Unreal4 Level Design

So today I found a great tutorial on setting up a level inside Unreal4. It covers everything from level layout using BSP brushes, to replacing the BSP brushes with static meshes then lighting and texturing the scene etc etc.
You can find the tutorial here: http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/ue4/ue4-how-i-created-the-corridor-environment-in-10-hours.php

I really recommend it. He explains each step in a clear and understanding way and personally I love tutorials which do this. It helps me learn and understand what process I am undertaking.

Some screenshots so far:

Latest and greatest - 1/12/2015

So much has happened since I'v last posted. Been extremely busy, sorting out all the projects and assignments due in for Tafe, getting bugs fixed in my Corporate Combat game so it would be ready for the Perth Games Festival (it was ready in the end)

The Perth Games Festival was crazy busy this year, 2160 people showed up, compared to last year's 1600. Might need a bigger venue soon!
I showcased Corporate Combat this year and it was a huge success! Lots of people came past to play it, with some even returning to have another go. Big thanks to my friend who's laptop I borrowed for the day to run the game on, made the day a lot easier.
I should also mention sorry to my friend and classmate, Kirsten, who is part of the group who worked on Blunder Down Under. Sorry I couldn't show the game more than I did on the day, I hope you understand the reasons why on both our ends I guess. And that I'm working on the bugs now for Wednesday.

My kangaroo model has also been 3D printed! By the great guys and girls at X3d in Mt Lawley, super friendly and helpful, I'll be going back there in the future for sure!
I just finished painting the model ready for our end of year expo as well, I'm not much of a painter but I tried my best.

Currently finishing up my edit for my showreel, at 1am. Who needs sleep these days? I'll take the time tomorrow to check over it before saving out a final version to use on the expo night. I also have to dedicate some time tomorrow to fix some annoying bugs in our Blunder Down Under game, so it's ready to be shown off.

1/11/2015 - Kangaroo rigging

Having never done this type of model/character before + not being particularly great with character creation itself. I'v almost finished the rigging for a kangaroo, getting it ready to be animated for our game. I'm hoping it's okay, skinning is a tough one I still haven't fully got my head around

Blunder Down Under Framerate + batch call fix!

So yesterday we figured out what was causing some lag issues and the batch calls to spike repeatedly while playing the game. Turns out the Reflection probe on the sun manager and player(?) was set to real time. Not what you want when the game itself features a dynamic day night cycle.

Glad to know it wasn't my terrain, so I'v bumped the quality back up a bit on that.

Blunder Down Under kickstarter draft

For our final game: Blunder Down Under, one of the tasks we had to do was to set up a Kickstarter page. Here is our draft for that page.

Video

Introduce ourselves and what we want to achieve. Include shots of gameplay and concept art. Explain the core gameplay. Explain how much it will mean to us to have our Kickstarter funded.

Tagline

It’s time to channel your inner Steve Irwin! Crikey!

About the game

Blunder Down Under is an Australian survival game with mystery, desperation and a little humor added to the mix. The game takes place in the middle of the Australian Desert, well known for being a deadly place where very few organisms survive in, including humans.

This game provides great entertainment for everyone. Tackle dangerous drop bears, run with wild emus, fight boxing kangaroos and see if you can survive a desert situation long enough to get rescued. Get hooked with the games captivating art style, challenging game-play and hilarious notations that will surely have you chuckling in your seat.

You play as the main character, a middle aged man called Jacob Hudson, an Australian inventor who has a wife and kids at home in Darwin. He is flying over the Australian desert on a business trip to Adelaide when his plane crashes.

Have you got what it takes to survive a blunder down under?

Read more: *Include link to short story about the game*

What’s Unique?

Unlike most survival games, we want to take a fun spin on the usual ‘serious’ type survival games while still keeping it challenging. Also there is yet to be a survival game based in the Australian desert.

About us

G’day mate! We are a trio games developer team from Perth, Western Australia who has a passion for making and creating games. We have worked on small projects, some of which you can find on the Google Play store, but now we want to put our extraordinary talents, creativity and imagination to the test and create one big exciting project!

*Include a picture of us making/working on the game*

Why pledge us?

Backing our Kickstarter will help us tremendously! This will enable us to have all the materials, resources and expenses we need in order to produce an amazing and fun game. We are aiming to have the finish product on Steam.

We are dying to make this project a reality but we need your support!!!

Rewards

$5 – Cheers mate! You have our most heartfelt gratitude.

$15- Cor Blimey! You will receive a limited edition artwork and our most heartfelt gratitude.

$25- Awesome! You will receive a digital copy of the game and have our most heartfelt gratitude.

$40- What a ripper! You will receive a digital copy of the game plus 2 limited edition artworks and our most heartfelt gratitude.

$100- You beauty! You will receive a digital copy of the game, a jar of Vegemite to munch on while you play, 3 limited edition artworks, a personalized letter from the creators to show our thanks and our most heartfelt gratitude.

*Free shipping to any items

Our Stretch Goals

Our funding goal is the minimum amount we need in order to complete our game but we would love to make it even better! We want to make the best survival game possible and we are dying to expand with new exciting features and add-ons. But this can’t be possible without your extra help!

Our Kickstart goal $5,000: If we reach this amount we will have enough money to make our full game. What a ripper!

Over $6,000: Upgrades, polishing and retouching assets. Fair dinkum!

Over $7,000: Expanding the world with new and exciting areas, more badassery weapons and more deadly enemies. Bloody oath!

Over $20,000: Multiplayer and online servers. You beauty!

Risks and Challenges

This is our first Kickstarter so we didn’t want to ask for an outrageous amount of money. We are all committed to this idea and are eager to make this game regardless if we reach our goal or not but we all have jobs and other commitments that come first. The game industry is hard and is extremely difficult to making a living off of. The amount of money we get will determine how much time we can take time out our busy lives to work on it. We have already started development but the game is still in early alpha and won’t be finished a little while longer. Good games take time to make.

More Info

*Link to the facebook, twitter, website, blog*

*FAQs*

27/10/2015 Part 2

Last week I had work experience at a local Tv station called West TV. My job was to edit together videos for a week. I started off with Movie promos, a 30 second clip to advertise a movie that would be played later in the week on the station.
After a couple of days of that, one of the higher level editors gave me the job of editing a segment for a popular current affair show that would be aired at the end of the week.

27/08/2015

Wow, so I really need to get more into updating this blog

So much has happened!

Our Australian survival game is coming along nicely, I'v made some progress on modeling a Kangaroo, we have an inventory system, the UI is hooked up + working with the time of day system and new rocks have been added (enviromental stuff hasn't been our priority because we wanted to get gameplay elements working first)

I'v also started working on a mech game/prototype test for the new motion base that is being made for the arcade machines. So far I have a terrain and a mech with almost complete walking animations

Update: 13/08/2015

So it's been a while since my last post. Things have been super busy lately, as my lecturer Andy used to tell us "sometimes LGITW (life gets in the way)"

This semester we started work toward's an Australian survival game. Working in a team of 3 the aim is the create a survival game based in the Australian desert. While most survival games take a serious note, we aim to change that with our game by including Australian humour aspects such as including drop bears, jars of Vegemite and boxing kangaroos.

On top of work towards that game in the Rapid Prototyping class I'v started work towards a side-scrolling mobile game. The idea is the player escapes from a bank vault, and must make his way through the level, jumping over obstacles and dodging police. So far pleased with my progress.


You can see how it runs so far in this video below or you can view the direct link: HERE

New Terrain

The other day I decided to create another terrain inside World Machine to try out in Unity 5.1

I'm pretty pleased with the results I achieved from this. Was the first time I'v attempted a valley in World machine, the process was a lot easier than I originally thought. The way it was exported in World Machine I didn't really know how to extract a splat map that would save the textures that were currently being used on the terrain. So I re-painted the textures inside Unity using textures I found online

World Machine

Unity 5

Semester 1 Work

So the first Semester of Tafe is over, here are some screenshots of the things I'v been working on. My fighting game "Corporate Combat" was the main project I worked towards completing for the Supanova deadline and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out

This was the cow model unwrapped with a normal map applied to get the detail from the high poly mesh made in ZBrush

Here are some concept art for environment for the cow game and the top down shooter.

Some of the models used in the top down game

The top down shooter game in engine

Here are some models made towards the Corporate Combat game for the arcade machines

"Corporate Combat" A fighting game in the works.

Recently my lecturer had told our class that the arcade machines made by Tafe will be on display at this year's Supanova (Pop culture convention) And that he wanted some games to be put onto them. Last year our group got one game onto the machines and the response from people playing it was great. So this year I decided I would create a game for the machines for the opportunity for a lot of people to play my game.

The idea I had was simple. A 'Mortal Kombat' style fighting game set in a office with a manager vs employee style scenario. I would have basic move sets which were: Punch, Kick and Block. And the player would be able to move left to right along the scene.

Reference Image:

My initial plan was to use the kinect sensor from the xbox 360 to record motion capture data of people performing these moves, but I decided against it after messing around with the software for a bit. There was too large of a chance the data would have weird movements added in. Although it wasn't the first option I wanted to do, I ended up purchasing some really nice fighting animations off the Unity Asset Store. So basically Now my animations were there, I just had to set it up inside a scene to work with controls.

At the start I began using code to control the players. I then decided to go for using PlayMaker as it was easier to set up the collisions that way between the two players so it could detect who hit who and whether to react or not. I had some great help from Fred during this process. Sometimes handling collisions can be confusing!

Next step was to start creating some assets for the office environment:

After those were modeled I then created a scene inside unity, adding some lights (WIP) and started to organise the layout of the level

Now all I need to do is add:

Sounds and music
Player models
Textures
Loading Screen
Start Screen
Ending Screen/scene