Last updated 4/4/2002
So, you want to make a Night's Edge map?
or
NE-WW-Canyon sucked so bad I have to show I can make something better.

Bad Mojo and Quintin Stone

Introduction

This is the first draft of a small Night's Edge mapping howto. It's purpose is to outline the technical details required to create a Night's Edge map as well as the qualities that the map should have to fit into the Night's Edge universe. As the mod grows and acquires more mapping experience, this document will grow and change.

Setup

You will need to modify your basic UnrealTournament.ini file in order to place Night's Edge actors in your levels. Under the section titled [Editor.EditorEngine], add these lines to the END.

EditPackages=NightsEdgeItems
EditPackages=NightsEdgeGraphics
EditPackages=NightsEdge

If you don't add these as the final lines in the section, you may encounter errors creating maps.

Actors

NEPlayerStart:
This is the NEPlayerStart actor. This is located in the Actor browser at Actor->NavigationPoint->PlayerStart->NEPlayerStart and is placed just like a regular PlayerStart actor. All player spawn points need to contain two bits of information for them to work properly in Night's Edge. The first bit is which team the spawn point is for and the second is which starting group for that team the spawn point is part of.

In all Night's Edge play modes, each team should have two starting locations in a map. This keeps the two teams guessing about where the enemy will spawn. The spawn areas should be placed far enough away so that the area a team spawns in is likely to have a significant effect on the team's strategy. Each starting area is a cluster of individual spawn points for that team.
In the NEPlayerStart properties, under PlayerStart, you can set the TeamNumber to 0 or 1 to indicate which team this spawn point is for. Under NEPlayerStart, you can set the GroupNum variable to 0 or 1, indicating the first or second spawn location for that team.
Personally, I find it easy to lay down many of these spawn points where I want them. Then I select a single starting area's entire collection of NEPlayerStart items and edit their properties all at once to make sure they are all identical.
You need to provide several spawn points in a group when setting up a team's spawn area. Too few spawn points mean that players will telefrag their teammates at the beginning of a round (never a good thing). Also remember not to make the spawn points too close together, because if the players overlap when they spawn then you'll get telefrags again.

Any pickup Invetory actors (weapons, ammo, health, or powerups) will not spawn in Night's Edge, since it is a purchase-based game. However, they can be used as part of the bots' pathing network if you like. You may find that this is the best way to motivate bots into moving around.

NEMapInfo:
Lets you customize some of the information on your Night's Edge maps. Add one of these to your map and you can set the following attributes:

BlitzInfo:
This has all the attributes in NEMapInfo, plus a few extras for Blitz playmode (Sabotage and Idustrial Espionage) maps . You won't need to have a NEMapInfo object and this. You just need this one.

NEFort:
The objective in the Sabotage playmode. Designed to work like a standard FortStandard from UT's Assault.

IndustrialEspionageObjective:
Obviously, for Industrial Espionage playmode maps. In actuality, this is similar to the FlagBase from CTF maps. When touched by a member of the offensive team, it will spawn a special carryable objective item in their inventory. The IndustrialEspionageObjective (IEO) can be used in one of two ways:

  1. You can use it as an invisible zone that surrounds a static brush of some kind. When offense players enter within the objective's collision radius, they will trigger it. For example, if your objective was a computer mainframe that the offense was trying to extract data from, you would make the computer from a brush and place an IEO around it. The special object spawned might then be some kind of data disk.
  2. You can make it a visible actor by setting various display properties described below. If you wanted the objective to be some kind of weapon prototype, you could select a weapon mesh to use for the IEO. The special inventory object could then be set to use the same mesh. See below for more information.
Here are the attributes decided on so far for the IEO:

EvacPoint:
Once a person is carrying an objective inventory object, they go here to win the half. Shows up as a bright yellow circle.

Milestone:
The milestone actor marks the offense team's progress as they make their way towards the objective(s). Each time a member of the team encounters a milestone with a rating higher than their current milestone counter, their counter is updated to the new rating (if they reach a milestone with a lower number, nothing happens). Each map should have about 5, starting with the milestones closest to the starting points at level 1 and the milestones nearest the objectives at level 5. Milestones should be placed so that they are progressively encountered along all possible routes.

If/when the offense team fails, their milestone counter determines how much money they'll receive for their next attempt in the next round. For each milestone reached, they'll receive money equal to the BonusCash setting. So if the BonusCash is set to $500 and the offense reaches 4 milestones in their first round before getting wiped out, they'll get an extra $2000 for their second try. And milestone bonuses are cumulative, so whatever milestones they reach in the second round will add bonuses on top of that $2000 for the third round.


Map Qualities

Design:
There are going to be 3 playmodes in the next version. Wet Works, you're probably familiar with. It is a team-on-team battle where players killed stay dead until the next round begins. Sabotage involves the offense team getting into specific area and destroying a target (kind of like many of the Assault maps). In Industrial Espionage, the offense has to steal an item from the defense's base or area, then return it to an "evac" spot near or at where they started. For more details, check out the online player manual.

So first, you have to decide which one you want to try. Wet Works is the simplest to design for. The other two involve setting up the map so that the defensive team has a number of chokepoints it can try to hold, but not so many that it has to spread itself too thin to cover them. That may be the tricky part, getting the map to have just a slight defensive advantage that the offensive team can overwhelm after enough rounds of collecting extra cash.

In Wet Works:

Some examples of simplified layouts for Wet Works maps (B and R are Blue and Red team starting areas):

In Blitz Playmodes (Industrial Espionage, Sabotage, etc.):

Basic Blitz map layout ideas (blue and red are starting areas, green is objective):

In general:

Simplified schematics of some popular Counter-Strike maps for example/reference:

Setting:
Ideas for the map itself are left up to the imagination once you decide on the playmode. The only necessary restriction is that the level fit into the Night's Edge setting laid out on the web site. The year is 2160, a hundred years ago there was a global nuclear exchange, and there are few places humans can go to be safe from radiation. The tech level, then, is mostly what has been found or replicated from 2060, though there have been a few advances since humanity pulled itself together. The most obvious choices for general map setting are: a thriving uban area (such as Arcadia), a ruined pre-war city, or somewhere in the wastes. From there, you have a number of different possibilities. Here are some ideas:

Any of these can be in-use or the ruins from before the war. Lighting should probably be dim, unless inside a well-lit building of some kind. Outdoor areas should have a thick cloud cover skybox to maintain the dark atmosphere of the game. The target ideas for Blitz-mode maps probably aren't as varied, but include such things as: Of course, these are just a few ideas, and you're encouraged to use your imagination. The city of Arcadia is located somewhere in the southwestern United States (Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada). For those making wilderness maps just outside Arcadia, searching for scenic pictures of these states might help out. (For example, see this page, or this one, or this one)

Mapping Resources