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.