Game Development Process Blog

Development Update: 2 Unreal Engine 4 Blueprint of the chase player when seen Blueprint of Chase Player that also damages player Blueprint to show that player has hit the enemy Within the unreal engine game I have started development of the main level design and also made the AI blueprints more streamlined so that when the player is spotted they will always follow the player till they are dead, I have also started working on a music trigger what will play when the player has been spotted by the enemy. The enemy has also been updated as well to be killed by the player when hit by a projectile. The music trigger is bugged so it plays outside of the pawn sensing zone of the enemy. The next part of blueprints to work on will be Ammo and the menu's and UI. AI has also been worked on for the game with the enemies patrolling the area until they spot the player character and then will switch the AI state automatically to start chasing the player till he is caught. This...

Maya For the next part of my development I will be using Maya to make the main weapon that the player will see in the final game, along with any other side objects I make to put inside the game at one point. Maya is a 3d modelling and animation tool what is the industry standard for development right now. It is pretty useful and a good starting software to learn to use but at the same time pretty expensive to get a hold of unless you have the education license or pay the fee per year for the main license. This is what the user will see on the start-up of Maya The main user interface for the software may look complicated at first with the many tools that it shows but it is possible to only show the right tools you want for the specific task you would want to do. In the corner there is an option to change the workspace from "Maya Classic" to stuff for modelling or animation, this can help new users get used to the tools they will have to use for their task but...

Development Update This week not a lot of major things has happened what could have it as it's own post, just simple development additions like adding more blueprints or trying to figure out the right layouts for the level. New Enemy Blueprint Image of Enemy death and Health print script. A new blueprint has been added to the enemy what will make the enemy die when in contact with the bullet. Right now this blueprint isn't fully working but is being worked on hard so that it may be working pretty soon. Once this blueprint has been added the final blueprint will be added to the enemy what will allow it to spot the enemy and follow and that will lead into the game over. To also test to see if the enemy is taking damage a function to print the enemies health on screen has been added temporarily. Level Design Testing Image of furniture in the level New parts of level design has been added and this is an addition to the vent system to figure out how the basic vent...

Unreal engine 4 blueprints Today started the development of the coding side of the main game, in this case it is the use of blueprints within Ue4 what is a more simplified version of regular coding within the engine but still can be versatile like regular coding but mainly uses blocks what connect together and at the end make a function happen. What are blueprints? Blueprints is one of the options of coding your game within the Unreal engine 4 engine where each blueprint block is actually a line of C++ coding which is the main form of coding used within the UE4 engine, The user is able to do a lot of things with this but it can get confusing at points with the large learning curve that has been put in place but it also is easy to learn if you take some inspiration that has been put in place via the templates provided or with some official tutorials online. This is also an easier way of getting into the engine if the user has just come off another engine like Unity for e...

Prototyping Stage Image of the basic first area with lighting tests. This week was the first week of starting development on the game idea what was created the week before, the first steps was to prototype the game and the features it will have. This involves features like the map layout and any player controls to be decided here and tested. The main features added in the first part were basic geometry layouts like how big the building would be and also how lighting would look in the final game. The next features to be added are the basic character movement features like crouching and a different style of shooting for the gun. New Features Used Image of a basic vent made in UE4. Image of the settings used for the shapes in order to make holes. A new feature learnt from this was the ability to basically make holes in objects, The way this works is by making a new shape and placing it inside an already existing shape and setting the brush type to subtractive....

Unreal Engine Learning/Comparisons In the Unreal Engine I have messed around with the terrain editor creating a simple rocky landscape and also learnt about the death plane the engine has put in place along with editing some lighting effects mainly point lights and spot lights The lighting effects in UE4 are interesting to use and are very similar to what is available in the Unity software. It is easier to mess around with them colour wise along with looking really good for the engine. Image of lighting testing in UE4 The geometry tool for UE4 was also fun to mess around with since there is a lot of ways you can mess around making a simple geometry layout. The main way is to simply extrude some of the plane and from there it's possible to make it took more natural with the other tools to do stuff like flattening and weathering. It is also possible to make holes using this tool. Comparing it to Unity it is more detailed then what unity has to offer what has the simple e...

Introduction This is a blog post documenting the development of an FPS game made within the Unreal Engine 4 engine. This is the starting point where I mainly state the general impressions I have had with the engine so far and comparing it to Unity. First Impressions Unreal Engine 4 is an interesting engine to use just coming off getting used to the Unity engine with the fact that there is options for the user to have an easier time coding their game via blueprints or actually just code their game using C++. I have actually used Unreal Engine 4 a few years back before now but only messing around with templates. The first impressions I have are from messing around with the engine more in depth than I have before. Image of the interface using the FPS template My first impressions on using the engine is mainly surprising because of the fact that the engine already gives you a lot of stuff to work with outside of coding and with the options of using blueprints or C++ m...