Game Development Process Blog

Unreal Engine 4 & Maya: Project Evaluation The game in recent days has finally started to wrap up development and at this point it is a good time to look back at the good and bad things that have happened during the development process of the game. This will range from all the new programs used to the brand new things I have learnt during the project and finally to stuff I would change if I did the project again and how this project has helped with my skills. Unreal Engine 4 With this being the main program that has been used throughout development and with another engine to compare it to this engine has a lot of new things to show compared to what unity has to offer, I have compared tools throughout the blogging process to show a difference between the tools and the upsides and downsides to each engine.  The reasoning behind some of the ideas I had done for the game by making it Stealth based and using AI is to learn more complicated features of the engine sin...

Custom Assets With the project there was more custom assets that were made outside just to give the game that polish. The main ones that haven't been shown off is how some of the assets for this game was made, mainly the HUD and the Menu's for the game. Some are simple but others are complicated than it seems. Main Menu Image of the Title Screen in editor view The main menu will be the first thing the player see's and it has to be simple but also at the same time give off a big impression since again this will be the first thing the player will see in the game. To make the menu I used an image that had been made in the program "Paint.Net", it is a piece of software that is free and similar to "Photoshop" and with it I just used a simple black box with some text that shows the title of the game and the creator of the game. There is one detail that some players might notice and that is the person in the menu and that is actually a character from a...

Importing objects from Maya to UE4 Now that the gun is finished it is time to import it into the engine for the final game, To do this it's pretty simple really since Maya has an option to import into Unreal already in the engine. To find this option it is simply located in the "File Tab" that is found at the top of the screen, There is also 3 options to choose from but for this case choosing the "Selection" option would be the better choice since it only imports what is selected. Image with highlights of options to choose when imported selected objects from Maya . Once the option has been selected then it's as simple as finding the Unreal project that the file will be sent too and then it will be sent to the imported section of the game meaning, just find the gun in the imported section and it should show the model with the imported materials, it is as simple as that but it goes more in detail with how the model will be shown in game. Image o...

The Third and Final Development Update Unreal Engine 4 Since the last development update a lot has happened on the game including finally putting the second section into the game with both of the layout and some of the obstacles and also more menus involving the ending of the game and a new title screen for the game. Image of one of the sections in the 2nd half of the game Image of another section in the 2nd half of the game The second section of the game is more interesting since it takes place on the ground floor of the facility and has more light areas compared to darker areas, this makes level design more interesting since the lack of relying on the flashlight. There are 4 rooms in total the player will have to traverse with the final room housing the door to escape. At this point all of the same tools were used here to make this possible but the interesting parts is how the menu's were made. Image of the Ending Screen Image of the code that links th...

In the current project for the HUD to be achieved it had to have some new pieces of blueprints added to allow the HUD to be accurate to show how many bullets you currently have. This was achieved multiple ways but first I will go through the new bullet system implemented what the HUD utilizes in the game. Ammo The game requires you go through the level with only 7 bullets, the bullets are used to make stealth easier and to also help solve some puzzles throughout the game. This was achieved by editing the blueprints in the template to basically count down till it hit zero then stop accepting the firing input. Image of new blueprints added to the existing template code This new blueprint gets the Ammo component and will always check to see if it's higher than the value of 0 as long as it's above 0 the condition will stay true but each time the gun fires -1 bullet is taken and then it will update the value of the ammo component till the condition reaches fal...

A lot has happened since the last time I posted an update, The first section of the game has been almost finalized and the gun is finished modelling wise and is almost ready to be put into the game, also HUDS. Unreal Engine First off the updates to the main game have been massive since last time having a new feature added what should of been at the start, ammo. The game allows you to only have 7 bullets throughout the whole game that means once you run out you can't shoot anymore. There is also to show this a HUD, custom made by me in Paint.Net. The final game will be using the same HUD. Image of the Spawn with the new HUD The first section of the game has also started and is almost done, the first section being the basement of the facility makes it so outside of the interrogation room it's pretty dark meaning you have to rely on the view given from the flashlight, originally this was going to be pure dark but the player couldn't see any of the hidden zones to m...