Final Major Project [Post 8] ~ Sounds, Interactivity and Tileable Textures

Final Major Project [Post 7] ~ Lighting Update

I found a reasonably easy tutorial online that got the torch working with the desired movement by adding a light as a weapon. It does require some coding, but the tutorial supplies you with all the code needed so it isn't too bad.

I think that I will have to include a note in my files when I hand in this project to uni, instructing to put the extra file into the UDK folder, otherwise my torch will not work and the player won't be able to see anything in the level.

The code that was supplied in this tutorial created an error when I tried opening UDK, which admittedly made me panic a little at first as I have no experience with game coding. However, I read the error message and figured out for myself that one of the lines of code was on the wrong line. The message was asking me to provide a name for the new "weapon", which was on the line underneath, so I put the name on the same line of text and it then worked perfectly. I then used Kismet to attach this "weapon" to the player, and I haven't had any more problems with it since.

In the tutorial, it instructs to remove the player HUD using Kismet, but I found that when I did this, none of my additional text that appears on screen shows up, so it must be part of the HUD. Unfortunately, I don't think I can remove the HUD and have text on screen at the same time, and I feel that the additional text on screen makes my level more like a game as it instructs the player and tells them that a door is locked or that they need to find a certain item in order for something to work.

Final Major Project [Post 6] ~ Engine Update

Other than creating a lot more assets for my level, I have been working a lot in UDK itself to make my game work how I would like it to. I had problems for a while trying to figure out how to get the player to “steal” items, and finding a tutorial online was proving more difficult as I didn’t know the correct term to search for. I have found over the years that if you don’t know the correct word, then you won’t find what you’re looking for. However, I figured that I was thinking about this completely the wrong way, in that I was looking for “picking up” items or “stealing” items, but really all I wanted was the item to disappear when the player activated it. Once I had figured this out, I realised that maybe the item itself didn’t need to be taken, but it needed to appear that it was gone. I then just set up a simple Kismet table with a Matinee “visibility animation” attached to a trigger on the asset.

To create the right feel to the level, I made the whole level completely dark by disabling “global illumination” I then tried tackling the problem of getting the player to emit light, like they were holding a torch. A followed a tutorial where a spot light needed to be “Hard attached” to the player’s right arm. This works completely fine in third person view, but because I have a specific time period for my game, I don’t want to be able to see the default robot player. I have set my level to first person and hidden the futuristic default gun. When in first person, the attached light moves from side to side when the player looks around, but stays stationary when looking up or down. The light moves when the player jumps, but just wont move when looking. I have asked people in class about this and the main opinion seems to be that I will have to look into coding. I have no experience with game coding, as I am doing an art course and have no idea where to start with this, so I am going to try and find a way around this or make it somewhat easier for myself.

Final Major Project [Post 5] ~ Testing in Engine

 I have put most of my untextured assets into UDK to see what they will look like as a scene and if they are the correct scale etc. I found that most things looked correct until I realised that I hadn’t changed the game mode, which was a bit of a noob mistake. Changing the game mode then meant that the player size had changed making my level look too big and adding a gun that I didn’t need. I fixed these problems by finding a few UDK console commands and then adding them to Kismet under the “level loaded” box. 

I changed the player size, the camera perspective and hid the gun. Making the secret door was easy, it’s just a simple Matinee animation, moving the bookcase asset to the side, the trigger is on a marble bust at the other end of the library. I found out that there is another Kismet function that displays any text on the screen, so when the player gets near the bust a message saying “Press E to activate” appears on screen. I would like to add an animation to the bust where the head moves backwards revealing a button, a lot like on the original Batman. I need to make the secret door and even the route of the level more obvious to the player, as I found when someone else played my level, they didn’t know where to go, as some doors open and others don’t.