Lifts Tutourial

In today’s lesson I wanted to continue with my block out but instead I found out we were doing a tutorial on how to create lifts which still made me happy because I could implement this knowledge into my map.

The first step to making a lift is selecting the piece you want as the lift and the place in which its going to sit, once this is done I right clicked the object and went to the convert menu and selected convert from static mesh to mover, once this was done I added Collison to the object by right clicking and selecting add Collison and block all this is so it blocks everything from every angle we need this because we are going to be standing on the elevator and don’t want to fall through it.

Once Collison is selected I then pressed the kismet button to bring up a new window in which I right clicked to add a new event using intrepid actor and the selected mover.

Once this is completed a matinee should appear in the window, once it does double click it to bring up the animation window this part I found most easy you move both the coloured triangles to the time you want the animation to be.

Then move the black bar to the begging of the animation and hit the button in the top left corner of the window which say’s add key frame then drag it to the end and add another key frame but while this one is selected go back to the view port and move the lift to the place you want it to take you,

 This should create a yellow line to show its animated I pressed play to try it and it worked so I closed the window and my lift was done all I had to do was start the game up and jump on top and the Collison activated it. And hey presto I had a working lift, I will incorporate this into my level somehow but right now I’m not sure how to.

Peer Review week 1

Today I thought I would be continuing with the creation of my level but for today’s lesson we had to do a peer review in which my peers took turns trying out my level and giving me feedback on what they liked and anything that could be improved.  

The three biggest pieces of feedback I had was that the jump pads going across the centre room made the gameplay have a quicker pace which they liked but they thought they were unnecessary unless there was cover in the centre of the room.

The next was that the second floor had nothing in it that was due to that still not been worked on yet so that feedback will be easily dealt with 

And the third was that they didn’t think that going down a dead end corridor for rocket launchers was worth it, this means I will have to revise this idea and possibly put a tele porter at the end of each corridor going back up to the second floor.

Block out phase week 2

So last week I ended when I created a ramp on both ends that went to a second level, so this week I decided to only concentrate on finishing the bottom level so at least that way I could test something out in my level without waiting. The first thing I set about doing was to create snaking corridors from the ramps which entered into the centre of the room where majority of the fighting will commence due to the open area and high concentration of weapons  (which I will get too next) . I created snaking and tight corridors because if the player meets enemies in the corridors then the fighting will be fast paced and tense due to the small are this should add a nice new dynamic to the flow and the overall fell of gameplay.  

Once the outlines of the centre room was created I decided to put 4 weapon lockers down by going to actor classes in the content browser and dragging in weapon content factory from the menu, I then had to change the settings by double clicking the object then going to the option in the menu to add a weapon and I added shock rifles to all 4 weapon lockers and placed them in the corners of the room. The reason I put them in this place was to give the players a reason to enter the big centre room and fight for a better weapon, I also placed rocket launchers at the ends of the corridors on either end so the player would have to run into a dead end for the most powerful weapon thus risking death, I done this because I didn’t want to offer the most powerful weapon out easily without risk otherwise everyone would go for it, this way you only will go for it if you’re willing to risk your life to get more kills.

After adding in the weapons and pickups I then started to walk across my centre room and i started to realise t is really big when playing the game which I didn’t like because I thought it would slow down the pacing the game so I needed to add some way increasing the traversal speed, so I went on the VLE and found a tutorial for jump pads and I thought that could be quite interesting for travel so I decided to do it and I went into the actor classes in the content browser again and dragged in 4 jump pads  and placed in similar positions to the shock rifles and then began to create the landing spots for them  in front of the shock rifles in opposite corners, this way each jump pad threw you across the room in a arc to a shock rifle I thought this could bring in some fun gameplay due to enemies jumping overhead while shooting as well as the player doing this and at the same time increasing the gameplay speed for the room.

 

Block out phase week 1

In today’s lesson I began by touching up on my designs and making sure they were ready.  Once my initial designs were done I began with the building of the level, I done this in a blocked out form so that we can get the gameplay working in the game before we start to make it look good. The blocks were given to us in a map called ublock_map_01.

Once i got this map I decided to double the size of the map in length because I want symmetry for a capture the flag map I did this by selecting the builder brush and doubling the number on the x axis.

Once this was done I then used CSG subtract to remove the floor before adding the newly sized one in by pressing CSG add.

 Once my floor was the right  size I used the pieces already provided in the level to create a border around the edge this will stop any AI walking of the ends when testing and shows that the level will be closed off, Once my walls were in place I began by building one side of my level with a long corridor in the center and then duplicating it on the other side this is because I’m creating  a capture the flag map and it would be unfair to give one team access to something and the not the others, it also allows for a better team vs team gameplay flow by having both teams coming at each other from opposite ends.

Then when the corridors were built I then created two ramps either side of the corridor that joined in the middle and went up towards the center for a higher level of the map, again I duplicated this effect on the other side to keep symmetry. That’s all I completed this week but so far I’m enjoying the layout of the map and i will have to wait to see once more has been added before I try to make changes to improve it because as the level stands there’s not enough in it to test how it plays so far.