The year coming to an end.

The school year is coming to an end, and so is my obligation to write on this blog. I might continue posting on it from time to time, as I plan to keep studying after I finish this course.

It has been a great year and I have learned so much through it. I remember starting using Scratch, which was a great way of being introduced to games development, but unfortunately a very limited tool. 

1st Level of my Taco Vengeance Game

Scratch programming

Programming day.

Back to work on my level, I decided to do some more programming today, I set up the teleporter rooms, but haven't done any programming on them yet because I don't know how I am going to link them yet. I am thinking of asking the player questions which he'll answer by choosing one of the portals, and the wrong answer will lead him to a room with enemies.

One of the many portal rooms

UDK game update - Troubles continue

I am having a problem with my AI bots on the last floor. They spawn but don't move, they just stand still. I tried fixing that by adding a pylon, but it doesn't work because it can't find a ground position. I've been doing some testing with pylons and landscape, and found that if I have a pylon on a higher ground, one on lower ground, and connect their area with a staircase, the pylons will form a path on that staircase. 

Pylons creating path in staircase

Adding enemy AI

The focus of today was adding enemy AI to the game. First I started by adding a bot on the first floor that greets you warmly with plasma shots. I've also added a little Matinee sequence in there to show the player where to find a weapon.

After that I started adding AI to the last floor. The AI in there is spawning randomly and will go after the player. It should be the most difficult fight for the player, as the fog will be limiting the vision and there will be lots of enemies.

I successfully created the code for spawning randomly, but had problems with the AI not moving around. I still haven't figured out how to fix this, at the moment I am trying to copy and paste this level in a new file. I think the problem is in the navmesh, and hopefully creating the level again should solve it.

Enemy AI spawning at random places

Creating custom HUDs.

A new Image Processing assignment has come up, this time I will be designing my own custom HUD's for my 3D game. For this I will be using Adobe Flash and import the .fla file to UDK. The first step is to install the ScaleForm extension, there is a very good tutorial to do that in YouTube. It uses an older version of Flash but it doesn't make a difference to me.

3D game update - Pick ups

Today I started adding health, weapon and armor pick ups to my level, they're very easy to place, just select them from the actor class and drag and drop them into your level. I am not sure yet how many and where should I put the pick ups, I'll have to test them a lot to find the right places and amounts.

One thing that I want to change in the pick ups though, is the respawn rate, the pick ups automatically reappear after some time, I want to remove that from some of them, but i'm not quite sure of how to do that yet.

Health pick-up

3D Game update.

Today was a slow day, I spend most of it fixing the lighting on the 5th floor(sauna). The problem is that I had to keep rebuilding the game all the time, so it consumed a lot of my time. But I managed to get a nice result with a dim light and the fog.

I also created the teleporter in the basement. I'm only using it because I couldn't get a ladder working for some reason. The next step is going to be adding the teleporters in the teleporter room and then adding A.I.

Top teleporter

Bottom teleporter with trigger activating teleport code

Lights and fog on 5th floor

Back to level building

With my to do and wish lists done, it's easier to focus on what needs to be done. Today I was trying to figure out how to add a teleporter, turns out since i'm using a UDK game type, I can't add the teleporter present in the actor classes, since they only work in a UT game type.

But I also got some more done, I added the lighting to the 4th floor and a couple of soundtracks. The 4th floor is going to be the teleporter room, which is basically a puzzle, but I didn't want the player to just keep trying different teleporters until he got the right one, so I'm going to make a puzzle on that floor. Each room will have a question and the answers will be on top of the teleporters so he can choose the right ones to proceed.

Teleporter to basement

To do and wish list for my game

These two lists are things that need to be done so I get full marks, and what I ant to add to my game, red means no progress done and blue means that it's almost done.

·        Pre – Production:

o   Analyse Game structure and Produce Plans and logs for Edit
Status: Almost done – Game dev sheets

o   Utilise social Networking tools to document development of projects
Status: Done – Learner Record

o   Identify game progression challenges appropriate to the game.
Status:

o   Create game concept art
Status:  Done – Concept Board

o   Evidence of level mapping
Status: Almost done – sketch the remaining floors

·        Production:

o   Basic Level Structure
Status: Done

o   Correct use of static meshes
Status: Done

o   Physics and Particle systems
Status: Almost done – Improve placement

o   Create AI for enemies or friendlies

Status:

o   Realistic Lighting
Status: Almost done – check 4^th and 5^th floor

o   Sounds
Status:

o   Into/cut/end scene
Status: Almost Done – create end scene

·      Post- Production:

o  Game Q&A
Status:

o  Package
Status:

o   Game Design Report
Status:

Wish list:

• ·        Add door puzzle linking to water volume
• ·        Finish Teleport Room
• ·        Place more static meshes

Textures Assignment / UDK Game Update

During this and last week I had time to finish my textures assignment, which asked me to create 5 textures for my game. I've uploaded screenshots of the final textures in the level.

Applied texture

Animations

Today I learned how to create a cinematic. Nothing fancy or difficult, I just created a camera animation, showing the player where he has to go after solving one of the puzzles in the level.

I followed the tutorial on World of Level Design, I recommend you guys check it out, it's very good.

I only used for a simple camera movement so far, but you can create a lot of cool stuff with it. I plan to add more on my level, for the intro and end scenes.

Camera actor used in animation

Troubles.

Last week I was on midterm break and didn't do much work. But the little I did brought me to a dead end. For some reason I can't build the lighting in my level and I don't know why. I've been trying to find out what is causing the problem without success, specially because it's taking more or less 10 minutes to build the lighting in the level.

I think it is one of the static meshes I have imported recently, but I can't find which one yet. Other than that I still have a few things to adjust and after that I will be mostly doing programming.

Ground floor

Lighting and some programming.

Today's focus was setting up emissive lights and start programming. Since building the level after I added a emissive light to see how it looked would take too long, I opened a new map created a room and added the static mesh with the emissive light to check which values would be good for my level. This way I could simply copy the values and build my level once. Here's how the basement looks like with only emissive lights.

Lighting in Basement

Decals in UDK.

Creating decals in UDK is easy as pie. I created this Blood Spatter decal in less than 5 minutes. First off, you need a cool texture. You can find it on the internet or create your own.

Image sample

Fog and Wind

Fog and wind are added as class actors to your level. There are 5 types of fog and 2 types of wind. Let's start with the fog.

Fog diminishing visibility

3D Map Update

Ok, so I did some more work today on my map, I managed to add a nicely detailed basement, doors, pillars and my water lift. I have a lot of work to do with static meshes, but because I need to import a lot of them this is going to take some time. Here's what i got so far:

Ground floor

Basement

Importing Static Meshes in UDK

The level I am creating is going to be a hotel, and with the default UDK meshes it would be impossible to create a nice hotel, so I decided to import static meshes from the internet to use in my game.

Imported static mesh

3D Game update

I did some more detailing on my level today, adding detail and foliage. I was trying to fix the stairs, but unfortunately UDK crashed a few times on me, but i'll continue that tomorrow.

Skybox and foliage added

Final Concept Board

I made some more modifications to the final concept board stage and got much better results. The building blends in better, the bubbles colour is more lively and the text is easier to read.

Finished concept board

Starting the level.

First day on the production stage of the game. Today I laid out the terrain and added blocked the terrain.
Starting with the set up, using landscape mode I created 4 terrain blocks with 32x32 in size forming a square. Then created the lightmass and blocking volume each just a little bit bigger than the terrain.

Basic terrain