Games Project - Game Creation Week 11/12

This blog will be a combined post for the last two weeks as the deadline is approaching and it makes more sense to combine these last two weeks into one as all that can be really said is that we will be finishing our work. Week 11 began with the hard task of pulling it all together but once again we encountered a problem which was that the project files Ben had saved and brought were not what we needed as it was just the project files and not the full entire file. After some discussion and sweating slightly as a group we decided that myself and Andy would take over on the Unreal front and Ben would take over the documentation and get up to speed with that as we felt it was best since myself and Andy had found it much easier to work with the Unreal development environment than Ben had and it only made sense to work to our strengths. 

I believe that the next upcoming two weeks will be hard because we will be needing to complete all of our coursework at the same time and hand each one in roughly on the same date. However I am feeling confident that we will be able to balance out all of the work for each class and produce a high standard for each one. Each of us have come far from week 1 in terms of ability as Andy has shown off skills in AI programming and level creation as he stepped up to the mark to pick up from where Ben left off. I have worked hard to understand the development process in programming a basic main character and managed to have it interact with the world around it. Ben has done well to keep the documentation up to date but did falter in communication in regards to the version of Unreal Engine which set us back however it did allow him to focus fully on documentation when Andy took over and it gave us all that extra bit of determination to finish the project.

The next stage of this last part is to compile everything we have done and have it all on the one project file which will take a bit of migrating of files and last minute checks but I believe that we will be in the clear once this is done and we can focus on last bits of documentation and anything else we would need to fix. Overall this project has gone really well as despite its bumps and problems we still managed to keep on going and fix whatever came our way. 

Games Project - Game Creation Week 10

Our discussion with the lecturer went well and we managed to get a clearer idea on what type of game we will be creating because whilst we haven't created exactly what we had in mind 10 weeks ago we have altered and changed things to come up with an almost new game altogether and our lecturer in all honesty said that we shouldn't worry too much because while we didn't achieve what we set out to we still have created something that we can be proud of.

In all honesty I believe that through the past 10 weeks we have been hard on ourselves and because we all have in mind what games are now and the high standard that is produced it's hard not to get swept up in it all and get a bit cocky thinking you want to create something just as good and be a one man army. 

In the past 10 weeks we have worked with a software that we have never used before doing this module, managed to create assets and implement them into a game successfully, programmed a basic sidescroller game from scratch and learned a lot about the journey that creating games takes and how much work is needed behind the scenes.

The game we are creating now is much more of a platform game than we had first thought but that's what happens in the real world. A project grows and evolves as time passes and I believe that is what has happened here in our group project and now after working on this I am more excited and I feel that the other team members are equally as interested to start working on other projects and creating more games in the future.

Games Project - Game Creation Week 9

This week was an interesting week to say the least. We ran into quite a big set back and it has put us behind for a few weeks worth of work sadly. In our lab we were discussing Unreal Engine and there was a updated version that had been released which was version Unreal Engine 4.12.0 and we all talked about what new features were in it and had a look at it and after having this discussion we discovered that Ben had been creating our levels on version 4.11.0 which doesn't sound bad until we realised that myself and Andy had been using version 4.10.0 and unfortunately Unreal doesn't have backwards or forwards compatibility. 

Not the best way to start week 9 however, we will just have to put in a lot more work and hope for the best in the end. The good news for this week is that I have been tinkering with collision after last week's discussion and have managed to get the code working for the punching to collide with objects in game which means that we can start using the main character to attack enemies.

The code itself is fairly simple as it allows the attached trigger spheres on the character's hands to be able to collide with other objects if they have physics and collision coded to them. This was tested by placing a sphere in game, giving it physical properties and then using the character to punch the ball around a small area and into a goal at the end of the area. 

Next week we are going to have a meeting with our lecturer so he can get an idea where we are in terms of development and we can show him parts of the game that we created and ask questions about what he thinks on different ideas if we still have any.

Games Project - Game Creation Week 8

This week we all continued to work away on our own individual work however I think the work on the AI is harder than expected and isn't going completely to plan as myself and Andy were discussing different trigger methods and collisions in Unreal and how they all work. I have taken some time off the main part of this week to look at trigger boxes and spheres in order to help out but the only work I can do on the main character for collision is trigger spheres (as shown below).

In regards to my own work I have been working on a health system and trying to incorporate damage for the main character however until the AI system is in place there isn't a lot I can do for the health system apart from create it and have it register our character has health. Although there is the code for the damage to be taken once we get around to creating the damage taken. The screenshot below shows the health system in place. It is very basic at the moment but it is the first time I have created one although I believe that this will create a good foothold for future projects. 

I haven't seen much of the work that Ben has done but he assures us that he has been looking at the original artwork and different games to get inspiration for how to design and create each level. I'm fairly confident that he will send them over to Andy and I will send over my work and we can compile it all together into one project and then iron out any creases then. 

Games Project - Game Creation Week 7

This week we picked up from where we left off in week 5 and began to work once more on our game. The work focus this week was based around us individually working away and continuing with our own part of the game. 

Our discussion for where we see the game was a big part of this week as with us being just over the half way mark and still coming to terms with some parts of Unreal we weren't sure what parts of the original plan would take place. The main idea right now is to continue working away and see how much we can get done and all in all hope for the best.

This week I spent time working out how to get the character to punch and not have the animation sequences break or stop working entirely. There are a good few forum posts on how to get punching to work but not all of them were for the style of game that we were working on or they were problems that were far advanced what we wanted. 

I managed to find an answer in one of the videos on the official channel and after a few hours of toying with different variables and animations I managed to get the punching to work and sort out the the problem with the animations which was whenever the character would punch all other animations would stop and the character would not return to the idle animation. 

The above screenshot is the finished piece of work for all the different animations working in sync with one another and whilst it looks complicated after following a many tutorial videos it was all explained very well and it didn't seem to give much hastle once finished.

Games Project - Game Creation Week 6

We are now at the half way mark and sadly we have had to take the foot off the pedal this week as we have other modules with hand ins so it has been quite a quiet week in terms of Unreal work. However, we have still had plenty of discussion this week about what the pros and cons of different factors and ideas for our game. 

In regards to the AI system we have decided that it would definitely be best to focus primarily on the one AI and see what we can do for that before taking on simultaneous and individual AI systems all at once because, to be perfectly honest, it is way out of our depth and we simply don't have the time for it so we decided as a team to create just the one AI and work with that to see what we can do. 

The main part of the game has run into some problems as I am needing to learn more the in-depth workings of different parts of Unreal that I've never looked at before or knew about till now so it's all quite new and confusing in all honesty. I've had to study a lot more about animation that I knew and whilst it has been well taught it is still a lot to take in however I feel that it's coming together nicely.

There's not much else to be said this week as our priorities were moved from Unreal work to completing work for other classes but once they are out the way work can continue as previous weeks.

Games Project - Game Creation Week 5

As the halfway point approaches we are making slow but steady progress. Only really major concerns are the fact that none of us have used Unreal Engine but we do seem to make a good headway. Andrew is looking over a lot of AI behaviour trees although at the moment we are not too sure how much of our original concept will be possible with the time constraints and knowledge we have now. The original plan was to have different types of AI for different enemies examples being we would have a weak fast enemy who could attack faster when compared to a stronger slower enemy who would attack slower. However with 7 weeks to go and other class projects looming it appears that even a basic AI will suffice for the time being. 

I do believe that out of the three of us he has the hardest job as for myself I need to program the bare essentials of the game which once you have a grasp of it then it all begins to fall into place whereas AI is quite advanced programming so he is having to go above and beyond his skill set as a programmer. The positives about creating AI is that there is a lot of tutorials and videos out there to help but the main problem with this is that some of it assumes you have prior knowledge and are well versed in programming with UE4 which isn't the case for us. 

Ben spent time this week discussing ideas for levels and firing back and forth with what things we could implement and what would be too much or look out of place in a level. The only real difficulty for him is that he isn't as used to working with UE as myself and Andrew are as it was both of us who predominately worked on the prototype and he took charge of the documentation. 

I feel that although progress is slow at points we are doing quite well in the fact that all of this is new territory for us all. In the end we can only hope to achieve the best we can do at this point in time in regards to our limited time scale and knowledge base.

Games Project - Game Creation Week 4

This week we started off with some group discussion as looking back to our original idea we started to wonder if it had been perhaps just a slight too much for us to handle. With our lack of experience in Unreal Engine or C++ programming taking on a lot of the challenges and tasks we have set seem just a bit too far out of reach for this stages of our learning. Maybe if we had a lot more time we could possibly develop and hone our skills sufficiently to create a game that would be more like what we had planned.

However, after this discussion we feel that we can progress forward more into the development process now that we have all came to agree on what we want to aim for and what we know is out of our reach. Our early idea of a currency system along with a form of market place for upgrades, while seeming like a great idea and something we wanted to implement, was just a bit too ambitious as after some research it seemed that focussing on the main part of the game would be a better strategy rather than moving onto the hard stuff. Gotta crawl before you run.

Progress with the game is going overall rather well. I have managed to map out the basics of character movement so the player can now run about in all directions which doesn't help in the case of a sidescroller however we can either try to limit certain movements or if all else fails create areas where the player cannot run.

So far this week has been fairly productive in terms of Unreal but also in establishing where we need to be and how much work we have to do. We are starting to see how much work is needed in creating a game and we all have agreed that we will be curious to see how much of our work will pay off and what will be created. Fingers crossed we can keep this up for the rest.

Games Project - Game Creation Week 3

Week 3 continued pretty much in the same direction as the previous week as we continued to do individual learning so that we could understand what we needed to do for our own section of the game. Unreal Engine has a vast amount of tutorials on their official website and on their YouTube channel and their forums  are full of helpful people answering any questions that you can think of. With all these resources available it seems really plausible that we will be able to throw something together. My only real concern is being able to bring it together at the end because it will involve migrating files and blueprints between the three of us and that could cause problems if it doesn't go as planned.

In terms of issues and problems there isn't much to say as none of us have delved into the thick of it yet but I imagine we will be soon enough and that's when we will be encountering issues and the like. I will say that from preliminary research it is a well laid out system and seems to be fairly simple to navigate and use. With the assistance of the multitude of tutorials it feels very easy to be able to learn this system so here's hoping we can develop a game over the upcoming weeks. However, I will be interested to see what UE4 can offer for both current projects and future projects once we all have a greater understanding of how it can work and what it can be used to deliver. 

Overall for the next few weeks I think that our goals will be to simply grasp and play around with the engine to get a feel of what it is we will be working with. This will allow us to come to terms with how much work we will have and so that in the end we can seriously churn out a game that we can say that we have created from scratch. 

Games Project - Game Creation Week 2

This week each of us decided to take the time to look into tutorials and research how we are going to accomplish our end goals. As far as documentation goes for software Epic Games seem to have a good amount on Unreal Engine which is incredibly helpful and insightful into how it all works and how each function can be used. With all this information freely available it feels like learning how to use this will be a bit easier than first imagined. 

I spent much of this week diving into both the side scrolling tutorial and the third person tutorials as they seemed to give a good footing in terms of Unreal Engine. Despite both being for different game genres they both gave good advice in terms of how to link up the blueprints and together and give a good grasp of the basics in terms of learning how the blueprint system works.

Andrew spent time reading up on the documentation about AI behaviour trees as this is what he would need to know about when the time came to using the blueprinting function and the construction scripts in order to program the AI for the enemies. He will be looking into how to create different types of AI in order for our game to have multiple enemies to fight with although we will discuss this further as a team to see if it will be advantageous to have two or three okay AI's or one really good one.

Ben spent a lot of this week looking at how Unreal Engine really worked as it was myself and Andrew who created the prototype meaning that Ben was inexperienced with the software as a whole so he spent time familiarising himself with Unreal Engine. His job will be to design the levels and create them so that we can then start placing in the enemies and main character into each level in order for us to have a solid working game.

Overall this has been a simple week of research and self study to find all of the resources and tutorials we will need for the upcoming weeks.

Games Project - Game Creation Week 1

This part of the blog will be dedicated to following our group as we progress from the design and planning stage of the games project to the second part of our project which is creating the game.

As stated before our software of choice will be Unreal Engine 4 as we decided that it would be beneficial to use this software because in our honours year we will  be using it again and a being able to have navigated it and had experience with it will be advantageous. Unreal Engine is also widely used for game development so there are pages and videos with tutorials that would assist and help us through the start of our development process. Along side an array of videos Unreal Engine has a website and forums all which are full of useful information on how to learn Unreal Engine.

Our overall process is to plan what work we have to do, divide it up into 3 main sections and then each of us will branch off and learn how to work with what we need to do and then we will begin to bring it together in later weeks. At a quick discussion this week we seemed to have come to the conclusion that I will be working on the main character and going over what I need to do to make the character work, Andrew will be working on AI and how they will interact with the environment and finally Ben will be working on the levels and texturing for the game.

. Nathan - Main Character Blueprinting and Programming

. Andrew - AI Blueprinting and Programming

. Ben - Level Creation and Design

Whilst the next few weeks will be hard it will all be worth it for next year when we need to call upon our experience with UE4 as we will have a module in level development along with our own personal projects that will use UE4 so we all believed it to be beneficial to take the plunge now and then be prepared for later on.