Maffy Lees ~ Third Year

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 "we...

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...

  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...

Recently I have been like an asset making machine, I have really been enjoying sitting in front of 3D Studio Max and churning out various assets for my level. I feel like I am definitely getting a lot faster with building in 3D and I am pleased with most of the things that I have made. My level was looking very sparse but hopefully once I have put all of these assets into my level, then it will look more like a manor house. I am not really looking forward to unwrapping or texturing some of these assets though as some have very rounded parts that will be difficult to unwrap neatly. I am going to pay more attention to making my unwraps a lot neater in this project though, as I feel that has let me down in past projects, although looking at my assets now, most of them will share the same tileable textures of wood or gold. I made a paint-over of my library, as I couldn't get the ceiling to look right, by doing my paint-over, I realised that the ceiling wasn't high enou...

An important part to any level is getting the white box done correctly, so that you can plan where all of the entrances and exits are and how you would lead the player around the level. Being a manor house, the design of the level isn't too difficult, most manor houses are all about symmetry with the doors and windows, even if they don't lead anywhere and are only for decoration. I used my floor plan to help me create my white box and I will use my white box to create my walls, floors and ceilings from, I may also do paint-overs on my white box to figure out colour schemes etc, but the overall shape and layout of the rooms won't change very much from this plan. I have recorded me building a few of my assets and put them on to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/maffkins 

I made a lot of concept sketches using primary reference photos that I have taken in various manor houses, books that I own on manor houses, and even when watching period dramas such as; Downton Abbey, Mr. Selfridge, Pride and Prejudice etc. These sketches will help me understand which assets I need to build and what sort of look and feel I want from each room. I will be using these sketches and concepts to directly build from.