Video Tutorial - Thinking Inside the Box (and Fun with Buildings)

System

New video tutorial. I forget to mention that the cool interior map is calle forcas. It's a ship, but I mistakenly call it a station a few times, lol.

It's not a very technical tutorial, but I hope that it's useful.

http://starbaseugc.com/index.php/sto-ugc-tutorial/video-tutorial-thinking-inside-the-box-and-fun-with-buildings/

Archived Post

A very good tutorial pointing out that you don't have to always conform your mission to the map, that sometimes the map can be made to fit the mission.

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You can cover the unneeded areas by placing Building Block Platform 03 over them. It is not flat black as it shoud (We need flat black platforms), but it is close.
That can also be used for a “Fog of war” effect where you don’t see anything on the minimap, only your heading and the HUD stuff (enemy, friend, NPC contact, circles).

You need to raise it close to the maximum height of the map. If you raise it higher, it will not be used during minimap creation. For example on the map Chiron II you need to raise the platform to 40 units.

On my interior test map, I tiled the whole map with them, so you don't see any part of the environment even on the minimap.

My problems with this is that
- you can enter or leave the building ONLY when story allows you to do so. You can't do it freely, like with fully custom built buildings.
- your entire team is brought to the new map. No problem if you play alone, but can be weird if you have other players. Like you wander around in the forest then a loadscreen all of a sudden then you are inside a building.
- you have loadscreens, but that is a minor problem.

Archived Post

Pendra37 wrote: »

You can cover the unneeded areas by placing Building Block Platform 03 over them. It is not flat black as it shoud (We need flat black platforms), but it is close.
That can also be used for a “Fog of war” effect where you don’t see anything on the minimap, only your heading and the HUD stuff (enemy, friend, NPC contact, circles).

You need to raise it close to the maximum height of the map. If you raise it higher, it will not be used during minimap creation. For example on the map Chiron II you need to raise the platform to 40 units.

On my interior test map, I tiled the whole map with them, so you don't see any part of the environment even on the minimap.

My problems with this is that
- you can enter or leave the building ONLY when story allows you to do so. You can't do it freely, like with fully custom built buildings.
- your entire team is brought to the new map. No problem if you play alone, but can be weird if you have other players. Like you wander around in the forest then a loadscreen all of a sudden then you are inside a building.
- you have loadscreens, but that is a minor problem.

Really cool advice on the fog of war effect. By "maximum height," do you mean that it needs to be stuck in the ceiling, but not noticeable from the ground?