Questions regarding warpzones

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memsys
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Questions regarding warpzones

Post by memsys »

I am currently working on a little project and I might try to do some interesting stuff with warpzones.
The warpzones might end up being an important part of the map depending on what the limitations are.
So far I have found out that it breaks hitscan weapons and the game only renders the other side three times when you create a loop (same deal with mirrors).

Do warpzones work well online and are there any issues when I change the axis of the warpzone (so that the floor on the past the warpzone looks like it's on the wall)?
Besides the above two questions are there any other issues with/ things I need to know about warpzones?
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by Red_Fist »

I did a testroom map for that

Made all stalls, a walled off room, stalls so you can try a zone facing the other way.

Could be 2 zones per room, Then the inside pair, seems I remember it had to do with which way you are facing.

But then you could flip sheets, change the direction of the warpzone actor, or both, or make any kind of test map, I never tried right angles.

The view through the warpzone, will always be the view of the warpzone, and not the actual direction you are facing.
So I think if you always walk straight through, or fall through floor (down is down) but changing direction, I don't think they are made for that.

I forgot my results from the test map, but I tried all sorts of combos, it seems like they are hardcoded to do one specific thing and I couldn't do much variations. It's almost a boring actor
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by editor Dave »

Over at unrealsp.org a topic about WarpZones was opened not long ago. There were quite some interesting observations and tricks from various users being made, so I just give you a link for further reading: http://unrealsp.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3664
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by papercoffee »

I tried to build a map with warpzones ...but failed.

viewtopic.php?p=44034#p44034
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It was meant as an planetoid like CTF map ...every team starts on one of the poles and can go around to capture the enemies flag.
papercoffee wrote: Each wall has a angle of 60° and this map will use many zone-portals.
You can only fight with projectile based weapons. My brain hurts now.
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by FraGnBraG »

They do work online, but can be glitchy. There are only really two issues with them I can think of, assuming they are set up correctly: hitscan, obviously, and getting AI to use them and also for the BOT (or monster) to not get stuck (depth and size of the particular zone has issues affects this).

If the zone portal is really large they are more prone to glitching, i find... I have many many maps using warpzones for different purposes besides just transiting from one room to another
some examples from me ... DropZone, I-C-U, Barrel Of Fun, UP4Ever ... the last example is imo the best way to use them - limited line of site to connect continuous movement from ends and sides (good to have in DM and DOM maps) this way players can circuit a map and short cut - once each knows the layout mapped this way, game play becomes more challenging since trapping an opponent is less likely...
UP4Ever also shows use of WZ as a viewport, rather than a doorway, etc.

IMO, it boils down to this paper - once you get your WZ chops together (by that I mean the ability to work with them and fix their stupid fiddly tendencies) then the challenge is to do something cool or even unique with them... I think the depth you see in the "mirror effect" is probably okay anyways, if there's shooting going on who really cares too much? Looking at skyboxes through WZ can be ugly though, although sometimes it works - iirc.

There have been many good WZ uses in maps over the years - one that always first comes to my mid is Ezkeels DM-Escher map... Any one who has not played this one should go get it - it was very cool for it's time. Takes a bit of time to learn it (because of the "unique" connectivity) but I still find it interesting to play now-and-then - there is one spot where you do the jumping down behind yourself while shooting rockets at yourself hehe... it's always fun in these maps to shoot yourself in the arse :P

No it does not somehow magically work like you would eshcer-fx should work i.e. flipping orientation correctly - UT is not like that (although, remember PREY portals? that would be cool to do in UT - and walking around the outside of a ball, also as in PREY). If you had that ability then methinks you could make a "realistic" escher-map :)

Cool idea for memsys to try: it would be neat if you could have a setup where you could shockball boost or rocket boost yourself up to a high place, but do it using carefully set up WZ (boosting similar to the competaive team techniques ala bridge etc) -- now there's a challenge, lol!

Cheers
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by memsys »

Thanks for the replies everyone!

FraGnBraG do you happen to know where I can get DM-Escher from Ezkeel?
FraGnBraG wrote:Cool idea for memsys to try: it would be neat if you could have a setup where you could shockball boost or rocket boost yourself up to a high place, but do it using carefully set up WZ (boosting similar to the competaive team techniques ala bridge etc) -- now there's a challenge, lol!
riiiiiight... Yes, I know completely what you mean... (I have no idea what so ever :ironic: )
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by Higor »

If your warp zone is rendering the wrong target zone on the other side, it can be solved by manually forcing the target render zone via uscript.
I've only encountered this problem once so far, so maybe you'll never need my help on this.

Secondly, make the warpzone's passage big enough for high velocity actors to cross it without hitting the inner wall in a single frame.
Example: Kicker with 1750 horizontal speed boost.
- Server tickrate: 20
- Server speed: 125% + Hardcore mode (*1.1)
- Player collision radius: 17
==> DeltaTime in a single frame: 0.06875
==> Distance covered in a single frame: 120 units + 17 (col radius)

A 128 long warp zone is not enough for players to cross at these conditions (you'll have a 10% rate of failure), always take into account what's meant to cross a warp zone and plan accordingly.
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by sektor2111 »

A few observations noticed by me.
Depending on mod or whatever tools used, ON-Line certain projectiles might look nasty in clients, depending on how is warp-zone. Anyway those aren't a friend of me. Try shoot default Dispersion through a Warp-Zone Ex: MH-LongCorridor_d+ or such. Rename it, fire a game-type like SinglePlayer or whatever Coop and see what's the deal... or put dispersion into start location and try a dedicated MHv503 server for testing. No worry, bugs are original...
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by FraGnBraG »

memsys wrote:Thanks for the replies everyone!

FraGnBraG do you happen to know where I can get DM-Escher from Ezkeel?
FraGnBraG wrote:Cool idea for memsys to try: it would be neat if you could have a setup where you could shockball boost or rocket boost yourself up to a high place, but do it using carefully set up WZ (boosting similar to the competaive team techniques ala bridge etc) -- now there's a challenge, lol!
riiiiiight... Yes, I know completely what you mean... (I have no idea what so ever :ironic: )
haha :P okay - i think you'll like this map
File is actually called "DM-DeCyberEscherUT"
Map Title is "The House of Escher V2"
Author: "EZKeel"
btw, this guy is/was a *great* mapper - One of my first mapping heros (back in 2000)
- he started out in unreal/SP and continued on thru UT
- made a good amount of maps some full of wild ideas
(some would even stand out today, imo)

linky: http://ut-files.com/index.php?dir=Maps/ ... cherut.zip

If I would fix anything about this map would be to liven up the lighting a bit
(a lot of these older maps have to much white light and not enough contrasts
Anyways, minor niggle
Enjoy!
Cheers
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by Hellkeeper »

memsys wrote:Do warpzones work well online and are there any issues when I change the axis of the warpzone (so that the floor on the past the warpzone looks like it's on the wall)?
Besides the above two questions are there any other issues with/ things I need to know about warpzones?
The others might be more competent for online play, but what I can say is that the axis has no issue at all. It's a very fun thing to play with: take a look at Dm-Ringworld by Darendash (his tutorials are also interesting). Bots will have problems navigating warpzones if they're less than about 64uu deep in my experience. Also they are quite hesitant to shoot through it when the axis becomes very screwed (hence why they suck completely on CTF-Axlik).
You must construct additional pylons.
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by EvilGrins »

Dunno if this helps, but this guy · http://www.evilut.com/ · primarily makes maps with warp zones.
http://unreal-games.livejournal.com/
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medor wrote:Replace Skaarj with EvilGrins :mrgreen:
Smilies · viewtopic.php?f=8&t=13758
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by memsys »

Thanks for the help everyone! I think I have enough to build something interesting.
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by abomination »

FraGnBraG wrote:They do work online, but can be glitchy. There are only really two issues with them I can think of, assuming they are set up correctly: hitscan, obviously, and getting AI to use them and also for the BOT (or monster) to not get stuck (depth and size of the particular zone has issues affects this).

If the zone portal is really large they are more prone to glitching, i find... I have many many maps using warpzones for different purposes besides just transiting from one room to another
some examples from me ... DropZone, I-C-U, Barrel Of Fun, UP4Ever ... the last example is imo the best way to use them - limited line of site to connect continuous movement from ends and sides (good to have in DM and DOM maps) this way players can circuit a map and short cut - once each knows the layout mapped this way, game play becomes more challenging since trapping an opponent is less likely...
UP4Ever also shows use of WZ as a viewport, rather than a doorway, etc.

IMO, it boils down to this paper - once you get your WZ chops together (by that I mean the ability to work with them and fix their stupid fiddly tendencies) then the challenge is to do something cool or even unique with them... I think the depth you see in the "mirror effect" is probably okay anyways, if there's shooting going on who really cares too much? Looking at skyboxes through WZ can be ugly though, although sometimes it works - iirc.

There have been many good WZ uses in maps over the years - one that always first comes to my mid is Ezkeels DM-Escher map... Any one who has not played this one should go get it - it was very cool for it's time. Takes a bit of time to learn it (because of the "unique" connectivity) but I still find it interesting to play now-and-then - there is one spot where you do the jumping down behind yourself while shooting rockets at yourself hehe... it's always fun in these maps to shoot yourself in the arse :P

No it does not somehow magically work like you would eshcer-fx should work i.e. flipping orientation correctly - UT is not like that (although, remember PREY portals? that would be cool to do in UT - and walking around the outside of a ball, also as in PREY). If you had that ability then methinks you could make a "realistic" escher-map :)

Cool idea for memsys to try: it would be neat if you could have a setup where you could shockball boost or rocket boost yourself up to a high place, but do it using carefully set up WZ (boosting similar to the competaive team techniques ala bridge etc) -- now there's a challenge, lol!

Cheers
I agree with FraGnBraG regarding the DM-Escher. A friend recommended to me a few months ago and I put it on my server. It's a wonderful map making great use of warpzones.

A similar map with an interesting use of WZs was DM-TwistedLibrary (I think that is the name) - I don't recall the transitions being as clean as Escher but I found it interesting.
EvilGrins wrote:Dunno if this helps, but this guy · http://www.evilut.com/ · primarily makes maps with warp zones.
I was researching building a CTF4/CTFM map and found that Doctor Evil here had basically created what I wanted, and also proved it couldn't be done in the manner I wanted. His CTFM-EvilCylinder map was essentially my vision, but I was looking to make it for Excessive Overkill. Rocket jumps from one base to another resulted in gravity deaths via a high impact crash. Projectiles can't travel through WZs obviously (I learned during my discovery process) so I ended my search there.
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by papercoffee »

Ok... ok ok ok ...do I get it right ...warp-zones should never touch each other.
If the answer is YES, then I get what was the failure in my map project. :ironic:
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Re: Questions regarding warpzones

Post by [did]Madis »

This thread gave me a brilliant idea - make a nice big CTF map with some sniper towers, but make sure the view you see from the tower is transmitted through a warp zone just to troll all sniper players.
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