Week 24, Year 2 To fix all, break something else and then fix it… wait what?

So after last week, not completing the level. The main thing I really wanted to focus on was getting the level working from start to finish. All was left to do was to finish the puzzle in room 3, add an end room to each puzzle area with a chest that gives you part of a key to unlock the finial door, and to add a lock system so the player has to go to room 1 first and only after they completed it, room 2 will unlock

My teammate made a small room that I cloud import into the level and add a chest to it that when the player overlays on a trigger around the chest, it will open. What came out was a particles that showed the play back to the key. I just did this with a matinee. I also link this up with the door locking system. So now when the player finishes the puzzle they unlock the next one all the way to the end door.

Now all was left was getting the puzzle to work in room 3. I ask my team mate to do this part because he had already made part puzzle work. So he has a better understanding of what to do but when he was trying to make the shorter staircase move, it would just teleport to somewhere random on the level. So when he went on lunch he ask me to have a look at it. When I try to test it, it would not move. When I look at both blueprints I could not see anything wrong, only that one node action class was set to the wrong blueprint but when I switch it out everything broke. It was only when I replaced the for each loop node it fix everything and made all the stares work.

So we finally had a working level from the very start. At last, this took a bit longer than it should of but happy we got it done now. Now we can test lighting, add assets, and texture the level. I will need to look at remaking the cut scene at the start because I made a new storyboard that shows off the character off better.

Week 23, Year 2 To know and to know how

So this week was really the same as last week. I just did some touch ups on some of my models and started to unwrap them. It’s really handy now because with unreal 4.7 you can just grab the export of your model and then just drop and drop it into the contents folder in the UE 4 project folder. What has really help speed things up. So when someone has finished a model and puts it into the file, if I have the project open I can import it in for them. No more need for them to have to open the unreal project as well.

I big thing that my team needed to do was make the level work from start to finish. This is still something we have not got done yet. We have got are starting area to work but we still needed to get all the puzzles working and add an end to the level. Luckily we already had 2 puzzles working. We need to get the anamorphic puzzle to work and get the stairs puzzle to work. The problem with the stairs was that we need to make just a new model and make the collision like a wage. So the player think he is going up some stair but really it’s just a slope.

The real problem was the anamorphic puzzle. The idea is that, when the play is in the right place they could look around and when they look at the right place it would trigger a door to open. James (another member in my team) had already try to make it, he had got the trigger to work. So that when the player is in the right spot, the area you have to look at become active. If the player in not in the spot and looks at the area then it will not trigger. Sounds like an easy idea right… well sadly not because to make this work it need to be in 2 different blueprints and not in the level blueprint.

So the problem was that I need to tell the look at Activator, when the player was in the trigger or not. The trigger blueprint had a variable in it that told it if the player was in it or not. I had to find a way to get that variable into the Activator blueprint so it knew what to do but you can’t just copy a paste it, and that what I know in my head what I have to do, but to know how to do it I had no idea. I did come across this document on the unreal engine website 

(https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/UserGuide/BlueprintComms/index.html) 

It talks about how to get to blueprints to communicate between each other. I knew that I had found what I was looking for but I found it hard to understand how it works. After many tries by me and James we could not get it to work and really that’s all because we only knew how it should work but we did not have the knowhow to make it work. Lucky for us we knew someone that had the know and the know how to make it work for us.

To know how something should work is one thing but to then know how to make it work is something very different and this really goes for unreal blueprints. There are many tutorials that can show you how to do thing and from them you get the know-how but some of these tutorials will miss out, the how it works. So if you try and try and make something new you may not know what to do because you don’t have the know how it should work. This is the problem I had but the other way round, I knew how it should work but I did not have the know-how to make it work in the blueprints.

What I do know now is that I need to learn more about the different nodes in the blueprints and how they all work with each other. So I can get the know-how.

Week 22, Year 2 I’m losing ideas for title names now

So this week was reading week, so there were no lessons but there was still a lot of work to get on with. I and my group final got an assets list together and unreal 4.7 came out. All I really had in to model were just little thing that can be done very quickly, what is what I like to do most because they are just little things that can be modeled very quickly. I also help move are level from 4.6 to 4.7

As for unreal update and I’m so happy with it, they have cleaned up the UI in a really nice way and just to me it feels more professional now than it did before and the new big thing that I and my group are really looking forward to is the new animation editing system. This new system allows you to edit animation within unreal and you can now create an animation from physics. I’ll have to look in to that more because that could really help with the rabbit hole falling and landing parts.

I’m pretty happy with how things are looking right now and that are level is coming along very nicely. Also this week I've been watching Fullmetal alchemist and I think I’m already very close to the end of it. I just can’t stop watching it, it’s just too amazing.

Week 21, Year 2 Finally my time to shine

This week I was tasked with doing more concepts but for riddle room this time. I also made a quick storyboard for the rabbit hole cut scene but what I’m most happy about was finally got some time to do some engine work.

So this time I try to go a little bit bigger and try and work faster. Again I’m happy with what I have done but again feel like I’m taking too long and I think it’s because I’m trying to hard when I need to be a little more relax. 

After that last one I tried to work a lot fast with the story boards but I think with something like this I should have done it with pen and paper first. Feel I bit like I rush into digital drawing to fast when I need more parties.

What I’m really happy about was getting to do some engine work. What I was looking into was how to make a player be in a fix spot and only could move there head a bit and not all the way around. I spent a long time just try to work it out and looking at all the unreal documents but not finding anything helpful. The only part I had working was just the player in one spot and can look around but had no limit to it. I did get lucky after some time looking on the internet. The way to do it was to just set up your own game mode, you can then edit the max and min of the Yaw.

Week 20, Year 2 Not much to do and painting slow

So a lot of last week was just getting ideas down but now we had to try and narrow it down to a more solid idea. We have some sort of an idea with how we want to start the level and how we wanted it to play out but we needed more of a layout of the level and start working on a block out as well.

We were still in the early stages of the project and because of that there was not much modelling or engine work to do. So I was asked to do some concepts for Lewis Carroll study. concepting is one of my very weak points but it needed to be done and I could use with the practice.

I’m happy with how it came out but not too happy with how long it took me to do this. What I think I need to do is really look more into painting fast and also look up some different brushes to use. I also made a moodboard looking at doors and some furniture, for when you are in the rabbit hole area.

Week 19, Year 2 Let the games begin

So Monday was the hand in for container city and I know that I and my team are all happy that it is over but now the really fun begins.

The next day we started the off the map project (OTM) which is a computation ran by the British library. this is the 3^rd year it has ran and the first time DMU won and the second time DMU came in the top 3 but now it’s my years’ time to have a go.

My year was split up into 9 different teams of 6 people in each. Each person had put down their own strengths this was to make sure all teams could have someone doing what they wanted to do. I put down modelling and engine because from past projects I found I could model fast and I love doing engine work.  

The theme for this project is based around Alice in wonderland by Lewis Carroll. We have to make a level with interactive elements in it. There are 3 themes and we have to pick one oxford, underground, gardens.

For this week I and my team made sure we read the book and just started coming up with some ideas and finding images that could give us ideas.

I’m really looking forward to working with my team mates on this project and I would really like to try and go for the first place in this computation.

Also 1 of my team mates showed us this guy who makes suits of armor for cats. It’s so cool and amazing how detail they are.

http://imgur.com/gallery/GaqLo