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How to make usable ladders for Unreal levels



We need a ladder to be able to scale the shack and get onto the roof.

You can either use a plane brush with a suitable texture for the ladder or make a ladder brush. I will do both methods just in case, and of course the all important part of this tutorial the invisible stair brush which you actually use to climb, the ladder is only for decoration.

ScreenShot1 - Shack

Create a plane brush to fit, I used a [32x128+8] plane

Then add the plane by using the add special brush button with these settings...
The special brush properties for the plane are...

Masking_Masked,
Effects_None,
Visiblity_2-sided,
Solidity_Non-solid.

Find a suitable texture, in the masked section of uttech2_NonDetGr8 that texture fits ok if scaled by 1.25 and pan to fit.

Looks ok so far...

ScreenShot2 - Make plane brush
ScreenShot3 - View plane brush

Now we can make the invisible stair brush.

Use a step width of 32, step height of 16 and a step length of 4, maybe 2 we can try that as well. Also note that making the step width wider will make it easyier to find and walk up but will act as a invisible block to players if running into the side, so builders choice there :).

ScreenShot4 - Create stair brush

Make the stair brush so that you can walk onto the roof, so the top stair must be 16 units or less from the top of the roof itself.

A nice fit...

I have placed the plane ladder brush 1 unit away from the roof and the stair brush 1 unit away from that.

Next the tricky bit, with the stair brush set up correctly use the add special brush.

The special brush properties for the stairs...

Masking_Regular,
Effects_Invisible,
Visiblity_1-sided,
Solidity_Semisolid.

Hit the add special button.

ScreenShot5 - Side view
ScreenShot6 - Create invisible stair brush

Rebuild your level and click the joystick the invisible brush will disappear..

Volia.

The stair brush is invisible but will physically be there, hence you can run up it...

ScreenShot7 - Volia

The problem with the plane brush being the ladder is that it looks naff from the side, so as long as the area where you intend the ladder to be has a fairly low poly count then we can make a real ladder even though you can't climb it, it will look much better.

I duplicated the stair brush and moved it to the other end of the building, made a five step simple ladder from cube brushes intersecting them into one ladder brush, adding the ladder brush so it sits behind the invisible stair brush.

Now you can see the difference from a side angle, much better, but a greater poly count.

I suppose I should test that the ladders actually work, I changed the level info within the test level and made the default game type Unreal1 single player, so I don't have to fight my way to the ladder :), yep both ladders work well..

I will try for a stair depth of 2 units this will give much more height without having to stand so far away from the actual ladder be it a plane non-solid brush or a semi-solid brush.

Build, build, build, test, test, test....

A width of 2 units worked but was rather harder to climb, I am not sure at all that bots will be able to cope :(, again trial & error testing will prove this smaller step depth.

Setting path nodes so bots can use these ladders can be tricky as well, you must place a object that they desire on the roof and place path nodes one at the base and one on the roof and some leading to a pickup of somekind, This part will also be require some trial an error testing to get it right.

Download the supplied level if you need a closer look at the completed ladders.

ScreenShot8 - Ladder comparison
ScreenShot9 - Long Ladder

Download the complete tutorial and test level

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