Wiki Roadmap

Unreal Wiki Roadmap

Coding

UnrealScript - The granddaddy page of all pages. This page should become your home page in your browser. It covers almost everything you want to know about UnrealScript and then some - but all through links to other pages.
New Features In UT2003 - This page covers the largest changes from Unreal Tournament to Unreal Tournament 2003. The list of topics include Key Differences, New Terminology, New Tools, Mapping, Modelling, and a short discourse on the Particle Engine.
New UnrealScript In UT2003 - This page is a quick single glance view at changes made to the UnrealScript language for UT2003. This page is great if you're an experienced Unreal or Unreal Tournament coder and looking to quickly get up to speed on additions to the language in build 2107+.
Class Tree - This should be your first stop when you begin coding. Grab the latest source download and use it instead of the commonly suggested UnrealEd exported classes. The source code available here is more complete and comes straight from Epic. In particular a great deal of defaultproperties are missing from the source that is exported from UnrealEd.
Unreal Coding FAQ - This page should be a great deal longer than it actually is but it seems more people use forums and the like to ask their questions. You can't blame them, of course, as forums have a much higher response time than the Wiki. In any case this page remains a worthwhile resource. (But it would be a good idea to trawl through forums for things to add to this page – and also to encourage n00bs to write what they learn from their questions)
UT2003 Engine Overview - A plain English guide to Unreal Tournament 2003 and the objects within.
PlayerController - A well written introduction to how pawns, players, and controllers all work together to allow UT2K3 to be played and manipulated.
Interaction - Interactions allow for the programmer to intercept or interact with various pre and post render calls, inputs, and messages.

Mapping

Red Builder Brush - A discussion of the "RBB", or "red builder brush." The RBB is your greatest foe and your greatest friend when it comes to mapping using UnrealEd. Understanding it and how it works is absolutely crucial to being successful.
Subtraction and Addition - The heart of mapping. This page gives you a very basic introduction and tutorial on how to create a map in UT2003. It also includes a link to a very useful page with a ton of screenshots showing you exactly where everything is located.
Mouse Control - If you're new to UnrealEd PRINT THIS PAGE RIGHT NOW. It gives you the strange, obtuse keyboard shortcuts that every tutorial out there assumes you know already. CTRL-LClick, ALT-RClick, BAH! This page is crucial to a beginner making headway into UnrealEd.
Mapping Lessons - This page sounds like a great place to start but for me it wasn't. The information is presented in a non linear fashion making it extremely difficult to follow from topic to topic. One of the greatest problems with the Wiki is that it's not meant to be linear - but you must learn the foundation before you can progress. Once you've learned a few terms and learned to use your mouse (again, see Mouse Control) come back to this page.
Unreal Mapping FAQ - A bit of a lie in my opinion. This seems to be more of a general UnrealEd FAQ than anything else. If you're an intermediate mapper you may find the answers to some of your problems here.
UnrealEd Tips - This page lives up to it's name. This is a listing of things and how to do them. "Viewing actors", "Autosave", "Skyboxes", etc. A quick skim of this page so that you become familiar with it and what's available on it is recommended to all mappers of all skill levels.
Beginners Guide To Mapping - A short tutorial which walks you through creating a room.
Mapping Checklist - Crucial list of items to be checked before release. This page is a great example of the common sense type of information Wiki can provide that most folks simply don't think about.
Architecture - A badly named page which covers the specifics of creating items inside of UT and UT2K3. This page covers the creation of terrain, BSP, and static mesh objects inside a map. BSP items are the type of stuff carved from your map; static meshes are models you create from within another program and use multiple times in your map. This page includes links on how to create pools of water and other fluids, how to create windows and mirrors, and other extremely useful tips and tricks like that.

Modelling

Topics On Modeling Overview - Provides an explanation of the different modelling types, has a list for several different modelling/rendering/converting applications, and is a central node for modelling related articles, tutorials, and wiki trails.
Lightwave Provides and overview of lightwave; what it is, what it can be used for and tutorials.

General

Terminology - A to Z listing of terms used specific to UT/UT2003 that may confuse you and an explanation of each. Where appropriate links to Wiki pages have been provided. During your work with UT2003 you may want to keep this page open and bounce between pages as necessary to understand what folks are trying to tell you.
Category Tutorial - A little known function of the Wiki is the automatic categorization of pages. At the bottom of each page you can place the word "Category XXX" and the page will join the appropriate category. Category Tutorial will take you to a page that gives you a brief explanation of how this works, and instructions on how to find all pages marked as Category Tutorial. This is a great way to see the various tutorials that abound on the Wiki.
Music - A topic lost on many. Music greatly adds to the ambience of a level and it's ability to draw a person in. This topic covers how to import and work with music in Unreal Tournament, Unreal Tournament 2K3, and other Unreal engines. It's a definate visit in my mind.

Improving the Wiki

Trystan: When I get home from work I shall take action on the items below.

New UnrealEd Interface In UT2003 - This page is very sparse and could probably be refactored into other pages and deleted.
- Agreed – tarquin
Unreal Mapping FAQ - The title is a bit off. I don't see why there should be a "Beginner", "Intermediate", and "Advanced" type of FAQ. Why not just make it the "UnrealEd FAQ" and combine it all?
- I think we mean "beginner" as a polite word for "noob". Not sure it's a good idea to rename as it's linked from other sites
Mapping Tips - This page should be combined with the UnrealEd FAQ. (Note the lack of a skill level indicator in the title.)
UnrealEd Tips - You don't map unless you're using UnrealEd. Can Mapping and UnrealEd tips be combined into one single page?
- I'm iffy about all the "tip" pages. everything could be called a tip. anyone who feels like hacking away at these is welcome to try
Class Tree - Needs to be renamed. The unedited/unexported source is available here, but there's only a link to the Actor hierarchy.
- it's a link page to all class trees – UT / UT2003, eventually U2.

What do we do with this page? Keep, integrate into the rest of the site or lose it? Or use it as a basis for the new topic pages (see Big Cleanup for the idea)

ZxAnPhOrIaN: Maybe put this on the sidebar.

Mychaeel: Most definitely not – on several levels.

I say "lose it." Pages like this one are for temporary use only anyway; they serve as a tool to sort one's thoughts, but actually aren't even made for a wide audience to read.

Having a page listing topics that "should be covered" is nice, but the past shows that it doesn't automatically lead to those topics actually being addressed. Better than adding ten items on a list of "topics that should be addressed" is creating even just one page that really does cover one of those topics.

Occasionally I think that such pages pop up because it is much easier to talk about a problem than to solve it. (I'm not immune against that myself.)

ZxAnPhOrIaN: true, most of these pages are on the x Topics pages anyway.

Tarquin: What are we going to do with this page?

MythOpus: Well what do YOU want to do with it Tarquin? Your our fearless leader ! :cheesy:

Tarquin: ROTFL!!!! I try to gently prod rather than lead! Well, I think our "lessons" pages and New Contributors Quick Start already cover this. So I am going to suggest Delete me (which Mych already said above). But people might want to save some of the text before I remove the page

RDGDanClark: Here's something to consider... why not take the text descriptions of some of those links up there and put them into tooltip form for the links on the sidebar? If you notice, a lot of the links above (Class Tree, Mapping Topics, etc.) are already on the sidebar. If the idea of this page was to put a nice little description there for each link, the same effect can be achived with a tooltip. Also along those lines, and I'm not sure this will work, but is it possible to assign a tooltip per link sitewide? Like whenever you generate a link to UnrealScript anywhere on the site, a tooltip that says "This is an index of pages related to UnrealScript" or something like that is assigned to it.

GRAF1K: Okay then, tarquin. You'll be our fearless prodder. Just doesn't have the same ring to it though... ;-) Okay, our fearless prodder: I was thinking that Newbie ought to go along with this page. It really serves no purpose. I think it was just a joke when it was created. Alternately, Newbie could be folded into tarquin (for reasons of heavy duplication). ;-)

MythOpus: LMAO ! I'm with Dan's idea and nice GRAF1K :cheesy:

Tarquin: Sidebar tooltips would increase the download size of every single page How about we put some of this stuff on Home Page? Or if that page is already too big, we could make an annotated contents page. That's what this page was trying to be, it just has a lousy title.