive technical elements of the map. Some of this is also covered in the threads linked above.

- BSP BSP BSP -
As mentioned above, this has a lot of BSP for a UT3 map-- 1395 brushes to be exact. I have been impressed with how well UT3 handles large amounts of BSP. For a game that focuses so much on static meshes, the BSP engine is quite robust. I have encountered none of the BSP hole issues I remember from my days of UT1 mapping. The biggest problem I have hit is that BSP cuts sometimes create hard edges in the light/shadow maps. By playing with the brush order I removed most of those, and I covered the remaining ones with various static mesh deco.

- Extra Sunlight Channels for Contrast -
Early on, I noticed that the effect of sunlight on BSP looked very flat. Any surface getting light from the sun seemed to be about the same brightness with little variation for of angle of incidence. Maybe this is realistic, maybe not, but it looked bad regardless. The best way I found to fix this was to create a couple extra copies of my sunlight source on special channels with different brightness. In addition to the base sunlight (on the usual channels), surfaces facing more directly toward the sun have an extra channel enabled to brighten them. To achieve this, I manually set extra channels on about a third of all my outdoor BSP surfaces.

- Radiosity -
In the real world, light bouncing off a surface lights up the area around it. This is particularly true if the light source is bright as with sunlight. Since this effect is not modeled by UT3, it is common for map authors to place dim lights on brightly lit surfaces to approximate the reflected light. With so much of DM-HardFall bathed in high-contrast sunlight, I use more than 350 such "bounce lights". This gives a realistic effect of light filling the space. To help avoid undesired lighting artifacts, I use 89 degree spotlights rather than regular point lights. I also enable only the BSP and Static channels to minimize any performance impact.

- Light-Catching Dust -
The rear hallway in the lower level of the radio building has has a moving dust effect. In addition to the usual light cones, there is also a subtle dust/fog effect through the rest of the hall. I used a grid of sheets with a material that disappears at shallow angles and as you get close. I also used DepthBiasedAlpha to prevent hard edges where it intersects geometry. These techniques are pretty common, but my implementation differs in that it actually catches the light by using the diffuse and transmissive channels rather than just being emissive.

- Custom Materials -
It may not be obvious, but DM-HardFall contains 90 customized materials and 25 material instances. Some are just tweaks of stock materials, and some are more ambitious. All textures used are stock, with the exception of one reflection map and one sine wave. I use the sine wave texture in a couple corrugated metal materials instead of using a Cosine expression with TextureCoordinate input. The advantage is that the mipmap levels of the texture reduce moire effects as compared to using an expression.

- Kismet Traffic -
If you look at the streets below the play area, you will see moving traffic. There are a dozen cars driving in various loops. I kept the number small to avoid potential performance impacts. Also, despite appearances, the cars are not lit by the map's normal sunlight (directional lights). Enabling the dynamic channel on those hurts performance too much. The cars are actually lit by smaller-radii dynamic lights placed above the road.

- Kismet Sound Enhancements -
In addition to the 280 ambient sounds in the map, there are also some kismet-triggered sound effects. The jump pad to the shield belt sends the player flying over several rafters. Via kismet, you hear a whoosh sound as you pass each one. Another jump pad sends the player high into the air to land in water on the opposite side of the map. When entering the water at high speed, kismet creates a louder, more convincing splash sound.

- Meshes Built in the Editor -
As mentioned above, I stuck with the guidelines of the 3D Buzz contest and created no content outside the UT3 editor. This means I have no externally created meshes. However, I did create some custom meshes within the UT3 editor by converting from BSP. This is not an ideal way to create meshes, and the conversion process has some problems with rotated materials, but it can be done. A good example is the lift in the radio building.

- Avoiding Online Kismet Issues -
Some Kismet actions like "Set VectorParam" and "Set ScalarParam" do not work online. I instead use an MIC actor and Matinee. This can be seen in the "PoweupLights" sequence. I also found that setting bClientSideOnly=true on a Matinee object completely disables it for online games. I had hoped that it would just not sync the animations with the server, which would save bandwidth for non-gameplay animations like my moving cars, but it does not seem to work that way. 

- Bots Prefer Steep Slopes -
When there is platform/ledge/wall that requires a jump to get over, bots will sometimes get hung up and repeatedly jump in place. The bots navigate better if the vertical face they must climb is actually a very steep slope rather than truly vertical. There are a couple places in DM-HardFall (e.g. the U-Damage pedestal) where I use blocking volumes to achieve this. Steep slopes can actually make navigating the map worse for human players, so I use this technique sparingly and keep the slope as close to vertical as possible.


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Copyright / Permissions
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This level is copyright 2008-2010, by Jesse Banet.

Authors MAY NOT use this level as a base to build additional levels without explicit permission from the original author.

ANY bug fixes, fixes, changes, and tweaks may only be implemented by the author. No other person or party is allowed to release a modified version of this map without the author's permission.

You MAY NOT charge any money for this map or any of its embedded content.

You MAY distribute this level through any electronic media (internet (web/ftp), FIDO, local BBS, Magazine coverdisk etc.), provided you include this file.

All other trademarks and trade names are properties of their respective owners.

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