Assault Mapping Tutorial

Introduction

This tutorial is intended to cover everything one needs to know to successfully build a map (and a good map) for the Assault gametype in UT2004. It does, however, assume you have a fair amount of prior knowledge about map building in general and how to do most basic map-building tasks. If you're just starting out you may want to read some of the other more basic tutorials on map building before tackling this one.

In the interest of brevity, this tutorial makes heavy use of links to smaller mini-tutorial pages for basic tasks, (such as how to Add an Actor, and so on). If you find that despite being familiar with most of the basics there is still a procedure mentioned here which you don't know how to do, simply click on the link to be taken to a page with more detailed information on how to accomplish that sort of task.

The Tutorial

With all that having been said, let's get on to the good stuff. This tutorial is organized in a series of sections which cover different aspects of building an Assault map, starting at the beginning and leading naturally from one to the next. It is strongly recommended that you read this tutorial through from beginning to end at least once. The sections are as follows:

/Getting Started: Understanding what it means to make an Assault map, and planning and building the basic map from which all else follows.
/Creating a Destroyable Objective: How to build a first objective, and then how to blow it up.
/PlayerStarts and the PlayerSpawnManager: The basics of handling spawn points for Assault maps.
/Attacking and Defending: Bot pathing and other things you need to know about how objectives affect gameplay.
/Continuing the Assault: Creating a second type of objective, handling map progression, and what to do when it's all over.
/Other Objectives: Some ins and outs of other types of objectives you can add to your map.
/Adding vehicles and Turrets: Vehicle spawns, defending camps, and related issues.

Finishing and Polishing your map.

/WrapUp: A few last notes and thoughts now that you're a real Assault mapper.

Other Resources

Tutorial Map Files

http://www.foogod.com/AS-Tutorial/AS-Tutorial1.zip: The basic map of "Tutorial Valley", on which this tutorial is based.
http://www.foogod.com/AS-Tutorial/AS-Tutorial2.zip: Tutorial Valley with a first objective (including everything up through "Attacking and Defending")
http://www.foogod.com/AS-Tutorial/AS-Tutorial3.zip: AS-Tutorial3 with the insides of the base built (as described in the beginning of "Continuing the Assault")
http://www.foogod.com/AS-Tutorial/AS-Tutorial4.zip: Tutorial Valley with a second objective, progressing spawns, and round ending (including everything up through the end of "Continuing the Assault")

Notes

This tutorial was originally written and contributed to the Wiki community by Foogod. Questions and comments are welcome! Please either leave them on my personal page or at the bottom of the relevant tutorial page. If you see something which is wrong or unclear and you think needs some correction, please feel free to edit the text directly (that's what the Wiki is for!), but please try to keep the tutorial flow intact (no thread discussions in the middle of the tutorial text, please).

Discussion

Note: To reduce clutter, comments on the tutorial pages will be periodically moved to the /Discussion page. Look there for older comments and thread discussions.

Anon: Pleeeaaasseee add the last parts to the tutorials... like now please, thanks. The tutorial was already very good and helped me alot , so now i'm desperate for the final lessons.