Level Design A few tricks I've learned: Killing Floor SDK Tips

[PiX]

I'm gonna share with you some thing I've learned or been taught throughout the years of Ued mapping.

Here's a few handy ones:

• Right-click any viewport to bring up a menu of things to hide or show. Many of them have shortcut-keys too. Try and remember them for a much easier editing. Here's a few:
  1. 'O' to hide/show volumes.
  2. 'K' to hide/show backdrop(skybox).
  3. 'P' to hide/show Real Time Preview.
• Try and always have snap to grid enabled. Expcept perhaps when you're moving static meshes and such. But if you turn it off by mistake and you just can't get your brush/static/anything(except movers) to snap, click on 'Show Large Vertices'. Now right-click any of the vertices - tada! - it snaps back into grid!
• Try and learn how to use the 2D editor. It will save you from so much tedious work trying to get the BSP to look the way you want without causing glitches.
• Busting your a** to make something centered? It doesn't matter!! As long as it looks centered no one will ever notice.
• Click the eye icon in the viewport then click on an actor. This way you can point your desired actor to given direction.
• In any of the 2D viewports, press and hold shift+middle mouse button to see the UU distance in the edtior. Useful for cull distance, fog, zombievolume mindistance, collision radius etc. (Thanks Falidell)
• Having trouble with the editor crashing on loading a new map? Click on 'New Map' before loading and this will rarely, if ever, happen.
  

 

[Fel]

yea, thats basic simple stuff

 

[nath2009uk]

Anything about making caves out of terrain?

 

[Fel]

you can use the terrain on the celing, then map that way for a cave.

Or you can make terrain mesh, and place it on the roof.

The 1st one i haven't done yet, but i know its dooable.

 

[nath2009uk]

I attempted to make a cave using 2 planes of Terrain, with on inverted so it looks like a ceiling. The end result was pretty good for a 2 minute job, but the tools and the fact you have to keep switching between the 2 terrains to edit them got annoying.

 

[Fel]

and the fact you have to keep switching between the 2 terrains to edit them got annoying.

You want to see what is annoying?

Pipes are annoying

(My new mission map)

 

[Murphy]

Type "stopblockingmyviewports*****es" into their "group" field under Object in their properties and use the Group Browser to hide and unhide them by unticking or ticking their group's tickbox. You might have to hit View -> Refresh in the Group Browser for the newly created group to show up.

bHiddenEd can be used to hide something in the editor too, but it isn't as comfortable as the Group Browser method because it's less convenient to unhide them again should you need to.

 

[Falidell]

i got one for ya.
-in the 2d viewers. press and hold shift+middle mouse button and you be able to check the UU distance between objects and stuff. helps with: cull distance, fog, zombievolume mindistance, etc.

 

[PiX]

I like that one, Falidell. Added a couple + the one from Falidell.

 

[Boltte]

What about if you want to copy and paste things from another map without individually selecting each item, is that possible? Like is there a select area button and you just draw a square or something and anything inside this square box is all selected?

How do you fix not opening item properties? For some reasons, and it's probably just me, I can't open any volume or actor properties.... BUT can open properties of surfaces... I know, weird bug....

Also, is there a window listing all items(surfaces, actors, static meshes, etc,) and their respective location if you double click on the listing for example? Would help out once you build all and it says there's an error in actor99 and you don't know where actor99 is...because you're is as big as mountainpass ...actually on that note, it would have been nice if I could double click on the error line and it would point me to the specific item issue so I could fix it....