We're Here

Here it is my last post of this blog I would like to say If you've read this throughout the duration of my journey that thanks for your support and I can conclude my final mile update for you...just so this blog feels complete.

Milestone update

Friday 14th December - Character both modeled and textured 

                                     - Game design document complete

                                     - Audio proposal

Friday 15th March      - Press pack for Outer Eden

Friday 22nd March     - Outer Eden cinematic completed with audio

Friday 19th April        - Outer Eden level completed

Friday 26th April        - Outer Eden Production Blog conclusion

What a pleasure it is to see such a spectacle if you don't mind me saying so myself and now this is over I can once again chill like I did last summer.

Fourth Milestone

Its quite emotional when things come to an end and I'm really feeling it now as this fourth milestone is welcomed , but before we go into that I would like to say that everything I intended to add to the Outer Eden game level was added such as the animated doors, fan animating, enemy wave system, soundtrack implementation with no issues apart from the doors at first because I've briefly worked in UDK I had made doors open and close before but I had forgotten how to go about this procedure but eventually it struck me and it worked fine. I will only display the kismet behind enemy wave system but other than that the rest will be clear from this final video of the Outer Eden gameplay sequence video experience.

Milestones Updated

Friday 14th December - Character both modeled and textured 

                                     - Game design document complete

                                     - Audio proposal

Friday 15th March      - Press pack for Outer Eden

Friday 22nd March     - Outer Eden cinematic completed with audio

Friday 19th April        - Outer Eden level completed

Friday 26th April        - Outer Eden Production Blog conclusion

Only this here blog to do and that is set to be completed next week once I have fully evaluated my entire journey from beginning to end.

Easter Festivities

Here we have it quite the big post if you don't mind me saying as this is the post to end all posts I hope been as it showcases a gameplay sequence based on game concept Outer Eden constructed in Unreal Development Kit.

So with 4 weeks until judgement day and my original level design featured in the game design document being far to complex with the amount of time left to finished so with Gears of War Horde mode in mind I began my search for basic wave systems implemented into UDK in order to see if it would be feasible for me to achieve such a gameplay mechanic and as it happens I came across the below link, which contained just the kismet I was looking for.

http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/750961-Help-Spawning-enemy-waves-horde


Moving forwards now I had clarified that the gameplay mechanics I desired was possible to do. Causing me to start looking at building up my game environment because of this new gameplay sequence concept I felt as if it was compulsory for me to have an environment to a fairly detailed standard.

Making my environment was purely scaled and created in 3D Studio max in order to provide me with a layout to work from. Importing wasn't as easy as planned because I had an idea that UDK would allow me to import the scene as one so I wouldn't have to allocate positions for each model but I did have to do that in the end which wasn't a massive issue. Below is a screengrab of scene in 3D Studio Max where everything was modeled and located.

You now see how it's all been made as a scene now below you can see the importation procedure into UDK when exporting models out as FBX's. All models were imported through this procedure and when texture maps are in PNG format they export as a part of the FBX format.

This process of importing models wasn't always successful as a few models refused to display faces as if the normals were flipped but I double checked them but it didn't rectify the problem so a few models didn't make it into the environment.Anyway below is a screengrab taken from UDK and Outer Edens progress displaying models in the engine.

From these images you will be able to see that my engine is processing my environment in a cel shaded visual style and this is because of a package I obtained from the below link.
http://prawnskunk.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/cel-shading-or-borderlands-style-shader.html
This visual style was mentioned in it's earlier designs but I didn't have it in place because I was expecting it would be a lot harder to achieve but Rob Ward a fellow student pointed me towards that link.


Once all static meshes were in place the fun began with importing custom playable/AI characters and weapons into the Engine.


Firstly before importing weapons in I had my character implemented into the game engine and at this point many issues were crumbling down on me because of the way in which my character was imported into UDK with the biped as it doesn't maintain UDK's default unit scale, so the character's collision was way too tall in comparison to the mesh. This also had the same affect with custom AI, but as far as integrating custom enemies and custom player was concerned I had succeeded with the use of custom scripts that extend the preset unreal script.


Even though I had my character in it wasn't the only stage with character importation as animations had to be assigned and this done through exporting animations baked onto a biped and importing them into an animset which are directly fed into an animtree where the animations are blended together for what ever purpose is required. I had no issues with this part of character importation.Below is a screenshot of the animtree and animset.

Referring back to player collision it was sorted with cylinder collision being assigned in the script files but it isn't very accurate when shooting at enemies as you have to aim at their feet but it was a good enough fix to allow the player to walk inside the building structure


Weapon importation was the next step in this chapter of this journey which was easier than the character, but only because I obtained this piece of software that generated the weapon code for me for its importation call Unreal X-Editor. Which was obtained from the below.
http://unrealxeditor.wordpress.com/downloads/

All I had to do was rig my weapon with bones for later applying sockets for handles to be applied and muzzle flash. Below displays weapon with bones.

When I did originally import my weapon it wasn't showing in 3rd person player perspective in UDK and after desperately searching for the answer I decided to email Games Architecture Tutor Chris Walton regarding the issues and responded mention the WeaponPoint on both the character and weapon which I completely forgot about. Below displays Character and weapon in the Engine.

Next Week

At this stage I felt that little bit more comfortable with that way things were shaping, but I didn't fee complete as doors needed to be animated, enemies spawned utilizing that wave system, fan animated and a soundtrack for that extra kick needed to be embedded, but I felt like it could be left til next week that final week on this project and in fact my fourth milestone...the end is near.

• Doors
• Fan Animated
• Enemy Wave System
• Lights

Fourth Milestone

Cinematic has finally been glued together after all this time and in order for me to achieve this I have had to put in double the time in order to be ready to render at least one day prior to the deadline just in case any errors are encountered.


From everything I've mentioned I now had to bring it all together as one cinematic scene including animations, models, lighting and even compose a soundtrack and record dialogue with to be layered on top of the final rendered piece.

Below is a screen grab of my scene and the final rendered cinematic

Everything went according to plan as far as rendering is concerned, but when it comes down to my dialogue and soundtrack I feel like I should have put more time into them as the dialogue doesn't quite deliver the right feel for the kind of character Zak is. Where the soundtrack is concerned there isn't anything specific that I dislike about it and it expresses exactly what I was aiming to, but it's because I only got it done this week alone when I've had all this time.

Milestones Updated

Friday 14th December - Character both modeled and textured 

                                     - Game design document complete

                                     - Audio proposal

Friday 15th March      - Press pack for Outer Eden

Friday 22nd March     - Outer Eden cinematic completed with audio

Friday 19th April        - Outer Eden level completed

Friday 26th April        - Outer Eden Production Blog conclusion

Next Post 

It's come to that time again, another set of holidays, but this time its the Easter holidays and I hope everyone has a good one and relaxes unlike myself as I have the game level still to complete. This time my next post won't be next week it'll fall at the end of the 3 week Easter holidays with all the relevant information about the development procedures that take place.

Third Milestone

My third milestone is here, how time flies and this milestone is the one focused around the press pack to promote Outer Eden as a product but I will have to tell you this I'm not personally excited about this milestone as I feel I didn't have enough time to commit as I felt as if the cinematic has been taking precedence. Anyway I took some time out of 3D to create a few design ideas for promotional products to push the sale of Outer Eden which feed directly into a press pack. Below are a few designs for various products from T-shirts all the way to posters

When all of these where created I had to shift back into 3D as so far I had compiled enemy character, main character, vehicle and environment. The only thing I was missing in order to transition Outer Eden into being a 3rd person shooter and yes that is of course the weapon model, which is displayed below alongside the texture map I put together for it.











It's design is influenced by that of Halo's assault rifle with inspiration from the Gears of War lancer for the rear end just because it's design heavily suits Outer Edens appeal, but I have made adjustments to its overall design in terms of the energy powered style instead of using bullets as the Gears lancer and Halo assault rifle have.


Overall this week has been productive even is I didn't feel fully satisfied with my press pack milestone it's still been hit according to plan.

Milestone Update

Friday 14th December - Character both modeled and textured 

                                     - Game design document complete

                                     - Audio proposal

Friday 15th March      - Press pack for Outer Eden

Friday 22nd March     - Outer Eden cinematic completed with audio

Friday 19th April        - Outer Eden level completed

Friday 26th April        - Outer Eden Production Blog conclusion

                                    

Next Week

• Apply animations
• Render Animation
• Compose Soundtrack
• Milestone

One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

Last week as you know I was in the process of UV texturing my tank and this week I have decided to revert to using the arch and design presets built into 3D Studio Max alongside the multi-sub object texturing method in order to keep myself on track. I undertook this action half way through the week when I realised that UV texturing the Tank was taking far too long due to poly count as you can see from image below there are far too many UV's to organise with such little time.

The image following this is the method in which reverted to for economical purposes and it took me about 30 minutes and had I done it the other way I may not of finished it by now.

Having finished the tank at the mid week point I was able to progress onto getting my landscape environment together by the way of a height map and skydome which isn't anything particularly fancy but it provides me with that scene I long to build. Below presents both skydome and height map alongside the height maps final result. 

Everything in this post so far has been positive in yet my post title invokes a different attitude and this is because I came across problems with how I was going to choreograph my entire set of animations within 3D Studio Max as I'm not yet as that level of experience, so I decided to make it a where the main character looks out to the vast lands to see the patrol marching by. giving me less animations to work with.

Next Week

• Model and Texture Weapon
• Press Pack
• Milestone

Tank Part 2

Further developments to the Tank model from last week have led me to the final result of it's structure you see below and It's been hard at times thinking about how certain parts of its body shape, but using designs from both Transformers: Fall of Cybertron and Transformers:War for Cybertron as heavy influences do benefit because they possess the style in which I want to feature in Outer Eden. An image of a tank from Transformers games is seen below.

All Elements of the tank are grouped accordingly in order to animate them as required for cinematic


Next Week

• Environment
• Applying animations to characters
• UV Texture Tank

Starting to Unload the Big Guns

After all this character business I think a well deserved break from characters is in order, so during this week I planned on starting my tank mesh to animated and implemented into the cinematic. The way in which I've decided to do this is by making one half of it in order to again save time as need I remind you that the milestones are approaching which are below.

Friday 15th March      - Press pack for Outer Eden

Friday 22nd March     - Outer Eden cinematic completed with audio

Friday 19th April        - Outer Eden level completed

Friday 26th April        - Outer Eden Production Blog conclusion

From this I haven't started any production of marketing essentials for Outer Eden's press pack as I've decided to focus on the cinematic as the work parameter seems to be on a larger scale, but time management could be the real restraint here. I am unsure at this stage whether or not I'm on track.

Below is Tanks progressed and as you can see its just half shelled at the moment

Next Week

• Tank modelling completion 

Enemy Skinned

This week all I achieved was that of skiing my enemy character and the reason for what you might see as lacking in these weeks in terms of production is because I am not very strong at skinning characters and it takes time to adjust to. Below is screenshot of enemy skinned and ready to animate.

further explorations have been declared with my cinematic is the additional factor of modelling futuristic energy powered hover tank to include as part of the patrol in order to have something else to flesh out ratio of elements featured within the scene and in my GDD I do mention the tank and it would present further expansion on that front.

Next week

• Start production of tank model

Problem Shared is a Problem Solved

So last week another issue stunted the growth of this project when myself and Ross Fielding a fellow student  came face to face with weighting characters as It completely went over my head and after long determination to figure it out myself and Ross Fielding  eventually decided to confide in someone. So we asked Mike White about this issues a tutor at Confetti that works with animation and he provided us with the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-awe14FQBY

Proved to be a valuable asset as I now fully understand  weighting and below is an image of the results of my weighting which at this stage aren't professional standard but I believe it to be a decent attempt for a first one .

Pushing on I will cast our minds back into the world of audio as I haven't really digressed into that area of things because I actually haven't produced anything at this point due to being to wrapped up with finalizing the general idea and problem solving with 3D aspects such as weighting


Next Week

• Move towards rigging and skinning enemy character

OH DEAR!!!!!

Right I'm back again and this time like a few weeks back I have stumble across a problem or a difficulty as I think it should be addressed. This difficulty is with skinning characters as I really don't understand how it works at all in terms of how its interface as a whole and the colour system and how certain colours affect certain vertices and I've spent most of this week trying to understand but haven't got anywhere with it as of yet.

On an upbeat note I have successfully capture all of the animations for my cinematic and I have even collected animations for the game that follows such as idle, running, etc. In order to kill two birds with one stone .


Next Week

• More research into skinning characters

At Long Last

Hope from last week is here to be delivered this week as I stumbled across my idea for the setting and scenario for my cinematic to display to represent a sequence in my game concept Outer Eden.

Further promoting this concept I would like to say that its places the main character Zak in the desert like outlands of Mars where he survives evading the governments military order that patrol Mars. So in this scene you will first see Zak looking out towards the vast land mass of Mars until his devices alerts him of incoming enemies; urging him to flee. With that in mind Zak hides behind a rock in order to wait for the patrol to pass but one of the soldiers hears movements from the rock in which Zak is hidden, which ignites an action sequence.

I choice this idea because it gets across how the game feels as a whole and it doesn't require me to construct a great deal of assets for the environment and that's not down to laziness its just simply in place to ensure I'm hitting milestones.

Taking in that I now have an idea to work with I felt as if I could move on towards researching environment and rigging characters as character animation protocols are something I have never before encounter, so it's going to be interesting.

For now I can leave you with an image of my main character with all the bones of the biped in 3D Studio Max in place ready for skinning.

Next Week

• Fully Skinned Character
• Motion Capture Animations 

Slow and Steady

Unfortunately  unlike the past few weeks I cannot bring cheer through work completion as I haven't really developed much this week due to the frustration of not coming up with an idea for my cinematic.

This has had a negative effect with the project as a whole because creating the two characters were definitive elements however the world that surrounds them is yet to be drawn and with not having a world I don't actually have any actions to take place.

Bringing me onto the factor that I have had the opportunity for the first time to witness motion capture in full flight.....but when it came to Outer Eden I didn't have anything to record because of the previous issues.


Anyway I'm going to have to leave it there for now but I really hope next week has more in store.


Next Week

• The drawing board with cinematic plan

Back to Work

Another steady week for me as I deliver on last weeks aims and a bit extra on the side and what I mean by that is I managed to completely finished my enemy characters. However I will not claim that it was difficult as for my enemies I recycled the armour which was originally going to be solely allocated to the main character by 3D modelling a helmet to sit on it's shoulders instead of my head which has been generated using a piece of software called FaceGen.

This was done in order to save time as I felt at this stage a lot had to be done and some aspects were elements that I'd never looked at ever such as rigging these characters to be animated. So, all in all I wielded my head to the armour mesh, created the enemy helmet to be used with the armour set and in result of this I had to put together two separate texture maps for both characters. All of which are displayed below.

Next week

• First look at motion capture
• Starting to build environment for cinematic

Happy New Year

Happy new year everyone who is reading my blog I hope you've all had a great Christmas and received everything you've asked for

Anyhow, been as my last post was last year due to me taking time off over the Christmas holidays I would like to highlight what's in store over the next few weeks leading up towards my second milestone which is the press pack and cinematic segment of Outer Eden. These are in fact two separate milestones but they do fall very close together so subconsciously I consider them to be as one.


Expectations over the weeks leading towards cinematic and press pack

• Enemy Character Model
• Rigging Characters
• Animating Characters
• Environment
• Other assets for scene
• Press Pack

I must point out that at this stage in development I haven't actually got a fully fledged idea for my cinematic piece as I'm trying to consider all logistics such as time constraint and whether or not my abilities will maintain a specific idea.

Next Weeks plans

• Enemy Character

Christmas is Coming

This is the last time I'll be posting in the year of 2012 as it's Christmas and as I am a great believer in family spirit and joy I'm not going to be committing any time over the festive period towards work. Anyway enough of that nonsense let's get down to business, so this is the first milestone for my game project known as Outer Eden and so far we have a character, game design document and now an audio proposal where I have outlined that the music, sound effects and dialogue will be influenced by that of Mass Effect, Star Wars and other famous titles that feature in the sci-fi genre in ordered to get across the right message to my audience to make my game that little bit more immersive.

Below Displays the milestones for Outer Eden 

Friday 14th December - Character both modeled and textured 

                                     - Game design document complete

                                     - Audio proposal

Friday 15th March      - Press pack for Outer Eden

Friday 22nd March     - Outer Eden cinematic completed with audio

Friday 19th April        - Outer Eden level completed

Friday 26th April        - Outer Eden Production Blog conclusion

                                    

I would like to say happy holidays to all

First Milestone Build Up

Here it arrives the final week for me to complete the game design document for my game Outer Eden and as you well know from last week there was still a lot for me to accomplish....in fact it wasn't just the GDD I was expected to complete as I also need to have my character fully finished and by finished I mean texture and ready to roll.

With all that in mind I can safely say it has been a struggle but I did manage to get there as my remaining for sections to my GDD were finished which included Game Art, Technical, Management and Appendices. These sections weren't too hard to complete however finding out business plans from existing companies proved to be a slight downfall, so my business strategies supporting the concept may be lacking.

Moving on as you can see from below images I have fully painted my Armour for the main character and it just requires a head to be wielded to the body...other than painting being inaccurate in places do to my slight of hand I think it captures that futuristic feel my game promotes.

GDD completed sections

1. Game Overview
2. Story Setting and Character
3. Gameplay and Mechanics
4. Levels
5. Interface
6. Audio
7. Artificial Intelligence
8. Game Art
9. Technical
10. Management
11.  Appendices

Didn't however propose my audio for Outer Eden due to progress this week being focus around the GDD completion and main character's armour completion which I see to be key factors when completing this cinematic that is to be finished for Friday 22nd March.


Next weeks plan of action

• Propose Audio
• First Milestone

Under two weeks before my first Judgement day or whatever

Under two weeks left now  before my first major milestone where I have to have my character completed with texture, game design document fully fleshed out and a proposal for what kind's of sound I would like to work with for my upcoming 3D game project Outer Eden.

Firstly I would like to establish that I haven't done any wok on my character as I have overlooked dates and it has come to my attention that this Game Design should take high priority over other outstanding milestones due to its scale.

So if we look back at the list of Sections I presented last week in order to give you an idea of my current progress.

1. Game Overview
2. Story Setting and Character
3. Gameplay and Mechanics
4. Levels
5. Interface
6. Audio
7. Artificial Intelligence
8. Game Art
9. Technical
10. Management
11.  Appendices

As you are able to see above I have come across a new feature....how exciting. I can now put lines through text. Anyway, so from the above you can clearly see which sections have been completed and which haven't and as I told you last week sections 1,2 and 3 were finished, so from that you can see that this week I have managed to further build on my GDD by successfully completing sections 4,5,6 and 7. Due to this being my objectives of last week I would say that I can see this week come to a positive end. 

For these sections I have not encountered any problems like I said the only set back has been the time constraint which has given me no choice but to focus all my attentions onto the GDD.

Fundamentally in order to complete these sections the following visuals had to be created

Menu screen designs with transitions between all menus.

HUD design

One of the level design's

At this point in my project I had some idea of how I wanted my game to play out the following video of Mass effect is just a small example of how I depicted my game at this point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vcMoDO1mDA 

This is how I could imagine Outer Eden to be like but without the vehicle for the majority of the time but there is the option of utilizing vehicles for faster means of travel

Next week I hope to of achieved

• Completed Game Design Document 
• Meaning sections 8,9,10 and 11 must be finished
• Character Art
• Team management, etc
• Character painting 

14th Decemeber is my first milestone which is in under 2 weeks where the following must be finalized 

• Character Model finished 
• Game Document Finished 
• Sound Proposal

Oh yeah I almost forgot...the week prior to I mocked up a leveling up system design aswell as my radar design and here it is.

UV's and such like....Oh dear

After last week's showcase of my progress on the 3D model of my main character for my game project Outer Eden I have made progress in order to keep to my date of completion which is the 14th December 2012. Such progress has been made on the issue I encountered because of making my armour using Autodesk's 3D Studio Max as I created additional polygons they weren't being registered when it came to painting. Enough of all this rambling I can safely say that I managed to sort out my UV's, with no issues well unless you count taking a lot of time to do. Below displays my character's finished UV's.

Now for my 3D character model I have to paint it and I have around 3 weeks until the 14th which is great if I don't say so myself.

In terms of developments on my GDD (Game design document I would be inclined to say that so far I am making steady progress as after looking at a few examples of existing game design documents online I have constructed a final structure that breaks it up into 11 sections and these are as named below:

1. Game Overview
2. Story Setting and Character
3. Gameplay and Mechanics
4. Levels
5. Interface
6. Audio
7. Artificial Intelligence
8. Game Art
9. Technical
10. Management
11.  Appendices

I almost forgot, in my section 3 gameplay and mechanics I put together a radar design as the gameplay  as the radar in game as a massive impact on how the game itself plays rather like grand theft auto with the mission objective system where an icon is placed on the mini map to present that there is something to head towards in order to progress in the game. Below is my radar design created in Adobe Photoshop. Its design has been inspired by the games theme through the use of colour representation and the rest is for you to decide on whether you like it or not.

From looking at the above I can announce that sections 1,2 and 3 have been completed leaving me with around 3 weeks to get the rest completed as my milestone like the 3D character is the 14th December 2012. 

I feel like I am on track, but that doesn't mean the next few weeks will be easy.

Nest weeks task's

• Paint Character 
• Sections 4, 5, 6 and 7 completed
• Level design 
• HUD design

Body of a model

Last week I felt my post title was a bit boring to be honest so this week I've gone for a different scope as I did promise to have some modelling complete for you this week and I haven't failed to deliver. Images of main protagonist 'Zak Knight's (Spero) Armour; modeled in Autodesk 3D studio Max. Model has been re-done since first screen shot on my first post as sculpting armour didn't seem to give me the results I desired. Too many smooth surfaces and not enough rigid indents, etc.

Front Perspective

Back Perspective

Overall I am satisfied with my work. unfortunately I later discovered that because I constructed all of  the armour structure in max, by adding additional polygons. Causing it tamper with the UV map, so over the next week whilst further developing my game design document I will be pelt mapping my character model. On a positive note because each section of armour was created as separate elements it won't be as intense to sort out, but it has been estimated to take me four hours. 

Next weeks tasks:

• Pelt Map character 
• Continue to develop game design document according to plan