- Who Is This Book For?
- What Should You Know Before You Start?
- What We Mean By Advanced Level Design
- Included Assets and Game Assets
- Working with INI Files
- Future Software Changes
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
What Should You Know Before You Start?
This book is intended to be used with the game Unreal Tournament 3.
Many of the basic concepts we teach you apply to other Unreal Engine 3–based games that provide access to the Unreal Editor. However, many of our tutorials rely on game assets that come with Unreal Tournament 3. What’s more, other games sometimes change the engine and the editor, which could make them work differently—or at least confuse the heck out of you. We wouldn’t want that!
As we’ve already said, we do some handholding throughout the tutorials, but you’ll be better off if you’re at least basically familiar with the Unreal Editor’s key concepts and controls. Ideally, it’d be way cool if you’ve already explored:
- Navigating perspective and orthogonal viewports
- Creating additive environments using BSP brushes
- Navigating and creating assets within the Generic browser
- Loading and unloading asset packages within the Generic browser
- Placing objects into levels from the Generic and Actor Classes browsers
- Adjusting actor properties within the Actor Properties window
- Setting up basic Kismet sequences
- Creating basic materials with the Material Editor
- Simple keyframe animation using Matinee
Haven’t done all that? As someone once said, don’t panic. As we keep saying, you’ll still be able to follow along, just more slowly. But you’ll definitely have a smoother, faster learning experience if you’re already familiar with Unreal Engine 3 and the Unreal Editor. To that end, you might want to check out the following training resources:
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Mastering Unreal Technology, Volume I: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3— The first volume in this series, this book gets you up-and-running with the Unreal Editor. It’s specially designed for anyone just getting their feet wet with Unreal Engine 3 modding.
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Unreal Tournament 3: Collector’s Edition— The Collector’s Edition version of Unreal Tournament 3 includes a separate DVD that contains many hours of Unreal Editor training—including several videos geared specifically for beginners.
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www.3dbuzz.com—That’s us! 3D Buzz, our company, delivers hours of professional-quality video training content covering Unreal Technology, programming, 3D graphics, and more! Get started right away by watching our Video Training Modules, or dig through our forums for tons of valuable information. And, since this site’s staffed and run by this book’s authors, it’s a great way to get in touch with us. (Come, say hello—really!)