Help with Volumes Physics please.

[Nelsoncarmo26]

So I'm making an under water map, as a request.
...and I just about managed to get the lighting just right, maybe is a little too blue, but I leave it for you to judge once it's ready for testing.

Now, I want to add a physics volume in which would feel like the players are really under water, but without the drowning thing in which no one would survive the first wave due to lack of AIR.

So, I want it to slow down the walking juuuuuust a little touch, and the jumping quite significantly, so again, you feel like you're under water.

As for the static meshes, Since there arent many in the default packs to do with underwater theme, except for the shark, and the submarine.
Can you give me a list of default meshes that you think would be apropiate for this theme?!

Thank you in advance.

[Dynadin]

It can be almost anything really. A ship crashed under the sea (mechanical meshes), A lost city (Egyptian meshes), A drowned forest (the trees without the leaves added). As for actual under the sea stuff ... I think you would need to acquire some new meshes. The standards are not too forthcoming for the underwater theme.

As for the slowing down of players. I am guessing you don't want a water volume due to the ... floating. So just use a physics volume. Ground Friction / Fluid Friction will slow down players. As for high jumping then change the gravity in that physics volume, -950 is the standard for Z. I would not go lower than -100 or players will take years to hit the floor and knockback will be a right bitch. -450 is a good safe setting. (I don't know if you needed this advice, I couldn't figure out if you needed help with this and static mesh advice so I thought I would add it anyway XD)

[Nelsoncarmo26]

Thank you Dynadin... I know a few things about volumes, but didn't know what you typed.

I will do that.

As for the theme, I will also think about what you typed about making some sort of Egyptian drowned ruination of some sort.

I'll let you know...

EDIT:
I did that, and the Z gravity works fine, but if I add fluid friction, you can't jump at all.
As for the ground fiction, too little makes no effect, too much and it hurts the player causing the editor to crash...

can you tell me the exact amount that would require to make the characters walk slow down a bit without affecting the jumping?

[DW_Ant]

Fluid Friction is used for liquids. It determines how fast people swim in this liquid, and you know you can't jump while swimming in UT.

Ground friction is determined how long it takes the players to slow to a halt. Notice when the players stop pressing forward, the character spends some time to slow to a halt. Decreasing this value only increases the time it takes to slow to a halt.

May I recommend terminal velocity. It's the max speed players could travel in this volume. Also I recommend fog.


As for neat visuals, why not have fish swimming around. Easy really. I'm assuming you already know how to import textures to mylevel.
1. Create a little fish image with a black background.
2. Place a sprite emitter in your map
3. animate it using sprites. The black background should be converted to the alpha channel. Let me know if it doesn't.
Since these are sprites, and your level is fogged, you could place quite of these fellas (and many types).

Also why not add a hidden underwater base players can't get into (or can they?). Something to think about.

Another is to add some valleys on the ocean floor. I'm sure you've seen the ocean floor before and notice it's pretty rough down there. While you're at it, why not add some steam shooting out from the bottom?

Lastly, I recommend terrain for the floor. The ocean bottom is not flat. Like mentioned earlier, it's very rough. Sudden drops or coral reef structures will most likely contribute positively to the gameplay of your map.

[Nelsoncarmo26]

Thank you for all the help and advice Ant.
Thanks for clarifying the fluid and ground friction settings.

I already did a few things you mentioned, such as terrain and fog.

The layout so far is as follows:

Surrounded by sandy dunes made of terrain, I placed an inactive volcanoe mesh bang in the middle, and place a submarine, on one side and 2 destroyed aircraft on the other.

Placed a few bubbles emitters around and under water sound effects.

The blue fog and lighting finishes that under water feel.
The blue fog also fades into the distance giving the map that blue orizon on the distance, and the skybox also contributes a lot for the finishing visual touches of the basics.

Now, for the more advanced visuals, and haven't the slightest idea how to make sprites... or should I say assemble them in the editor.

I can make a sequence of sprites, and import them into my myLevel, but what do I do next?

What's the compression format? (eg DXT1)
What's the texture lodset? (eg World, interface)

Do I make the Sprites into a sequence, just like the map previews?
...and what about the sprite emitter?
Not a clue about that.

I like your idea of the hidden under water base.
Will definetively do that too.

Well, I'm going to take a look around some photos on the net to get some inspiration.

I would very much apreciate if you could elaborate a bit more on the fish emitters.

Thanks Ant.

[DW_Ant]

If you're planning on animating the fish, then you'll need to create a spreadsheet.
Something like this (just not that many rows/columns)


But really you could just use this.


I meant by animation is by making the sprite particles move around (affected by velocity, acceleration, and revolution). It'll look like the fish are swimming around.
Once you get this far or if you get this far, I'll tell you how to make the fish point forward (so they're not swimming sideways).

To import an image to mylevel:
1. The image must be in powers of 2 (2X2, 4X4, 8X8, 16X16, 32X32, 64X64, 128X128, 256X256, 512X512, 256X512, 128X512, etc...)
2. The image must be saved as a bmp, pcs, tga, dds, or upt.
3. Then you can import to the editor. If you don't see it through the importing window, then you have the wrong format. If you imported it, named it but you can't find it in mylevel, then you don't have the right resolution.

It doesn't hurt to compress your textures to DXT1, it saves space.
The texture lodset can remain as default. No need to touch it.
If you need help in creating the sprite emitter. I guess I can give you a lead. Just tell me how much space and shape I have you're willing to make the fish swim in?

[Nelsoncarmo26]

The map dimensions are:

height: 10,000 ut units
width: 10,000 ut units
breadth: 20,000 ut units

EDIT:
Ok Ant, I have done the first bit of the emitter.
Used the bubbles emitter, and then changed the texture to the fish.

I don't know what settings I have to modify, so the fish looks like it's swimming though.
I will play around a bit with properties and see what I can come up with, cause right now they just look like a bunck of fish appearing and floating onto the air.
I unticked generate mipmaps too, did I do wrong?

The other thing you mention... you were also right about is that the alpha colour does not work, unless i use translucent in propertie under texture, but that way you can't see the nice colours the fish have.

[DW_Ant]

Wow that's plenty of space to swim around in. I don't think there will be a particle that will cross from one side to another so I guess you'll may have to duplicate a few copies once you're done with the first.

I did overlook a major thing though. I'm forgetting about color (I'm sure you don't want a one color fish, right?). If that's the case, may I ask you what kind of image editing program you have? Is it able to make tga or dds format images?

You should verify that before attempting to work on the emitter.

Bare in mind that I'm not doing this with the editor so I may mess up on a few property names and values. If you find some of the properties to be "off" (Like I made the fish too big, or they travel too fast) feel free to make adjustments.

In the actor class browser. Select emitter (not xEmitter).
Place the emitter actor at the "pivot" point where you want the fish to spawn.
Open it's properties, go to emitter category.
Hit add, sprite emitter, new.
Notice the new gray properties. We'll be messing with that.
Go to texture.
Texture is set to the fish texture.
If you have a spreadsheet as a texture, then you'll need to modify the USubdivisions and VSubdivisions equal to the number of rows/columns of your spreadsheet.
If you have a spreadsheet for animating a fish, it wouldn't hurt to set bBlendSubdivisions to true to make smooth transitions between the frames.
If you have a spreadsheet to enable multiple fish in one texture, then you'll need to set bRandomSubdivision to true to make the emitter to choose one frame, and keep that frame for the lifespan.
Go to size.
SetStartSizeRange to 5 (min) 15 (max). Remember if the properties appear to be off, you're smart enough to correct it.
Go to location.
If you want the fish to spawn spherical shape, then
Set LocationShape (name is wrong) equal to sphere.
SphereRadiiLocationRange 0 (min) 1024 (max)
In a rectangle
Set LocationShape = box
LocationRange
X -1024 (min) 1024 (max)
Y -2048 (min) 2048 (max)
Z -1024 (min) 1024 (max) assuming the emitter is in the middle. You're welcomed to change these values specially if they are spawning inside a mountain.
To make them swim in a linear direction, go to velocity
StartVelocityRange (going to make this completely random)
X -1024 (min) 1024 (max)
Y -1024 (min) 1024 (max)
Z -512 (min) 512 (max)
If you want them to travel in the direction towards or away from the emitter then
Then you'll need to set GetVelocityDirection equal to Radial.
Then RadialVelocity range should have values to take affect. Negative values = repel away from emitter. Positive = attract to emitter.
Before continuing on with velocity, we should adjust the lifetime range.
Go to time ---> LifeTimeRange.
Set the minimum and maximum duration these fish will live before fading (in seconds). I'll leave these values to you.
Once you got this down, then you should consider having the fish swim in a curve (rather than linear).
Two options (the easy way or the more complicated way)
Easy way
Go to Acceleration ---> acceleration. XYZ....self-explanatory
tougher way
Go to velocity
Set bUseVelocityScale equal to true
Now go to Velocity Scale. I cannot tell you what to put, but I can tell you how it works.
If you hit add, you'll add a new element in the array that'll keep track of the change in direction.
Relative Time tells you what part of the life span will this element take affect. 0 means right at the beginning when the fish spawns. 0.2 marks the expiration time of the change velocity from the Previous element after 20% of its lifespan expired. 0.5 means half way. 1 means the end.
ScaledVelocity (wrong name) is the velocity multiplier. If the fish is traveling 512 at first, then the next element says go back down to -512, then it'll gradually switch directions until it reaches -512 speed (the speed of acceleration is affected by the relative time). Please note that making these values 0 will completely cancel the speed you've set it before. It's rough to explain, but once you see it in action, you'll understand.
Now to make the fish swim in circles go to revolution category.
Set bUseRevolution to true.
In RevolutionsPerSecond
I would set the values like:
Z: -0.1 (min) 0.1 (max) for the fish to swim a lap in 10 seconds minimum.
X & Y are optional, too. Up to you.
If you want to change the pivot point, feel free to modify the Offset property too.
Now to prevent the fish from suddenly appearing/disappearing.
Make note of their life time ranges.
Go to fade category
set bFadeIn and bFadeOut to true.
set FadeInEndTime equal to like 1 - 3 (this is the time it takes from a fish to fade from nothingness to a solid fish).
set FadeOutStartTime equal to 1 - 3 less than your Minimum Life Time Range. Once the fish's life counter hits this value, it'll begin to fade out.
Now to make the fish face forward while swimming go to the sprite category.
In the SpriteDirection (wrong name) property. I would set it equal to Up. I don't think they offer options down, left, or right so if you have fish swimming sideways, don't worry. An easy solution is to go back to the image editor, rotate the image so the fish's nose is pointing up, and replace the old texture with the new one, then you'll find your fish facing the right direction.

That should be the general needs, other properties is up to you to adjust. Have fun ;)

[Nelsoncarmo26]

Right... phew.
I did all that, and it's looking good, for the exception that I can't get the texture to display in full colour.
It has to be either Translucent, or the black backround will display.

What should I do?

[DW_Ant]

As mentioned previously....

I did overlook a major thing though. I'm forgetting about color (I'm sure you don't want a one color fish, right?). If that's the case, may I ask you what kind of image editing program you have? Is it able to make tga or dds format images?