UDK - Limitations ???

[ThePriest909]

Greetings everyone.

Before starting, I'm zero familiar with the Unreal Tech. Untill today I used to develop quest-based games on the engine used by The Elder Scrolls IV.
I've decided to switch on something more powerful though in order to be able to setup stand alone games and that's when I fell on UDK's release.

Since I'm total unaware of what UDK can do I'd like to ask a few questions before investing on getting to knowing how to use the engine. So.... Two basic questions:
1. Will I be able to use different kind of weapons in my game (not just guns) like swords, axes and shields?
2. Is the engine able to support large exterior enviroments?

Thanks in advance and please excuse my english.

[immortius]

1. Yes, if you code them.
2. I'll leave this one for someone else, but I believe so.

[Henrik]

Yes, and supposedly you can stream levels in if you need more space but I'm not sure if that functionality is fully implemented. But even by default the size of map the engine supports is quite large.

[ffejnosliw]

Streaming should work fine in UDK, but it doesn't give you more playable space. It is more of a way to load stuff in and out of memory. It works well in situations like a large city where the player is only in one section at a time so it doesn't make sense to have the entire city loaded at once. You can stream in chunks (in the form of other levels) as the player moves around so that only what is needed is loaded.

Large outdoor environments are certainly possible. They do take planning though. I think UDK has the massive LOD system built in which should help a lot. That allows you to set up things like detailed buildings made out of several meshes and higher res textures and then have the entire set of meshes be swapped out for a single low res proxy for the entire building when the player is far enough away to not need the detail.

[ThePriest909]

I asked because so far I've seen the engine limited in really small levels for multiplayer based games.
I'm not planning to create open-ended enviroments but I wouldn't be pleased if I had to deal with loading screens every 2 minutes if I were a player. It would be totally useless for our idea anyway since it's based on a horror-fiction story and it's mostly targeting at single player gameplay.

[johanz]

Day/Night cycle. So far doesn't seem possible.

[ThePriest909]

Day/Night cycle. So far doesn't seem possible.

Not a problem for me at least for the current project since I really want to control the lighting and not just letting it doing it's own cycle.
Well, based on your replies I think it's time to do my homework on UDK and learn how to use this thing :0)

[johanz]

For MY project day/night is very important. I was wondering if there is a way to somehow "fake" it or make it not so dynamic. Maybe making a day and a night version, but syncing them probably would require a lot seeing as UDK can't read external files.

[Angel_Mapper]

Of course it's possible, you just have to figure out how to go about it. The best way would probably be a combination of material setups, dynamic lights and post processing effects.

[johanz]

I guess it's not possible to swap lightmaps on the go right?

[Blade[UG]]

ThePriest:

Try checking out the Vehicle CTF map that comes with UDK, or the several that come with UT3. Those are pretty sizeable.

Theoretically, Level Streaming, if you can figure it out, should be able to give you an unlimited amount of space, if I understand it properly.

[Steve Polge]

Level streaming lets you build environments of almost unlimited size, as long as the number of levels visible at once is limited.

The UDK has new features which make it possible to build large open levels with much more detail than in UT3. See http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MassiveLOD.html for more details.

[ThePriest909]

That sounds great! Thanks for the info everyone!

[wildicv]

I'm not 100% sure on this but I believe that's where the UnrealKismet comes into play. I'm sure you can get it to activate lights etc after a certain amount of time.

The way I’d try and go about it is creating two light maps for the scene the day and night then using the unreal kismet to time the switch of light maps. That is if you can swap light maps on the go which you should. However if you need a smooth change you will need more than 2 light maps.

[neai]

I guess it's not possible to swap lightmaps on the go right?

Typically games that use day cycle don't use lightmaps, as they're kind of incompatible with the idea. It's a tradeoff - either pretty or dynamic.

[ThePriest909]

Has anyone else ever scripted melee weapons for UDK...? I can't get the anims working right :0(

[ThePriest909]

okay.... I'm moving one step further with my question... Forgeting about melee weapons...
Will I be able to script events in UDK and not just build levels and stuff.
So far level designing seems quite easy and intersting but what if we come on a single player game... Scripting puzzles or events like, if you do that a door will open or if you do this a dead body will fall on your head and scare the hell out of you... so... are those stuff possible to be created on UDK or... am I just wasting my time while I should be looking for a different engine right now...

[Nawrot]

Look at Borderlands game, it has quite complicated mechanics. Yes they did it with commercial license, but almost everything they did can be made with just script (possible however could be slow without C++ code). Well everything that do not involves complicated databases, because storing and processing complicated data is weak point of UDK.

Events can be scripted inside KISMET, average level designer can prototype it, then you need somebody with at least bit of programing skills to optimize it and debug. You can add custom nodes to kismet, so creating some set of ready to use bricks even for RPG game should be not that hard. Kismet has cool stuff to make simple events in game, it lacks a bit in nodes department for more complicated things, but for that you should use script directly.

Those things you mentioned are exactly what kismet was designed for. More complicated tasks should be scripted.

[ThePriest909]

Thanks for the info once again!
Well, personally I can't consider myself a programmer but at least I can do some serious stuff on C++. Hopefully UDK won't require super hi-level programming knowledge in order to set up a decent scene in game.

[Nawrot]

Day/Night cycle. So far doesn't seem possible.

Yes i got hooked to Borderlands over last weekend, so again example from it:

They done day/night cycle, just by some post processing, when you are focused on killing and action it really does not matter that shadow from tree always points in same direction. Change in colors and brightness with some sounds is enough to make your brain believe it is day or night.

I agree that RPG needs day/night cycle, but it does not need to be simulated with great details, even time in game can depend on advancement in story not on realtime clock, so you can make different versions of location each time player zones in.

[Nerdy3.14159265]

I had an idea maybe you could add some sort of filter to the camera, so that it looks night even though the map is day. Also if that works you could shift from day to night by changing the filter over time.

[awakeningfromobliv]

Has anyone else ever scripted melee weapons for UDK...? I can't get the anims working right :0(
I'm not a coder so I don't know how well these technics will work with UE3 but it talk about melee weapons with unreal script. and its pretty old.
hope it helps
http://chimeric.beyondunreal.com/tutorials/tut17.html

[ThePriest909]

I'm not a coder so I don't know how well these technics will work with UE3 but it talk about melee weapons with unreal script. and its pretty old.
hope it helps
http://chimeric.beyondunreal.com/tutorials/tut17.html

Thank you very much for posting the reference. Even if it won't work on UDK, at least I can get a basic idea from it.

[Steve Polge]

Has anyone else ever scripted melee weapons for UDK...? I can't get the anims working right :0(

There are several outstanding UT3 mods that have melee weapons. Check out:

- CODA http://www.moddb.com/mods/coda (third person sword fighting)
- Archasis II http://www.moddb.com/mods/archasis-ii (third person sword fighting /RPG)
- NoonTide http://www.moddb.com/mods/noontide (third person sword fighting)

[Deranged]

Is there a way to get more space in the viewport for big outdoor maps or are u locked from scrolling out more from the 'bounding box' ? Feel kinda limited as crazy as it sounds, not sure if streaming would help this

Some of the ut3 maps I have seen max out the viewport and still seem pretty small even for slow flying vehicles
(bangs head to get cry engine out of thoughts)

[salolito42]

I asked because so far I've seen the engine limited in really small levels for multiplayer based games.
I'm not planning to create open-ended enviroments but I wouldn't be pleased if I had to deal with loading screens every 2 minutes if I were a player. It would be totally useless for our idea anyway since it's based on a horror-fiction story and it's mostly targeting at single player gameplay.

Look at Batman:AA its pretty big
Mass Effect, not that big but its pretty good imo
X-man: origins

[notanother]

is there a way to implement leaning, like lean left and lean right (for a FPS) ??

[Geti]

Yeah, with a bit of scripting and some animation, you should be able to. You'd need to extend your pawn class though, as for adding any extra functionality (sprinting, weapon melee, whatever), so you actually have variables to work with in your objects.

[Digitalfiend]

I know this thread is a bit old, but I saw this on YouTube showing day/night cycling using the Unreal 3 engine (I assume UDK):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkrOMhpWvd8

Looks decent to me.

[Gray_Va]

for day and night just set the light intensity and color to change by way of a timer the begins on level startup its just like making a switch to turn the lights on and off but it works automatically.... then just animate a sun and moon to rotate around the level to match the timing of the light changes.