Best Graphics Quality

[snmavronis]

Hi just joined this group. Last weekend I had a retro nostalgia moment and installed Unreal Tournament GOTY from my Unreal Anthology DVD. I loaded up 18-20 year old maps I made with UnrealEd and was blown away. It is cool seeing the "look" of Unreal again. I love it. Anyway, I have 2 versions of a map I made scale to blueprints (16 units/foot & 20 units/foot) of the old '80s-'90s "Photon" laser tag facility from my home town. This is not a question about level editing though.

I want to made a 6-1/2 minute video as a tribute to the Photon era using my level maps with the best video quality. My graphics card is the EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Classified. In modern games I run everything in ultra settings. But with UT99 can I jack up the quality? My Nvidia control panel has 3D game profiles with Unreal Tournament in my installed list but with default settings. What can I do there or in the unrealtournament.ini file so I can get the best quality for my little video tribute?

[OjitroC]

Hi - welcome to the forum!

First thing is to have a read through this thread viewtopic.php?f=6&t=373 (it's long but worth a look) and make sure you are running the latest renderers.

[snmavronis]

First thing is to have a read through this thread viewtopic.php?f=6&t=373 (it's long but worth a look) and make sure you are running the latest renderers.

Yeah thanks for that link. I forgot to mention that I am running the Direct3D 9 R13 driver in UT99 on Windows 10 just fine. I had to add that to fix the problem were everything was too dark and brightness didn't work at first.

=MERGED=

Just saw those suggested [D3D9Drv.D3D9RenderDevice] settings. Even though in the [Engine.Engine] section it says I'm using the Direct3D9 driver, my ini file just had the regular Direct3D section so I added that below and copy/pasted my video card description line. Let me see if that does anything. [EDIT] I notice lens flares now and I think the edges are definitely smoother! Thanks

Before: and After:

[EvilGrins]

Oh good, that was easy to find.

I'm the one that asked you earlier on facebook "how's the bot-pathing?" so now I can keep up on this map here.

[snmavronis]

Oh good, that was easy to find.

I'm the one that asked you earlier on facebook "how's the bot-pathing?" so now I can keep up on this map here.

Cool nice to meet you in CyberSpace!

[FraGnBraG]

Welcome - regarding graphic quality.
As an alternative, there is OpenGL. Did you try that one? If not then you should give it a look - I have a (GTX970) and OpenGL definitely looks better than D3D on my monitors (BENQ). That said brightness adjustment (f11) sadly does not work when OpenGL in win10. So I preset ut brightness to 5/10 in ini and leave it at that since my monitors are rather bright to begin with.
btw - that level looks interesting - might be good for ig?

[snmavronis]

Welcome - regarding graphic quality.
As an alternative, there is OpenGL. Did you try that one? If not then you should give it a look - I have a (GTX970) and OpenGL definitely looks better than D3D on my monitors (BENQ). That said brightness adjustment (f11) sadly does not work when OpenGL in win10. So I preset ut brightness to 5/10 in ini and leave it at that since my monitors are rather bright to begin with.
btw - that level looks interesting - might be good for ig?

Thanks for that OpenGL tip! I did try that before getting Direct3D9R13. But like you said in Win10 the F11 or menu options brightness doesn't work. I'll have to compare OpenGL with the ini-based brightness setting. What's "ig" by the way?

[papercoffee]

Hi @snmavronis.
Please read the House Rules

8. Avoid unnecessary, as well as double and triple postings in the same thread. Double posting is only allowed after 24 hours after the last post, or in extensive tutorials which need such posting space.

House Rules.

We allow our member to edit their posts. Please use the Edit button to add more content or wait 24 hours. If someone has written after your post you don't have to wait 24 hours.

[OjitroC]

What's "ig" by the way?

Insta-Gib, using the super shockrifle.

Have you released any of the maps you made?

[Koolflux]

If you run the latest renderers on UT, such as OpenGL or Direct3D 10 or 11, you should get pretty good graphics quality.

Nice looking map, btw. Looks like it'd be good for games using the Instagib mutator or even the Shock Rifle Arena mutator.

[FraGnBraG]

If you run the latest renderers on UT, such as OpenGL or Direct3D 10 or 11, you should get pretty good graphics quality.

Nice looking map, btw. Looks like it'd be good for games using the Instagib mutator or even the Shock Rifle Arena mutator.

definitely one of the two. Laser-tag == InstaGib in my mind - you get hit your dead, lol! bit hard to guess at the scale of the layout though.

If it is actually true to realism (16uu ~= 1 foot) iirc, might be a bit tight for proper ut movement. 1.5 or 2 x reality is about right for best movement imo
(as if you are a 3 foot guy, lol!)

You should post the map or some editor shots with an intro dude or two placed - this gives a good idea of scale - intro dude is about 6 FT guy.

Anyways, if it is too tight, you can scale the map up to 1.5 or whatever you like using MapScale - a tool that resizes the brushes, etc., once enlarged
then some editing is required to fix placements and lighting etc. but is often worth it if an optimal size is desired.

Should post the map? There are players and a server here..

[snmavronis]

Okay well, I guess it's been over 24 hours by now so I'll try a mass reply.

1. I haven't released any of my maps except my Photon ones to fans of that real life game. The super shock rifle would be cool. My last Photon "arena" only map just features the pulse gun. I felt that was close to Unreal's dispersion pistol which I really thought would be cool if that were carried over to UT99. I liked that it didn't need any ammo as a default weapon. Instagib would be good for laser tag - no fuss. In the real Photon when you were hit your helmet lights would flash for 10 seconds while disabled and you would get negative points for friendly fire.

2. I applied all the graphics renderer INI settings from the forum tweak link provided here. Direct3D 9 R13 looks much better with anti-aliasing and coronas and OpenGL R36 looks exactly the same as far as I can tell and the brightness controls work with both. Trying to decide which one I'll keep. OpenGL seems most stable running 1920x1080 which is the highest my 144Hz G-Sync monitor supports. What is the latest recommended stable download link for DirectX 10 or better to test with in the Unreal Tournament\System folder? I'm running Windows 10 Home 64-bit always with the latest updates.

3. I have 2 Photon map versions that I'll link here if you want to check this out yourselves. Remember they are really just scale models of a real place and bot gameplay was just for testing to mess with. I wasn't really sure how to make this style UT map playable. Gameplay movement isn't always conducive to real world places. It's more of a nostalgia thing for me with Photon being able to walk through the place and remembering good times. If you have any suggestions that may encourage me to get back into Unreal editing let me know. The emails in my readme files are no longer in use so private message me here or Facebook searching my snmavronis username. I also use SeismicForce as a general online player name.
- 2002 beta map Photon scaled up (area only and more accurate) redone at 20 units/foot. -
- 2000 beta map Photon (full facility recreation) at the default 16 units/foot. -

4. My next thing to do is record a bunch of video clips together to make a 6-1/2 minute Photon tribute movie. That's how long the laser tag game soundtrack is. I have one in the map (without the voice overs) but will be using this one since multiple clips edit will need the sound redone for a little movie. -

P.S. Sorry for the large URL previews. Not sure how to suppress them when posting. Do not automatically parse URLs doesn't seem to do anything.

[FraGnBraG]

heh heh - interesting experience - So that's laser-Tag. imo the smaller (newer) map was a bit better, not sure why.
I tried them both with instaGib and just 3 masterful bots (which seemed about right) and yeah pretty tight in there.
Of course that was expected given the nature/goal of the design. _If_ you were interested in upscaling the map
to make a better-playable ut99 experience, I would suggest about scaling up 2x in the horizontal, and either leave the vertical
as is or at most 1.5x. That would make things less snaggy, and encourage bot movement. Easy to do using the map scale tool.

As it is what you have is quite well done. not a hom or collision error anywhere, fwiw.
The lighting and texture work is not bad, but could be upgraded using higher resolution textures.
Lighting could be sweetened up (more contrast, lighting FX, neon trims, etc.)
well, just some things you'd likely do if you were to go forward.

Cheers