So you want to create some Single Player, but you think spending hours and hours of level design for a simple linear sometimes-multi-path map is way too much effort for barely anything? Welcome in the club. Here I will teach you how to do a very nonlinear level with GoWED. That is, how it works, if you never used the editor before then you should learn the basics first.
Keep in mind that the editor for GoW is indeed going to crash. It crashes on you when you close matinee, when you open a package, when you finish play testing , when you finished a light build, and so on. You'll want to save your map a lot of time, try to save before doing something you think will crash that beta-ish tool. And seriously make sure that you have autosaves enabled.
Note: This tutorial isn't 100% completed. The 100% phase includes
- An example level
- Reinforcements
- Endding explained
- Blue Flashing lines
The AI Factory
Delays
Random Switch
Here, Boomer.. Hello?
Play as any COG characters
The easy Cover System
Player Blocking
Last things
Inspiration
The AI will spawn from a " AI factory" inside Kismet. By default, the AI will spawn and take cover on some of the nearest cover nodes. So it goes like this. You have a Kismet Event called "Level startup/Beginning". This means, it can trigger something as the level starts. In this case it will be our "AI factory". There's like 40000 different ways to trigger anything like a AI factory you'll find.
NOTE: By the way, AVLD has a nice tut for Kismet if you want to go deeper in it. But seriously, this is just in case you want to learn more.
Open Kismet (The green K at the top toolbar) At any moment, right click on the blank space to open a menu of everything you can add. Actions, Conditions, Events, Variables, ETC.
Find Level startup in New Event -> Level Startup
Find AI Factory in New Action -> AI -> AI Factory
Right now, if we'd go and link "Level Startup" to "AI Factory" spawn, we'd get it working as the level start. But that's the basic to get it working. now that you see how it is simple to activate a "AI Factory" I will teach you about the spawning points. I use pathnodes to spawn locusts from them.
You see, there is 2 ways of getting this to work. There's the "Silly" way, and the "Smart" way. Yeah, that's the way I see things. I will only show the Smart way because you'll find it more organized and simple. Right below the "AI Factory" there's a "Spawn Points" connector, In case you didn't knew, Purple connectors are looking for Variables. Each actors can be a variable AFAIK. For example, a pathnode you just put inside you level.
To add a pathnode you desire inside Kismet as a variable, add a pathnode in your level, keep it selected, right click on Kismet's blank space and New Object Var using... From there you can now link the pathnode right to your "AI Factory" and the locust will spawn on that node. NOTE: I always like to differ my spawn pathnodes, to do so, I scale them with the scale settings at the bottom-right corner of GoWED. That way you can't miss them and find them easily.
You can link as many pathnode as you desire to a "Spawn Point" connector. A easy way to find yourself back again when it's time to link spawn points again is to place your pathnode variables as they are placed in the map - as if you were looking at a minimap. To create a comment box like shown in the picture below, right click on blank and New Comment (Wrap).
Now, we have it connected, and the Locusts will spawn. Note that you can connect "All Dead" to "Spawn". Which speak for itself - the locust will spawn endlessly every time the whole factory is cleared out. That's how Kismet work. With logic. Let's now take a look at the "AI Factory" settings.
The green highlights are the settings I always mess with. The others I don't find any purpose with. DO NOT UN-CHECK THE RED HIGHLIGHTS IF YOU'RE PLANNING ON MAKING A ENDURANCE LEVEL.
AI Type: Have a list of every Locust/COG/Stranded used from the game.
Spawn Total: The total of locust to spawn using the AItype.
Max Alive: The number of AIs to spawn according to the Spawn total settings. If you set 3 on both, 3 locust will spawn at once.
WeaponLoadOut: The inventory list of weapons a locust can have. Some weapons won't work with certain AItype. EX: Boomer+Lancer=No.
bClearDefaultInventory: Really handy if you want to make sure a Theron Guard don't spawn with a Torque bow.
bAllowInventoryDrops: Yet another really handy option. I always turn that off when it comes to wretches.
All connectors can have a custom delay attached to them. To do this at anytime, right click on a connector when there's a link attached to it, and Set Activate Delay. Here for example, I have a "Level Startup" but I want the locust to spawn after 6 seconds each wave. In that case right here I'd go set a delay on the "Spawn" connector of my "AI Factory".
Yes. Now it's time to add a "Random Switch". New Action -> Switch -> Random
With that, you can link as many AI Factory as you want by modifying the number of 'out' connectors. I will now make 2 other "AI Factory" and link the "Random Switch" to them. Once finished, I will link the "All Dead" connectors to "Random Switch" 'in' and put a delay of 6 seconds, exactly like below.
As in the picture above, the "Random Switch" will randomly pick for one of those "AI Factory" and repeat the cycle endlessly.
We start to get something interesting.
Have you gotten issues with the boomer not moving, or any AIs? Even if you didn't yet, make sure that your paths aren't green (press "P" when paths are build), put your path nodes in the middle of the corridor to leave enough room for those AIs, otherwise they might just stay there, which happened a lot of times to me, until I found out. I recommend you try to keep the ceilling over 256 UU's high minimum.
All explained for you here, with download.
The Level Design part.
Cover System
AI pathing and things like that. It's so easy to make the AI navigate you'll see. First, you don't need to go out there in the generic browser and look for a Cover actor. Hold down the "," key, and click somewhere on the ground near where you want your cover to be applied.
The green node's the "Master", and each red block is what you will use to make cover possible for you and the AI's. Note that a "Master" cover is needed to be created for each angle. For example, if you have a crate and want each face to have cover available, you will create 4 Master.
Now on to make it work quickly.
Select your cover node, it should have a single red block, move it to a surface where you want cover (Note that you can see a arrow indicating the direction that the red block will snap on) then do a middle mouse click. That should snap it on, also giving you a clue on the available moves the character can do while on that cover. Like if the character can blind fire from there or , if the player can go right in ( The 90° arrow on the ground) Hold down the ALT key while dragging a red block will work great, very especially from the top viewport. Just make sure your blocks don't get messed up when duplicating, try to keep order as much as possible to avoid issues.
Once you build paths, you'll notice swat turns and jump overs getting connected. At anytime, press "C" to visually turn on/off the collision on meshes. This should help align when creating your cover.
To make this whole endurance experience interesting, you'll have to think about something on the lines of, "there's place where the AI's spawn, but I can't go there." It doesn't mean you'll have to create places where the locust drop down from a tall wall, there's a way to create walls that will block the players and AI's, but technically it only happens when the player is about to reach that "restricted area". You just have to put objects that makes the player believe he don't belong there (Or a blue flashing line that pop up is what I do)
Players are going to exploit and do everything imaginatively possible, you'll need to do a little last hard effort to your endurance level. Since Epic Games didn't include any "Player blocking volume" in the game, you will have to create a trigger that will activate a dynamic blocking volume. Yep. Here's how you do it:
Get your builder brush and set the grid to "8" (for now). Make sure the grid is enabled. Then make a 8 Unit thin "Dynamic blocking Volume" that will cover up the entire corridor where the AI spawns. Once finished, keep the same builder brush, and move it EXACTLY 1 time directly toward the gameplay area on the "8" grid. Then create a "Trigger Volume". That said, the "Trigger Volume" is the first thing the player will touch, before reaching the "Dynamic blocking Volume"
Select that "Trigger Volume" you just created, and go inside Kismet, right click on the blank space and New Even Using TriggerVolume_# -> Touch. Then select your "Dynamic blocking Volume" return to Kismet again, and create a variable with that with a right click and New Object Var Using Dynamic... Now right click and New Actions -> Toggle -> Toggle. Get the player variable under New Variable -> Object -> Player. Once you have everything, link things like in the picture below.
Then make sure you have the following properties in every "Trigger Volume_# Touch"
The "level startup" node is needed, and important to turn off the "Dynamic blocking Volume" in every "Toggle" nodes you made for this procedure. The locusts will go trough that blocking volume unless you're triggering it. But you'll get crushed anyway if you stand there, and with a 8 units tall blocking volume it is not an issue with wretches.
NOTE: This isn't probably the only way to do this, but that's how I do things, and it does work well.
One fact, and an important one, is to try to make the level like a gameplay circle - there's no spot where the player can hide in a corner without getting flaked by a locust, and kill everything. AKA there's no perfect spot. Make a lot of locust entry, at least 5-6, depending on the scale of your level.
IMPORTANT: YOU SHOULDN'T ADD COVER LINKS INSIDE NON-PLAYER AREAS, SINCE THE LOCUST WILL WANT CAMP OUT OF THE PLAYER'S FIELD. USE PATHNODES TO DIRECT THEM RIGHT IN THE ACTION.
I say nothing comes without inspiration. I had this idea for a while but I never though it would be this easy to create, when I saw one of these endurance levels from the community. I opened it from the editor, and learned this up all by myself.
I say this because you should try it. Here, you can use every kismet you want in my levels, or simply take a look to sort some things out. As long as you credit me somewhere in the readme or thread. I am proud to see people show interests in level design for Gears of War, and hope that this community could grow larger.
Thanks for reading.