[Game Career Guide presents an extract from Mastering Unreal Technology, Volume I: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3. The book, by Jason Busby, Zak Parrish, and Jeff Wilson, offers practical information, including detailed tutorials, on how to get your mod or game up and running -- and GameCareerGuide presents some of those tutorials here.]

Up and Running: A Hands-On Level Creation Primer

If your weird, disturbing imagination can conjure it up, it's a pretty good bet that Unreal Engine can make it happen. The power of this engine can seem overwhelming -- especially when you're first starting out. It's your job to narrow the Unreal Engine's field of infinite possibility: to sculpt it into the gaming experience of your dreams. It's like being handed the keys to an F-22 fighter jet: Where do you start? You ultimately need to develop skills in many different areas. To give you a feel for the real experience of working with Unreal Engine, we designed this chapter to get your hands dirty with as many aspects of the Unreal Editor as possible. Worry not. We hold your hand every step of the way. It'll be simple. Easy. Fun. We promise...

Starting Your First Level

This chapter does not contain in-depth explanations over each action you perform, but rather provides a quick run-and-gun crash course on the Unreal Editor, enabling you to acquaint yourself with many of the actions you'll be performing throughout this book. This chapter can also help those who have previous experience in earlier versions of Unreal Editor with finding the changes that have been made as of the release of Unreal Engine 3.0.

Note

The tutorials in this chapter assume that the reader can generally identify the primary areas of the Unreal Editor user interface. For an in-depth look at the Unreal Editor user interface, please turn to Appendix A, "The Unreal Editor User's Guide."

It is highly recommended that you follow this chapter from beginning to end, rather than simply selecting a tutorial in the middle. Remember that this is a primer chapter intended to give you a brief tour of Unreal Editor and demonstrate as many of the concepts found throughout this book as easily as possible.

TUTORIAL 3.1: Creating Your First Room

1. Launch Unreal Editor. You can do this by launching the Unreal Tournament 3 Editor application found within the Windows Start menu. If you don't see this option, you may need to create your own shortcut to access the Editor, which you can do by appending the flag "editor" to the end of your executable's Target property. If you're unsure, simply follow these steps within Windows (see Figure 3.1):

Figure 3.1 This is the Unreal Editor user interface.

a. Navigate to the installation folder where you have installed Unreal Tournament 3, and locate the game's launch executable. In many cases, this will be something like the following:

C:\Program Files\Unreal Tournament 3\Binaries\UT3.exe

b. Right-mouse drag a copy of your executable icon to a blank space in your installation folder (or to the desktop, if you prefer) and choose Create Shortcuts Here from the Context menu.

c. Right-click on your new shortcut, and choose Properties from the Context menu.

d. On the Target line in the Properties window, add a space to the end of the line (after the quotes), and then add "editor."

Note

Your final target should look something like this:

"C:\Program Files\Unreal Tournament 3\Binaries\UT3.exe" editor

Double-clicking this new shortcut launches Unreal Editor.

2. The Generic browser might open once Unreal Editor launches. If so, close it for now by clicking the Close button in the upper-right corner and then choose File > New from Unreal Editor's main menubar (see Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.2 Here are the New options from the main menubar.

3. The New Level dialog appears, from which you can choose to create an additive or subtractive world (see Figure 3.3). Choose Subtractive, and click OK. You may be asked if you would like to save any changes, in which case you should click No.

Figure 3.3 This is the New Level ­dialog.

This creates a world of solid volume (as if we were inside the center of a mountain) from which we can carve out our level.