PC Gears of War Map Editor Revealed

[Scinbed]

The "publish" button is what "cooks" the map into a more streamlined format for the engine to work with once the game is running.

So you'll have a .ut3 map file to work in the editor with, and another "published" file for the game to read, which is un-editable.

In basic terms.

[MJ]

interesting...

[PogoP]

So ummm, publish is just another word for 'compile'?

I'm a Source mapper, forgive me for my sins.

[Hourences]

Cooking is a process to optimize the map, its not really essential to have the level run so in that light its not like compiling. Rebuilding in Unreal is like compiling, as it calculates lighting and BSP.

Cooking tries to lower filesize by stripping all non essential content of a map, eg all editor properties, textures, preview thumbs, and so on.

[Psy]

Goddamn, UnrealED looks a lot easier to use then Hammer.

[Nexus]

someone own this already?!!!

[WitchKing]

Goddamn, UnrealED looks a lot easier to use then Hammer.

I use it at work and it´s great - extremely comfortable to work in.

[Taylor]

Cooking makes a load of pre-baked data so the engine doesn't need to work it out itself?

I hope the next version of hammer introduces more cookery based terms to keep it up to date. Displacement map altering should be kneeding or something. I don't know. I haven't thought this through.

[KungFuSquirrel]

Cooking's the core of effective streaming. Loading stuff is ass-slow when you're seeking for every file through a crazy directory structure, loading each one individually, and loading assets in packages that aren't necessarily used in the map.

Cooking the map packages the map and its assets into one easy-to-find and quick to load package that can be brute-force loaded and unloaded at run-time. This actually dramatically increases file size and often results in duplicate assets between map packages, but is considerably faster and more efficient, particularly in console environments.

This is my I-just-woke-up morning level designer explanation of it, at least.

[Taylor]

I did notice even in WoW, instead of throwing skins together on NPC's and storing some file paths, they pre-bake the skin of every single NPC in the game and throw them in one big directory - so yeah, it must have a giant impact on streaming.

[^Slick]

Goddamn, UnrealED looks a lot easier to use then Hammer.

I've found it to horrible, its incredibly buggy and even decides to change your gamma settings on your desktop, at least the last version did. Also I hate the red builder brush thingy, and the way that things sometimes come off the grid.

I do like the lighting preview though.

[aevirex]

Goddamn, UnrealED looks a lot easier to use then Hammer.

I've found it to horrible, its incredibly buggy and even decides to change your gamma settings on your desktop, at least the last version did. Also I hate the red builder brush thingy, and the way that things sometimes come off the grid.

I do like the lighting preview though.

1.) Unrealed.exe -nogamma

2.) buggy as in Unreal2 Unrealed? Then yes ofc, but UT2004's Unrealed is quite stable unless you link shaders to itself, move subtracted verteces on (subtraced) verteces, cut sheets, ... No sane person would need that though (jk )

3.) You can shift-right click (iirc) a off grid vertex to get in on the grid again...

4.) There is no lighting preview, its the final lighting.

[mjens]

Cooking's the core of effective streaming. Loading stuff is ass-slow when you're seeking for every file through a crazy directory structure, loading each one individually, and loading assets in packages that aren't necessarily used in the map.

Cooking the map packages the map and its assets into one easy-to-find and quick to load package that can be brute-force loaded and unloaded at run-time. This actually dramatically increases file size and often results in duplicate assets between map packages, but is considerably faster and more efficient, particularly in console environments.

This is my I-just-woke-up morning level designer explanation of it, at least.

andy you're right so textures models and other shit should be in different packages...

[^Slick]

1.) Unrealed.exe -nogamma

Thanks for that, why does it do that anyway?

2.) buggy as in Unreal2 Unrealed? Then yes ofc, but UT2004's Unrealed is quite stable unless you link shaders to itself, move subtracted verteces on (subtraced) verteces, cut sheets, ... No sane person would need that though (jk )

It was buggy for me, both at home and at college (I put off using it till I had to, hammer (and now sandbox) all the way tbh). I just didn't feel, right, I can't explain or remember as it was a while ago.

3.) You can shift-right click (iirc) a off grid vertex to get in on the grid again...)

Thanks again , I tried turning off snap to grid and lining them up as close as possible (some sort of invisible grid appears so I might as well line up the invisible grid to the visible)

4.) There is no lighting preview, its the final lighting.

Same thing

I will move over to UnrealEd soon, with the release of UT3 and a better computer as long as it isn't as balls as it was for me before.

Back on topic:

erm yeah, totally awesome cool!

[Furyo]

With that said, Hammer 5 (if the current one is still 4) should give us lighting preview. Seen it before, and it's a giant step for Source mankind.