The February 11th meeting consisted of a quick walkthrough of some communicative and administrative technologies that the project will be utilizing heavily:
After which the group split into the various subgroups that are focusing on a certain topic area (programmers, level designers, story creators, artists) and set about creating tickets, or tasks, for themselves during the coming week. You can find more details by
checking out the milestone tickets.
If all proceeds well, the group should make measurable progress this week in the way of unique data generated and art/story created.
Hello everyone, trying this out from the Computer Club site as opposed to keeping everything in emails that can get lost, not read, and not easily shared. Here goes:
There are a number of tasks that need to be taken care of by
everyone throughout the next week. Please search around the Internet for collections of materials, textures, and static meshes that are directed more towards modern day (since the UDK is geared towards a more futuristic environment). Everyone is expected to find at
least two resources and
post them in this thread on the forum.
The next meeting on February 4th will be focused on beginning the execution of the first level. Everyone should be there, not just the level designers. Every group in the Game Design group must be involved and in gear for us to continue moving forward with this project.
Everyone should also be watching their respective pages on the
Game Design project site and continually tinkering with their respective applications.
I am looking forward to moving through this project and getting the vision closer to a realization. With everyone working together, communicating, and staying involved we can definitely get whatever we want done.
To conclude this post, I want everyone to be mindful of the fact that you
should be working on your component of the project throughout the week. The meetings on Thursday should never be seen as the only time to work on the project. You should be spending a few hours each week tinkering with the UDK or programming environment, reading articles, or finding resources to enable us to complete the project.
Today we held our weekly meeting in our new location (EH 306 for those that forgot). Here is the basic recap: I did a tutorial covering the following topics:
- BSP Brushes (Cubes etc)
- Actors (Lights, PlayerStart Locations, etc)
- Applying Materials
- Static Meshes
- Terrain Creation
- Terrain Materials
We then covered the important aspects of the first level in regards to actually building it. In fact, the topics covered above are the most applicable to the level.
I have also moved the project off of Google Code and onto a campus server which will eventually be the home of all DSU projects. Currently the server is only available while on campus and through an IP. To make it easier, however, I have pointed my personal domain to this server for easier access and easier to remember url. You can get to the
project site as well as a
phpBB forum.
Below is a copy and paste of the email I sent out to all members of the Game Design group:
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Hello everyone,
Following is some important information that will be utilized on Thursday the 28th. It is
your responsibility to make sure that you read the email, get everything installed, and be ready for the meeting. I am also including a number of links to resources to begin reading. They should provide a small overview of each group's particular task in relation to the programs we will be utilizing. This is a rather long email, but please read everything so we are all on the same page for Thursday.
First, the most important info:
From now on we will be meeting in
EH 306. We will be utilizing the lab throughout the creation of our game.
After reviewing the UDK and comparing it against Hammer, I have decided that we should move forward with the UDK distribution. I will cover the reasoning briefly on the 28th and will have a basic hands on tutorial prepared so everyone can gain a measure of experience with the UDK Editor.
Second, what you will need:
Programmers, please head over to Dean Halverson's office and ask him for the Visual Studio 2008 disc. Have that installed as we will be using the
nFringe plugin which will provide a number of useful features (syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, etc). You can
skip right to the download, but you will have to have VS2008 installed first. You will likely have to wait until Monday to get into the office. However, if you would like to get this installed immediately, you can visit me over the weekend in my dorm room: 302 Higbie. I can burn additional discs as needed.
Map designers and anyone else interested in the map editing process (which should be most of you), please also head to Dean Halverson's office and ask him for the UDK 2010 disk that I left with him (so it is in a centralized location). Even if you have a version already installed, please uninstall and install this version. For those of you that would rather wait a few hours for the download, please be sure to download the
January 2010 Beta release. As above, you will have to wait until Monday to get it from Halverson's office. You can also visit me in 302 Higbie to get a copy faster if you do not wish to wait for Monday or the download to finish.
Concept artists and story writers/planners, feel free to also get your hands on the UDK so you can test levels as they are being developed (after all, more feedback is better for everyone and the project itself).
Third, here are some resources for each of you to glaze over/read:
Programmers, I would appreciate if you could read over the
First UnrealScript Project document to gain a basic understanding of how the projects are structured when dealing with UnrealScript.
Map designers, please read the
Creating Unreal Levels document to understand the basic components for constructing a level. This tutorial will cover nearly the exact ground that I covered in my Hammer demo, and as a result, should feel somewhat familiar.
Concept artists and story writers/planners, there is no basic overall introductory document, but there is an enormous number of wiki pages dedicated to topics including creating vehicles, textures, materials, etc etc. Feel free to hop on to the
Creation category and glaze over a topic that may interest you. However, for the most part, please concentrate on hammering out some concept art and finer details for the initial part of the first level.
Finally, some closing notes:
The Thursday 28th meeting will consist of an interactive tutorial on building a very basic level using the UDK Editor. It will be very similar in format to my Hammer demo, but will proceed with more explanation and at a slower pace so that everyone can follow along and gain hands on experience with the editor. After the tutorial is complete, we will all focus on hammering out the details for the first level, getting a level layout, and a thorough (but concise) concept of how the level will look and feel.
In addition, from here on out we will be proceeding as quickly as we can so I would appreciate it if each of you choose one of the above groups to have as your
most active group (the one you have the most vested interest in). You will definitely be allowed to participate in the other groups as well to gain more well-rounded experience, but having a single group to focus most of your attention on will provide better focus.
If you know anyone that should have received this email, but is not in the TO field, please forward this to them so they get this information. Please also ask them to send me an email at this address: ryanwersal [at] gmail [dot] com so that I can get them added to my list until we get the kinks worked out of the Computer Club email list application.
If you would like help installing or using any of the above tools I will be at the Computer Club Help Night in EH 105 on Tuesday the 26th at 7pm and will be more than willing to help you.
Thank you very much for hanging in there and reading the entire email. Please try to follow through with the above so that we are all ready for the meeting this Thursday. If you have any questions don't hesitate to email me.
Ryan Wersal
The January 21st meeting saw Cody stepping down as leader and, after a vote, I was named leader of the Game Design Group. I am hoping that we can get a lot done during this semester.
The first part of the meeting consisted of me giving a presentation on making a very basic level with the Hammer World Editor and the Source Engine.
The next part focused on the discussion of what engine to utilize for the game. After a bit of back and forth, it was determined that I would take some time to contrast the features of the UDK and Hammer to determine what would be the best suited engine.
To end the meeting, I informed everyone that there would be an email coming soon that would detail the decision and have links to resources to read as well as links for tool downloads.
I hope that the group continues to show strong promise and that with the proper motivation we can create a product of quality.
Meetings - Thursdays at 5:30 In EH Rm 002