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.