Does it work ? Thread

I have to ask

Does Hammer work with the new free Unreal Engine 3 development kit ?

Well, Hammer is based on Valve's own Source engine, so I wouldn't see how it could work with the unreal engine 3 dev. kit

Edited by: Toyoka

well thanks for the info i was just curious is all : )

i tought hammer could export the brushes to a format unreal can import
anyway, why would you want to that anyway? at most you will be able to generate some very basic geometry :/

@Assaultman: actualy, additive is the standard now in UT3
if you make a subtractive map, then unrealed automaticly adds a huge brush for you to carve in
additive maps allso have shorter lighting calculation times
i once tested it:
made a simple box both additive and subtractive version (different mapfiles duh :p) with a point light in the middle of it)
there was a difference of 1.34 seconds (additive was fastest)
this might not look like alot, but remember, simple cube room with 1 light so imagine for complex levels with alot of geometry and lights :p

Edited by: Sigma

I should probably point out that Unreal and Source use different techniques anyway. Whilst one might have brushes, one is BSP, the other is CSG. They're different things.

You could export to .dwf (i think) from hammer then import that as a brush into the udk editor and then add it as CSG. Textures however wont transfer over and it may have a few complaction as well.
But i have to say i prefere hammer to Unreals editior, at least so far.

Sigma wrote:@Assaultman: actualy, additive is the standard now in UT3
if you make a subtractive map, then unrealed automaticly adds a huge brush for you to carve in
additive maps allso have shorter lighting calculation times
i once tested it:
made a simple box both additive and subtractive version (different mapfiles duh :p) with a point light in the middle of it)
there was a difference of 1.34 seconds (additive was fastest)
this might not look like alot, but remember, simple cube room with 1 light so imagine for complex levels with alot of geometry and lights :p

NARRRGGHHH!

 (thats me writhing in pain ...)

I honestly would like to know if there is a difference in game play ... even if there is a difference in build time ... because the 1.34 second could be due to something weird like differences in general level "volume" if it uses some kinda volumetric scanning process to calculate lighting :/ ...

I guess it doesn't make much difference ... its still just empty space based with a huge brush ...

but why?!?! ... lol I mean you have to define many more surfaces to seal your level than you would for solid space

Edited by: Assaultman67

You don't really have to "seal" your level in unreal engine; as long as the player can't see nothing you're okay.
.. or am i wrong about that?

Edited by: ngs616

I'd say its good mapping practice for any engine to seal your levels (seal off places people are not supposed to be) ... in general if you don't, people will abuse it once they find out ...

Ill use the example of delta force land warrior (again, i used it in another thread) ... the maps were basically a voxel height map and apparently the height map were also tiled and repeating ... so there were practically no barriers ... you as the player could literally walk a couple miles away from where you're supposed to be ... I once tried to see how far away i could get ... i placed a weight on my keyboard to keep the player walking forward ... and i never hit a barrier, my computer crashed instead ... (i think i got out from the center about 5 miles)

Since the AI didn't even acknowledge you if you were outside a mile ... i just sat back at two miles and sniped them ... which was too easy

by sealing the map you make it so people can't get an unfair advantage over the opposition built into the map, whether they are playing SP or MP it doesn't matter because it just ruins the goal of the map when people can camp from a place outside the area they were meant to operate in ...

and as a result it cheapens the victory for them (and angers the people who lose if its MP) ... the harder the victory was to obtain, the better you feel when you complete the level ...

I remember people modding red faction so they could activate their ghost mode from SP in MP, they basically had an unfair advantage because they could pass through all the barriers (bsp, clutter, whatever) ... So I started investigating mapping methods to counter it ... I figured out by putting water volumes outside the level you could kick them out of their "ghost" state (you get tripped from whatever state you are in to a "swim state" which makes the player's "ghost" state get switched to a "swim" state, and thus you can strip the weapons from them and trap them in a separate room isolated from everyone else ... and that room coincedentally had flashing seizure inducing textures and annoying music)

anywho, barriers are good

(hammer doesn't even build the map if its not sealed right? )

Edited by: Assaultman67

I wasn't saying you don't need to player clip your levels!! haha i didn't kno thats what ya meant

But hammer will still build the map if it isn't sealed. It'll just come up with an error saying theres a leak and it can cause a couple of different issues.

Edited by: ngs616

Screwing around with no clippers was just an example I used to accentuate how far Ive gone to "enforce" barriers for maps ... thus showing why I thought barriers were so important

But in general, solid space based BSP makes it much easier keep "containment" without adding to the complexity of the map (instead of a minimum of two brushes to contain a player, it takes only one, thus 1/2 as many faces) ... so why did they change it?

And what did you think i meant NGS? ... now im confused

not rly indeed i read somewhere (was on the unrealwiki somewhere) that IF you created a leak then you did something verry verry horribly wrong :p

Can you find that for me Sigma?

This is what i'm talking about for the Unreal Engine. A set up like this. // Red = level // transBlue = skydome // Green = player 

The player never sees "space" and is incapable of leaving the level. But the level is not sealed.
(the sky is only transparent so u can see inside.)

In the Source Engine that would be picked up as a leak. In the Unreal Engine it would not.
If anyone could find some documentation stating otherwise it'd be good for me to see it.

Edited by: ngs616