Monkey Maze

When you teleport into the maze, you are greeted by some dialogue. When the dialogue is over the AI is spawned and you have to beat the monkey to the end of the maze where the real panda is situated, if the monkey beats you then you are teleported back to the beginning of the maze and you must attempt to reach the other end of the maze again.

An attempt was made to try and make a halls of mirrors like maze for this section, however it was successful for the most part as I actually managed to get a reflection to occur but it would only work when the material was assignment to one side of the wall.

Instead I created what seemed to be a dynamic texture which essentially renders the whole scene around it and then applies it as an almost real time 3D render on the wall giving the illusion of more space as well as a moving texture.

When you reach end and move into the indicator in front of the panda you will be teleported back outside of the monkey where another piece of dialogue will greet you instructing you to make your way to the gate.

Platform Area

In the game there is no real need for the player to die, but there are still some obstacles that the player must face which can set them back. 

If you fall from the platform you will land in the water and you must swim to the ledge below where you entered the level. There is a ladder that you can use to climb back up to the top where you can attempt the platforms again.

A post processing affect has been added to the water to give it a blur when you swim under the surface.

Once you have completed the platforms and made it to the other end, you will instinctively go towards the panda. But it is a decoy which will teleport you to another area.  

Monkey Fun House

Once you have collected the colourful bear from the jumping jack ride, the indicator for that task will disappear and a piece of dialogue will appear giving you a clue to your next task and where to go.

This in tern activates the following area, the indicator will appear outside the monkey head and because you have collected both the brown bear and the colourful bear which should also be featured on your screen as images. You will be able to trigger the matinee which opens the mouth of the monkey head. 

When the matinee has completed you can jump into the mouth which houses a trigger which is linked to a teleporter. 

When you have passed through the teleporter you will trigger a short piece of dialogue and a small matinee sequence attached to an arrow. You then trigger the platforms to begin their matinee sequences. 

Next Task

You can only interact with the elements of the next task which is getting the colourful bear down from the ride which apparently broken once you have completed the target stand and collected the bear from that stand.

How this works is that all the triggers can only be activated through a compare bool and a toggle. Basically the game is asking whether you have picked up the first bear, if not then you can't activate the next task. You only know where the next task is or something you can interactive with through the placements of blue gradient indicators.

The indicators will appear and disappear depending on whether a task is completed or you have just interacted with something.

If you don't find the spanner and bring it back to the control panel, then the same piece of dialogue will continue to repeat.

When you have found the spanner which is hidden in one of the tea cups you can walk up to it and pick it up. This illusion is done by having a trigger linked to a toggle hidden which will hide the object when you reach the radius of the trigger. The trigger is also linked to a open gfx which will open an image onto the screen of a spanner.

When you approach the panel after collecting the spanner the image will be removed and a model of a spanner will appear on the control panel. A matinee sequence will be triggered which will give the impression that the ride is coming down and with the bear on it.

When the matinee is over the bear on the seat will be hidden and another one will be unhidden indicating that you can go pick it up. 

When you walk up to these bears a sound will be triggered to let you know that the bear has been picked up and an image of the bear will appear on the screen. Showing you which bears you have collected.

Target Stand

The target stand works by being triggered by the pick up of the weapon which sets the matinee for each target in motion. The weapon can only be picked up if you have gone through the first indicator and run through the first lot of dialogue. 

You must hit the 3 yellow targets with the image of the crocs on, if you hit and knock down the bear targets in green, the stand will reset however you only have to knock down the yellow targets you missed. 

When each target takes damage it triggers a sound as well as adding to the counter which monitors which target has been shot.

When all three yellow targets have been shot a compare bool recognises this and takes away the inventory, making it look like the rifle has been put down. A bear will appear which you can then pick up.

Once you have picked up the bear, more dialogue will be triggered which will give you clues to the next task.

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.