This week in map stuff

Hi everyone!, over the past week i have spent most of my time doing minor changes to the map, most of these being changing the length of lanes and other such things to allow for the implementation of assets into the level, as well as this i have begun creation of textures and unwrapping models for texturing, with my textures they’re mostly just basic colors and shapes with some added noise to make them more visually interesting, then when i am happy with the base texture i create a normal map using an Nvidia plugin that can generate a normal map and then i edit this partially to get the desired effect.

Below is an example of the textures i have so far created along with their normal maps and specular maps, the normals maps are used to give the effect of 3D and the specular maps are used for the engine to figure out how to properly light the texture, Their is also an option within Unreals material editor to let me create a specular just using the blueprinting system, for this project i have tried a combination of both to try and get some cool looking lighting out of the textures.

After i have create the textures,normals and sometimes speculars i then take it into UE4 and begin creation of the material, depending on what i want this can be either a very straightforward process of a bit of a tricky one, For instance the below gif is a material that i have created entirely within UE4, none of this has been animated within another program.

In order to create this effect i had to create several different nodes, within the emissive area which gives it a glow effect when rendered in game i also have a cloud texture that i quickly made in Photoshop using the cloud filter which i am overlaying on top of the colors and then panning to the left.

Within the pulse section of the material i have set it up to occasionally make the material glow slightly brighter than what it is default set to by the emissive, Above this is the specular map input which also contains two variable which are plugged into roughness and metallic which further help to make it feel like a real object in the scene.

Above that their is also the default material that is overlayed on top of everything else and then also the normal map which is used to give it the pretend effect of 3D lighting.

So other than all that stuff which i have greatly enjoyed doing i have also been slowly optimizing and unwrapping my 3d models that are already in the scene to be ready for when i texture them.

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading and tata!.

Hi everyone here is another update on how the map is going, currently I have created multiple assets to populate the scene with, the major parts being Huge pipes which i guess would be used to transport sewage,water or house electrical cables for connection between the higher and lower part of the city, Below is a gif of a brief fly over.

Mostly i have been working on trying to make sure the pipes phase in and out from top to bottom using either fog or at the top of the level a massive block, which is meant to represent part of the unfinished city, Originally i was going to use a volumetric fog to cut off both the top and bottom, however currently their is no such tool in UE4 to allow me to do this eventually i will try and create a fog particle effect to try and block out the upper sections.

I also had help from one of the lecturers who helped me improve some of my already completed assets and i plan on creating some basic textures for the level so that we have something more tangible to show off for a presentation that is coming up soon on the project.

As well as all this both myself and another class mate have begun designing what the HUD will look like, below you can see the most current design for the HUD, it has to show all three placeable towers, the players crossbow as well as a wave counter and a bolt counter for the player, We decided to position it at the top center of the screen instead of the bottom as having the HUD and the crossbow in the same section of screen space would be to confusing for some players.

Aside from all that i haven’t been doing much else, i look forward to mocking up some textures for the level and seeing how that goes as i always enjoy creating assets, anyway hope you’ve all enjoyed the read and ill see you next time.

Work stuff

Hi everyone, apologies that i am a week late in posting this blog so expect another blog post this week around Friday!.

For the past week i have been mocking up really basic high level concept HUD’S for our project as well as creating some minor details for grey box to give the level a sense of scale, On top of all of this i created a technical document for use with the project, it is incomplete however this document will likely continue changing depending on what happens with the project so this is not a problem realistically.

So with the HUD high level concepts I’ve been doing i just created a Photoshop file with a canvas size of 1920×1080 created some text elements called “Wave counter, Money counter and Selectable turrets” and with these i can easily place them around the scene and get a rough idea of what the HUD would feel like in game, obviously their is only so much i can do with this before taking it into UE4 but because of UE4’s UI widget tool this isn’t a problem, as i can easily create multiple types of HUD’s and try them in game.

As for the level, for the most part all I’ve had to do is re-size the level which only took a few minutes, then set about creating spaces for the player to be able to navigate between each lane, The way I’ve gone about this is creating narrower lanes which the player can use to quickly get between each lane however these also offer a certain level of risk as the player if they’re not careful could easily fall off and die which could lose them precious building/defense time.

The idea behind the scene is pretty similar to one of my earlier concepts which was the two larger towers among the city, a map which can be downloaded Here, however this is more similar to Deus Ex human revolutions Hengsha map which i really love.

Aside from all the stuff on this project i have been slowly creating some basic mock ups for the final project of my course, I wont show these now as i want more time with them before i show anything on it.

Hope you enjoyed the read!.

Gratuitous mappernating

Hi everyone!

So our group has chosen to create a First person tower defense shooter, similar to Sanctum 2, For this i have chosen to do level greyboxing as well as HUD design, for the HUD i will be using UE4’s new UI tool, it’s really simple and allows you to very quickly block out the beginnings of what you want your HUD to look like.

Our game is set in the future were a Medieval engineer has traveled into the not to distant future and must defend himself from hordes of robots, He must do this by using his wit as an engineer to modify the available technology surrounding him.

For visual reference i have been using thing’s like Akira, Ghost in the Shell,Kowloon city, Deus ex human revolutions China map, Remember Me as well as Judge Dredds mega city one, My vision of the level in its complete stage is to create something akin to a heavily built up and eroded city that is still lived in, some great reading material for this is also Neuromancer and Snow crash, A great piece of reference that can be pulled from as well is Kowloon city almost a real world counter part to what i have stated above.

So with all this stated for the moment all i have been doing is the block outs for our level so Haigen our programmer can have something to work with, I have created four different versions of the map and currently the fourth one that i have come to appears to be the one we will stick with.

Currently their are three lanes, enemy waves will spawn from these and converge at the same point, Eventually i plan on filling the negative space with smaller pathways that the player will be able to use to navigate easily from each lane to the next, Visually this will look like a built up industrial section of the city which people still live in.

Other than this i have been working slowly on a small side project, All it is at the moment is a relaxing exploration game were you sail a ship around to different islands, their are currently a lot of games focusing around this genre though so i think that i will change it up somewhat.

Bye!.

Concepts

Hey everyone just here to show you some concept work that i had a friend do for the project, you can also find her deviant art page here, there’s some really cool stuff on there.

Concept art done by Memo

Concept by memo of the ceiling air vents

UDK concept work done by me

As you can see there have been a lot of changes from the initial concept work, mainly it’s not as blue as i wanted it, this was due to several different technical constraints with materials and shaders that i ran into, however i’m still confident that the game will be fun, next week i’m going to try and post a recording of some of the work that I’ve done with it so that you can get even more of a feel for the game.

and if you’re wondering that i wasn’t going to talk about the First person shooter that I’ve been making in unity then fear not because it’s almost done.

Hope you all enjoyed this small post and ill post again soon!

The Release

Requirements:

A PC

A copy of UDK http://www.unrealengine.com/en/udk/