Publishing and Cooking UT3 Community Maps

[Burliminator]

I'm having the same problem as Vertigo, where I can't get the map to cook and be copied over to the published folder. Does anyone know how to fix this?

[[FWG]_Sniper]

when i cook the map and tested it on my pc,it work's fine but when i ship the map to the server it crush's the server every time the map come up any input

[3Deeing]

Any images of the map in the editor, or links to it? Perhaps I or others can help debug it?

[Yoshi_last]

i have an image of the error cooking saveing procces let me go get it quickly
alrighty here it is

[DGUnreal]

i have an image of the error cooking saveing procces ...

It looks like you are using Vista.
Are you running the application (UT3 or FrontEnd) as Administrator?
Go to the Start Menu icon for the Editor, right-click, and choose Run as Administrator and see if the error stops.
This is a common known issue with Vista that has been posted and answered many times.

when i cook the map and tested it on my pc,it work's fine but when i ship the map to the server it crush's the server every time the map come up any input

Do you have any custom content associated with the map that you put into external packages instead of embedding it into the map file? If the server doesn't have those external packages, the map won't run.
Other options can be if the server is running some extra mutators or scripts that are not from Epic and they are conflicting with your map. This is a known issue with some of the community created content.

[DGUnreal]

So did using Administrator work for you guys?
If so, right-click on the icon, choose Properties, then click on the Advanced button and make sure the Run as Administrator checkbox is checked. And you should be good to go.

[Yoshi_last]

So did using Administrator work for you guys?

did it work you say..... YES IT WORKED OMFG THANKS ALOT 0 ERRORS: NOW I CAN BETA TEST MY CTF-ForgottenKargo lv thanks alot

[danielchlds81]

hi
im having trouble publishing my map. it is saying this
"Error, Failed to load base level DM-collegetest"
could anyone pleas help?

[BodyOfTheMany]

Hey folks! if you are seeing this error when you try to cook:
Error, Failed to load base level
I think I have it figured out. You may be saving your maps in a different location than where they were originally saved. When the map goes to cook, it looks for your saved map here:

C:My Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Unpublished\CookedPC\CustomMaps

if you are getting this error, try placing a copy of your map in the above location and then trying to cook. Let me know how this works for you!

www.justinGpappas.com

[Asura_Mapper]

I had a problem recently; I tried to cook my map to run on PS3, but it didn't work - the PS3 said that there was no data on the memory card, but the map was there, in the correct folder structure and everything.

It's possible I may have done something wrong; is there a step-by-step guide anywhere online for cooking your maps to be PS3 compatible?

[Loton]

My custom maps have built and cooked fine before, but my most recent version crashes during cooking at this point:

'Cooking [Seekfree] DM-Freeway29'

I've tried cooking other maps and they cook fine, just this one.

I'm on Vista and running UnrealEd as admin etc. Any ideas???

[DGUnreal]

Any number of things can cause this, especially if it crashes so early in the build.

I would delete the current log files in the MyGame\UT3 folder area and re-open the map in the editor and/or play it uncooked and see if anything is logged. You possibly have a bad asset in your map and this may show what it is.

If the logs show nothing and you are certain that you have no bad assets.
Are you running any custom content on your game such as the many custom characters and mutators that are being released by people in the community?
If so, you may need to delete them all and try again, if that still fails, re-install with only the latest patch and no custom content and try again.
There is a lot of issues with many of the custom content released since a number of them are hacked into working and are known to cause a variety of issues.

[yojo201]

Please help me... I am getting an error like lots of people and it is the error 1 cant load base level (mymap) HELP ME!!!

[yojo201]

HELP!

[yojo201]

Now that i fix this error UT3.exe crashes when i try to cook it!!! WTF! Godamn faulty **** software!

[DGUnreal]

Read the error dialog, it tells you exactly what is wrong.

"Failed to load base level VCTF-Ancient"

Take the space out of the map name.
It must be VCTF-AncientFortress
You can't use spaces or other special characters in map names.
This has been told many times on these forums already.

If it still crashes after that, you probably have something else in the map wrong.

[yojo201]

kk ty but now ut3.exe crashes when i try to cook maps... it makes me send an error report to microsoft

[DGUnreal]

Then you probably have something else in your map that is causing problems.
Without knowing anything about your map it is difficult to say what the problem may be.
Can you play the map without any issues in the Play In Editor?
Does it also play fine when you copy the map file from the Unpublished folder to the Published folder? Maps do not have to be cooked to play.
If it does play uncooked, check the Log files to see if there are any errors reported by the game when it tries to play the uncooked map.

[Agostinuke]

hi I'm trying to cook my map DM-Urdarat for the ps3 with unrealfrontend...it's giving me hundred times the following error: Failed to load 'A_Vehicle_Stealthbender': Can't find file for package 'A_Vehicle_Stealthbender'

and after some minutes, it ends with this:

Warning, Cooking simple sound failed: A_Vehicle_Scavenger.Scavenger.A_Vehicle_Scavenger_ OrbFireLoop02
Reason: SCE_PS3_ROOT envvar is not set! Run the PS3\InstallSDK script to install the SDK.

No Sdk to install inside the Ps3 folder...any ideas please? Thx a lot

EDIT:

this is the map : http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=616000

I'm working with a plain UT3 install patched to 1.2 with no bonus packs installed. Unreal Frontend last version and the map is made only with original game assets.

[Agostinuke]

nevermind. Someone wrote that u have to ignore those warning messages. So I'm ignoring them. The map is cooked. I hope it will work. thx bye

[CaptainSnarf]

When working with maps that contain scripts (such as a modded vehicle or new power-up) I've found an odd issue that I haven't seen documented anywhere.

When you cook a map containing scripts, the scripts are embedded inside the map. I've confirmed this by deleting the scripts after cooking and playing an offline match vs bots.

In an online environment this doesn't work. The server tries to send the scripts but fails if they aren't there. In order to make it work I had to include the scripts on the server, even though they are also embedded in the map. Is it supposed to work this way?

I'm going to need to repackage all my maps that contain scripts so that they will work online. This just means including the \Script folder in the zip file but I wish I would have known about this sooner

Hopefully this information will be useful to others.

[DGUnreal]

If the scripts contain code that relates to client-server actions then, yes, they will have to be on the Server since it is the authorative controller.
In other words, if your scripts are doing anything that changes or expands game play, the Server must control that, the client cannot, that is how anti-cheats are managed.
Anything that runs locally on the client only should be able to be embedded, such as non-relevant effects, NPCs (eg. circling birds), etc.

This is why using Kismet or stock actors such as Triggers and Volumes are preferable to resorting to custom scripts. Not all Servers admins are going to want to install custom scripts.
Mutators are often a better choice than custom scripts.

[hantaruu]

(cooking for PS3 reduces size?!)
I neeed help when i Cook my map for the PS3 everything is fine i save it to the disk so i can transfer it to the ps3, but when i look at the map to makes sure its there it says 32.5KB! i dont get it My maps size is originally 72.5mb i dont get it anyone know wha ti did wrong?

[TheAgent]

i can cook for you if you want if you have aim send it to joel791e9 if not then send me a email at joel791e@verizon.net

[CaptainSnarf]

I came across a very frustrating issue last night that I thought I'd share.

I have a map 'WAR-TestMap' in my unpublished\cookedpc\custommaps folder. It uses a vehicle I've been working on, with it's content located in unpublished\CookedPC\VH_MyNewVehicleContent.upk and script in unpublished\CookedPC\Script\VH_MyNewVehicle.u, both default locations.

When I cook the map, I get zero errors. When I try to play the map after cooking, it always crashes UT3. The cooked map is corrupted somehow.

If I first copy the 'unpublished\CookedPC\VH_MyNewVehicleContent.upk' to the published folder, then cook, the map works ok.

Why does the VH_MyNewVehicleContent.upk need to be in the published folder *before* publishing a map that uses it? If the cooking process needs those files in the published folder, shouldn't I get an error during cooking if they only exist in unpublished?

[Rob313]

Running: UT3.exe CookPackages -platform=PC DM-LostReligion -alwaysRecookmaps -alwaysRecookScript -user -installed -updateInisAuto
[COMMANDLET STARTED]

Init: Version: 3487
Init: Epic Internal: 0
Init: Compiled: Oct 21 2007 03:17:32
Init: Command line: -platform=PC DM-LostReligion -alwaysRecookmaps -alwaysRecookScript -user -installed -updateInisAuto
Init: Base directory: C:\Program Files\Unreal Tournament 3\Binaries\
Init: Character set: Unicode
Log: Executing Class Editor.CookPackagesCommandlet
Log: GConfig::Find has loaded file: ..\Engine\Localization\int\Editor.int
UserModType: (0)
Loading base level ..\UTGame\CookedPC\CustomMaps\DM-LostReligion.ut3
Skipping shader cache ..\UTGame\CookedPC\LocalShaderCache-PC-D3D-SM2.upk
Skipping shader cache ..\UTGame\CookedPC\LocalShaderCache-PC-D3D-SM3.upk
Skipping shader cache ..\UTGame\CookedPC\LocalShaderCache-PC-D3D-SM4.upk
Skipping shader cache ..\UTGame\CookedPC\RefShaderCache-PC-D3D-SM2.upk
Skipping shader cache ..\UTGame\CookedPC\RefShaderCache-PC-D3D-SM3.upk
Skipping shader cache ..\UTGame\CookedPC\RefShaderCache-PC-D3D-SM4.upk
Cooking MyPackage

[COMMANDLET FINISHED]


I know everyone has seen some of this before. I'm running Vista. When this gets to "Cooking MyPackage" - the UT3.exe crashes and must be closed. I can run the level fine in the editor and if I copy the file into the C: UT3 maps file and make a ini for it myself, it shows up. But I would really like to cook it. Did I miss anything?

[r2tincan]

Cooking shouldn't hurt the textures.
There is a known issue with Texture settings below 5 not streaming the higher LODs, but that is fixed by either setting the game to Texture of 5 or hack-fixing by setting bForceMipStreaming on all StaticMeshes. Using bForceMipStreaming on a map with a large amount of textures may cause pool issues though, especially on consoles. I would expect a proper fix on a future patch.

The PS3 only has 256MB of main and 256MB of video memory, so there are limits on what it can run when compared to the average PC.

Part of the overall issue with community maps is that most mappers do not understand the issues with lightmaps and with occlusion. This is no different than UT2004 though in which most mappers never could grasp the simplified collision system, etc.

Which issues are you referring to with lightmaps and occlusion?

Thanks

[Rob313]

After reading about 53,000 posts about cook errors I finally broke down and unistalled everything and it seems to be working. I'm guessing it was the custom textures. However, after cooking an ini file was not created, but I can make one those.... i couldn't make the map loc file.

So thanks to all the forum posts and DGUnreal and everyone else here.

[DGUnreal]

... but when i look at the map to makes sure its there it says 32.5KB!

You must be looking in the wrong place.
You were prompted for where you want to put the PS3 file, there will be a USERDATA.JAM file in the subfolder of where you told it to save.
See this.

I came across a very frustrating issue last night that I thought I'd share.

What's happening is correct. You can either use the -unpublished switch or make sure that the packages and scripts used by the map are in the proper folders.
IMHO the method that they are using for file management is not my favorite, but is most likely due to console file management.

But I would really like to cook it. Did I miss anything?

Most crashes during build are caused by bad assets imported by the mapper, or by incorrect use of actors and existing content.

Which issues are you referring to with lightmaps and occlusion?

That was an old post of mine you quoted.

Many mappers do not understand the various intricacies of geometry lightmaps. I see many maps that are still using per-vertex lighting on staticmeshes, incorrect lightmap sizes, or other such issues.
See the various lightmap tips here. FYI, I still have more tips to put on that page, plus more UDN tutorials to complete.

Occlusion is automatic in UE3, but it requires that geometry occlusion be taken into consideration when designing the map layout. Otherwise specific frustum/camera views will impact performance. A large complaint on many community maps is that their framerate varies wildly from location to location in the map. This is because the mapper didn't consider occlusion when they designed the layout.

I'm guessing it was the custom textures.

However, after cooking an ini file was not created, but I can make one those....

i couldn't make the map loc file.

Custom textures can kill builds. I've never personally had any issue, but I always use standard Windows uncompressed .bmp files for 24-bit and uncompressed .tga for 32-bit. I also use PhotoPaint to edit them, which always produces properly compatible format files with the importer.
Paint software like Windows Paint and other free software can sometimes create files that are not properly compatible.

Ini files will many times not be auto-created after an initial build has been done, forcing you to create it yourself. I just copy a previous map ini and modify it.

Loc files are language localization and are usually not required to run a map.

[Rob313]

Thanks,

I use Paint.net, but will try photopaint now and see if that works.
Thanks for the other info and the hundreds of posts through out the forum. I had trouble with admin rights (vista) and creating a maps folder. But things are finally working out.

[jpaul1985]

i dont mean to get this thread off topic but can you give me some quick pointers on how to get a, actor(player/bot) to spawn with shield belt? Please~!

in kismet when i open the "give inventory properties" i see everything in weapons and powerups except for Thigh pads, helmet, body armor and shield belt. I assume it has something to do with "UTpickupinventory" am i correct

this is how i do it. . .

open kismet, right click go to -new event - player - player spawned
then right click go to "new action - pawn - give inventory

in the properties window click the green plus on right side of inventorylist "boldletters"
choose what you want to be spawned with

select a player start in ya map, then in kismet right click, new object var using player start "?" "the one without the arrow

drag link out of "player spawned" into "give inventory" out -----> in

instigator(from "playerspawned") shall be dragged to player start, and target(from "give inventory")shall be dragged to player start as well and there you have it

you spawn with whatever is added in the give inventories properties via kismet

but i dont see "Shieldbelt" in the menu of "give invemtory? can ya help me please???

[DGUnreal]

Hi,
You should start a new thread for this question in the Level Editing, Modeling & Skinning forum area.

[gilarin]

So, I have a fairly major problem... My UT3 Editor doesn't have (or isn't showing) the Cook icon at all. My toolbar ends at the "No Propagation" box. I thought it might be a resolution problem, but when I un-maximized the window, I couldn't pull the right side of the window any further to uncover any "hidden" icons. I patched up to 1.3, and still nothing. Please help... what's the use of a level editor if you can't actually cook your mods? =(

[DGUnreal]

You require a system with at least a 17" monitor set to 1280x1024.
Anything less than that is too small.

Your other option is to use the Unreal Frontend to cook.

[firefly]

Ok, so I've made a map in the editor and its ready for some in-game testing so I figured I'd cook the map and test it, however when I press the 'Publsih/Cook' button I end up getting this:

Init: Version: 3487
Init: Epic Internal: 0
Init: Compiled: Oct 21 2007 03:17:32
Init: Command line: -platform=PC CTF-Test -AlwaysRecookMaps -UpdateInisAuto
Init: Base directory: D:\Spel\Program\Unreal Tournament 3\Binaries\
Init: Character set: Unicode
Log: Executing Class Editor.CookPackagesCommandlet
Log: GConfig::Find has loaded file: ..\Engine\Localization\int\Editor.int
UserModeType: <0>
..\UTGame\Published\CookedPC\GlobalPersistentCooke rData.upk is out of date. Forcing a full recook.
Error, Failed to load base level CTF-Test

Warning/Error Summary
----------------------
Error, Failed to load base level CTF-Test

Commandlet->Main return this error code: 1
With 1 error<s>, warning<s>

Execution of commandlet took: 1.38

I have no clue of what I'm supposed to do here, it also deleted the maps I allready had in the Published/CookedPC/CustomMaps folder.

I was having this problem too but moving the map file to the homedir allowed it to cook with no errors.

[jpaul1985]

Yes your right and sorry for getting off topic man . . . .

[Gwen-Haël]

Is this normal that the Cooking window does not close after cooking, does not close when I tell it to close then freeze my computer because it takes as much resources after finished cooking as while cooking?

[DGUnreal]

On Vista the publishing dialog always stays on screen and errors on forced-closing. This doesn't affect the Editor though.

However, if your system is less than a dual core with 3GB of RAM and a newer video card, you'll have issues working with UnrealEd.
The minimum requirements for the Editor is much higher than for the game itself.
To work with the Editor you should have at minimum a 3GHz dual core with 4GB RAM and a NV 8800 or ATI 3870 video and XP/Vista 32. The preferable system would be a 3GHz quad core with 8GB RAM and a newer video card and XP/Vista 64.

If you are having issues beyond this, then problems in the map design can cause the Editor to fail on certain systems.

[Gwen-Haël]

Im talking of a small cubic map with a light and a spawn. Not a lot of problems in map design I think.
I got Vista64, a 3Ghz Core2Duo, 9600GT and 2GB RAM - but the Unreal FrontEnd cooking dont use more than 600Mb RAM while processing so I really dont see the utility of 8Gb RAM, except if I want to load every file! UT3 itself weights about that.
Of course 2Gb may be a bit short too.

By the way i hadnt seen Vista freeze because of high memory usage. While programming (school, etc) I got some bad memory leaks, but the worse case was the forced shutdown of the process by the OS, never a system freeze!

But thank you for advise, Ill think of getting some additionnal memory.

[DGUnreal]

2GB of RAM is not enough to do any half-way serious mapping with UnrealEd, it will barely crawl along on a system with that low total amount.

On 32-bit OS's 3GB would be the minimum to run UnrealEd, and preferably 4GB (less the mapped hardware so ~3.25-3.5GB). Especially with Vista. And especially if there are additional applications running, such as Anti-Virus, or if you are also using 3DS Max, Maya, PhotoShop, PhotoPaint, etc. at the same time as UnrealEd.

On a system with 2GB of RAM installed the OS is going to eat up at least ~250MB to 500MB (OS, drivers, resident software, etc.), leaving only ~1.5GB of physical memory for all running applications to share. Many applications, including UnrealEd, will usually crash with an out of memory error if the OS attempts to allocate memory from the hard disk virtual area instead of physical RAM. Most systems don't have their Page File set correctly anyway...

In Windows 32-bit OS's each process can allocate a maximum of 2GB of User Memory*, and UnrealEd wants all 2GB of that, and on 64-bit OSs UnrealEd wants 2GB to 4GB just for itself.
So a 64-bit OS with at minimum 6GB and preferably 8GB is the comfortable setup for UnrealEd.

FYI: Gears of War 2's level design was developed on 64-bit Vista with more than 4GB of installed RAM since the Editor plus the basic loaded packages in the Generic Browser exceeds the available per-process User Memory* on 32-bit OS's. In other words, the GoW2 Editor won't even run on a 32-bit PC with 4GB RAM.

See these:
OS and RAM
System Requirements

* UnrealEd supports /LARGEADDRESSAWARE so it can access up to 3GB on 32-bit OS's and 4GB on 64-bit OS's.
And it will eat that up easily.


IMHO the fact that the technical issues and requirements with using UnrealEd and that most community people won't/don't understand these points is a large reason why GoW2 won't be coming to the PC and why UT4 undoubtably won't include an editor.