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Level Design Simple building procedures

not much to say here, if its at grid 1 off the the line crossings, somewhere in the square, just not where the gridlines meet.

it happens to me sometimes, appearently for no reason, then i click another brush shape (like from cube to stairs) then back to the first, and its back on grid usualy. it seems to happen more often in the gridsize 1-4 than in the sizes above, mostly when i vertex edit.
 
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yeah that about sums it up.

I have a problem with the red brush a lot of the time I make it a new size and then check it and it is sometimes not snapped to grid, So I always now left click one corner before doing anything to snap it first.

Also happens sometimes when duplicating or rotating, it does not always snap to grid first time. So I always double check before moving on.
 
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Newer versions (like UE3 I believe) have per-pixel shading rather than per vertex.

Off topic, I know, but I want to clarrify for you folks. UE3 Uses probably more than a dozen different lighting methods. For static meshes, you can use vertex lighting, light maps (bsp uses this in UE2), shadow maps (per pixel lighting). Then theres all the different dynamic lighting, light enviroments, gpu or cpu skinning, etc. Most of the stuff seen in Gears isn't per pixel. Majority of it is precalculated vertex lighting or light maps if it's a high detail shadow. Light maps are used in place of shadow maps where dynamics aren't used. Player shadows are shadow mapped. Shadows from a pillar on to a wall via a static light is going to light mapped (if high detail, vetex if low). Light maps are better in most cases (other than visually) because it just gets stored in the memory only once and gets calculated once. Vertex lighting (mind you is greatly improved) is the easiest way out because it effects less memory.

But then again, you folks will never notice because of all the normal and specularity maps going on.
 
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When you create a building that has a ground floor and a basement do you remove teh terrain squares it will occupy or leave them in and just pass the ground level through the solid BSP brush dividing the floors? You would have toremove it for the the stairs section I would guess.

You don't have to remove them, but you might want to for Performance reasons(if you have many buildings it might be worth worrying about that). It is, as you suggest, mainly so you can pass through the Terrain.
 
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When you create a building that has a ground floor and a basement do you remove teh terrain squares it will occupy or leave them in and just pass the ground level through the solid BSP brush dividing the floors? You would have toremove it for the the stairs section I would guess.

Remove as much unseen terrain as possible, is the ideal choice.
 
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So I have a large area on my map that I want to transition to a more builtup town like are now can I create a second terrain only with smaller squares (not sure the particulars I think it is scale and resolution) basically I want to have finer control on the terrain in the built up area. Now these two terrains the large scale and small scale will be on the same level can I use the visiblity tool to remove a large section of my large scale terrain and put the little terrain in its place?
 
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That's pretty much it - you get more control over the edges if you use visibilty to blank out the area on either side of the inner smaller terrain's edges then gradually restore visibility to the smaller terrain within.

You can deal with any mismatches of height by having the smaller terrain go through and below the outer terrain at the very edge of the limit of the visible part of the smaller one.

(well, I know what I mean, anyway :) )
 
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Now another subject is there a tip to keeping the edges of a cube square once you put it into the map and and vertex editing and the like. Also is there a way to get the faces of two brushes to meetexactly. Like for instance I am trying to build some tunnels and they are not cooperating so it has been alot of vertex editing. Basically I just have some sections that are an add and a subtract put together tha I have been duplicating around to make my tunnels.
 
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I see Dr.Guppy, I do use the other viewports I dont see how you could not you know what is weird is that I have Some mines that I am creating and I have sections of the mine shaft that I am just Duping and reconnecting to make the tunnels. For some reason some sections will not connect to each other to make an opening. I finally just backed off one of the subtract brushes and used the builder brush and intersect to create an in between brush and that connected just fine. Weird I spent about an hour on one connection. Anyone else have this problem?
 
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Yep, its called the intersection tool, you will find the button for it just below the add button. It will give you a brush with the data of all the objects you intersected, all you have to do then is put it where you want.

I was under the impression that intersect and deintersect only applied to the red builder brush and not to two brushes that have already been built. Basically I am trying to join two add brushes together. Like at a corner overlap them a bit and hit a button and it makes a solid L shaped brushThis is what I am looking for. Thanks.
 
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I see Dr.Guppy, I do use the other viewports I dont see how you could not you know what is weird is that I have Some mines that I am creating and I have sections of the mine shaft that I am just Duping and reconnecting to make the tunnels. For some reason some sections will not connect to each other to make an opening. I finally just backed off one of the subtract brushes and used the builder brush and intersect to create an in between brush and that connected just fine. Weird I spent about an hour on one connection. Anyone else have this problem?

If you're doing 45 degree corners, or 12.5, that's where the deintersect and intersect functions really work great. I keep a build box outside the map where I can take my hallway (extruded 2d shape) as an active brush, rotate it 45 degrees, and then slice it off.

A build box is just a 2048x2048x2048 or so subtraction outside the map. Handy for shrinkwrapping multiple brushes together too.

First time I figured out how to do it right was after days of doing it wrong, so one hour is no biggie. Just be sure you didn't make a HOM. ;)

But if the hallway is simple, you can just vertex edit both corners together. It's faster and less buggy. In fact, I make sure that the 2D shapes I build are simple so that I can vertex edit exclusively.

As for how to build a building... I tend to add the walls on top of the foundation, between the supports, then subtract windows. I join the corners by vertex editing them to 45 degree joints.
 
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