Time Management for Unit 76

I have now in my tenth week of second year and currently am in my fifth week working on unit 76.  Currently I have an idea of what I am doing and have made good progress with my block out within the time given, I have worked on the game play, flow and look of my level and almost have a block out completed.  I now need to get a peer review on my map and possibly adjust my map to make it better based upon my peer review.  About now I would say I am on track with my level and with the help of tuitions, peer reviews, etc. I think I will be able to produce a very good map.  Calculating the time spend in session and time that should have been spent out of session I have worked out that so far I should have spent a total of 96 hours on unit 76.  I am also working on another unit (unit 74) and have calculated that so far I should have spent a total of 61.5 hours on that unit, with the two units combined I should have spent a total of 157.5 hours among both units.

Conclusion

Organise, Analyse and Interpret Relevant Outcomes

Now that I have done my research and have given it a lot of thought I have decided that I am going to create a steampunk western themed map.  It will be a first person shooter and will be set in an old style western town however the assets will have various elements of steampunk intergraded into the assets on my map.  I look forward to taking on this task as and producing the best possible map that I can.

Peer Review No. 2

Undertake the Proposed Project in Accordance with the Agreed Specification

Today I will be doing my second peer review.  I am happy about this as after I done some research on my steampunk western theme after the last peer review I was starting to wonder if I was that good of an idea so this is the perfect for me to get some feedback from my peers and hopefully will help me decide what to do.  I will use the same peer review technique as I did the last time and today it will be Jack and Jerome reviewing my work.  I asked them:

Before I had the idea of doing a steampunk western theme, however I have now also looked into doing a simple western theme without any other themes.  Personally I preferred the steampunk western theme however I would like to get your opinions and feedback

1. What do you think of this idea, is it too boring and should I go back to focusing on my steampunk western theme or should I look into it a little more?
2. Maybe I don't have to do neither, maybe I could look into more themes that would tie into a western world, what do you think of this?  Is it a good idea or would I just be wasting my time?
3. Do you think I should add a little more crazy to my ideas, if I went back to my steampunk western theme I was thinking that I could maybe add something absolutely insane like an invading steampunk dinosaur or an army of steampunk ninjas, something crazy like that... What do you think?

Jerome Responded:

1. Is terms of portfolio, you could go with the simple western theme and focus on getting good look objects and map design. However for me I would expect to see some good style of gameplay as there would be nothing new to look at visually in the simple western theme, as for steampunk design I would be able to observe the surroundings and not be too bother about the gameplay.

2. As I mentioned in the previous peer review, Steampunk or futuristic tied in with western theme is a bit of a cliche situation as it has happened quite a lot. But it is quite an easy option to take as you know the combination works very well together and you should just go with if you struggle to think of other theme. I am unable to think of another one for you so for now steampunk will be good.

3. Because I am not sure what kind of gameplay mode you are going with I am not sure how you would fit it in, but adding some sort of fictional creature in there could work, as there is no right or wrong on how it should be. As I mentioned in the second answer, about steampunk and western together being overused, this solution could be a good way out of this situation making the design more personal,

Again Jerome has been extremely helpful to me for the second time, this has made me think that my steampunk western theme may actually be a really good idea.

Jack Responded:

Hello!

You could have both, if you feel like challenging yourself! You could focus more on a western theme and involve some elements of steampunk in it!

Sure! You can do, as lonf you're generating ideas for your game. You consider having a bit of fantasy with your western theme.

The idea of an steampunk dinosaur is incredible!!! When you implied "insane" the film Mad Max kinda fits into that idea! Maybe you could use some inspiration from that film to help capture something insane!

Again, this has made me want to persue a steampunk western themed level, Jack and Jeromes feedback has been so helpful to me and I now have an idea of the kind of level that I would like to create.

Review of my Current Work

Produce an Appropriate Project Plan for the Agreed Project

During today's lesson I used the resources given to me (the homework check-list) to evaluate what tasks I have already completed and what ones I need to take the time to catch up on.  After doing this I found that I still need to look into the specification of Unreal Tournament including submission and art specification and then I need to blog about it, I will then need to blog my own project specification and show that I have planned my time and managed my production.  I also need to upload my blog posts from Microsoft Word onto this, however that shouldn't take to long.

Mood Boards

Throughout this unit I will create mood boards on Pintrent to give me an idea of what to give me an idea of what I want to do for my level, I already know that it has to be western themed so I’ll look into that but I will also see if there is anything else that I can do with this.

https://uk.pinterest.com/blainemcswiggan/unit-3-western-ideas/

https://uk.pinterest.com/blainemcswiggan/steampunk-western/

Peer Review

Undertake the Proposed Project in Accordance with the Agreed Specification

Today I am going to be doing my first peer review of this unit, for this peer review I will simple be showing my peers my mood boards without explaining anything and simple get their thoughts.  Matthew and Jerome will review my ideas.  I asked:

I have decided to take John and Chris' idea of a western world and set it in a steampunk world, my questions are:

1. To you think the speampunk and western styles work well together or should I spend my time looking at other things to tie in with a western theme or even just do a western theme on its own?
2. For my map I have the idea of creating a steampunk western town with a big clock at the top of it, do you like this idea or should I just do something completely different?
3. Do you see this as a 1st/3rd person shooter, adventure game, side scroller or something completely different?

Thanks 

Matthew Responded:

First of all I think that steam punk and western themes work very well together as demonstrated by Will Smith in the film 'Wild Wild West' I think you should definitley focus on this theme as I think it could make for a great looking level. Again I think the Idea is really cool having the big clock at the top of it gives your map a land mark straight away which means that players will be able to navigate around it much easier as they will know where they are from just looking up. In my mind I can see your map as either a first person or third person shooter, as with all the western map Ideas people are doing I automatically think of Red Dead Redemption which is probably the best western third person shooter ever made (at least in my opinion). As for first person or third person in your own level I would suggest trying out both and seeing which plays better.

After responding to Matthew I took his comments on board and considered everything he said and hopefully it will help me in creating my level

Jerome Responded:

1. When I was researching in Chris's unit, I discovered that steampunk or futuristic are used quite a lot when twisting in with the western theme. But yeah I would say it does work well, some say to do something different and unique but you don't always have to, it will be quite easy to go with that combination as its easy to imagine what things could look like so you could start to focus on the quality or the detail of the objects you create for this in future, depending on your skill set.

2. Yeah this could look good, already I am thinking eerie, dark, night time, with rain. Or maybe dusty town, with sandstorms.

3. Personally I perfer 1st Person when it comes to good looking levels, it makes everything look big, and real, especially if you are having a big clock tower. 3rd person would be good if you are focusing on gameplay, making it seem more fast paced and you can see the actions of your player on-screen.

By the looks of chris's game it appears they are going for more of a survival type when he shown a quick preview of it. Plus when it comes to western style games, they seem to fit in well as adventure games. Think of Red Dead Redemption game.

Again, this is extremely helpful information from Jerome and I will take all of this on board and into consideration and it has give me a lot to think about.

Uploading to UE4 Marketplace

UE4 Marketplace

Match Resources Efficiently to the Project

Unreal Engine 4 also has a market place which allows users to download packs containing assets that can be used in UE4 when building.  Users who upload these packs usually upload these packs place a price on them which has to be paid in ordered for them to be downloaded however some people make them available for free of charge.

Unreal Engine 4 Features

Match Resources Efficiently to the Project

Now that I have had a look at Unreal Engine I had a look at Unreal Engine I went on their website and had a look at the feature that are available in Unreal Engine 4, here are the features that were listed on their website (https://www.unrealengine.com/unreal-engine-4 )

DirectX 11 & 12 Rendering Features

Unreal Engine 4 supports advanced DirectX 11 & 12 rendering features such as full-scene HDR reflections, thousands of dynamic lights per scene, artist-programmable tessellation and displacement, physically-based shading and materials, IES lighting profiles and much more.

Cascade Visual Effects

The Cascade VFX editor provides the tools needed to create detailed fire, smoke, snow, dust, dirt, rubble and more. Cascade's pipelined includes fast, low-cost GPU particle simulation and a collision system that interacts with the depth buffer. Millions of dynamic particles can receive and emit light within a scene, and you can control all kinds of particle properties, including size, color, density, falloff and bounciness.

New Material Pipeline

Unreal Engine 4's new material pipeline makes use of physically-based shading to give you unprecedented control over the look and feel of characters and objects. Quickly create a wide range of surfaces that hold up visually under close examination. Layer materials and fine-tune values at the pixel level to achieve any kind of style you desire.

Blueprint Visual Scripting

Bring your creative visions to life in-game with Blueprint visual scripting. Blueprints enable anyone to rapidly prototype and build playable content without touching a line of code. Use Blueprints to author level, object and gameplay behaviors, modify user interface, adjust input controls and so much more.

Live Blueprint Debugging

Blueprint visual scripting comes with a built-in debugger you can use to interactively visualize gameplay flow and inspect property values while testing your game. Freeze the game at any time and audit its state by setting breakpoints on individual nodes in your Blueprint graphs. Step through actions and events, make changes as you like, and have fun optimizing your game on the fly. 

Content Browser

Use Unreal Engine 4's Content Browser to import, organize, search, tag, filter and modify terabytes of game assets within the Unreal Editor. Real-time animated thumbnail previews can easily be changed and saved with the handy screenshot function. Create any type of asset collection to be used for individual work or shared with other developers. 

Persona Animation

Use the Persona animation toolset to edit skeletons, skeletal meshes and sockets, animation Blueprints and more. This multi-purpose tool enables you to preview animation sequences and morph targets, and also set up animation blend spaces and montages. You can also modify physics and collision properties for skeletal mesh actors using the Physics Asset editing tool (PhAT). 

Matinee Cinematics

Unreal Engine 4's Matinee cinematic toolset provides director-level control over cut scenes, dynamic gameplay sequences and movies. With a look and feel similar to non-linear editors used for video editing, Matinee enables you to set up action within your scenes down to the finest detail, animate scene properties over time, and produce awesome filmic moments.

Terrain & Foliage

Create large, open world environments with the Landscape system, which paves the way for terrains that are orders of magnitude larger than what have been previously possible thanks to its powerful LOD system and efficient memory use. Customize huge, outdoor worlds using the foliage tool by quickly painting or erasing all sorts of terrain components.

Post-Process Effects

Unreal Engine 4's post-processing features enable you to gracefully adjust the look and feel of scenes. Filmic effects at your fingertips include ambient cubemaps, ambient occlusion, bloom, color grading, depth of field, eye adaptation, lens flares, light shafts, temporal anti-aliasing and tone mapping, just to name a few.

Full Source Code Access

With C++ source code for all of Unreal Engine 4, you can customize and extend Unreal Editor tools and Unreal Engine subsystems, including physics, audio, online, animation, rendering as well as Slate UI. With complete control over engine and gameplay code, you get everything so you can build anything.

Professional Source Control

Unreal Engine 4 supports full C++ source code access via GitHub for subscription members with clear version documentation and tracking. In addition, both Perforce version control and Apache Subversion support are available to developers with custom license terms. No matter your team size, you can easily coordinate development and design efforts with others through UE4's versioning infrastructure.

C++ Code View

Unreal Engine 4 Code View saves time by allowing you to browse C++ functions directly on game characters and objects and jump straight to source code lines in Microsoft Visual Studio to make changes.

Hot Reload Function

Make updates to your gameplay code while the game is running using Unreal Engine 4's popular Hot Reload feature. This tool allows you to edit C++ code and see those changes reflected immediately in-game without ever pausing gameplay.

Simulate & Immersive Views

Quickly debug and update gameplay behaviors as they happen through Simulate Mode, which lets you run game logic in the editor viewport and inspect AI as characters perform actions. View your game in full screen within the editing environment with Immersive View, which allows you to complete iterations on gameplay changes without added UI clutter or distractions.

Instant Game Preview

Update your game and use Instant Game Preview to instantly spawn a player and play anywhere in-game without waiting for files to save.

Possess & Eject Features

The Possess and Eject features allow you to play your game in-editor to easily “eject” from the player’s perspective at any time and take control of the camera to inspect anything that may not be behaving properly.

Artificial Intelligence

Give AI-controlled characters increased spatial awareness of the world around them and enable them to make smarter movements with Unreal Engine 4’s gameplay framework and artificial intelligence system. Dynamic navigation mesh updates in real time as you move objects for optimal pathing at all times.

Audio

Use Unreal Engine 4's Sound Cue Editor to build the audio pipeline and define audio playback for your game. 

Leading Middleware Integrations

The premier Unreal Engine 4 Integrated Partner Program provides integrations with more than a dozen industry-leading middleware technologies, including NVIDIA PhysX, Autodesk Gameware, Enlighten, Umbra, Oculus VR and other software libraries.

I have read over these features and they all seem very advanced, I am not really experienced with a whole lot of them at this particular time however over time I look forward to developing new skills while learning how to use these features and hopefully I’ll implement some of them into my project.

Unreal Engine 4 Game Types

Produce a Specification for the Agreed Project

Now that I’ve had a mess around with the software I am going to launch Unreal Engine 4 and take a look at some of the different templates in UE4 and how they work with various game types.  The game types available in Unreal Engine 4 are:

-          -Blank

-          -First Person

-          -Flying

-          -Puzzle

-          -Rolling

-          -Side Scrolling

-          -2D Side Scrolling

-          -Third Person

-          -Top Down

-          -Twin Stick Shooter

-          -Vehicle

-          -Vehicle Advanced

The blank template is almost like UDK in that you simple have a blank canvas to work on, nothing is set up for you, you basically creating a project from scratch, there are no cameras set up for you, there are no player starts set up for you and there is no geometry set up for you… really your imagination is your only limit.

The first person template allows the play to see the video game from the games characters perspective.  This is a very commonly used camera type in video games, particularly used it shooter games, an example of with is the extremely popular Far Cry series where every single game in this series has used a first person perspective.  However it’s not just shooter games that use a first person perspective, the recent survival horror game Outlast used a first person perspective where you could simply run or pick up items.

The flying template allows players to control a plane which flies around the map.  I don’t really see this used in video games very often however an example of a game which would use this mechanic that is sticking out to be would be Nintendo’s Star Fox series, also the planes/helicopters in the Grand Theft Auto series may use a similar mechanic to this one.

The puzzle temple is quite self-explanatory, it allows unreal engine users to create puzzle games, puzzle games are quite popular across Android and IOS platforms, a great example of which is the extremely popular Candy Crush game which has been downloaded by millions.  However it’s not just Android and IOS devices that are a popular platform for puzzle games, handheld and home consoles have also had some extremely and commercially successful puzzle games, a great example is Tetris which was released in 1984 but is still going strong today.

The rolling template allows the player to control a balls movement throughout the environment, I honest can’t think of any games that would use this mechanic of the top of my head however it could make for a great mini game.

The side scrolling template is quite similar to a simple 2D side scroller however the camera is positioned in a way that makes it look like the player is in a 3D environment even though they can only move forward, backward, up and down.  Rayman Legends would be one example of a game that would have used this mechanic.

The 2D side scrolling template is where the camera is facing the stage straight on and make it look like the player is in a 2D environment.  Several games on classic consoles have used this including Kid Icarus, Metroid and the Super Mario Bros. series which still often creates 2D side scrolling Mario games.

A third person camera is whenever the games camera is positioned just behind the games main character, I am actually very familiar with it as I have used it before in one of my previous units when I was developing a level in UDK.  Examples of games that use a third person camera would be the Resident Evil series, Tomb Raider and The Legend of Zelda series.

The top down perspective is whenever is placed directly over the character giving the player an overhead view of the map, popular games that have used this perspective include the original Grand Theft Auto games, the Pokémon series and the Legend of Zelda series.

The vehicle template allowed me to, as the name suggests, control and drive a vehicle around the map, it was very basic though and nothing to flashy, the vehicles in open world games like Grand Theft Auto use a similar mechanic for their vehicles.

And finally, the advanced vehicle allows the players to drive around the map as well however this time it had more features and felt more like a racing game.  I was allowed to increase my speed, drive on a racing track and drive around loops and over ramps.

Time Management

Produce an Appropriate Project Plan for the Agreed Project

In today’s lesson we sat down and took a look at how time management plays a pivotal role for us when we are designing our project.  To begin with John provided us with a timetable which indicated how much time we would have to complete each unit, here is the time table showing how many hours we have for each unit.

We have 4 units in total, we have 48 hours for 3 of them and we have 56 for the other one.  Throughout this assignment I will aim to manage my time so that I will have a sufficient amount of time to complete my assignments to a satisfactory level or even better.

Thoughts So Far...

Identify the Factors that Contribute to the Process of Project Selection

Now that I have downloaded Unreal Engine 4 I had little browse around the Epic Games Launcher and my first impression is that it seems very simple to navigate through, I seen straight away where I could launch Unreal Engine 4 and could easily navigate through the other things.

Unreal Engine 4

Identify the Factors that Contribute to the Process of Project Selection

Unreal Engine is a video game engine that is developed by Epic Games, its initial release was 17 years ago in 1998 however the current version, Unreal Engine 4, was released in May 2012.  As of the 2^nd March 2015 Unreal Engine 4 became free for everyone to download with future update also being fee.  The latest update came on the 31^st August 2015 with was Unreal Engine 4.9, this is the version of Unreal Engine that I will be using for this unit.  Unreal Engine provides its users with a complete suite of game development tools which were made by game developers for you to develop and create your very own game, weather it some as simple as a mobile game or a full on home console game.

Introduction

Formulate and Record Possible Outline Project Specifications

For this unit, I will be using the skills which I have acquired in my previous units by using software like UDK to help me in learning a new software in Unreal Engine 4.  From what I understand a lot of the skills that I learned while using UDK will be transferable to Unreal Engine 4 meaning it shouldn't be an overly difficult software for me to learn how to use.  Throughout this unit I will also develop my decision making skills, my problem solving skills and my communication skills.  This will aid me in selecting, planning, implementing and evaluating a project in which will meet the grading criteria and hopefully even exceed this criteria to achieve the best result I possibly can.  Throughout this unit I will also further develop my skills working both individually as well as working with others within a given time-scale and constraints to produce an acceptable and viable solution to an agreed brief.