Questions/Suggestions for UED2.1

[Mechazawa]

Getting back into Unreal mapping; I have been mapping with gzBuilder in doom for awhile so that will be what I reference the most when talking about things.

Is there any way to selection box things in one of the 2D views? For example in gzBuilder you can make draggable selection boxes. So if you made a room and gave it details and actors and so on. You could go to the wireframe view, drag a selection box around the whole thing, and it would select all actors, lines, and vertexes, and then you could say.. copy and paste them, and it would retain all of their settings and texture information as well. I know you can manually click each brush and actors but I was wondering if there was a faster way. And since I hear you guys take suggestions...thats a suggestion for any future updates, lol.

Second, is there any way to "select same textures in a zone"? Often times I want to select the same texture in the area I am working in; but not in the whole map. My thinking was it would be spiffy if I could make a seperate zone somewhere to construct details such as pillars or a fountain or what ever (usually things that have a lot of surfaces that use the same textures) and other things where I am changing textures a lot. And ONLY select the same textures being used in that zone. Again, if that can't be done then it is my suggestion.

Also, as another suggestion, it would be nice to be able to have either/or some indicator on screen that shows the HxLxW of the selected brush, even if its not a box; but it would show what space that object could fit in; if you get my drift. As well, in the 2D view, highlighting a line could show the length. So, when you mouse over a single line it would have something like

I will probably come up with more questions and/or suggestions as I go. I hope that is alright. Thanks!

[Krull0r]

Is there any way to selection box things in one of the 2D views? For example in gzBuilder you can make draggable selection boxes. So if you made a room and gave it details and actors and so on. You could go to the wireframe view, drag a selection box around the whole thing, and it would select all actors, lines, and vertexes, and then you could say.. copy and paste them, and it would retain all of their settings and texture information as well. I know you can manually click each brush and actors but I was wondering if there was a faster way.

There are already two ways to achieve this.

1. Method:

You can move and scale your red "BuilderBrush" to the actors you want to select. Make sure everything you want to select is inside your BuilderBrush. Then press "Select Inside Actors" in your toolbar. [img]http://wg1165843.virtualuser.de/unrealdev/Krullstuff/227Stuff/SelectInside.jpg[/img]

now you can copy or duplicate your selection.

2. Method:

Draw a red selection box by holding control and alt in your 2d top view. This will select all actors inside the red box.

[Hellkeeper]

Second, is there any way to "select same textures in a zone"? Often times I want to select the same texture in the area I am working in; but not in the whole map. My thinking was it would be spiffy if I could make a seperate zone somewhere to construct details such as pillars or a fountain or what ever (usually things that have a lot of surfaces that use the same textures) and other things where I am changing textures a lot. And ONLY select the same textures being used in that zone. Again, if that can't be done then it is my suggestion.

Also, as another suggestion, it would be nice to be able to have either/or some indicator on screen that shows the HxLxW of the selected brush, even if its not a box; but it would show what space that object could fit in; if you get my drift. As well, in the 2D view, highlighting a line could show the length. So, when you mouse over a single line it would have something like

Unfortunately, none of these two exist in UnrealEd 2.1. The last one exist in UnrealEd 3.0 and has been suggested to smirftsch before (by me among others), so if enough people come out of the wood to pester smirftsch about this, it may happen.

[Mechazawa]

@ Krull0r

Thanks for the ctrl + alt tip, that helps a bunch!

@Hellkeeper

Sucks about the texture thing. Which was really what I was looking for. In gzBuilder you can hit a key or I even think you can just double click any texture and it selects any matching texture connected to it until it hits a texture that isn't the same. So if you double click a floor it selects all textures on that plane that are connected to the surfaces you double clicked.

In my case I specifically had a bunch of arches (which I should have perfected before I copy-pasted them) that had a few off textures and the only way to fix it was to go to each arch and manually select them.

[dustinechoes849]

this is pretty similar to the texture thing you mentioned

for instance say you had like 10 houses, and you wanted to change the side texture of all of 'em quick. you could right click on 1 side per house, and then press SHIFT+W and all the sides would be selected for each house
[media]https://i.gyazo.com/eb805fdecc6ff1f7690 ... 377e1c.mp4[/media]
/\ video, hover over to see controls

[Mechazawa]

Thanks for the tip dustinechoes849. I will mess around with that setting.

Another question; I have made this hallway and I have grates. I put invisible brushes to prevent the player from falling through. However, I would also like to block light from going down to the bottom areas. Is there any way I can do that without simply making them really dim? I have been flipping through the brush options and nothing seems to work.

[img][/img]

Edit:

Another lighting question. I made lights out of several sheets:

[img][/img]

They show up in the editor and in the realtime preview. The level has been completely rebuilt. However, there is no lighting in game. Infact there is no lighting other than where I specifically used the little torch light actor. MY game is using OGL, I have Dynamic Lights enabled as well. Any ideas?

Edit2: After messing about for hours, I came to a conclusion. Don't make lights out of sheet brushes...

If anyone does know a way to do this I would be appreciative. I tried so many things to get them to work in game and they just refused. On top of that they broke any new lights that were added, even via light actors.

[Krull0r]

Thanks for the tip dustinechoes849. I will mess around with that setting.

Another question; I have made this hallway and I have grates. I put invisible brushes to prevent the player from falling through. However, I would also like to block light from going down to the bottom areas. Is there any way I can do that without simply making them really dim? I have been flipping through the brush options and nothing seems to work.

[img][/img]

If you use UnrealED2.1 you can achieve this with StaticMeshes.
Just build a masked 2d plane. Align textures and convert this plane to a static mesh. Then you can add this StaticMesh on your grates.
The Light will also shine between the gabs of your masked grate. IF you don't want any light passing use a solid none mask texture for your StaticMesh.

After this you can set your Static Mesh to bhidden=true in advanced and it will become invisible in game.


An important note:

Always use Light Actors as a static Light sources. Unreal Engine 1 only supports point lights.

[Mechazawa]

I will try that with the static meshes thing.

The issue with light actors is they don't snap to the grid and there is no way to really tell where the center point of the light is. Perhaps it is nitpicky, but I like to have my lights exactly originating from a particular spot. This is why I was attempting to do sheet lights.

Another question; every once in awhile (read: all the time) my brush will get off the grid. I never turn off grid snapping and I always use the snapped brush scaling if I have to resize. But, still sometimes it will get a few UU off the grid and will simply refuse to go back unless I set grid size to 1 and move it around 1 UU at a time. What causes this?

[Krull0r]

You can snap Lights or any Actors to the grid

Open the actor properties, advanced and there you can set EdShouldSnap=true.
If the light pevit is not in the center just right click on your light and it snaps perfect to the grid.


If some brushes get off of your grid you can also right click on any vertexpoint of the brush and it will snap to the grid, or to the next vertexpoint of other brushes if you have vertexsnapping enabled.


Sometimes the scaling tool scales infinite between the grid. I don't know what causes this.

[Mechazawa]

Thanks for the tips. I shall put them to use.

I don't know if this is very report worthy, but I have had UED 2.1 crash on hitting Play Map! and on hitting New Viewport from the viewport menu. Otherwise it has been stable. I save after every couple of edits and I rebuild map almost after ever brush placement.