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If you work with realistically proportioned environments, you may notice that your character feels unrealistically tall when walking around your game level. Despitewhat the “experts” say, it still feels like the camera is taller than the claimed 96 units (6 feet), and that’s because it’s true.

The standard 96 unit character height is based on the characters made for Unreal Tournament, which has it’s own standards of gameplay separate from thedefault UDK settings. Under UDK’s Game Type settings (View > World Properties > Game Type), the default value is set to “None”.

To set the player height to the desired 96 units, we need to set the Default Game Type value to UTGame instead. We’re not entirely done yet, though. Becausethis is the game type used for Unreal Tournament, our player now has access to all of the inventory and HUD (heads-up display) that comes with the game.

For many applications, we will not want any of this garbage cluttering our screen’s real estate. Luckily, we can use Kismet to hide it all.

1. Select the No Default Inventory For Player checkbox under the World Info settings. (View > World Properties > World Info)

Resetting Character HeightAPRIL 25, 2012

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2. Open Kismet, right click, and add a Player Spawned event node.

3. Right click again and add a Toggle Cinematic Mode node. This is where we control what the player can or cannot see in the HUD.

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4. Finally, right click and add a Player variable (New Variable > Player > Player).

5. Now we need to connect all of these nodes to make a working node network. To do this, connect the Out socket of the Player Spawned node to the Enablesocket of the Toggle Cinematic Mode node. Then, connect the Target socket of the same node to the Player Variable.

Now all we need to do is tweak some settings and we’ll be done! To start:

6. Select the Player Variable and deselect the All Players checkbox, found under the Properties tab.

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7. Select the Toggle Cinematic Mode node and deselect the Disable Movement, Disable Turning, and Disable Input checkboxes. This will allow our player tomove and turn as usual.

That’s it! The gun and HUD are now invisible! And, of course, our player is now the “default” 96 units tall. Try it out for yourself and see what else you can do withit!

There are times when you’ll find that the default speed of the UDK character is too fast or too slow for your game level. Luckily, Kismet gives us an easy solution tosolve this problem using the Console Command node.

1. In Kismet, right click and select New Event > Player > Player Spawned.

Customize Character Speed in KismetAPRIL 24, 2012

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2. Right click again and select New Action > Misc > Console Command. This will be where we add the code to control our player’s speed.

3. Connect the Player Spawned node’s Out socket to the Command Console node’s In socket.

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4. We now need to add a player variable to attach to the Console Command node. To do this, right click once more and select New Variable > Player > Player.

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5. Connect the Player variable to the Target socket of the Console Command node.

Now that our initial Kismet node network is set up, we can adjust some node settings to get the effect we want – in this case, to set a custom speed for ourcharacter.

6. Select the Console Command node and take a look at the Properties tab. Under Command, type “SetSpeed 0.2″. The number can be whatever number youwant it to be. 0.2 is a good walking speed, especially for realistically proportioned environments.

7. Now select the Player Variable, and under the Properties tab deselect the All Players checkbox.

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That’s it! If you play your level, your character will move at your custom speed. Feel free to play around with the settings to match your specific game level. Formore information, check out the Epic Games thread at http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/772578-How-do-you-change-the-walk-speed-of-your-character.

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