Vignette
A vignette in the Unreal Engine is essentially something that is shown to keep you busy while the engine does something. The prime example is the loading screens in UT2003.
A vignette is a very special type of actor because it is seemingly completely inert. One would have to wonder why it's even an actor, instead of just an object. Vignettes do not exist during gameplay, only in a transient state whenever the engine is busy.
Variables
There is only one variable declared in Vignette - a string for the MapName. This will be filled in for you by the engine, if there is a relevant map name to display on the Vignette.
Vignette Functions
Vignettes have two events: Init and DrawVignette. Init is called directly before the Vignettes first draw. DrawVignette is essentially the same thing as PostRender - use it to draw graphics to the screen. DrawVignette also takes as an argument a float which in theory should show the progress of the map being loaded, but it doesn't seem to work. In UT2003, it's always 100%.
Entry Point
Vignettes are created natively. The native code that their creation resides in is in the Engine class. Fortunately, however, you do not need to subclass Engine to use a vignette you have created. The loading vignette is specified in the LoadingClass variable in Engine, which is a string. It is a config variable, so you can add an entry to the Game ini file or your [mod ini file]? under the [Engine.GameEngine] section like this one:
LoadingClass=MyPackage.MyCustomVignette
