Playtest
Playtesting the map is opening the map in its current state from UnrealEd. It is useful to get an idea of scale, appearance, bot behaviour, etc. To playtest the map press the Play Level ("Joystick") button on the top Toolbar, press Ctrl-P or use Build → Play Level. It's probably a good idea to Rebuild the map first.
In UT200x
This saves the map in it's current state as Autoplay.ut2. At any time, you can reload and relaunch the map by using one of the Console Commands, "map autoplay".
Testing Botplay
For testing bots, see Testing Botplay.
In UT
This saves the map as Autosave.UNR, so you can't ALT-TAB back to UEd, make changes and reload. 
Even if you reload the map name at the console, UT has some cache mojo goin' on.
You can't reload a map in UT that you've save in UnrealEd. UT caches it. The only way to test updates this way (keeping UnrealEd and UT running simultaneously) is to save with a new filename each time.
Getting Rid of Bots
In the early stages of creating a map, playtesting largely involves checking the scale of what you've built, and seeing the map from the in-game perspective. You don't want bots around for this. There are several ways of getting rid of them:
- Run UT normally, and start any practice session with 0 bots. Exit the game. UT will remember this setting the next time you playtest from UnrealEd.
- In Level Properties, set LevelInfo → DefaultGameType to SinglePlayer?. Remember to change this later, whan you do want bots around.
Several UT console commands remove bots. Hit TAB and type one beforepressing Fire to play. You can bind one of these to a key (see Binding Keys).
killpawns killall bot
Getting Rid of the Countdown
See UT2003 InstantStart Mutator.
Troubleshooting
When I start my map to test it...
- I hear the player scream and I die immediately
- Most likely you haven't rebuilt the geometry after adding or removing one or more brushes.
- You could also check that your PlayerStart is not located too close to a wall or the floor (making the player spawn into world geometry).
- If you hear several screams of rage and agony followed by frenzy gunshots then it means that you are playing against bots and you have not enough PlayerStarts (causing telefrags). See above for how to get rid of them.
- The game crashes and there is a huge list with little arrows, what should I do?
This is both UnrealEd's and Unreal Tournament's standard reaction to a critical error in the program, this can be serveral things. Read the arrows carefully, especially the last thing in line. The problem could be one of several things:
- No PlayerStart was present – look for "PlayerStart" in the list.
- There was not enough memory – usually an error like "failed to create window." Reboot to fix this.
- More...
- UnrealEd shows the log then a dialog box says "couldn't spawn actor" or something
- The map starts properly, and says "Press Fire to Start", but pressing Fire has no effect
- Check your game speed settings. It could be too fast or too slow
- There is no sound when I playtest!!!
- Close UnrealEd before testing your map. Open it with the open mapname console command
Or go into the audio tab in the preferences and choose software bla bla bla. - The game freezes after about 5-10 seconds, the player keeps running in whatever direction they were when it froze, moving the mouse
- reveals flickering window buttons, taskbar items, etc.
- The only reliable way to prevent this is to not playtest from the editor, but open the map directly with UT (save it in the editor then run the saved file).
Related Topics
Discussion
SuperApe: It looks like this page should be updated for UT200x. I started to above.
