Construction

[comoestas]

I intend this to be a mod where you will be able to dynamically summon walls, staircases, and all sorts of BSP, in-game while you are playing a map.

Purpose :

Create elaborate maps solely with a gun that can place preconfigured BSP
Enjoy blasting your creations to pieces, because anything placed will be fully destructible
Use in other game-types that involve building obstacles (which is what prompted me to work on this first )

Things I have in mind:

Create a weapon that allows creation, relocation, and deletion of dynamically placed BSP in a simple fashion
Include a wide range of brushes so as to not limit creativity
Add a GUI of sorts that allows easy selection of brush types, sizes, etc.

Example: (this is from previous work I was doing in my new game-type)

The red walls you see were spawned in-game by me. Anyone for testing their side dodging skills?

What I need:

For now: I am going to be using this thread to post updates and keep on track, as I have 5+ unrelated projects I tend to get lost in.
Some feedback: What would you like to see? Will you use this in a mod of yours, or perhaps a map? Would you play something that used this?
Coding help: Most likely later, when I venture to do GUI / weapon design.

Edit: When I say BSP, I mean solid geometry that has non-cylindrical collision. The spawned geometry will not be part of the BSP tree, as it is impossible to alter it in-game, but instead it will be dynamic BSP, aka movers.

[EvilGrins]

Seen this kinda thing in Ben10. Girl makes energy platforms she walks up and down like stairs.

[Dr.Flay]

What an outrageous idea!
Fantastic.
Some sort of team-based strategy I guess.
Add the Portal-gun mod to the mix and you have the choice of making holes or bridges
CrazyCTF anyone

Could be useful in "storm-the-castle" type setup.
I can see using it with Vehicles or Naliweapons (create you own nuke-proof bunker)

Or even turned into a mapping tool

Is there any possibility you could summon models from decoration packs? (I am aware the collision box for some meshes are not set, but it could come with a warning)

[MrLoathsome]

Very interesting idea.

Has a lot of potential, and will give hope to mappers who can only make big empty maps.

If this "Construction" gun scrolls between different types of ammo easily, I can think of no further suggestions.
What you described sounds very interesting.

I look forward to trying it out.

[JackGriffin]

I'm not trying to rain on this parade but trying constructor gun in UT is going to be a total fail. BSP can't be "created" like this. The constructor in 2k4 summon static meshes and that's vitally important to remember. BSP needs to have several important variables set on it (like occlusion, it's place in the BSP tree, etc.) and you can't skip that. Well you can in the short run but very quickly you are going to see the limitations for what you are wanting to do.

At the very least you ought to consider using mover subclasses, just anything aside from trying to call up blocks. Remember that UT uses cylinder collision so if you don't build your BSP it's going to have a round collision box. One only needs to look at stacking the UT wooden box to see where this is going.

[comoestas]

Great! If you guys are willing to try it out, I'm willing to work on it.

@Dr.Flay

"Storm-the-castle" game-types is exactly what my primary purpose was for starting this. Although mapping tool is something I might see happening if mappers are fine with using only a limited set of brushes (which can always expanded ofc). It would help if let people save their creations.
As for decorations, I will include them because they are an asset to any map!

@JackGriffin
I'm having deja-vu.
If you don't remember me, please go back to the PMs I've sent you.
No point in having this conversation all over again.

[JackGriffin]

Then you should clarify your posts to say what you mean. In your original post you said

all sorts of BSP, in-game while you are playing a map

In our discussions you talked about movers.

I'd love to be proven wrong but this is a doomed project from the gate. Online it's going to be a mess of collision overlap if you use movers, and BSP is just out of the question. This sort of thing has 2 requirements: the first is static mesh and the second is proper collision. Neither of these are well developed in UT and it's why no one does this sort of project.

Like I said, I hope you prove me badly wrong. I loved construction maps in 2k4 and spent some time in the community. If there was any chance that could come in some form to UT I'd be the first guy in line to sign up.

[Dr.Flay]

Well pointed out Jack. Obvious now you well... pointed at it.

How the hell do you get round the fact that the editor has to render the geometry before playing?
It will get very crashy, very quickly, leaving you looking at a UT crash dialogue bitching about occlusion errors.

I am guessing as you have already been working on this, that you have avoided the issue somehow, and are doing something new/different/mad/genius *delete as applicable
Can you show a clip of that beta in action, or do you only still have the picture?

I am guessing also that as you say everything will be destroyable, you will be doing some serious coding.
A whole new class/subclass ?

[Feralidragon]

It seems to me this may work out, were you able to fix the issue of "having hundreds pre-built BSP models in the map to be able to build said movers/BSP"?

[papercoffee]

How dose the build of barricades in siege work?

[comoestas]

UT crash dialogue bitching about occlusion errors

I saw many of these, but they are no longer a problem. The trick is to hide the geometry(specifically the mover) so that it is never displayed!
I am exporting the geometry to a mesh, using MeshMaker, so that I can have the mesh provide the visuals while the mover provides the collision.
This is afaik the only way to get it to work right.
I will have a clip soon!

@Feralidragon

Well I got it to work out with 400+ wall brushes in a giant box, and I only need one of each type because by hiding the geometry, I fixed the problems I was having of spawned movers not being able to share model objects with each other. I'm guessing 50+ brush types with 5+ variations in sizes won't amount to any problems, so long as the brushes are not too complicated.

[Feralidragon]

@Feralidragon

Well I got it to work out with 400+ wall brushes in a giant box, and I only need one of each type because by hiding the geometry, I fixed the problems I was having of spawned movers not being able to share model objects with each other. I'm guessing 50+ brush types with 5+ variations in sizes won't amount to any problems, so long as the brushes are not too complicated.

Definitely a great improvement.
Not the ideal solution, but although I tried to seek a solution myself I noticed the game doesn't like to create dynamic models for brushes, but by making quite simple maps alone for that, you can make a great thing out of this, this is really interesting stuff

Keep it up

[Higor]

Glad to see somebody found the MoverFactory useful.

Back when I didn't know much about the engine I would have loved to make a drivable player carrier, or summon it.
Perhaps it isn't such a crazy idea after all.

[Dr.Flay]

I haven't got round to playing with all the extra brush-builders available for UEd2.
but would the pre-defined brushes etc. from addons such as Tarquin's builders be usefull for this project?

[comoestas]

Update!

I have put together a test map! Everything in the map is destructible. It is only proof of concept as I'm not a great mapper and I have limited time, so please ignore bad textures / lighting. Everything required for the map is embedded into it, so give it a try! Feel free to open the map in UnrealEd and see it's workings.


Go in there, summon minigun2(redeemer is too powerful), allammo, and blast the !@#$ out of this !@#$ map.

DM-ConstructionAlphaTest1.unr

(61.79 KiB) Downloaded 69 times

@Dr.Flay

I haven't tried Tarquin's yet, but yes, any custom builders will be useful if they're not too complicated and can contribute some unique shapes that the standard builders can't provide.

Glad to see somebody found the MoverFactory useful.

Yes, it was very useful during preliminary testing, thank you. Now I am using some "white magic" to avoid native code and have it work through pure UnrealScript. Working through this, I have imagined hundreds of cool things that are now possible because of this. Player controlled movers are just the beginning.