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