Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

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Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by =(V)=Kevster »

I found this very educational zoning tutorial that explains how Unreal Tournament zones work, and why they're even used. I learned a lot about zones myself, from reading this. I hope someone finds it useful.

Unreal Zones
Tim Sweeney
Epic MegaGames, Inc.
http://www.epicgames.com/
Audience: Level Designers.
Last Updated: 07/21/99
The concept of zones

Unreal levels can be huge; many of our game levels are pushing 20,000 world polygons. At any time, the player only sees a tiny fraction of those 20,000 polygons, typically 100-200 polygons. The engine spends a significant amount of CPU time figuring out which 200 polygons, out of a potential 20,000, are visible in each scene. Unreal employs several techniques to speed up this "visible surface determination" process. Most of these techniques are automatic, requiring no designer intervention. However, one of the most powerful techniques, zoning, requires level designers to manually place invisible polygons called "zone portals" in their levels. Zones greatly accelerate the engine's visibility calculations, and they also enable designers to create many special effects that are specific to a region of space, such as ambient lighting or modified gravity.

A zone is a non-convex interior region of connected 3D space, for example a room, or a group of several complex, interconnected rooms.
By dividing your map up into zones, you gain several benefits:
Speed. A well-zoned level typically speeds up the engine's "visible surface determination" process by over 100% in a complex map compared to an un-zoned level.
• Ambient lighting. Each zone can have its own ambient lighting value, which is added to the regular lighting on each surface. Ambient lights are very useful for outdoors areas, where pure black shadows are unnatural, as well as in diffuse environments where one would not expect dark shadows.
• Reverberation. Each zone can have its own aural reverberation properties; see the audio document for more information.
• Zone-based physics properties, such as friction and gravity.
• Water.

Seeing zones

UnrealEd has a special mode that enables you to see your level's zones graphically, with each zone rendered in a distinct color. In UnrealEd, in the 3D viewport's menu, select "Zone/Portal view". You can also see this in the game by typing "RMODE 2" at the console.

In UnrealEd, zone portals are normally visible, and you normally can't see through them. To hide them, press the joystick button in the viewport, which turns on real-time updating of the viewport. You should only use this for previewing your architecture, as this real-time updating slows down the rest of UnrealEd's user interface.

Partitioning a level into zones

Level designers can partition their levels into zones by using special kinds of brushes, zone portals, to seal up regions of their maps and make them "water-tight".
There are two tools in UnrealEd that you need to use to create zone portals:
The "sheet brush" tool. This is represented by the bottom brush builder icon on the toolbar, which lets you build a flat square polygon. You need to build zone portal polygons using this tool; you need to create polygons that are big enough to block the passages you are sealing up.
The "add special brush" tool. This is represented by the solid green square icon on the toolbar, below the "add" and "subtract" buttons, which enables you to add a polygon to the world with special properties to it. When you click on the "add special brush" tool, a little dialog box comes up with
• several pull-down options. Choose the "Zone Portal" pulldown option. Then position your sheet brush and click "add" when you're ready to add the portal.

To zone your map, first you add a bunch of portal polygons (using the "sheet brush" tool to build them, and the "add special brush" tool to add them). Next, bring up the "rebuilder" dialog and rebuild you map. The rebuilder will go through your map and detect regions of space, which are sealed up "water-tight" and assign a unique zone to each region. You can go into the "Zone/Portal" view to verify, graphically, that your level is properly zoned.

If, in Zone/Portal view, you see that the engine hasn't recognized your zones, you have probably not made the portals "water-tight". You need to add in enough portals that the separate zones are completely sealed-off from each other.

Tip:

If, in the game, you see "hall of mirror" effects where you placed portals, make sure your portals completely seal up the regions of space they separate. If you have a portal that only partially fills up a passageway, you might see through it into nothingness.
Where to place zone portals

For special effects zones like water zones you will, of course, place the portals wherever you need the effect.
For zones whose purpose is only to speed up the engine, your goal is to divide your level up into zones while introducing portals whose overall area is as small as possible. The smaller the portals, the less work the engine must do to process the portals. Therefore, we place our portals in passageways, which naturally separate large areas, such as doorways and hallways. This approach causes the level to be divided up well, without adding too much portal area.
There is no benefit (and often a performance penalty) to placing portals in the middle of large rooms. These huge portals usually eat up more CPU time being processed than they save. Stick portals in doorways, hallways, and other narrow passages.

Adding ZoneInfo actors to specify zone properties

If you want to assign individual properties to a zone, such as water, ambient lighting, or reverb, you need to add a "ZoneInfo" actor to the zone. You only need to do this if you want to assign custom properties to the zone; if all you want to do is to add the speed advantage of portalization, you don't need to add Zone Info.
In the class browser, expand the "Info" class and you'll see "ZoneInfo" right there. You can add the ZoneInfo actor anywhere in your zone; as long as it's in empty space and there aren't more than one ZoneInfo in your zone, the ZoneInfo will work. For the engine to recognize your ZoneInfo actor, you need to rebuild your map again.

See the ZoneInfo property sheet for a complete list of the ZoneInfo properties. There are many cool adjustable parameters, such as friction, gravity, ambient lighting, pain, water, etc.

Water and translucent zone portals

To create a water zone, just set the ZoneInfo bWaterZone variable to True. The Unreal physics code (in Pawn.uc and PlayerPawn.uc) automatically recognizes these water zones and transitions between walking and swimming physics modes.
To make transparent water, just select the zone portal's surface in UnrealEd, bring up the "Surface Properties" and turn its "Translucent" option on.
Caveats
A level can only have 64 zones. If you create more than 64 zones, the engine will merge some zones together, causing a loss of performance. This limit might be extended in the future.
End
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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by =(V)=~Sean~ »

Good read. Thanks.
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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by Chamberly »

At least the zone limit is mentioned, just gotta be careful.
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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

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With all the time I have on my hands, I'd love it if someone would sit over my shoulder and guide me through making a simple map.
A guy like GHOST, who has even more time on his hands (disabled in a wheel chair), might even take time out from playing 5-6 player names in Monster Hunt, and start prolifically making new RX maps.

I'd tried several times to get a simple UnrealEdit map started. But the concepts always baffle me.

Kevster, you up for some long distance phone instruction?
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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by =(V)=CandyMan »

Duke wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 3:06 pm With all the time I have on my hands, I'd love it if someone would sit over my shoulder and guide me through making a simple map.
A guy like GHOST, who has even more time on his hands (disabled in a wheel chair), might even take time out from playing 5-6 player names in Monster Hunt, and start prolifically making new RX maps.

I'd tried several times to get a simple UnrealEdit map started. But the concepts always baffle me.

Kevster, you up for some long distance phone instruction?
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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by =(V)=Kevster »

Duke wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 3:06 pm With all the time I have on my hands, I'd love it if someone would sit over my shoulder and guide me through making a simple map.
A guy like GHOST, who has even more time on his hands (disabled in a wheel chair), might even take time out from playing 5-6 player names in Monster Hunt, and start prolifically making new RX maps.

I'd tried several times to get a simple UnrealEdit map started. But the concepts always baffle me.

Kevster, you up for some long distance phone instruction?
Hi Duke!

Yea, I can guide you through how to do a basic map, then add things to it. Once you'd made a few, with me working with you, a light bulb might go off and you'll be good to venture out into the map making world on you're own. That's how I learned. I've helped out lots of peeps in the past. Most recently, Blade. Give me a shout and we could use TeamViewer for example. I can walk you through the editor menu and show you how it's done. :thumbup
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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by =(\/)=_\/3|\|0/\/\ »

this just gave me an idea for how to fix my most recent map
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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by Orion's***Belt »

Do you use Discord? Would that work?
I was in the VM channel, until I crashed my hard drive, and lost everything.
Maybe we could connect that way.
Thanks for the offer of help!
Looking forward to this.

Have TeamViewer set up but have never ever used it, and have no idea how it would work.

Is it something that we could do through Discord?

I'm thinking creating a simple box with two flags to begin with, adding details as it goes along.
Trying to keep it simple.

What are we going to use to CREATE the maps? UnrealEd? Or, something else?

Poking around, I see that Epic offers something called Epic Games Unreal Engine 4.23. So, I signed up at Epic Games, but cannot log back in. Grrrrr.
The previous attempt (+10 years ago) at trying my hand at a map was using something that came with the original game called, UnreadEd. I see it in my UnrealTournament/System folder. The version of UnreadEd that is in that folder is 2.0.

Let me know which path I should be wandering around.

Oh, and............

I saw some mention of "brushes" which I presume are pre-built objects that can get dropped into the map design. Should I get some/all of those?

=(V)=Kevster wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 7:59 pm
Duke wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 3:06 pm With all the time I have on my hands, I'd love it if someone would sit over my shoulder and guide me through making a simple map.
A guy like GHOST, who has even more time on his hands (disabled in a wheel chair), might even take time out from playing 5-6 player names in Monster Hunt, and start prolifically making new RX maps.

I'd tried several times to get a simple UnrealEdit map started. But the concepts always baffle me.

Kevster, you up for some long distance phone instruction?
Hi Duke!

Yea, I can guide you through how to do a basic map, then add things to it. Once you'd made a few, with me working with you, a light bulb might go off and you'll be good to venture out into the map making world on you're own. That's how I learned. I've helped out lots of peeps in the past. Most recently, Blade. Give me a shout and we could use TeamViewer for example. I can walk you through the editor menu and show you how it's done. :thumbup
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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by =(V)=Kevster »

Duke wrote: Wed Nov 13, 2019 12:48 pm Do you use Discord? Would that work?
I was in the VM channel, until I crashed my hard drive, and lost everything.
Maybe we could connect that way.
Thanks for the offer of help!
Looking forward to this.

Have TeamViewer set up but have never ever used it, and have no idea how it would work.

Is it something that we could do through Discord?

I'm thinking creating a simple box with two flags to begin with, adding details as it goes along.
Trying to keep it simple.

What are we going to use to CREATE the maps? UnrealEd? Or, something else?

Poking around, I see that Epic offers something called Epic Games Unreal Engine 4.23. So, I signed up at Epic Games, but cannot log back in. Grrrrr.
The previous attempt (+10 years ago) at trying my hand at a map was using something that came with the original game called, UnreadEd. I see it in my UnrealTournament/System folder. The version of UnreadEd that is in that folder is 2.0.

Let me know which path I should be wandering around.

Oh, and............

I saw some mention of "brushes" which I presume are pre-built objects that can get dropped into the map design. Should I get some/all of those?

=(V)=Kevster wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 7:59 pm
Duke wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 3:06 pm With all the time I have on my hands, I'd love it if someone would sit over my shoulder and guide me through making a simple map.
A guy like GHOST, who has even more time on his hands (disabled in a wheel chair), might even take time out from playing 5-6 player names in Monster Hunt, and start prolifically making new RX maps.

I'd tried several times to get a simple UnrealEdit map started. But the concepts always baffle me.

Kevster, you up for some long distance phone instruction?
Hi Duke!

Yea, I can guide you through how to do a basic map, then add things to it. Once you'd made a few, with me working with you, a light bulb might go off and you'll be good to venture out into the map making world on you're own. That's how I learned. I've helped out lots of peeps in the past. Most recently, Blade. Give me a shout and we could use TeamViewer for example. I can walk you through the editor menu and show you how it's done. :thumbup
Hi Duke

We'll be using the native editor from within UT, if you have other than the copy of UT that's available through VM. If you have our copy of UT, the editor doesn't work too well because it's a modified version of UT99. If need be, I can install version 2.1 of the editor on your machine. I'd prefer to use TeamViewer to get into your machine. Once installed on both yours and my machine, you invoke it on your end and provide me with a six or seven digit, series of numbers, and also a pass code. Then you'll see me come into your machine and we can start working on a map for you. I'm currently also helping Venom with his map, along with me being a full time IT manager. But we'll get it done.
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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by =(V)=BloodyRabbit »

Be sure to delete and or hide your animal porn. Kev got tennis elbow last time.
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2017 9:16 am WTF I shot this twat-a-potamus and he didn't die!
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Wed Jun 28, 2017 8:01 am wtf lag is that!
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Thu Aug 17, 2017 8:31 am I cant believe i have to waste my time on this
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Wed Sep 27, 2017 4:44 pm During the Cold War, the U.S. considered airdropping enormous condoms labeled "Medium" on the Soviets
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Thu Oct 05, 2017 8:36 am A free picture of DEEZ NUTZ
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Thu Dec 14, 2017 4:12 pm bahaha this is great news
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Sun Feb 18, 2018 6:33 pm how about we mute the entire server then all you can do is play or rage quit.
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Mon Mar 11, 2019 11:02 am FML im old and chics don't check me out anymore
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 10:49 pm BloodyRabbit is the sexiest man alive!! (Rubs nipples)

Oh RJ, the things you say. This is worth the super long sig :laugh :vmrocks

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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by =(V)=Kevster »

=(V)=BloodyRabbit wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 1:40 pm Be sure to delete and or hide your animal porn. Kev got tennis elbow last time.
Shut up you! I'll get you! LOL :approvecool
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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by =(V)=BloodyRabbit »

Lmao
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2017 9:16 am WTF I shot this twat-a-potamus and he didn't die!
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Wed Jun 28, 2017 8:01 am wtf lag is that!
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Thu Aug 17, 2017 8:31 am I cant believe i have to waste my time on this
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Wed Sep 27, 2017 4:44 pm During the Cold War, the U.S. considered airdropping enormous condoms labeled "Medium" on the Soviets
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Thu Oct 05, 2017 8:36 am A free picture of DEEZ NUTZ
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Thu Dec 14, 2017 4:12 pm bahaha this is great news
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Sun Feb 18, 2018 6:33 pm how about we mute the entire server then all you can do is play or rage quit.
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Mon Mar 11, 2019 11:02 am FML im old and chics don't check me out anymore
=(V)=RocketJedi wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 10:49 pm BloodyRabbit is the sexiest man alive!! (Rubs nipples)

Oh RJ, the things you say. This is worth the super long sig :laugh :vmrocks

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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by Orion's***Belt »

Discord is the only way for me. sorry.
Where can I download v 2.1 of the editor?

Kev, I am sure it will be helpful if you post the editor 2.1 file for download here.

I went looking but don;t find any links. It's like a secret handshake club?
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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by Orion's***Belt »

Here's the Editor 2.1, thank you Nullity
http://ut-files.com/index.php?dir=UEdit ... 1Setup.exe
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Re: Map Zoning Explained In Plain English

Post by Abigor »

oh, didnt know you were looking for it here or i would have posted it lol. oh well, you got it either way
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