Gameplay / UI - Kismet Node Creation and Integration Weeks

This post will be the last one that I made in the blog and contains the activities in which I took part during the last two weeks.

Mert and I worked on the creation of some Kismet nodes that he needed in order to work with some arrays for the AI of the bots. I created 3 different version of the nodes in around the three days that we spend working on it. At the end we were not able to integrate the results into Mert's Kismet scripts, but we did try our best!

Next, integration started. I had several problems with it, especially with Mert's AI. Also I did Karthik's sound integration, managing to create the needed 3 classes in order to do it. At the end, most of the time went into bug fixing with Mert and at the end, we managed to fix most of them, leaving just some minor ones in the game.

Tough decisions had to be made at the ending, like having not to include the ant that Craig sent us, since we had some problems with the animations at the end. The Queen is included in the game, but still it does not behave in the expected way. I think with a little bit more time, we would have been able to fix most of this errors, but a deadline had to be met!

The video below shows some of my features during the integration progress in one of the last builds of the level. Also a picture of the final version of the main menu is attached, since UDK would refuse at the end to update it, ant the game was compiled with the previous one.

The game was finally submitted yesterday with most of my features included.

WEEK 17 - Level Designing

MAY 15 - MAY 21

Removed all the bugs and made testing over and over again to make changes. Yet again, Tyler helped me by just playing(how weird).

Now looking at the intelligent members of my groups, in cooking the game.

Gameplay / UI Weekly Update - Food Pile HUD

This week I finally got the food pile HUD working. You can spawn bots, heal yourself or the queen. The amount of food will be discounted from the colony reserve. The HUD shows in screen once you activate the trigger in the food pile (with the e key) and show on top of the screen, with the alpha channel set to 60%, so it has transparency. The control is removed from the pawn and now controls the cursor in the HUD and by pressing the "Exit" button, the HUD disappears and the control is returned to the pawn.

The normal HUD used to disappear when the food pile HUD was displayed, but once I got the team feedback, it was decided to keep the two at the same time. That's why the "Food Reserve" field in the food pile HUD has been deactivated (It shows "000").

The only thing remaining in to the integration of all this features with the other ones. I'll keep updated on this. Here's a picture of the food pile HUD, since fraps is crashing and doesn't let me capture the video.

Sound log 7

Sound triggers

It is quite interesting to have a sound triggers in the level but its is more interesting when player has a dynamic environment throughout the game. Since we have the gameplay as deathmatch the importance of triggers are ruled out a little.

We have decided to have a couple of triggers for learning purpose. One in the queen lair and the other at the center of the terrain.

The World Thus Far

Sorry for not posting in forever. Always trying to get one more feature in to show off and I end up never updating. Just like real developers.

Well, we now have a beautiful looking world for the outdoor portion of the level. Lots of green grass walls break up the playing field into more managable paths for the player to choose from. It starts to look a little more like what you'd expect and ant to see.

That grass be tall!



You may also notice that I managed to switch the crosshair to be a new one that I made in Photoshop. The bite weapon also has a new crosshair.

This is the view as you walk out of one of the colony exits.



All throughout the field, there are many smaller trenches for you to duck into for extra cover. Or brave staying up top for a faster trip to the enemy's lair.

Go under that suspicious looking bridge, or just run for it?

Off on the sides, you can get really walled off from the middle portion, allowing you to focus on what's in front of you.

There could be an enemy ahead, but we can't tell because this stupid rock is in our way.

And finally, in the very middle is an open brawling area. It has two hills on either side for you to charge over and into the brawl, but that leaves you exposed. The other option is to sneak through the thick grass surrounding that area. You'll be better covered, but you'll have a harder time seeing what's going on in the middle.

Is anyone there?

Well, all of that is good and everything, but what about getting rid of that dang default robot model and getting some ants in here? Well, wait no more! I've gotten our ant in. Here's a video I made showing a little more of how the outside looks, how the weapons sound, the background music, and the ant! Unfortunatly, there's a few problems, but we'll worry about those later.

Well, isn't he the friendly sort?

So, obviously, the animation set is not configured correctly. I should be able to fix that on my own tomorrow, there's just a lot of settings and I probably goofed one of them somewhere. So for the moment, he's a floater. Also, he uses the default UDK gun at the moment, but he won't in the final game. And, if he does get his hands on a gun, he won't be firing it from his face.

So, I'm going to try and get better about updating on a regular basis and keep you guys informed. Until then.

AI

My food collector/defensive AI's are ready like my base/colony defender AI bots. They are doing what they are suppose to do. Also respawning issue is also solved. So that when they die, they will be revived after some time like 15 seconds which can be changed. Also when the bots die, they got into a stack so that they are not going to spawn at the same time. So with stack, each same type bot will be spawn after waiting 15 seconds from the previous bot spawning time because spawning 5 food collector/defensive bots is not going to be fair for other team.
I am still working on my attacking AI. The fath problems seems to be solved. They are following their paths when no one is around.

Gameplay / UI Weekly Update - Working Scaleform HUD

This week the HUD is fully working!! It took more time than expected because the classes that I mentioned on the last post (MinimapHUD and HUDWrapper) that I was extending, had to be created completely from scratch; since removing and/or using its methods for our custom game was creating to much warnings in the code.

Functions for setting the initial values for all the parameters in the HUD have been created, along with all the "ticking" functions for each one of them. The Queen's health has a especial function, since it is a "placeable" class. Kismet action sequences had to be created in order to keep track of her health and reflect it on the screen.

Validations have been added into the game too. For example, now the game is not limited to only one food pile per team and also a check is made before the food is deposited, in order to allow only members of the corresponding team to deposit on it.

The only field that has not been programmed yet is the weapon name, since the weapons name are not defined yet and I need to set the text field to have a specific number of letters as the maximum.

The coding on the food pile HUD is being done right now.

AI

Its been a while since I update my AI conditions in this blog. My base/colony defender AI bots are ready. My food collector/defensive AI's are almost ready. I solved my major error problem this week and only a few minor adaptation to our game map issues are left. But I am still having problems with my atacking AI. I want to give them navigation points to direct them to the enemy queen in the map. To do this they must be placable for the map. I think that causes some problems. They are not following their paths, sometimes they are directly attacking me even tough they cannot see me in the first place. I have to test my ready AI's with our map and with actual food item and concentrate more on my atacking AI's.

Gameplay / UI Weekly Update - Main Menu and Scaleform HUD

First, sorry for the late post this week, not having classes has really affected my schedule! In this week great achivements have been made with the scaleform interface. Since last week was the first time working with it, I redesign the main menu, so now it looks more polished, as you can see in the attached image. The textures and ant image were modified using photoshop. Also the .ini files (Config files for the game) have been modified in order to make the map that host this menu the default Front End for our game. If you exit the game, it takes you back to it.



This leads us to the two remaining interfaces in the game: the new Scalefrom HUD and the food pile interface. I started with the first one, creating a completely new layout on Adobe Flash with all the necessary specifications to integrate it into the game. Each one of the labels on the HUD now contains several levels of instances in order to have a hierarchy and easy access to the parameter that will be modified via UnrealScript. The previous interface created as a test has been really useful for this step.

Once this was done, the coding started in UDK, having to create custom classes for the HUD wrapper and the HUD itself. They have been created and I'm in the process of creating the new functions and overriding the ones that need modifications in order to display the information specific to our game. A screenshot of the UI already in the game is attached; each one of the parameter is with rectangles because they are dynamic text fields define in Adobe Flash that still need to be connected in the custom classes. Also some transparency and inclination will be added in order to give it a more professional look.



I have a sketch of the remaining interface in flash already and will be connecting it shortly to UDK in order to spawn new actors from it.

Sounds log 5

With few tips, I was finally able to get the custom sound group class working for our player/team. The game can possibly have 4 sound classes. 2 classes for the two teams and other 2 for each of the queen ant.

The sound effects are almost completed. Jump, hurt, light landing, heavy landing, dead sound, slip, queen death, queen screaming, some random horrific sounds in the queen lair are some examples. Some of these sound effects are lengthier but will be reduced in future as required.

Background musics:

7 soundtracks totally, the soundtracks can be heard any where in the level. It will be randomly looped in the sound cue.

Triggers:

Trigger play their role when the player enters places like queen lair/terrain/hidden spot/finding special pickups(bigger food pickup/health). Still little work is pending on triggers since the level is ported from dec to nov 2010.

Level Designing (060411)

I have been working on the problems that arose last week.

Ladder volume was one big problem. I tried lot of forums but nothing opt in.

Finally I was able to find one solution. I had to follow a set of protocols inorder to

get it right. I have added a big mesh inside the main hallway. It absorbs the whole

room and it is pretty good. The terrain is the region where I have devoted most of

my hours(MAN hourssss). I have made some valleys in between. Except for one the rest are

defined pretty much so as the ant(AI in particular) to slide in and out without any hassle.

I have also erected a tower on the top on the main hallway which needs some definition.

All the mathematical co-ordinates are being updated as a document for future reference.

My plan for the coming week is on the terrain again and bring in water to the level.

OVER & OUT...

Gameplay / UI Weekly Update - Adobe Flash CS4 and ActionScript 2.0

Learning how to integrate flash menus and UI with Scalefrom into UDK has been my focus this week. Since UDK provides official support only for Adobe Flash, I installed the CS4 version and managed to set it up with Scaleform.

Learning a little bit of ActionScript has been necessary in order to incorporate functionality to the buttons. First a new map was created in order to host the main menu for the game. In this map, the menu created in flash to shown once the level is loaded. The problems started once I tried to incorporate the functionality for the "Play" button. According to Unreal Developer Network , the UDK command line has to be invoked through "fscommand", so here is where we set the "open map" call. This would not work at all and after a lot of research, I found out that something has changed in UDK since the last months of the previous year. Since we already changed versions of UDK once, I did more a little bit more of research in order to find a workaround for this problem and finally did.

I had to create a new custom class, that would extend the GLX Movie Player Class (here is where the Scaleform code happens) and added to this new custom class the ability too invoke the command line by itself. So I went back to Flash and through ActionScript I send the parameters to this function, where they are executed; resulting on loading the map where the game is played. The same procedure will be utilized form the remaining parameters that need to be interchanged between this two entities.

For the next week, now the Scaleform interface is working, the main menu and the "food pile" HUD would have been created.

Gameplay / UI Weekly Update - Queen Pawn, Game Ending Conditions and Food Pile Mechanics

This week I continued working on the gameplay features of the "game ending" conditions and the food pile.

The conditions for the game to be ended have been programmed. Two queen pawns are placed on the map (right now they have a very basic AI pattern that I created, they just wonder around without shooting anyone), their teams are setup, so you can't shoot your own queen. Once the opposing queen is eliminated, the games notifies you that you are the winner (or the loser) and then takes you to the main menu, which at the moment is the standard Front End map, since next week I'll be working on Scalefrom to create our custom ones. A video demonstration is attached.




Also for the food pile was easy to set a static mesh on the UDK editor with a trigger to spawn new bots when touched. I tried this method and it worked, but it didn't kept any record of the food remaining in the pile and wouldn't let players deposit the collected food into it. So an implementation in Unrealscript was needed. A custom class was created for the Food Pile and a new Action Sequence class was created. This was done in order to been able to call the GiveFood and DepositFood methods of the pawn class via Kismet, once the trigger is touched.

Right now I managed to deposit the food that the pawn is carrying to the FoodPile and is reflecting it in the command line, as the picture shows below. After this the series of considerations of how many food you need to spawn a need bot or regenerate health have to be implemented. Next week I'll be finishing this feature and also learning scaleform in order to create the menu maps.

Gameplay / UI Weekly Update - Food Collecting Mechanics

This week I worked on the picking up food mechanics and they are finally working. In order to do this a new attribute had to be added to the antz_pawn class (our custom pawn class) and the pickup event for the pickup factory class was overwritten. Now each time a pawn touches the mesh for the food, adds the defined amount to his food attribute.

The end game mechanics have seen some progress. Doing some research I started modifying the CheckEngGame class, overwriting the events, but since I manage to set as peaceable some of the custom classes in UDK, I can work the conditions in Kismet now (The main menu and the ending menu have to be included in the map file, according to some tutorials I've been trough, this is why handling this conditions in Kismet is easier). If this conditions are managed by the map, functions and events of GameInfo class related to the game end, will have to be overwritten. I've managed to get the queen bot placed and spawned when the game starts and also to keep track of her health, but I'm working on ending the game and sending the player into the menu again.

This week I'll be working on this game-ending conditions on kismet and the creation of the custom class for the food pile (Which I'll set as peaceable too, in order to use the level editors trigger).

The image below shows in console, how every time the player touches the food (place-holder mesh at the moment), increases his food meter by 25, which is the amount for the package defined in the custom class as default properties.

Gameplay / UI Weekly Update - Canvas HUD and Food Items Framework

The clipping problems with the UI have been solved by now. Some rendering attributes for it have to be set in order to use them in every "draw" function later on.

I've received from Craig a basic layout of the UI, but since gameplay elements need to be incorporated in order to get to an alpha state, I've been concentrating the remaining gameplay features. We agreed on the last meeting that once all the this elements are incorporated, I'll send him an email with all the information that needs to be displayed, so he can create a UI texture to be used in the game. Right now all the information displayed is set on a class for easy access when we have the definitive version of the UI.

I've been working on implementing the food and the queen into the game. Food has been quite a challenge. I created a framework of (at the moment) two classes, one for the pickup features and other one for the food package itself. This framework allows me to customize all the possible features of item in UDK (mesh, spawn time, effects, rotating items, base or no base, etc.) and also the quantity of food that each one of the packages have. For this I'm sending an email to Craig in order for him to tell me about his idea of how this should be displayed.

Also, while I was programming this I came across the two possible mechanics for using the food: Having a device that will display a HUD to spend food in the desired resource (in this case the food will have been implemented as ammo for this device, I did test for this and it worked) or having a pile of food in the base colony, so you have to go back and put the food on it and then use it. The two alternatives where presented to the team on the weekly reunion and they agreed on the second one. Right now I'm working on implementing this alternative and also deciding how the food is assigned to the player and bots, since previous efforts (creating a new value in the default UDK pawn class) manages to crash UDK. The solution for this is the creation of the attributes, along with overriding functions to add and destroy inventory in the custom pawn class.

The second gameplay feature I'm working on is the queen. I've already mange to get a bot as a peaceable class, but once the game starts is not doing anything just standing still, this due to the AI problem that Mert mentions for the UDK December release. I'm recompile in the Nomvember release and see how it works. The modification on the "game end" function have started in order to get this as the definitive condition to end the game, but since this function has lots of heritage, a lot of backtracking has to be done.

I hope by this weekend to have this two features completely implemented.

Soung log 4

Trigerring sounds using Kismet.

A simple sound test done by trigerring the sound considering the player in collision with the trigger volume. The design for the trigger is made inside the kismet. With a soundnode,delay, and a counter for comparision (for example). To make the sound loop in the trigger we use the int .

Gameplay / UI Weekly Update - Canvas HUD Test

This week I've been working on a basic UI for the game. In order to get this working, I've been studying the Canvas and HUD classes. The fist one allow me to draw on screen (text, figures, symbols, textures, etc.) and the second one if for more user driven displays (like the cross-air).

So far I've been going through this classes to see what kind of methods is available and which one is the information that can be displayed. I've make a new class in UDK for our interface, which displays the health, character name, current weapon and ammo. All this variables are updated in real time.

As it is shown in the picture, there is some problems with the long names for the weapons and the character names, I've been trying to figure this out and it has to do with some clipping problem, in which I'm working right now.

This is by no means the final UI or HUD that we are going to be using, just a place holder, so we now how to show the information and the variables that we need to use. Also the functions have been created in a way that the resolution or aspect ratio in which the game is played, won't affect it.

More elements are going to be incorporated, once they are being programmed into the game (food for example). Also, I have already started doing research on how the menus are created and handled. Finally a talk with Craig will be needed, to define if he has some ideas for the HUD, since a texture-template can be created with all the elements, to be called by the coordinates on the image.

This week, I'm going to continue working on the UI and menus for the game.

Sound - Log 3

Sound effects update
Bullet impacts (randomised)
Player landing upon jumping
Scripting
WOTgreal is more handy to work with unreal scripts. On adding sounds to the pawn class the sounds work fine but the sound effects are not unique to our player (i.e the AI makes use of the same sound). The soulution is each of the custom sound classess have to be extended from the base class so that all ants dont have the same voice tone and produce same sound effects.

Level Design

Due to the change of plan, the level had to be recreated from scratch. Part of the learning experience, I should say. Finally now we have a Deathmatch level on board.

It does need a bit of tweaking. The Level so far created is a the outline of a colony.

A bit of testing on the level and check for resource efficiency, I could work on the inner details

of the level.

1. The whole level is designed so as to give the player a complete free in and out movement.

2.The mission is to kill the queen, more than 2 approaches can be made by the player to reach the final third.

3. Again here, the level is made so as to give a typical up-down termite colonial structure.(so far it is good)

4.I have made 3 entry points for the player to enter the colony and after that it is all down way to find the queen.

yet to come:

1. create doorway and test the level

2. Replicate the same structure for the enemy colonial unit.

3.Once done with the testing, create a terrain so as to join both the colonies.

so, later...

Gameplay / UI Weekly Update - Custom Character Framework

This week I've been working with the creation of a custom character for the player. I did it and learned which parameters do I have to change in order to include a custom mesh, animation tree, materials and animation set.

I just changed this to the assets that the UDK comes with, since the inclusion of a custom mesh is easy, but it would only float around, because the rigs for the pre-defined animation sets are very specific about the mesh that they use, so when you try to add this to a custom mesh, it just doesn't work, or in some cases, crashes UDK. In order to prevent this when Craig is creating the rigs for the models, I sent him a tutorial with a guide of the different parameters that has to be considered.

The creation of the custom character included a function in the "Game" class, that would set the defined parameters for the mesh, and for all the custom meshes that we would have in the game, the corresponding function would have to be created. Doing a little bit more of research I came across the "FamilyInfo" class, which allow me to set parameters to a group of characters and even assign more specific ones, like assigning the team and team specific parameters. This would be really helpful in the gameplay programming.

Finally, this second way of doing it, will allow me to get rid of the function in the "Game" class, the only needed modification was to set our custom "FamilyClass" as a default property in the "PalyerReplicationInfo" class.

The goal for this week was to create a framework that would allow to include into the game the custom characters that we will have and it was successfully completed. This week, I'm working in a simple UI for the game.

AI

After installing November 2010 release of UDK and a couple changes my bots start to patrol and shoot like I expected. Also again because of UDK change my Navigation Mesh works now so that I added crowd to my level. They are doing nothing but running around. They have a problem with lighting. I am seeing them like a bunch of shadows but I guess this is because of their skelaton meshes which can be easily replaced with an another one. My plan is use them to simulate the ants that are going to food and returning to their cave afterwards.
Also, even tough my patrol bots are now working, they still need improvements. They shout you without stoping their patrols. That can be good for dodging attacks but still that behaviour makes their movements easily guessable.

Art render

Sound log 2

Character sound effect
A standard voice has been chosen for the main character (player), sounds like a teen but not too thick or too thin. The character sound effects will continue to have the same pitch throughout the game such as when the ant jumps, get hurt, fall form heights, gets shot by enemy ant etc.

other features tested are attenuation and ambient zone sounds.

a video will be uploaded shortly.

Level Design – Log III

So far the level which I have made is bigger than the first. The whole level is made, with the game play mechanism in my mind. I have created hideouts for the Non Playable Characters to spawn and have the element of surprise. I have made use of the Geometry mode available in UDK to give some sloppy surfaces. At certain part, the whole level has the ups and downs which give much more realism. As this is a termite colony, the level goes from top to bottom rather than on the same plane. Efficient usage of space is also considered while making the level. At the ending part of the present created level, rooms are deployed in between the inclined plane (staircase). With such a kind of level creation, it gives the player multiple options to move around.

As the level has to be tested, neither mesh nor texture has been added. A bug which has been found, is what I am working on.

Weekly Overview

Well, we've continued to make great progress over the last week or so. A third person camera has been implemented, a lot of scripting has been learned, and a prototype of a second level piece has been published. With this in mind, let's take a closer look.

Art

We have yet to get our first character model finished, they take a lot of work! However, we have some nice texture concepts to show off.

This first one is for a cave drawing the ants have made within their tunnels.

And now, our first look at the outside world in our final concept stage!

As you might surmise, we're going in a fantasy direction with the outside world. We've already suspended reality by having ants that shoots guns which real ants never do, as far as us humble humans know, and so decided to carry a bit of that feeling into the look of the world. Also, if you think about it, the real world might look incredibly boring from an ant's point of view. We would end up with large green grass pieces everywhere and you might not be able to discern what a given object is supposed to be. Could you identify a tire if you saw it from a very small perspective?

Gameplay and AI

Both of these areas have made good progress this week. The AI has run into a bit of a wall with a possible set of bugs in the release we're using. More research will be done to see if we will have to update our version of UDK. Over in gameplay, a lot of scripting work has been done to thoroughly understand what is possible. A lot more details about gameplay progress can be found in this week's gameplay post.

Level Design

As I mentioned before, a prototype of the next section of the first level has been created. It is much larger than the first piece, which consisted of only three rooms. This piece has many more, and is much more diverse in terms of possible directions for the player to take, hiding locations, and has multiple floors. Unfortunately, it is currently untextured making it rather hard to look at. We'll have more pictures for you next week. In running through the level, I discovered a rather amusing bug. It seems that the geometry of the level is not quite aligned with the grid, meaning the current AI cannot successfully pathfind. The ultimate result of this is that the AI continually suicides, making for a rather large pile of bodies.

Just for kicks, I added a second bot. The result was somewhat predictable.

Obviously, we'll get this fixed for next week. Oh well, just goes to show that no one gets it quite right the first time.

AI

This week I tried to add patrol behaviour to the bots so that they can spawn at a specific point and patrol between two points. They are attacking when they see the player but there is still a problem in their movement. As far as I looked in the forums, most of the people are saying there are lots of bugs in December 2010 release of UDK, especially in NavMesh system which seems to be the my problem too. They say the examples that were running in the earlier releases are not running in the December 2010 release. I will look into that.

Gameplay / UI Weekly Update - Level Events Scripting (Kismet) and Third Person Camera

For this week new scripted events were created using Kismet in my test level, like material animation, on-screen messages, player's health modification and a "mover" (elevator). Stored events and named variables were used in these scripts. Also, since the size of the scripts is bigger now they have been organized into groups.

Visual Studio 2008 was setup to work with UnrealScript, using the nFringe Plug-in. A 3rd person perspective has been implemented with these tools. Classes like the UTPawn and UTPlayerController had to be modified in order to create the new perspective. Validations about the camera not going into the walls or the floor when the player dies, have been done. Also, the new class considers that the camera does not goes into the player model when trying to avoid a wall or other obstructions; if this is the case, changes to first person view, by making the character model "not visible".

Also in the GameType class (in this case extending the UTDeathmatch class for demonstrative purposes) default values for the UTPawn and UTPlayerController classes are declared.

Sounds - BGM

Background music is added to the level (escape sequence). Since the player escapes into the outer world, the level progresses with some sound effects which repeats over and over with minor delay. The "Sound Actor" positions will be locked in all levels.

Level Designing log - II

After with much a look alike of an ant colony, this week was working on bring in more elements to the environment and making rooms less cubical. Spreading out elements included all the static meshes available in the library and pretty much of the brushes. I also had to limit the usage of static meshes as I thought of reusing them as much as possible. Apart from that, I had a problem in starting the player at the end of the tunnel. Hence I created a cubical at the far end of the tunnel. I have also added some bots on the second room.

TOP View

AI

I added sliding door and opening and closing lights to my basic and bad looking level ( without textures) by using kismet. I can add some AI bots to the level but sometimes they act like bots but sometimes they dont do anything at all before you show yourself to them and afterwards they try to shoot you without moving. I have solve that problem. Probably it is because of path nodes, but we'll see.

Then I expand my level a bit and also start to look to the crowd control which will not attack to the player or other bots but go one place to another place. My plan is to use them to create the illusion of the ants constantly going for food and bringing that food to their nest. Likewise, I need to solve their path nodes problem too.

Concept Art

Some Concept art and Illustrations. The Gray scale technical drawings of ants are being taken to 3D.

Gameplay / UI Weekly Update - Creation of Test Level

This week I added lights to the level and also used kistmet to animate the opening door. It makes sounds when its opening and closing. A photo of the kismet window is attached, wiith all the different elements needed.

Also there was some test done with the post processing volumes by creating a heat effect on the machine room. Here are some pictures and videos of the level running.

Getting Started

Hello all and welcome to our blog. Here, we'll be making progress reports on how our game project is coming along. We've only just started, but we've already got plenty to share with you.

Administrative

Probably the least interesting portion to talk about, but without a doubt one of the most important. Roles have been assigned to everyone, a full task schedule has been made, we settled on the December release of Unreal Development Kit, and work has begun. Roles were chosen last semester, but now it has become official as everyone begins to work on their given area. A master task list and schedule has been made which everyone can edit to add tasks that they've forgotten or the update completed ones. Unlike the simple Milestone Calendar we has before, this one covers every task a person has. This allows us to keep a good eye on both our own jobs, but also on the jobs our work is dependant on. It also gives us a quick glance at the project as a whole. Finally, we also have an online file repository set up with sub version control. This will allow us all to work on the same files simultaneously, merge changes, and track editors.

Sound

Sound is difficult to show off by its nature. We can't really show you screenshots of what's been done in this area. However, good progress has been made. Sounds have been added in, faded in, faded out, and numerous other effects have been tested. Now that our sound designer is confident in use of UDK, he is beginning to select sound effects and music to use in the game. Hopefully, we will have sound clips to share with you soon!

AI and Gameplay Programming

Most of the work here has been preparation work. There has been a lot of research going on into the guts of UDK. Despite this, a nice pair of playable rooms has been created as the team tries to learn as much as they can. Let's take a look at them!

This was without any texture added. Then, we added some of the default textures that came within UDK.

Many of the techniques used here can be used to build the outside world later. Next, we will work on adding scripted events to the map to get good with Kismet. Light sources are another area to work on.

Level Design

This area has also made great progress in this short time. We already have our first piece of the actual levels from the game up and running! That's right, the first piece of the colony has been put together by our level designer already. It is only in its first prototype look, without final art, but it already looks great!

This is one of the three rooms currently running. Here are some other shots!

This is for the underground colony portion of the game. Obviously, the outside world would be much more open and have more plant life. But for now, we begin underground as all ants do. The player's starting position is in a dark passage off the side of one of the rooms.

The player will have to head toward the light to squeeze out of there. Finally, there is a small side room off the first room which the player can get to by breaking a weak spot in the wall.

The level created so far is the threshold for the game. Once they slide down, the player gets to know the look and feel of the world. Stones, leaves, roots, and pebbles are all around the place in addition to the usual muddy and murky ant colony. Initially the player will posses only a melee weapon with which they use to destroy the fractured mesh which is at his left. That room would be a weapons/food cache. The third room is where they place themselves before the Non Player Character for the first time. Within these three rooms, the player gets the weapons,food(if needed) and learns to fire with the available weapons. When the player is done with these three rooms, they enter the bigger world which is the main colony.  The texture file is created with clay mud in mind and some grass patches.

Things to work on:

1. Cubical rooms have to altered to get the feel of a colony. As brushes in UDK are all planar I have to use static meshes. Or try something clever enough with the brushes itself.
2. Fractured mesh needs to be altered, in such a way that it is destroyed in 2 or 3 hits.
3. Rooms has to be populated with more relevant elements.


Feedback about these rooms is sought from all team members.



So there you have it, our starting point. Looking forward to writing to you all later!