Holy Crap!! 2!!

[BigFolks]

Check this tutorial out that I made. It specifically targets texture mapping and the shortcuts / work arounds.

This tutorial will show you how to convert a UT map over to UT2003 without mapping textures or realigning them.

This tutorial teachs you that you must preload all the map's textures and that you don't have to realign them!

What's the catch? Well.... in this case, there is a catch. You have to turn the whole map into 1 big brush. But hey, it works! It's the "quick and dirty" way of converting maps. Best of all, it's an exact conversion.

Check it out:
http://www.geocities.com/neilvmoore@ameritech.net/UT-to-UT2003-Tutorial.html

Have fun!

 

[BigFolks]

Ugh, always forget to post this... What do you think?? Is this tutorial lame? Opinions?

 

[beefsack]

ill have a read of it for sure a bit later. ive written a couple of uscript tuts so i know it aint easy

 

[Hunter]

i'll give it ago later

 

[darknight7]

Interesting if you want to prototype but I wouldn't call it a very good conversion since it doesn't take player model size into account IMHO. Further modifying the obtained brush would be really painful...

You could try this: open unrealed and select everything in your ut map, then open the ut2003 editor, paste everything. It's not perfect but it works (or at least it worked when I tried it), you'll have to realign some brushes that the mapper forgot to transform permanently. Cutting and pasting only a few brushes at a time would be a good idea too.

I think this method or rebuilding the map brush by brush, rescaling them as feets are overall better solutions...

Remember that the scaling of the maps is 112,5% of the original ut, that is, 128 wu in ut equal 144 wu in ut2003 when compared with model size.
This is official stuff I grabbed some time ago

 

[Ultron]

Also note that the bounding box for players is 10% larger. UT model stands 80UU's high and UT2k3 model stands 88UU's high.

 

[Hunter]

i'll stay working how i am seems easier than ur tut, no offence.

 

[BigFolks]

Yeah, I'm not sure I'm going to stick with my tutorial. 1 big brush?

Ultron and darknight7, you obviously don't understand this mod. We are not converting the maps over to resize them to fit 2k3's character height. We are converting everything. We are going to make ut2k3's character height smaller so they fit the size of the map. No reason to make the whole map bigger. And remember, the map is supposed to be an exact replica of ut's, so taking 1 whole brush of the map has no effect on the geometry of the map and how it needs to be resized or modified.

This thread was supposed to be in the private forums, becuase it is sorta private stuff. But since I cannot post in the private forums, there's no sense not posting this thread at all. All i'm doing is trying to help out in some way... just to benefit this mod and not anyone else out there who enjoy rescaling the map to fit 2k3's gameplay. And not to mention, 2k3's gameplay on these maps are bad .. due to double jumps/wall jumps and so forth.

Example, when was the last time you tried to double jump/wall jump in DM-Peak?
Well, if ya did, you didn't trick jump for long!

 

[Ultron]

It's not a matter of me "understanding" this mod. I'm giving opinions and advice to the mod makers based on my experience with the Unreal universe.

I am saying that if you wish to play UT-style on any of UT2k3's maps, which is 100% of all the maps out there for this game already, you shouldn't change the model sizes. The only change that should be made is to raise the player camera slightly to be more proportional. Raise it by 10% since the models themselves are LITERALLY 10% larger. We're talking a height of 80UU's in UT to 88UU's in UT2k3. That 8 extra UU's for the UT2k3 model is an extra 10%.

If you reduce the player height the UT2k3 maps, all of them, will be effectively be larger, since you are effectively shrinking the models. I went through this decision making process while working on my Redemption mod.

How many UT maps are going to be ported over to UT2k3? There are FAR more current maps for UT2k3 that are made for that scale.

This has NOTHING to do with trick jumps, or building around them. Wall dodges, dodge jumps and double jumps are not the issue here.

I recommend keeping the model sizes the same, and if any maps are built, they should be scaled larger between 10-24% - with my recommendation being around 12% since that would be consistent with model sizes.

And BTW I make the arguement that many current UT2k3 maps that came in the game were actually built without supermoves in mind. Particularly Chrome and Curse3, as well as Slaughterhouse comes to mind. Those would be fantastic maps with UT gameplay. But if the mod makers shrink the models, those maps and many others effectively become significantly larger. This is why I _don't_ recommend rescaling. Just my opinion.

In fact I recommend this be done in two stages.

Stage 1: The mutator. Removes supermoves and adjusts running speed, jump height and dodge speed and distance to UT levels, but 10% larger than UT increments to fit in with the wealth of UT2k3 maps that are already out there, and UT2k4 maps to come.

Stage 2: The maps. Map packs of remakes that can be released separately. There are already a wealth of ports out there already. Many of those can be put in map packs at first, with permission from those mappers.

I've work on mods before and I've seen how often people drop out of them, and they never get released. By doing this incrementally there can be released works that can be revised in time.

 

[Ultron]

Since you are working on the mod, what percentage are you guys shrinking the player models by? How tall will they be when you are done shrinking them? If you make them shorter than 80UU's that's too short.

 

[darknight7]

Yeah, I'm not sure I'm going to stick with my tutorial. 1 big brush?

We are not converting the maps over to resize them to fit 2k3's character height. We are converting everything. We are going to make ut2k3's character height smaller so they fit the size of the map. No reason to make the whole map bigger.
(...)
And not to mention, 2k3's gameplay on these maps are bad .. due to double jumps/wall jumps and so forth.

This makes sense, it's easier to shrink those models then the whole maps and btw super moves just suck big time, I think they were introduced in the game since in those huge maps it took forever to carry a flag home.

I also agree with Ultron's pov on the release schedule. Now that I've focused better on the problem I think there is almost no need at all for the ut2003 maps working 100% in this mod (with respect to size), there are not that many maps that stand a chance vs the oldies from ut and those few can be converted...

Just my opinion

 

[BigFolks]

Well here is a problem. I do not quite understand how this will affect the mod gameplay but I'm just making a prediction/assumption. I know how mad people get when they hear the word assumption but since I am taking part of this project, I have a say so in the making (a very small say so but none the less...).

What I am trying to say is, we are probably going to convert old ut character models to ut2k3 as well. Was Gorge ever a part of UT? Maybe not, I'm not certain. So if he wasn't a part of UT, there would be no reason to include him in it, thus bringing the need for old UT characters. (IMO, both UT and 2K3 models would be cool).

If you haven't noticed, which you probably have , the characters of 2K3 walk faster and differently tremendously. The aim in 2k3, for chrisake, has been magnificently tweaked. I thank the makers! UT's aim was so aweful. I'm not saying the aim is perfect, but for 2K3's gameplay, I felt aim tweaking was a must. This is way off topic. I just had to give at least one reason why porting this over was so great which has nothing to do with your post Ultron.

Okay, finally. What I am actually trying to say here is, perhaps keeping character size the same is a good idea and making maps bigger is a good idea, but I have seen it done. It's not an EXACT replica of the UT maps. But how does this affect the gameplay? If we could.. would we be able to tweak the character movements of 2K3's characters to make them act as UTish as possible (without resizing characters) or will it never be enough? Has 2k3 changed just too much?

And not to mention, if we ported old UT characters over, we would have to make them bigger and I do not know how this will affect the game/mod.

And one more thing... This may not have anything to do with it, but why do you think Epic resorted to resizing character models in the first place? To change the gameplay perhaps? I don't know.. Somebody will just have to tell me.

Please do not reply with a hate message too, I'm only trying to learn here. I'm new at this sort of thing.

 

[beefsack]

i sure hope someone can get a hold of the animations for the ut player models. the ut2003 models were released without animation. can you export animations in ued2?

edit: ill have a play around with it, ive got all interested all of a sudden

 

[SylverFyre]

Having UT's characters in would be great - reskinned would be even better - I think that we should stick to UT scales for things though

If we dont we have to try to make the weapons feel more UT like with no solid base to work on - whereas if everything is UT scale to start with then the scripters might be able to pull some weapon code out of UT to get the feel right (?)

Once things start to get scaled up it may get much harder to make things work. Also I dont think we should be aiming to play UTR in UT2k3 maps, they wont work in the same way that direct ports of UT maps dont work with UT2k3 gameplay. This mod should stand alone with its own maps IMHO.

I dont know if its possible to get karma on UT player models but that would be nice too

 

[beefsack]

it seems that dragging the ut models and animations out of ut is a bit more impossible than first assumed...

hopefully i am wrong

 

[darknight7]

Aren't the basic animations good enough? Sure, we have double jumps and so on, but if we don't trigger them they won't display. What I'm trying to say is that the animations are quite ok in ut2k3, there are just more animations that we don't need... Maybe it's the timing that should be changed, hopefully this can be controlled from UScript.
BTW there's already the male/female soldier model.

IMO new/revamped player models are not a priority.

 

[Ultron]

Maybe this should have three different aspects:
Mutator
Models/Texture Artist
Maps

Quite frankly all I care about is the mutator side. Which is get the UT2k3 weapons acting as close to UT weapons as possible, and get the movement as close to UT as possible too.

Then if someone wants to go through all the trouble of creating all the UT weapon models from scratch, and texture them, and then do models and their skins and animations and whatever else they feel they need to do.

And a mapping team can do whatever map ports they want to as well. But I think if you make the mutator side of things wait for all that other work to be done, it'll take some time.

My arguements stem from the desire to get a good mutator out quickly that won't create a rift between the practically non-existant perfect UT map ports and the rest of the entire UT2k3 map community which is 99% or better of all maps for the game.

I don't want a mod/mutator that basically prevents players from playing the UT2k3 maps at will, forcing them to play UT in UT2k3 but only on UT in UT2k3 maps.

 

[KarlMarx]

I don't want a mod/mutator that basically prevents players from playing the UT2k3 maps at will, forcing them to play UT in UT2k3 but only on UT in UT2k3 maps.

I think a trade-off is inevitable: faithful reproduction vs. compatibility with existing UT2k3 maps/mods. The first problem is deciding what is a faithful reproduction? What is it that people want to recover from UT? Some say just the weapon properties. Others can't stand the 'super mario bros' moves of UT2k3. The simplest solution is to reproduce as much as humanly possible the gameplay of UT, without getting into a debate around picking and choosing, while taking advantage of the graphic and other technical advances of the UT2k3 engine.

One of the inevitable sacrifices though, once you embrace UT1 movement, physics and perspective, relates to compatibility with different map scales. UT2k3 just doesn't seem to work well, at least in CTF which I play, with small, crampy maps (like the classic CTF-Coret). Conversely, there will be limits on map scale introduced by a UT1 mod.

I don't know if any of the physics or model changes will, technically speaking, break compatibility with existing UT2k3 maps (one question raised was around bot pathing). But technical glitches aside, I can't imagine it would be very fun playing many stock UT2k3 maps with a faithful UT mod, due to the movement changes alone. UT2k3 maps were built around dodge jumps, wall jumps, adrenaline-speed, the heavy 'faster' translocator, etc. Can you imagine, in CTF for example, a flagcarrier trudging Lava2 or Orbital2 distances with UT1 movement? How about deathmatching in Antalus?

I agree with your point about maintaining as much compatibility as possible.

 

[darknight7]

Compatibility is one thing, things working together is another thing entirely. What I mean is, you can run linux on 386 but nowadays who would since you have very cheap hardware off the shelf.
What I mean is that I would be very surprised if the mod broke compatibility with ut2003 maps but then as you pointed out no one will play antalus anyway.
Technically speaking I don't see a reason for broken compatibility but in practice this could still happen by choice of the players.

And by the way, why not put switches in the mod, maybe not immediately if it's difficult, to allow (for example) fast weapon switch, I think many like this or that aspect of ut2003 that "fixed" something in ut, just like "no redeemer" was introduced and was immediately very appreciated.

 

[Ultron]

Yeah I basically want to be able to play on all the UT2k3 maps in the UT style. If the modders are able to let me play both the UT remakes and all the other hundreds or thousands of UT2k3 maps then I'll be happy. Keep in mind I'm in 100% support of this mod, regardless.

Here's one more thing on this topic of scaling.

The camera (eye) level of the UT2k3 players are roughly the same height as it was in UT, in Unreal Units. So worst case scenario, where UTR puts everything back to UT's scale, unit for unit, then we may actually not notice the change in the UT2k3 maps.

IOW the UT2k3 maps might not actually appear any bigger, because our eye level will be roughly the same.

If that is the case, then all my fears have been taken care of.

If the worst case scenario is the UT2k3 maps look no bigger, then no harm is done. I still argue that many UT2k3 maps in the box weren't designed for the supermoves. Dodge at best. Try Chrome, Slaughterhouse and Curse]|[ without dodge jumping or double jumping and I think you might see where I'm coming from. The clutter isn't so bad, relatively speaking.

IMRO.