Terrain question

[zeus]

fo you guys working on ONS maps. This obviously requires large terrain. Do you use one terrain actor or do you use multiple ones and just put them next to eachother??

[kaeolian]

I wondered this as well, because you can split maps into "zones" do you need a diff terrain actor for each zone ? or is it even worth zoning and ONS map with 99% of them being outdoors.

[DW_WailofSuicide]

Most outdoor maps are not zoned. Most maps use only one terrain. Unless you have huge buildings separating your terrains there's no reason to break it up into multiple smaller terrains -- even if you have huge buildings, you can use a certain tool to prevent it from drawing the terrain polygons that you specify (ie, the terrain polygons within the large buildings). There's basically no reason to use multiple terrains unless your map is primarily constructed out of BSP/SMs and only has a few unconnected areas of terrain.

Also, I am fairly certain you can only use one terrain in one zone, and if I recall correctly if your terrain bleeds over into another zone it might cause some problems.

[DW_Wraith]

I have wondered the same question, and I believe you can only use 1 unless I'm mistaken. I have only used 1, and yeah, it is quite a bit larger in an ONS map...

[zeus]

According to Epic, you can have multiple terrain actors per zone. They will just collide.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/AdditionalTerrainTips

However, your outside is going to be one zone. Unless you have a large BSP which completely blocks access from one zone to the other.

[DW_Wraith]

Very interesting... I wish i'd known that earlier. If you can make 2 pieces of terrain, it would making a map identically on each side so much easier. (mountain parts etc.) I'm assuming you would have 2 heightmaps, and when you do one terrain and finish it, you could duplicate the heighmap and manually enter that in for the second terrain heighmap thus having 2 identical halves if you designed the overall terrain to be half of the map.

Case in point the dreamus2 map could have identical terrain, so one side would not have an advantage over the other side such as it has now due to the terrain not being the same....

Thanks for the info zeus... I'll be sure to keep this in mind for and future maps.

[DW_WailofSuicide]

Very interesting... I wish i'd known that earlier. If you can make 2 pieces of terrain, it would making a map identically on each side so much easier. (mountain parts etc.) I'm assuming you would have 2 heightmaps, and when you do one terrain and finish it, you could duplicate the heighmap and manually enter that in for the second terrain heighmap thus having 2 identical halves if you designed the overall terrain to be half of the map.

Case in point the dreamus2 map could have identical terrain, so one side would not have an advantage over the other side such as it has now due to the terrain not being the same....

Thanks for the info zeus... I'll be sure to keep this in mind for and future maps.

Why wouldn't you just use brush mirroring? Assuming you're using the in-Editor terrain tools that is. If you were importing a heightmap you could just mirror it in a graphics program though...

[zeus]

Very interesting... I wish i'd known that earlier. If you can make 2 pieces of terrain, it would making a map identically on each side so much easier. (mountain parts etc.) I'm assuming you would have 2 heightmaps, and when you do one terrain and finish it, you could duplicate the heighmap and manually enter that in for the second terrain heighmap thus having 2 identical halves if you designed the overall terrain to be half of the map.

Case in point the dreamus2 map could have identical terrain, so one side would not have an advantage over the other side such as it has now due to the terrain not being the same....

Thanks for the info zeus... I'll be sure to keep this in mind for and future maps.

Why wouldn't you just use brush mirroring? Assuming you're using the in-Editor terrain tools that is. If you were importing a heightmap you could just mirror it in a graphics program though...

I know for the map I am working on, mirroring of the terrain editor won't work. I want to mirror at an angle. In other words, have it look like it was rotated 180degrees. I had to download G16ed (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/martingbell/ut2003/) to edit the heightmap like I wanted.

[DW_Wraith]

I've tried mirroring, but sometimes it either didn't do it quite right, or something. Also the editor seems to crash a bit easier when doing mirroring. Sometimes too, I'd forget to turn it on, and then I was screwed also as I didn't notice until after saving the map.

[DW_Wraith]

I downloaded the g16ed program you listed from the link, (Thanks zeus) I have never found a heightmap editor before. I tried photoshop, but that didn't work too well, as the gray's were so similar that it was impossible to tell how high and low you made things, so I just used it to mark off nodes on the map so that they are equally spaced from the red core to the blue core.