[HELP] Map on Rails.

[Visceral89]

Hi guys, my very first post.
Anyhow, here is the story. So i come from a mapping community that is focused on Valves Source engine. Over at their forum i found a really intresting thread.

http://www.interlopers.net/forum/vie...hp?f=2&t=30700

Now i know this has been made in earlier verisions of Unreal Engine, and i think they finished the Gears of War singleplayer like this. On an "infinite" train track.

Now to my question, How would i go about making this? Im allready familliar with mapping in unreal and source, but im not sure how i would go about doing this particular thing.

[Nawrot]

Way to make it in UT engine is as described in first reply in that other thread.

Your level needs to be static or else pathing will not work. So only option left is moving surroundings.

Best way to do it is by using static mesh emitters. This allows some randomness and not totally repetitive track. Make series of static meshes like patches of ground with rocks, some train stations and other landmarks. Then setup 5-6 emitters that shoot those meshes in direction of your train.

Biggest problem you will fight is lighting of those meshes, lighting them dynamically will be resource hog. So you need to make them all unlit with backed up lights and shadows in material. For this you can use render to texture from 3ds max, or build static track in UT and lit it statically. Then you need to copy lightmaps and apply them to final material of corresponding mesh.

Lots of tricky stuff to do for just one effect, but it may be worth troubles.

[Visceral89]

Thanks alot, i will post results.

[Distant Land]

Check out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQHJZBwEQZg

or my map SeaSkirmish for good examples of this kind of animated map...They're definitely doable in the UT engine, it's just limited by some resourcing things and how much effort you're going to put in your sequence

[Visceral89]

This last post is amazing, this is exactly what i would like to do. I would have a very heavy distance fog tho.

Im not gonna have any amazing detail on here. Just alot of custom stuff.
Could you PM me on how to go about doing this? Beacuse i think its hardly a mesh emitter doing this.

[Distant Land]

In this case it's a static playfield, those trains, with a ton of matinee work done to create a smooth line of interpactors and movers to scroll by them. He uses some fog and lighting tricks to avoid having to dynamically light all of those moving objects (very resource heavy) but there's other methods too, especially if you aren't going for that kind of detail.

To rig this up you need to make your playfield, then just learn the technique of dropping down a moving object, and making it scroll by the playfield...then sync it up however you like. Just find some easy tutorials on matinee, or check out the kismet setup in my map.

[Visceral89]

Im not very bright when it comes to Kismet and such, i know basic stuff. y speciallity is in making models and textures.

Would be cool if i could team up with someone on this one.