The second part of this game project is to crack on with the production of Skeleton survival from the research in Pre-production, this post will include everything I produce in blender and in engine to achieve my game creation. I will separate this post into three separate sections, section one will be on making my own models, section two is going to be about how I make my environment in engine and the last section is going to be about all the scripts a codes that make up the mechanics of my game. Each and every section will be documented through the use of video footage where I will show of what I have achieved and how I did it, I will also leave a comment below every video talking about problem solving. I will begin now with section one below.
Section one - Modelling
This section of the blog is going to be about how I create my own models using my references from the research in pre-production. I will leave a videos below of my process and I will also talk about problem solving.
Campfire Stand and Pan
The video below shows of and discuss the process of making my pan and my campfire stand in blender:
Problem Solving
In the video shown above I showed you how I used my research reference to create a campfire stand, this went extremally well and I love the turn out of the whole set. However the were problems along the way that I will address and talk about now. The main problem I faced was when I was making the strap using the Bezier curve tool, the shape looked great and it fitted the reference nicely, the issue was that the curve had no geometry and had only one singular UV. Having only one UV means that there cant be more than one face, so one side was see-through. I overcame this problem by using the solidify modifier to add more geometry to the curve. This fixed the problem perfectly.
Wood and Coals
This video below shows of and discuses the process of me making some wood and coals in Blender:
Problem Solving
In this video above I have shown the process I used to create some coals and some wood, I am glad to say that they turn out well and I like the looks of both the models. However I did run into one minor inconvenience when UV editing, because I decide to subdivide the model slightly I had an weird UV map. I solved and overcame this issue my running one long seem across and around the model, this split the wood into four parts making a much simpler UV map as shown in the video.
Texturing the models
The video below concludes section one by showing and discussing how I texture these models:
Overall as mentioned in the video I have used materials supplied by an asset pack that I researched in pre-production in order to make the models look textured and I think that they look great and it makes my models fit in perfectly with the chosen art style and the aesthetic of my game.
Section two - Level and Environment
This second section of the blog is going to be focused on how I use various techniques in order to create my games level and environment. I am going to work in a weird order as my first video will be me showing my completed level and environment but I will be making a series of video showing and discussing how it all came together to work so well.
My level and environment
Below I will leave a video of me talking about how I will present the process of how I achieved my games level and environment:
As said in the video I will be making a series of videos showing and discussing how each part of the level and environment was made and I will discuss any problems that a face and how they were resolved as well.
Making the Island and Ocean
This video below will tell you everything you need to know for how I created an island that is surrounded by water:
Problem Solving
In this video above I have shown off how to add a island and an ocean into UE4, this makes my level look really good and it gives the foundation to start level designing. In terms of problems, there wasn't much that went wrong except for when I forgot to enable landscape editing in the landscape mode. Other than that small issue the process was easy and made sense.
Making a Landscape Brush
This video below is about how I made a landscape brush that allows for me to paint my island using sand and grass materials. Before you watch the video note that I used a tutorial for the script that I was following, I will also leave the tutorial below as well as the video of me showing it off:
Problem Solving
In this video above I have shown how the landscape brush tool works with my island, I am glad to see that it worked so well and there was no problems that I can think off, when following the tutorial everything was well explained and It could be followed easily so I didn't make any mistakes that lead to any problems. I will leave the tutorial below.
Here is the tutorial that I followed:
Decorating the Island
This video below is the final video for level and landscaping which shows you how I made the awesome scenery and how I have utilized the asset packs models to flesh out my level according to my design plan:
In this video above I have talked about how I decorated my island level even further using the asset pack to flesh out the levels design, I am super happy with how it looks and I am glad that I didn't run into any problems when designing with the assets. All the assets from the pack work great and definitely fit my theme that I am going for.
Section three - Mechanics
This third and final section of the production is going to be all about the mechanics of the game and how I have made an implemented them from my designs and concepts throughout this project. I will leave videos for each mechanic I have implemented in my game and I will also talk about problems and how I solved them along the way.
ATTENTION, I will not be talking about mechanics like jumping, movement or camera navigation as they come ready made as stock with the First Person Shooter template.
Shooting - Fist person character
This video below shows of and discusses how the shooting in my game works. I also talk about the process I took in order to make the first person character shoot a custom gun instead of the one in the template. I shall leave the video below:
Problem Solving
In this video above I have shown how I made my script and actors for my shooting mechanic, I am very pleased with how the shooting works as there are no issue now. However during the process of making this shooting script I ran into an issue where I couldn't shoot my custom projectile asset that I made. In order to fix this problem I had to make the engine realise that I no longer needed the pre-set projectile, so I removed it and and my own custom one that contains the appropriate scripts like shown In the video. Once my custom projectile was link with the fps character it was all fixed and working.
UI - Health Bar
This video is all about the UI I have made and how I made a custom health bar with its own scale and unit. The video is below:
Problem Solving
In this video above I talk about how I constructed a UI that includes a health bar. I like having the health bar UI in the corner of the screen as it is helpful to know how close you are to dying, also the fact that the UI is so subtle is great as from the players point of view it would not be very good if the screen was crammed with bar and other UI elements. When it comes to problems I see no issue with how the UI performs as it is really simple. One little error that I ran into was that the health bar didn't decline, this is because I didn't make the enemy character deal any damage to the player so the health bar remained at 100%.
AI - Movement
The video below is all about how I made an AI that tracks and follows the player around the level. I will leave the video below as well as the tutorial I used from Aoife's YouTube channel.
Problem Solving
This video above shows how I used Aoife's brilliant tutorial to make my enemy character AI move around the level when it detected me. I am very happy with how this performs and even more happy that it wasn't as much of a struggle as I thought it would be. I didn't end up causing any problems with my game because this mechanic fitted in very well so I have no real problems to discuss. I will leave a link to the Aoife tutorial that I used below.
Here is Aoife's tutorial that I used from YouTube:
AI - Attack
This video is all about how I made my AI attack me and deal damage to my player. This is a continuation from the last mechanic video as I have used another one on Aoife's videos to help. I will leave my video as well as Aoife's tutorial below:
Problem Solving
In this video above a have used another one of Aoife's tutorials as a continuation of the AI movement and development. This tutorials is about how to AI attacks and the script need to make this work, I feel that the tutorial was so helpful and was easy to implement into my game at no extra effort or stress. I am happy with how everything works within the parameters of my game as there was no such problems that held me back. I have no problem solving to discuss as everything went smoothly, with that said I will leave the tutorial below.
Here is Aoife's tutorial that I used from YouTube:
AI - Respawn
This final video for mechanics is all about how my skeletons respawn after dying to keep the game flowing and making it more challenging. I will leave the video below.
Problem Solving
In this final video above I talk about how I have created a system that makes any skeletons that have died respawn at a designated spanner. I am really happy that I was able to put this concept into action and the fact that it works to a degree is great. The reason I say that it works to a degree is because everything works except the moving and navigation of the respawned enemies. This is a problem that I have not yet solved and might never solve in time for the deadline, this is unfortunate but sometimes things go wrong so I am not to gutted anyway. I am still really happy with the results of the production so I have to be proud of that.
Conclusion
Now that I have covered everything I have done through out this game project I am confident that my game is playable and can be enjoyed. Although there are so many thing I would still like to add the deadline for the project forbids me to do so as I had to stop working on the game an start making blog post like the one you are reading now. To wrap up this project I will do one last post called Post-Production where I will evaluate my whole game and I will also leave some gameplay footage to enjoy watching.
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