Merchant Monarchy: 2017

Thursday, 29 June 2017

Permission Granted

I finally managed to contact Eric "ebolt" Boltjes and get permission to remake his original UT99 maps DM-Nitro and DM-Bishop for UT4.

I'd already been working on both maps for some time but was unable to find contact info for him until recently.

Thanks again Eric!

DM-Nitro

http://ut4.unrealcarnage.com/ut4redirect/DM-Nitro-WindowsNoEditor.pak

I've kept the meshes and materials light on Nitro for performance reasons (I want it to be played competitively). It's a fairly large map, large enough to play well in 8 man FFA DM and 4v4 TDM, yet small enough to work well for Duel too.

I made a number of item placement changes to better balance playing the entire map, making the strong high side less overpowering for control, the weak side stronger and to encourage running the whole map rather than just controlling a small area around the sniper rifle and shield belt / 50 armor.

It mostly uses stock assets with a few custom materials and meshes.

DM-Bishop

http://ut4.unrealcarnage.com/ut4redirect/DM-Bishop-WindowsNoEditor.pak

Bishop is a larger map that plays well in FFA DM and should be ok for TDM but is too large for Duel.

I've moved the 100 armor to the other side of the map and put a 50 armor where the 100 used to be. That should make it play better in TDM though it could use more testing and feedback in TDM.

I've gone for more of an atmospheric, moody and colorful look in Bishop but it still performs very well too. It uses a number of custom assets from several different UE4 demos and asset packages as well as a few assets I made myself.

Notes

Both maps have three UTGenericObjectivePoints which get used in gamemodes like Showdown, Domination and ShockDom.

Saturday, 8 April 2017

PSK to OBJ Conversion Script

Just a quick post to share a little psk_to_obj python script Scoob (the author of Elimination) whipped up for me that makes porting meshes from older UT games with XTXP's UT4 Converter much easier.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0TfHeypIQIaY0JXMUZTaXB1Ync

I've tested it fairly extensively on UT 2k4 meshes under Win 10 and it's worked perfectly for me in all of my tests.

Usage:

You need to have python installed.

Run the Converter program as usual.
Import all the textures and "Make Materials" for them. This must be done first or the materials won't be automatically applied when you import the meshes.
Once Converter is done drop a copy of the psk_to_obj python script into the folder where Converter put the *.psk meshes.
Double click on the psk_to_obj script.
Wait a few seconds for the script to finish.
Open the UT4 editor, go into the content browser and "Import" all the *.obj files.

You'll now have all the meshes in UT4 ready to use. You may wind up with some missing materials (the ones that weren't just simple textures in the old engine) but for the majority of maps and meshes most of the materials will be there and automatically applied to the meshes.

A big thumbs up and a thank you to @Scoob for writing this script!

Monday, 6 February 2017

Maps repacked and moved to a new location

Since the Play Unreal redirect went down I've moved the Unreal Tournament 4 maps I'm working on back to MPF.

Multi Player Forums Redirect

~~Unfortunately while the MPF redirect is working for uploading and downloading with a web browser it is NOT WORKING as a redirect.~~

Most of my maps are back on the MPF redirect depository and in-game redirects are working again now.

DM-Landscape has not been uploaded because Epic broke something in the most recent build(?s) preventing the trees from displaying at longer distances. It almost seems like they hard coded foliage cull distance, changing it to 0.0 (used to disable distance culling) or 500,000.500,000 (very large values) in editor makes no difference.

The problem is long range sniping is what the gameplay on Landscape is mostly about. The trees have collision and function as cover... If you can't see the trees your shots get blocked by invisible collision. If you zoom, the trees do fade back in, but still, it's a problem.

If you're looking to chat with me about any of my maps (feedback, suggestions or w/e) I can be found on Discord.

UC Discord
Epic Discord