25th Anniversary of Unreal Tournament

[Higor]

If you mean .dds textures, then no. Whenever I tried to import .dds textures UnrealEd would throw an error. I don't know if was doing it wrong, but I could find no documentation on the subject.

It's a delicate process, it involves building two versions of the textures that have at least one dimension of 1024 or above.
And using v469b/c Unreal Editor.
You create palletized versions in up to 256 size, then a PNG of the original high res.
Import the palettized version first, then use "Import CompMips" on top of said texture and grab the PNG.
If done right the texture will have two mip sets at different resolutions and the package size should go down considerably, as well as the GPU memory usage.

One little screenshot explains a lot more than words.
With this you'll be building packages that are identical in style to the UT CD2 textures.
You may have to rescale textures in levels that already use them, or apply DrawScale in Texture properties.

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Automatically merged

Extra note: I suggest manually downscaling, sharpening and palettizing using PS/Gimp+GMic/Bright, so the low res versions get maximum visual quality too.

[fudgonaut]

If done right the texture will have two mip sets at different resolutions and the package size should go down considerably, as well as the GPU memory usage.

Thanks Higor - I will give it a try and convey this technique to the 25AC mappers!

[fudgonaut]

My first pass of DOM-25AC-Condemned is done. I'll need to tweak the bot behavior probably. This one isn't a total remake, mostly a graphical facelift.

I'm working on DM-25AC-Phobos, which is scaled up so it's not as claustraphobic.

I'm starting on pathing, it's been a pain trying to get the bots to use the sniper tower lift.

I decided to spectate the original DM-Phobos for a few matches to see how well it works. So far I haven't seen any bot use the tower lift.

Has anyone else noticed this, or is it that the bots don't use the tower lift often?

If anyone is aware of a map that has a tall elevator with a delay, like Phobos — and bots use successfully — please respond. I need to find a working example. My bots will sometimes ride the elevator up... then jump down the elevator shaft to their deaths

[papercoffee]

And you really didn't make the Phobos claustrophobosic pun ...srsly??

[fudgonaut]

claustrophobosic

[fudgonaut]

Hydro WIP

[Swanky]

My first pass of DOM-25AC-Condemned is done. I'll need to tweak the bot behavior probably. This one isn't a total remake, mostly a graphical facelift.

DOM-25AC-Condemned.jpg


I'm working on DM-25AC-Phobos, which is scaled up so it's not as claustraphobic.

DM-25AC-Phobos.jpg

I'm starting on pathing, it's been a pain trying to get the bots to use the sniper tower lift.

I decided to spectate the original DM-Phobos for a few matches to see how well it works. So far I haven't seen any bot use the tower lift.

Has anyone else noticed this, or is it that the bots don't use the tower lift often?

If anyone is aware of a map that has a tall elevator with a delay, like Phobos — and bots use successfully — please respond. I need to find a working example. My bots will sometimes ride the elevator up... then jump down the elevator shaft to their deaths

Try tweaking the desirability of the item that the bots should get. This may cause them to use the lift more often. I usually do this tweak with body armor as it has very low desirability compared to the thighs.
For example, in Ars Indus I've used 3.0 for the armor instead of 2.0, and 2.5 instead of 1.8 for the thighs. The sniper rifle has a base desirability of 0.5 although it might be modified by bot weapon preference (unless that is only for what the bots actually has collected).
You can find the value in the inventory tab of the actor.

[fudgonaut]

You can find the value in the inventory tab of the actor.

Thanks! I've made a couple tweaks with placement and timing, and the bots will occassionally use the lift. I'll try tweaking the desirability to get them to do it more often.

I had one occassion where a bot actually reacted to a distance view trigger and tried to snipe other bots. Yay!

The problem is when the bots want to leave, they plunge to their death trying to take the elevator back, because the lift center is at the bottom of the tower:

Is the solution to add another set of triggers with a lift center at the top? I thought I read somewhere that it's best practice to only have one set of lift-exit | lift-center | lift-exit per mover...

[OjitroC]

I've made a couple tweaks with placement and timing, and the bots will occassionally use the lift.

That's probably the best you can hope for. Personally I wouldn't spend too much time trying to get bots to use it more often.

FWIW my view is that the tower is a nice architectural feature and in keeping with the overall design - however it is completely out of the flow of the gameplay in what is a fairly small and fairly tight DM map. Even for a human there is little to be gained (in terms of getting kills and thus winning the match) by spending much time at the top of that tower out of the action. Bots are governed by their code, by the code of the game controller and by what's in the map - gettting bots to spend time trying to snipe is difficult - the sniping platform in Deck is an example of this.

What would the consequences for gameplay and flow be of the bots using the lift much more often? Would these consequences be desirable? Would the focus of action shilft too much? Is the sniper rifle a particularly useful weapon for bots (and humans) in this type of DM map? These are some of the questions to consider perhaps?

[fudgonaut]

That's probably the best you can hope for. Personally I wouldn't spend too much time trying to get bots to use it more often.

I'm not too concerned about how much the bots snipe from the tower.

I'm looking at it as more of a technical challenge: how do I keep these guys from yeeting themselves down the elevator shaft?

[Swanky]

That's probably the best you can hope for. Personally I wouldn't spend too much time trying to get bots to use it more often.

I'm not too concerned about how much the bots snipe from the tower.

I'm looking at it as more of a technical challenge: how do I keep these guys from yeeting themselves down the elevator shaft?

Make the upper LiftExit one way only and specify another pathnode - you can edit the sniper rifle's tag for example and specify that as one way path destination.
It would be best to add another, non-lethal way down so bots don't get stuck up there.

[fudgonaut]

Just a quick status update:

We've got 5 map remakes that have reached (or are already past) Alpha:

• CTF-25AC-Hydro16
• DM-25AC-Gothic
• DM-25AC-Peak
• DM-25AC-Phobos
• DOM-25AC-Condemned

Would love it if we could get 25 map remakes for the 25th Anniversary! That's about 18 months left to get 20 more maps.

If we could get 20 mappers to commit to one map each, we can easily make that happen. Come join us!

If you want to contribute please add your name to the spreadsheet in my sig and PM me to join the 25AC Discord.

map_on.png (17.25 KiB) Viewed 817 times

[fudgonaut]

Some WIP shots from Darji16

We are a little more than a year out from the the 25th Anniversary and we have a total of six maps. At this rate we're looking at maybe 10-12 maps and I'd really like it to be more like twice that. Would it increase participation if we turned this into a contest? Or crowd-sourced some gifts for participants? Open to any thoughts/ideas.

[fudgonaut]

CTF-Coret

[darksonny]

Epic's latest actions could have discouraged mappers to make maps/mods/muts/etc, maybe here is the reason to seen only 6 (Good and sexy) maps.