Thursday 16 April 2009

Final Major Project

Ok, so we've got to hand in a draft of our project proposal this coming monday, and from then on its all work towards the end of year show. I had a few initial ideas, namely a Resident evil style horror game using third person fixed camera angles and the like. While I was messing around with this idea, I did, with
the help of 3DBuzz, manage to figure out how to have multiple fixed cameras that would change dependant on the player position, all done in Kismet. A screeny is posted after the jump. Ultimately however, this idea was not what I felt would really show of all my skills. As a result, I've settled on Creating a game in the vein of "Loaded" and "Re-Loaded". As a result of this, it has taken me the better part of a week, amalgamating countless tutorials together in big pot confusion just to be able to figure out how to get a custom character into Unreal. More after the jump.


It Involves a very confusing Rigging process in 3dsMax, and lots of messing about with several .ini files. Until we go back to college I'm unsure if I can edit or even get access to these config files, due the college's network setup. So far, all I've done is a basic test character, made out of boxes and with placeholder textures.
Fortunately, by Epic offering up the base models for 4 of the different character types, I can model around the provided skeleton, rig it, and all the animations will (or should) transfer straight over onto my character. This is helpful because I've got alot to do, and creating all new animations would require a good few weeks that I don't have. Changing Weapon properties like fire speed and damage done is a simple matter of changing a few numbers in some different .ini files. Getting the top Down view I need that tracks onto the player is easy, in fact it was the basis of the kismet for this that helped me get the angles for the Resident Evil Idea. Still a long way to go though;

-Create my Final Character, Complete with Textures and Normal Maps (possibly)
-Figure Out how to Change the meshes and animations on the Weapons, OR create new weapon classes entirely
-Change the HUD
-Custom Meshes for ammo, weapon Factories etc.
-ALL Level Assets
-Changing the way unreal handles aiming (at the moment it fires in the center of the view, which results in shooting the floor)
-Meshes for Bots
-Changing Bot Behaviour (the play it like a deathmatch at the moment, killing each other, I need them to focus on the player only)
-Possibility of Porting to PS3?
-Some other things I've probably forgotten, watch this space.


The Kismet Showing the custom third person camera Angles and how they are done in Kismet. (Right Click, View Image for full size)






The Custom Test Character in the unreal character selection screen. It has to be Imported in parts, such as arms, legs and torso. (Right Click, View Image for full size)



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