Deadline week

Now this week was a busy week for me as I have had multiple deadlines this week however some of the assignments have been pushed back which did give me some space to look into some areas of the game that I was mean't look into again in my spare time. 

I thought I would go back to looking into the HUD for the game after I saw Ryan working on the design. However I am still insure which action script to go with, now I have been informed on different occasions that one is better than the other, but I did get the Menu to work perfectly in a short space of time with action script 2, but when I tried action script 3 for the HUD nothing. Sadly I didn't have much luck second time around however this will not deter me. 

3 weeks of Christmas holiday looms so there should be enough time for me to look at it in a more relaxed atmosphere instead of the hectic deadline week. My goal is to have looked into the different areas before we return ready to put the game together so that there are no suprises and that the production can run as smoothly as possible, as the sessions will be dedicated to the game project.

Merry Christmas, see you next year!

Flashy

Because my Technology Project also involves using UDK, I've been messing around with SWF's and GFx movies to try and get videos to play on trigger however when I actually get them to play I haven't been able to make them stop they literally just keep playing, I was testing this out using my loading screen swf for the menu that I had created.

Even though I had no success I did find it useful as I found it interesting that even though one of my swf files which I had from my first year assignment didn't use scale form which you would use to create a menu, the file still ran within UDK, mind you it was a little out of shape but its main function still worked. Which makes me feel like there is some room for experimentation with flash and UDK to be had.

However I do know how to make video clips become texture movies, they're quick and easy to do and easy to import and apply, but they're only downfall is that once they are placed they are just on a continuous loop and I have yet to look into whether they can be triggered or hidden. But as far as my knowledge goes with materials and kismet within UDK I'm not sure whether this can be achieved.

Artificial Burn

Because I haven't had much luck with AI in the past, it seemed necessary to look into AI within UDK and see if I can improve on my previous attempts as my last project that involved AI, they went from being aggressive and actually attacking you, to passive and running away from you, not only did they run away from you but they actually started jumping into the fire pits. 

Now that could be because the environment I had created was a bit tight and the path nodes I had put in place weren't effective enough. Now because this map is going to be quite cramped with carnival rides and stalls, I'm'm going to need to create an effective nav mesh for the AI to move around in. However due to other assignments I have only been able to look into this area and not properly explore it in the engine.

Setting up the basics

I didn't do a great deal this week, mainly just setting up the class files ready to import characters into the game and have it so that the game can be played in third person and that we can also select a custom game mode within UDK. These are things that I learnt in the previous years on the course so putting them into place wasn't difficult, now they're ready for when the team has made the characters.

What I need to do next is to set up the classes for the different weapons that we will be having. For the weapons I need to look into things like particle effects and potentially custom projectiles for the weapons. Because I haven't received a level design or a detailed one, I haven't been able to do much in UDK in terms of level creation, instead I'm looking into the different areas of the criteria each week.

So It Begins

I am Ross Fielding the UDK Engineer for the group game assignment. As of yet we do not have a team name or game name yet so for now I am going to refer to us as D9.

I was involved in the initial discussions about what we wanted to do, we had a list of themes that were given to us which we ended up choosing Goose Fair. Many ideas were thrown about in terms of game ideas, at this time the game GTA5 had just come out and some of us were feeling that open world/sandbox theme. But as the UDK Engineer I have to take into consideration what can be possible in terms of time and my own skill level with the engine.

It ended up being one of many ideas thrown about, people didn't want to just re-skin the unreal engine and pretend it was a game, some people wanted depth. As a result of much talking I opted out of the discussions stages of the game design as I felt too much was getting talked about but nothing was being finalised with the amount of views and different directions people wanted to go in.

What I then focused on whilst the game design was being discussed was creating a Menu, Loading Screen and HUD for the game. This was something I felt could be done whilst the design stages were still going on in order to get it out of the way, so it was being rushed towards the end.

I succeeded in creating the Menu and the Loading Screen, however I am still struggling to get the HUD done as I am not sure which would be more effective, action script 3 or 2. The Menu and Loading Screen now load into the game level when you run it through frontend, but the unreal engine sprite still appears just before the game is fully loaded, this is something I will look into later down the line. Along with the option to start and exit the game in the menu, you also have the option of changing between three resolutions. I don't know whether it has anything to do with my computer but their is a fault with the menu at the moment, where if you click on multiple buttons on the menu, launcher crashes.

The game design has been agreed upon and people are focusing on their areas, at the moment I don't have anything to put into the engine, so my focus at the moment is computer AI as at the moment that is my weak point.