Epic are you going to honor your word or what???

[L0rdGunn3r]

Ok, enough is enough. We've been patient and as consumers expect Epic to honor their word and give us the access to the UDN as stated in many interviews. What exactly is the problem here?? There isn't one article on the UDN that helps anyone right now. If you expect us to reverse engineer everything then just say so, otherwise do the right thing and provide the documentation we need to mod this game properly.

[jansoft88]

Chill dude. They're currently working on a new website for the UDN. I bet once it's done we'll have the documentation. It hasn't even been a month since the release of the game and epic is still working on two other versions of it so CHILL .

[Hellcat]

Reversing is always the way to go *lol*

nah, an up-to-date mailing list, and some sort of official documentation would be nice tho....

[jansoft88]

For some reason the mailing lists are down. I was subscribed to the servers mailing list but haven't received anything for 2 days now.

[jansoft88]

Reversing is cool too but when you have 3 assignments due by the end of the week, you find it better to have some tutorials available . That's why I got the CE .

[L0rdGunn3r]

The CE is helpful but does not come close to covering the nuts and bolts behind many aspects of the editor and scripting. Only documentation can do this. As a company if you say you are going to do something then as a consumer I expect it to happen. When they said they'll open the UDN when the game is release that would mean on that day and not a month or more later. I purchased the game to make a total conversion mod not to play UT3.

[Ekt0F0rm]

After trying to mess with dynamic lights like I have... it looks as though there could be a possibility that the reason the documentation is not up yet is because UT3 might be using a stripped down version of the engine. If that is the case they have to go take out all the documentation for features that they got rid of for UT3. Just a theory anyway .

[Nawrot]

After trying to mess with dynamic lights like I have... it looks as though there could be a possibility that the reason the documentation is not up yet is because UT3 might be using a stripped down version of the engine. If that is the case they have to go take out all the documentation for features that they got rid of for UT3. Just a theory anyway .

Exactly my thoughts, UT3 does not have many features that were on their tech demo movies. I feel a bit cheated, from rendering engine point of view UT3 is basically UT2004 with new textures and shaders. Anybody noticed total lack of dynamic light in their official maps, I looked through all official levels and seen none. (or maybe anybody found dynamic light that is there and can point me to it, screen+map name would be great).

[Ekt0F0rm]

Exactly my thoughts, UT3 does not have many features that were on their tech demo movies. I feel a bit cheated, from rendering engine point of view UT3 is basically UT2004 with new textures and shaders. Anybody noticed total lack of dynamic light in their official maps, I looked through all official levels and seen none. (or maybe anybody found dynamic light that is there and can point me to it, screen+map name would be great).

I was hoping to get away from the whole lightmap thing. Since there were things I wanted to do in 2K4 that could not be done with the light maps. Now it seems that lightmaps are still the only thing to use for effective lighting of any kind.

Of the great shadowing and lighting techniques listed (http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/Un...ine_Versions/3) how many do we get in UT3?:
Shadowing:

• 100% fully dynamic real-time fuzzy soft shadows for all environments
• 16x sampled shadow depth buffers for characters
• Stencil shadow volumes for dynamic lights
• With self-shadowing
  - With all normal mapping techniquies
  - With all displacement mapping techniquies
• With all lighting techniquies
• Many more soft shadowing techniquies

Lighting:

• Parameterized phong shading
• Spherical harmonic lighting
  - Real-time spherical harmonic maps for all lighting types
• Real-time ambient lighting
  - Real-time ambient maps for all lighting types
• Radiosity lighting
  - Fully real-time PRT (Precomputed Radiance Transfer) radiosity pipeline support
• Global illumination
  - Fully real-time true beam tracing global illumination for dynamic lights
  - Included Geomerics's Enlighten (Unreal Engine 3 IPP)
• Volumetric lighting
• Sub-surface scattering
• Real-time point light
• Real-time sun light
• Real-time directional light
• Real-time spot light
• Real-time diffuse light
• Real-time specular light
• Real-time shiny light
• Real-time gloss light
• Real-time opacity light
• Real-time spread light
• Real-time emissive light
• Real-time light beams
• Real-time light shafts
• Many more lighting techniquies

The other thing that makes me wonder is the physics in UT3. I don't see much in terms of physics in maps, I only see it with vehicles and rag dolls. I remember seeing a UT3 (then called UT2007) trailer with what looks like the Onyx Coast map in it. It had some rock arch thing that fell apart in it. In fact here is a screen shot from the trailer:


When I go in that map I can shoot at the arch all day with the Leviathan and nothing happens:


Maybe they got rid of it after realizing that after the rocks fell the lightmapped shadow was still there even though the arch was not anymore.

Just my thoughts anyway.

[jjensson]

Anybody noticed total lack of dynamic light in their official maps, I looked through all official levels and seen none. (or maybe anybody found dynamic light that is there and can point me to it, screen+map name would be great).

It's not noticeable on first sight, but there is dyn lighting in the maps. For example all movers/lifts and doors are dynamically lit (i did this in the editor - it IS in the engine). Maybe the characters and vehicles too. Of course it's sparsely used in the levels. Blame nVidia and ATI for this though, not EPIC.
jj

[L0rdGunn3r]

The lighting issue is a great example of where documentation would clear this up. This shouldn't be an excuse as to why no documentation exists but a reason why it's needed and should be available.

[jansoft88]

I think they stripped it down because of the limitations of currently existing hardware and the limitations of the game's design. A UT game cannot afford to have destructible environments (at least not in its current state). Also it's possible that the engine in itself isn't stripped down just the game is. We'll have to see though .

[L0rdGunn3r]

If you look at the scripting ref site http://www.codekisk.com/unreal/ut3/scriptref/ it will help answer some of your questions. You can create the collapsing arch effect yourself if that is something you want to do. The engine will allow it.

[headfog]

They spent too much time working on an engine that the average consumer doesn't care about. We wanted a game. Only enthusiasts wanted both.