Final assignment, continued.
To carry on from where I left off, the assignment has now been completed. The final week of work was very long and quite difficult. To start of, the scripting in the final map was completed, so that was all our scripting complete. So we went back to the first maps and started to make them look professional. James worked on the first map, the city, and I worked on the tubestation.
For the tubestation, I wanted to create a map that showed the destruction of a tubestation. To do this I created a map that was dark, and had smashed up trains in it. To give the idea that a battle had taken place down there, I had a train that is smashed up, partly on the platform. I also placed two more trains that had been smashed up into my map. I also placed fire emitters in the trains to give the illusion that some of the trains were on fire. Finally I used dead body static meshes to show that something bad had happened down there. As well as making the tubestation look as if a battle had taken place down there, I also needed it to look normal, before a battle had taken place. To do this I created a mover of a tube train. This mover is shown at the beginning of the flashback in the tubestation. I feel that this gives the impression of an everyday working tubestation.
After I had finished the tubestation it was agreed with James, that I should work on the final map. First off I created an exit to the tubestation, and then created a control tower. I also started to create the buildings for the city. Once I had done this James and I agreed that we should go back to the first level, and work together to make the levels look nicer. As we were doing this it was agreed that I should try and get the level transitions working. This was just to make sure that what we had done linked up well together.
We also created the sound for our level, credits, and worked on the programming. For the programming we decided to use the mine, and then manipulate this code so when the player hits the mine you actually gain health.
Problems
Some of the first problems that we encountered were script related. In the tubestation, the problems with moving the bots and making my bot turn around. To combat this problem, I would normally delete the triggers that I had created and then create them again and nine times out of ten this would solve the problem. Sometimes it would just be a simple mistake on my part such as spelling pathnodes wrong etc. One of the major problems that hit our project was towards the end. As we ran our first level we had problems with the brushes. The brushes would disappear as we hit certain parts of our level, which was a major problem. To fix this we had to delete the brushes that had disappeared and recreate them. This took a long time and we are still not sure what the overall problem. One theory is that many of our brushes collided with each other, so this is what was causing this problem.
Another problem that we experienced was with the weather property. For some unknown reason, at one point it started to replicate itself, and in one level we had up to seven weather effects in one level, and when we ran the level there was so much rain you couldn’t see the level. After deleting the weather effects it started to run fine.
Another problem with the rain was we couldn’t block the rain from going into buildings. We carried out a lot of research into volumes that could block this from happening, and we still couldn’t get this working. In the end we decided to keep the rain in the levels, for the visual impact that it delivers. There is only two buildings that this is seen in.
Overall I have really enjoyed this assignment. I have learnt so much and hopefully this will become helpful in later modules. Working with James was fine, we had an equal balance of work and we worked well together.
To carry on from where I left off, the assignment has now been completed. The final week of work was very long and quite difficult. To start of, the scripting in the final map was completed, so that was all our scripting complete. So we went back to the first maps and started to make them look professional. James worked on the first map, the city, and I worked on the tubestation.
For the tubestation, I wanted to create a map that showed the destruction of a tubestation. To do this I created a map that was dark, and had smashed up trains in it. To give the idea that a battle had taken place down there, I had a train that is smashed up, partly on the platform. I also placed two more trains that had been smashed up into my map. I also placed fire emitters in the trains to give the illusion that some of the trains were on fire. Finally I used dead body static meshes to show that something bad had happened down there. As well as making the tubestation look as if a battle had taken place down there, I also needed it to look normal, before a battle had taken place. To do this I created a mover of a tube train. This mover is shown at the beginning of the flashback in the tubestation. I feel that this gives the impression of an everyday working tubestation.
After I had finished the tubestation it was agreed with James, that I should work on the final map. First off I created an exit to the tubestation, and then created a control tower. I also started to create the buildings for the city. Once I had done this James and I agreed that we should go back to the first level, and work together to make the levels look nicer. As we were doing this it was agreed that I should try and get the level transitions working. This was just to make sure that what we had done linked up well together.
We also created the sound for our level, credits, and worked on the programming. For the programming we decided to use the mine, and then manipulate this code so when the player hits the mine you actually gain health.
Problems
Some of the first problems that we encountered were script related. In the tubestation, the problems with moving the bots and making my bot turn around. To combat this problem, I would normally delete the triggers that I had created and then create them again and nine times out of ten this would solve the problem. Sometimes it would just be a simple mistake on my part such as spelling pathnodes wrong etc. One of the major problems that hit our project was towards the end. As we ran our first level we had problems with the brushes. The brushes would disappear as we hit certain parts of our level, which was a major problem. To fix this we had to delete the brushes that had disappeared and recreate them. This took a long time and we are still not sure what the overall problem. One theory is that many of our brushes collided with each other, so this is what was causing this problem.
Another problem that we experienced was with the weather property. For some unknown reason, at one point it started to replicate itself, and in one level we had up to seven weather effects in one level, and when we ran the level there was so much rain you couldn’t see the level. After deleting the weather effects it started to run fine.
Another problem with the rain was we couldn’t block the rain from going into buildings. We carried out a lot of research into volumes that could block this from happening, and we still couldn’t get this working. In the end we decided to keep the rain in the levels, for the visual impact that it delivers. There is only two buildings that this is seen in.
Overall I have really enjoyed this assignment. I have learnt so much and hopefully this will become helpful in later modules. Working with James was fine, we had an equal balance of work and we worked well together.
posted by Matthew Battison at 4:36 AM
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