TresCom Forums

If someone was to convert one of the game maps to multiplayer for say ut2004 for instance which would you pick?

I'm thinking about converting the test map first to see how well it ports. It's the easiest. I have to place every tree individually in Unrealed. I figure, export all the trees and decorations in a 3d program as a single mesh, import it to unrealed, then place individual trees and such where the big mesh has them. The game levels would take awhile this way hehe. Just thinking about a project to work on.

Anyone have any ideas?

That's a tough one, my initial thought is IT. Most levels are structured like a linear, narrow corridor, which isn't very good for death match or capture the flag games. IT's town and Lab's docks have nice sandboxes, but they're mostly flat, which allows people to snipe each other from across the map.

I'd say IT or LAB as well. JR based on the early bigger terrain would work as well, but the other maps are really linear in the terrain design.

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Active project: Trespasser: Isla Sorna - Working on PH2-IT (and experimental BE-IT).

"...there used to be more benches, but InGen's workers removed them during the evacuation in the name of framerate."

IT would definitely be the best deathmatch area. You could also try SUM since it's relatively small and self-contained but it's fairly linear - you'd have to make some changes to make it playable.

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Current Project: Cloning Facility | My Release Thread

Have to agree with a lot of the choices that have been picked but like to add PV and PH. Think both those would make great maps, cut a little off the sides of PV and add the helipads from the demo area and that would make a nice base for a flag match.

I'm thinking about making it for UT3. They have an updated Jurassic Rage mod based on the Unreal Tournament 2004 version. I like the ut2004 mod but its a little hard. I tried the UT3 version a while back and while it adds a T-rex I believe it doesn't have custom weapons... So maybe Ballistic Weapons will work with it. I'll make a basic terrain and test it in UT3 and see how the mod works with open landscapes.

With UT3 I have more control over the terrain. A higher poly limit. It might not necessarily run slower than a 2004 version... The editor is more compatible with windows 10, etc. I think that came out in 2007 so most people here should be able to play it.

Mod link > https://www.moddb.com/mods/jurassic-rage-iii

Here is a video of the mod.
Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4CvIgW03w

Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LhRN0BN7VU


I agree Town would be good. That would take a while but worth it. I'll look into that. Imagine IT at 120fps at 4k lol.

There's also the map with the airplane and the long valley with the ditch running down it. That it right before IT right?


Edit: I'm having trouble converting the tpm into a heightmap... Once in UT3ed the ground has some holes in it that are not seen in the modeling program. It has to do with how I am exporting the heightmap.

Yes, that's the ending of IJ.

Ok either G16ed or Unrealed is messing up. I'm not sure which.

Edit: I figured it out.

The terrain in Unreal Engine 3.

I need to figure out how to import custom landscape layers. I can't get it to use my custom alpha maps yet.

I'm going to try and create a optimized mesh of the landscape and import it as a static mesh. Basically just use the .tpm file from TresEd as a optimized mesh. I think I can apply landscape layers to it or something like that.

I've been reading this https://unrealbyfusilade.wordpress.com/unreal-development-tutorials/unreal-engine-tutrials/landscape-terrain-and-land-type-static-mesh-tutorials/map-projection-to-static-mesh/

I'd like to smooth the landscape, to get rid of the flat appearance. But I can't effect the player space areas. So idn about that. The look may clash. If I am really picky and do it section by section it might look ok. OR maybe using smoothing groups will get rid of the blocky lighting.

If I'm able to use a lightmap layer on the mesh mapping coordinates then I'll just make a custom lightmap that is smoother and wrap it around the mesh. I was gonna do this with custom alpha maps for the landscape that look a lot more realistic but I'm unsure how to import custom alpha maps so far. I can provably get them to work on the static mesh though, but not a landscape. I used erosion techniques on the alpha maps, they are placed on top of the original non eroded landscape mesh. Same with lighting. It looks very nice in UT2004 but I have yet to try it with UT3.

This is what the technique looks like it UT2004.


I converted some Trespasser assets for practice. Ground textures and trees. This is just an example of assets in unreal engine. Not work on the DM-IT map. Of note, I want to recreate IT near to perfect as possible. Scale, layout, distances between objects, etc. I think the only difference might be ground textures and obviously lighting. I got the rock from Summit and the dirt and grass from IT.

When you talk about UT3, do you mean Unreal Tournament 2003? I played that a fair bit as I was younger.
I'll happily test this out as you progress on. Hope you figure out the terrain smoothing. IT overall is very rough. You might wanna look at the Isla Sorna terrain, TI has done some great work optimizing the terrain, so the IT one is less rough (as well contains the cut area (in retail and b96 the terrain is badly raised).

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Active project: Trespasser: Isla Sorna - Working on PH2-IT (and experimental BE-IT).

"...there used to be more benches, but InGen's workers removed them during the evacuation in the name of framerate."

They have UT-UT2003-UT2004/UT2_UT3. In that order. And now they have a new version of UT called UT4. I think it is a remake of the original UT.

Of note: For the UT3 level I have been working with baking the textures onto the models. It combines all of the textures into a single one. 512x512 or 1024x1024 seems to work well. I had to do it for that tree in the screenshot above. I really should have raised the draw scale of those trees lol.

I want to get this finished for UT3 then port it to UT2004 to be able to play it on the original version of Jurassic Rage. I'm gonna have to split the 1024^1024 terrain into 4. And use a 4096x4096 Lightmap for the landscape. The trees and buildings will have a low res blurry look to them but it is a lot better than the default shadows in UT2004. I use a projector. It's a bit limited but better than nothing. You can bake lightmaps for UT2004. It has a separate UV channel.

I'm downloading Isla Sorna.

Edit: Thought this was neat.


I'm glad this game is low poly. This will take forever, I feel sorry for the developers and their much slower pc's. I bet it took hours to load a 3d file. I'm thinking about spliting the static mesh of the terrain into chunks...

Edit: Practicing importing. I baked all the textures to a single one to make it easy to import, so for now it should look blurry but that will get fixed later.



I gotta figure out how to apply custom uv co-ords for lightmaps. I think I need to give the uv channel the correct name. Right now it wont let me up the lightmap detail of the terrain...

I think the tpm is the equivalent of 4096^4096. That is beyond the limitations of UT3. So im working with it as a static mesh and gonna learn to paint layers to a map

I hope this works with the engine. Or else I'll have to use 16 1024^1024 terrains. That would CRAWL.

Learning how to do the lighting. I baked a lightmap in a 3d app and applied it to the terrain mesh material. Works like a charm. This displays on top of the default baked lighting. I used 64X64 for the lightmap in the engine and imported a 4096x4096 lightmap for shadows. I think this will work ok.

I want to try with dynamic lighting with this method. Work in progress. I want the map to look nice.

Oh I missed the edit on the last post, nice!


From my understanding, based on the 3ds Max files we do have, they rarely worked on the level with everything loaded, but rather had several files for a level. Heck, even when I was using 3ds Max 8 many years ago, just loading and looking at one of the Town 3ds Max files was really laggy

Otherwise, glad you are making progress!

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Active project: Trespasser: Isla Sorna - Working on PH2-IT (and experimental BE-IT).

"...there used to be more benches, but InGen's workers removed them during the evacuation in the name of framerate."

Figuring out how to do "complex" materials on a static mesh with UT3 made me want to experiment with UT2004. I came up with this.





This is just a test map, nothing to do with the final. It worked out well though. Now I'm confident I can port the whole level to UT2004 also. I was worried about the size of the terrain from Trespasser. Trespasser is equal to 4096^4096 while UT2004 is limited to 512^512. And UT3 is 1024^1024. But using a static mesh instead of the terrain system allows me to use really detailed mesh's. Optimized of course. It started out as a 512^512 sheet. I no longer have to use a projector for the lightmap. I add it directly to the UV of the static mesh. Works like a charm. It's fun to figure out something new.

Right now I'm leaning towards finishing the UT2004 version first. After that it should be easy to port to UT3. I have a porting tool that might work good. But it only goes forwards in game engines, not backwards. Plus I prefer the gameplay of Jurassic Rage for UT2004.

It's cool to me that I can now pretty much have unlimited terrains in the old game. I hated the limitations of the terrain engine. There is a dinosaur single player mod for UT2004 that I have been wanting to make a level for, for ages. Well actually it is a mutater for the monster mode where you fight enemies from Unreal 1, but the characters work in a single player environment. Combining this with baked uv maps on a cliff or cave or etcetera should look really smooth. The only real limitation is download sizes and shadows from objects on the terrain. They would be a bit blurry compared to dynamic lighting or high detail baked lighting. If I use a high res lightmap the render lag is bad. And If I split the terrain into many sections and use tons of smaller but still detailed lightmaps it would be a huge download. So... limitations.

Too bad UE4/5 dont have any good free military weapon or dinosaur mods... Then I could use modern tech lol. Oh well.

EDIT: I did the texture material wrong, was only showing one texture. If you apply a UV map it removes one of the textures. So I made some more materials and blended the lightmap onto the texture directly. This is what I got.



I'm happy with the general look. Though doing it this way I cannot have deco-layers. The grass decoration layers that fade away at a distance. Gonna have to do all of that manually. Trespasser grass and plants are very high poly, so it is just as well. You can't have very many on screen at once.

I tried ages ago to import a LOD mesh(trees) to UT2004 and it actually ran slower... I would like to replicate every decoration from Trespasser but that could be pain staking. So um, maybe just place random decorations? Grass and such. What ya think?

I'll get to splitting the entire landscape from IT into game friendly chunks and make up all of the materials tomorrow. See how it looks in game. I'm glad this will actually work and look nice too. With UT3, it is less of a challenge graphics wise but I really want to play the final of the UT2004 version first.

Have fun guys and gals.

For those curious I got the terrain into UT2004. This is a rough draft. Terrain static mesh is 56,820 triangles.





EDIT: I think I'm gonna try exporting all the deco-layers from Trespasser and convert them to a mask for the 4096x4096 terrain mask. I bet it will look similar to the original level.