UnrealED to Torque convertor - ( Unreal Tournament Editor )

#1 Anthony,

Nobody at GarageGames was ever working on an Unreal to Torque converter (not that we wouldn't mind seeing one). Also, nobody has ever left GarageGames.

Jeff Tunnell GG

#2 Rumors are fun! :)

Hehe, anyway. UnrealED I always thought was a joke. Carving from one block? bleh, the carve tool is a joke in WorldCraft (very inefficient in creating brushes and polygons) and basing a level design on it is even worse...

Any skilled mapper who has used Quake or Half-Life engines would probably vomit trying to go to using Unreal. Ugh, subtraction based level editing? What kind of drug were they using when they came up with that one?

Brush subtraction can create horrible things in terms of performance. Extra brushes (blocks in level design terms) which means extra polygons. Occasionally, it'll end up breaking up the brush faces into awkward patterns creating even more polygons.

Maybe there's some info out there, but does anyone have a clue why they wanted to use such a crummy level system?

#3 @Anthony Potamitis there is no direct converter (i known), but there is one plugin for 3D Max, you can import UeD Brushes into Max. In Max you can export the map with the max2map Exporter.

#4 Thanks for the quick replies.

I have some maps made with UnrealED that I want to get put into the torque engine, which is why I ask for about the convertor :)

It was Matthew Fairfax that was working on trying to make the convertor. Just saw, hes an associate, not an employee, never quite sure what the difference is.

the thread was:
http://www.garagegames.com/index.php?sec=mg&mod=forums&page=result.thread&qt=1488
for anyone whos interested :)

Is Matthew still around with GG? I think he;s the guy I heard was leaving to do other work, not too sure, as I say, Ive been away too long.

Time to get back into WorldCRaft mode :)

Thanks again

Anthony

#5 Mathew has logged in a couple of times in the past month. He posted in his .plan that he was underging some personal problems, so he wouldn't be around.

As opposed to Matt's ever opinionated viewpoint, I think UnrealED is an awesome tool, and would welcome a converter or importer of some kind to allow it to be used with the Torque. Anybody up to the project?

Jeff Tunnell GG

#6 Hi,

Torque rocks, with more and more applications to allow work to be imported from other applications will increase the user potential and allow for more teams from other engines to feel comfortable in porting their work accross to Torque.

I have just 4months left of my service to run in the army, and when Im out, I cant imagine the progress and work that would have been created on this engine.
Even in the time I've been away since this site went up, people have been making some incredible work.

My only thought is, how good will the engine be at handling single player liniar story games.
But this is for a different post alltogether :-)

-Anthony

#7 Maybe a Ued exporter isnt the most ideal thing...maybe a Torque .DXF importer would be more usefull...that would cover both 3dsmax and Ued.

#8 Hm... What about the licensing agreements for these editors? Most are Non-commerical use, meant for making mods of the game they were created for.

I am sure Epic would be really excited if say Blizzard was "using" UnrealEd without a license... and no, being broke doesn't bend laws any more than ignorance does...

I was surprised to find out that Tribes2 used Worldcraft? Were special arrangements made or did the license change since I last had a look?

-Joshua

#9 Torque is compatible with certain data types that Worldcraft creates. Actually those data types go back to Quake. Being compatible with data that comes out of an editor is not a licensing infringement. Usually, as the user of an editor that you purchased, which would be the case here, you can freely use the data you created with the editor. I have not read the EULA that comes with Unreal, so I do not know if they attempt to restrict the use of the data created with UnRealEd.

It would be a tough licensing restriction to police.

Jeff Tunnell GG

#10 Yes... .map format: a collection of planes which define convex polyhedra which then have CSG operations applied to them *yawn* ... this is the method not the tool...

What I am talking about is the USE of a tool to create COMMERCIAL content...

I just installed Worldcraft 3.3 and saw that there really was no legal information. This is different then previous versions. Odd. Maybe they forgot to package up license.txt... or maybe there isn't one now... *shrug*

Example: Nihilistic licensed QERadiant for Vampire...

Another example: it is tempting to use the (really nice) quakeIII preprocess tools... why pay the $5k that the _quake_II_ tools cost for commercial usage when I can have quakeIII tools for free? I doubt they would sue me???

Or how about this, I want to use Torque's 3ds exporter.. so I just make a little tool that rearranges the binary it spits out... now I am just "using" the tool... voila!

-J

#11 Below is a snippet from the license for the new version of Worldcraft (version 3.4 which is now called Hammer) ...

You can use it for creating FREE levels for HALFLIFE and other VALVE software ONLY...

I believe this is EXACTLY the same license that any previous version of Worldcraft fall under...

This is why I found it odd that it was used on Tribes2. Also, how can it be promoted as an editing solution for Torque Engine based games?

-Joshua


VALVE, L.L.C.
VALVE HAMMER EDITOR LICENSE

This Valve Hammer Editor License (the "Agreement") is made by and between you (the "Licensee") and VALVE, L.L.C., a Washington limited liability company ("Valve"), with offices located at 520 Kirkland Way, #201, Kirkland, WA 98033.


1. License.

1.1 License Grant. Valve hereby grants Licensee a nonexclusive, royalty-free, terminable, worldwide, nontransferable license to:

(a) use VHE solely to develop New Levels for Half-Life and other compatible Valve products;

(b) reproduce and distribute New Levels, solely to licensed end users of Half-Life or other compatible Valve products, without charge; and

(c) reproduce and distribute exact copies of VHE without charge, in the same form and with all associated files that VHE is received by Licensee pursuant to this Agreement, provided that Licensee will: (1) distribute copies of VHE only in object code format; (2) only distribute copies of VHE with this Agreement included and subject to the receiving party agreeing to the terms of this Agreement; and (3) preserve in all copies of VHE all copyright and legal notices that are attached to the copy of VHE received by Licensee pursuant to this Agreement.

#12 Sooo.. we all switch to QuArK?

Not really joking.. the Hammer EULA really does prevent you from using it for Torque games. Another quote from the license:

"Whereas, Licensee wishes to use VHE to develop new levels running only on the computer game engine used in Half-Life and other compatible Valve products ("New Levels") for personal use and free distribution only to licensed end users of Half-Life or other compatible Valve products;"

Now, Valve hasn't complained before, AFAIK, but it does seem like they're about to "go corporate" with big business ideas like Steam, and it's that kind of corporate mindset that would suddenly decide it wants to collect from all these people using their editor outside of the license terms.

Of course maybe a quick call to someone in Valve could turn up a nice free licensing deal for us and GG, who knows?

#13 I'm gonna second Simon's motion for a clarification here. Don't want to go all Panic Room, but this is one of those things that we should know sooner than later.

mychal mcCabe
badlands games

#14 Switch to Quark.

Jeff Tunnell GG

#15 I have a nice little contact within Valve, I will fire off a email to him and see whats what.

#16 Hi,

Personally, I still think Torque needs an integrated UEd style Editor. Mesh, Interior, plus import/export, and more. We have enough people here that even an open source editor could be started.

David

#17 QuARK4Torque is an awesome tool

http://holodeck.st.usm.edu/vrcomputing/toolkit/map_editors/quark4torque/

#18 Hi Gary,

Quark is a nice tool, however, I still adhere to the fact that Torque should have its own editors, since that would allow us to integrate current and future features that are specific to this engine. Most times you either don't get access to all of the "properties" that engine objects support, or you have to kludge them in by silly poly/texture naming systems.

David

#19 Hi Gary,
your are right Quark is a nice tool, but nothing more. 90% of the Leveldesigner from our team came from the UeD corner and first of all they are bagging for a Torque Editor based on the GUI and Funktions of the UeD.

So i have to do this ;) and i'm just on it to make our own all in one TGE ED.

Goal of this Game ??
A Editor that's include
- 3D MeshEditor, Animator
- InteriorEditor (in the end with mapping directly on the Terrain)
- ActorBrowser
- ScriptEditor
- PathEditor
and some more.

If i come out of the foundations, i will post details to a planfile

#20 i agrea something like that would totaly kick ass ,but till then ,have to use what we got :)