Lots of Unreal fun!(?)

Spent a lot of time this week trying to make some progress on my map, its the biggest part of my project and id only got a few placeholders in so for starters i carried on making the background landscape for my area aswell as playing the 2nd island in the game (this is where you will pop up after the underground section probably not the greatest of screenshots but because my map is so large when i zoom out it starts forgetting to render all the water and it looks stupid but:


Ive done too much round the edges to screenshot it all but ive worked on the other side too behind the dam/apartment block to try and give it some depth ive added some bsp shaped bridges over the river leading off into more buildings, these are only temp until i find suitable meshes for them but its just to get an idea of the size/scale of things, ive also added a few more temp buildings and completely boarded off my play area so its a proper island now with boundries and needed something to fill the gap!


I've not taken enough screenshots of my progress but nevermind, i didnt want to attempt the buildings quite yet as i think im going to have a hard time making them not look crap! so ill open some of the premade maps in the editor and see if i can pick up any tips, im looking at you Heatray. So i thought id make a start on park, which as it stood was nothing more than a green block, the idea for my park is that its quite lush as its been abandoned for a while because of everything thats happened so the grass will have overgrown a little and will be popping up through the paths and things, ill also have rubbish scattered all over, probably a pond/a fountain feature and maybe some burning barrels at a later point when i get round to emitters, something that the bandits have set out.

So anything i added a foilage layer and selected a few meshes and got painting, changing the randomness and the scale of the grass meshes gave some interesting results and with some trees and lamposts added i came up with something like this:


Which i think looks pretty good since theres still no proper lighting. I also added a pond area with some overgrown bushes and things around the edges, i may work on this later, i may change the water or add some more greenary but for now im quite pleased with the result:



And finally for the park the fountain/main area in the central part of the park, i changed the orignal bsp into a round concrete fountain with the some gargoyles and waterfalls with the overgrown bushes around the edges i think it stands out pretty well (bare in mind all of these in game shots launched through the editor are only 640x480? so when ive finished the map and cooked it i should be able to take some better shots in 1920x1200 with all the settings ramped up.



Well i couldnt resist and i had a crack at some buildings, my earlier attempts i havent even screenshotted they looked so bad i deleted the bsp's and tried to forget i ever did them, they just looked like cubes randomly dotted around so after researching some premade maps i see they make walls up purely of static meshes combining different packages to give some interesting results, so i had a crack myself and came up with



Which actually came out well, im not sure exactly what its suppose to be but the dragon and the pillars give it quite a futuristic feel i think, it doesnt matter as you wont be able to enter them, if i can make a few more like this, some garages, maybe abandoned warehouses that u can actually enter with machinery in? that could work i think, ive seen some futuristic screens on walls and bus stops and theres quite a lot more of these lights that i think add to the time zone, well at least with the meshes i have available to me, its 2009 and we still have buildings around in main parts of town from 1900's and earlier so i dont think it would be unreasonable to have buildings from 2000-2050 in the late 2100's anyway!

Boundries!

I was looking at my map thinking where to begin and the outskirts was really annoying me..all very flat and nothing but a skydome for miles so i thought id try and fill out the edges with some messhes after finding some meshes i thought suited i set off trying to block off areas so ive put some buildings in place with some waterfalls in front of them..looks a little plain at the moment but hopefully in the right lighting when its dark and rainy..and theres some emitters where the waterfall hits the river to give it a realistic look it should look a lot better

Now although it looks alright zoomed in..in reality you only see

But nevermind..as thats all this was meant to be ..something in the distance to block the edges off.

I played around with some more meshes even using ones that look from a different package however they are not, unfortunatly they dont have the same light emitter so im not sure if they will stay but for now im still just placing things in and seeing how it looks, ive also played with some walls to try and help with the scale, its hard to figure out..you look fairly close but it does take ages if u try and run there so i guess its realistic:

The shiny water despite thinking id hit the jackpot finding it was starting to annoy me, it was too clean and didnt look that realistic, when your river floods its not going to be tap water is it, so i went on the hunt for something else while trying to fill up the outskirts even more, its starting to look quite good now i think:

Water fun

well water plays a big part in my map..infact its probably about 70% of the above ground enviroment possibly more if i can use it better, so with this i decided to have a crack at following some tutorials to make my own water to see how it looks, after some huge tutorial and 96 instructions in the material editor later i came out with:



it looks pretty good, you use a reflection of the sky in material so it looks realistic however due to the sheer scale of my water area when i increased the scale beyond what i was happy with it still looked like it was just a material copied over and over, you could see where it ended and repeated again giving an ugly tile effect so unfortunatly i had to find something else, i scanned the assets provided in the unreal folder and found some liquid materials and a distorted lake gave something i think i could use as it doesnt give a repeated tile effect and the waters moving quite rapidly which would be realistic due to the floods in the area:



i think ill roll with this and see if i can get the terrain shape how i like it next so i have all the water in place

Back to Unreal!

Well for now i just wanted to get some building shapes blocked out as they would be in there final position and hopefully get the scale something like.

Im not sure if im going to use 3D for any of these buildings as your fairly limited with bsp shapes in unreal but i can at least have some sort of buildings and if they are not how i wanted them i will draw concept art showing how i would have liked them if i had the time to make some curvy futuristic looking structures.

So im still going on what i remember in Unreal 2 avoiding reading these books for aslong as possible so some progress shots:

So theres the dam structure and now im reusing some of my old bsps with some garage doors on simply so i can figure out the scale of things also using pavement meshes as a rough outline for the roads but theres progress!



Hard to get everything in 1 screenshot, but ive added more buildings are outlined a general grassy area for the park.



Now ive added some gates round the park and a rough path, ill probably make a better one using bsps but for now i just used the terrain editor to paint out a rough path so i could get used to the scale, also added some trees and a feature in the middle of the park, again its probably just a placeholder but i find it quite useful then i go back over it at a later date and replace things with final meshes.

Unfortunatly this was as far as i was able to get, i cant add the next island with more buildings on yet as i dont know how far away it will be as thats dependant on how far i can make the underground tunnels reach without feeling stupid. Until i have this island i cant lower all the other terrain and fill with water. However im having some issues with the underground as im used to unreal 2 where if you want to add a staircase under terrain you just subtract a cube but as this engine is different you need to add a cube and then subtract from it which is causing me a few issues so im going to have to consult these unreal books! however im fairly pleased with the rough outline ive done and i think the scale feels right which is probably the most important thing.

Yet more concept art!

Well i still wasnt entirely sure on my map layout i knew i wanted a built up area, a park area and then to use the underground to access another part of the map as perhaps the water has cut off other ways to get there which gives the enviroment another dimension.

I drew out another image trying to get some ideas together and came up with this:

I was trying to draw the map out in a different perspective and as i drew out the dam i thought, actually that could be a massive apartment block, its in the future population is increasing and they are running out of areas to build housing so why not have a massive complex that doubles up as a dam for the Thames the theme may change a little and ill probably add more art concerning this structure later as radio masts and other features will probably be roughly added to it as people are having to adapt to the flooding but with this in my head i had another go at an overhead view exactly how i would like my map to be for once:



And this is it, it has the built up area in front of the dam as in my previous image with a park area on the left, ive added some roads and the bridge on the left and the smaller island of buildings on the right is where the main goal of this enviroment will be. The idea is you have to take the underground entrance which will be somewhere near the dam and follow the abandoned and possibly half flooded tunnels and old train tracks through the underground as the water is stopping you reach it otherwise. But this is hopefully something like what i intend to create in unreal 3 depending how much i can do with the water on a large scale enviroment.

I also drew up some concept art of the underground showing how the water has reached here aswell:



However now i have a good idea of how i want my map to look i can open unreal again and pretty much change everything i had already made!

Some assets for the interface

I still havent got round to reading these weighty unreal books so i decided to work on some art which i intend to use in navigation which i should be creating in UIScene at some point!

The main title i made for the game i few months back ive expanded on slightly to accomodate areas to have easy to read buttons on so i went with some simple borders

Few buttons to be used in these borders also:





There are others but this should give a clear idea as im not entirely sure which ill use yet.

After some research and listening to others i realised i probably shouldnt restrict myself to the red colours im using as in the otherside of the world and due to the density of the ash other places would be freezing over in almost an ice age style enviroment so i created my tephra backing screen again and tried to give it an icey effect in photoshop

I think it turned out pretty well and it means i can use red/hot screens for certain areas and blue/cold screens for other enviroments but for the title i wanted to include both to show each extreme so i simply merged them together which will be my final main screen:

Main Character

Ive drawn out my main character, although i hvent really gave him a name or a proper bio i thought it would be worth uploading the image of him as it gives the game more of an identity now you know how the playable char looks

So the idea of this behind this is to be just your average typical guy, does his 9-5 job doesnt really enjoy it but needs the money to get by, mid-late 20's quite scruffy, just an ordinary guy not some big super hero type. Which i think is useful for letting the player empathise with the character more.

Concept for tutorial zones i may create

I decided to quickly draw out the tutorial zone, both indoor and outdoors. The base is set up in some old abandoned warehouse, the inside is where you would begin the game and learn the basic controls such as moving around, jumping, crouching climbing ladders etc. This is probably also where you use other features of the game which i will go into more details at a later game (upgrading guns and buying other equipment) as well as where you pick where to travel to next in the main story.

The outdoor area would have a target range set up and access to some basic weapons and would be where you are taught how to hold and fire a gun as its something you've never had to do before but need protection from the bandits you will encounter.

I intend to draw these out much better at a later date and include more detail as i work out what i want to have in these areas as i may make them in unreal if i have time later on in the year as they are fairly small enviroments.

Concept art for the other areas

So I've changed my main char from an ex military type figure to an average guy whos caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and is thrown into this post apocalyptic type game.

The idea is the volcanos thick dense ash has made all the satellites in the world pretty much useless so countrys are cut off from each other, thus they cannot work together to save the planet from mother nature herself. To get over this they need to reconnect and reuse all the old communication systems (internet lines, phone and radio towers etc) pretty much the technology we are still using today.

The main character you play is an engineer with an average 9-5 job who is approached and hired by the Mercury corporation who is a team of lead engineers who have all the blueprints and scans which pinpoint how the old technology exactly works and where the main systems are throughout the planet. Your task is to be sent around the planet and reestablish communcation via these methods despite you never having done anything like this before (Half Life style)

As i was going to create the London area in unreal i still wanted to develop concept art for the other enviroments you would visit throughout Tephra so i have made one quite detailed image which would be somewhere in North America close to where the volcano had erupted.

So this would explain the fires around, however this would also be from the bandits who are taking advantage of the situation and looting what they can.
This picture took me days so although i wanted to do at least one for each zone its going to be a while before i attempt another area.

Back to drawing

In my original idea my main char was some ex military type figure, i knew this sort of character is used in nearly all games these days and its fairly common but i thought i could work with it.

I had written a 3-4 page backstory from the perspective of the main character leading up to the events before the actual game takes place as the idea would be you would find a diary or some sort which would be used to replay the events in the game back in the past. After much thinking i couldnt decide on how exactly to show this so i scrapped the whole idea and changed the main character which now makes the back story totally irrelevant but i can still submit it in the document i suppose.

Apart from this ive done yet more overhead concept designs for the map layout again i dont think im particularly happy with any of them and im still not sure how much ill be able to even create using Unreal 3 which is why im trying to develop my drawing skills more so i can show what i was aiming for in concept art at least.

An example of one of my overhead images, least they look much better online now i have a scanner.

Loading screen? anddd a logo for the team you work for

Was messing around with filters and some effects and came up with a simple screen i may use for a loading screen before your in the world, may make a variety of these depending on which mission your about to begin but it didnt take me long and i think it fits the game quite well:

Yeah widescreen, going to need some cropping there i think but we shall see when im that far in.

Something that had been bugging me for a while was a name for the group thats set up who aims to reconnect all the communcation devices, i had a big gap in my story as i didnt have a name logo or anything so i had a brain storm and came up with the word Mercury, didnt seem right on its own so it became Mercury Corporation

With a name and an idea i cracked open photoshop and made a logo for this, it could be on your armor, at your base etc, just something to associate with them. What came to mind with the term Mercury was either the planet the greek god Hermes (refered to as Mercury by the Romans) or the element, so i tried to incorporate all 3 things, a planet some wings and a liquid metal and actually came up with something fairly quickly, after a few hours editing and tidying it up we reached this:

I liked the idea of using the Earth as a background image as this is ideally what the corporation want back to normal as the Earth in its current state would be nothing like this.

Map screen

Every game like this needs a map screen, somewhere to show info about your next mission or where your headed next, already roughly knew what i wanted for this so i went ahead and made:

Not sure if ill keep the title of the game there yet, nor do i know how this will be used in the game, zoomed in and being able to move around or scaled down to view it all at once, not entirely sure but as for the actual look of it im very happy and its exactly what i was aiming for.

Some early concepts in PS

Well i toyed with the idea of making Tephra wrote in volcanic rock or carved into a volcano itself in lava, but it didnt really come out too well due to my poor photoshop skills as we can see!

So i went back to the drawing board and decided to find some stock photos of skys and built up towns and blend them all together to give a more realistic view and i came out with this:

Looking much better in my opinion, this is definetly staying however i may add some line of text to it or put something else in the sky im not sure yet but this is a potential beta of the title screen!

Tephra is born!

Tephra is fragmental material produced by a volcanic eruption regardless of composition, fragment size or emplacement mechanism.

seemed appropriate, think it works well for my game since its about a supervolcano

Now ive got a title i could work in photoshop to mock up some designs for a possible logo or general art work

Paperwork Paperwork Paperwork

havent posted for quite a while, decided to draw things down or write roughly when an idea popped into my head , a possible name, zones, missions, extras, char development..story, lots of planning needed before i really should attempt anything else on the computer!

as it stands now ive wrote down each zone that will be in the game with a rough outline of the type of terrain/what may be found there, also made a few more pointless overhead doodles for my map layout..this thing is becoming awkward

Back to Unreal

ive got plenty of time yet, its still summer so i decided to see if i could make anything in the editor a building so i could get an idea for the size and dimensions of the map

I present..a building!..and a mesh of a char nearby to get a feel for the size..1 down many to go

I obviously havent done anything with the lighting nor is it really finished but my plan is to get the map roughly laid out how i want it then go back and focus on areas and improve them..getting the layout how i want it is going to take some time.

Doodles

Well i think ive roughly got the hang of the Editor, havent watched the tutorial videos as of yet just played around and looked at current maps to see where some of the assets i can use are hidden away

ive also had a major terrain breakthrough - i got it to work and do what i want, after it crashed anyway..

Besides that ive been drawing out some ideas for my map from a top down view, im finding it quite hard knowing how big to make things, and how much that will impact on the work load, although id rather just spend the whole project in Unreal i unfortunatly need to spend some time in flash too so i dont want the enviroment taking up all the time, 3 different top down views and im still not happy

Curse you UT3!

This engine doesnt like me, ive acquired some videos to watch with tutorials but i also tried to have a play around and the new features are taking some getting used to..and as for the Terrain editor...

FMP ideas

Been racking my brains for an idea once i realised you actually needed a game concept..i thought it was odd i could get away with just doing a simple unreal map

Had a few ideas, really wanted to keep a theme to do with water/freak weather conditions/storms etc, decided to focus it around global warming as its not really been done much in games but thinking of a game concept concerning that while still being fun proving to be quite difficult

What im going to go with is a FPS with RPG elements, the game will be based 100-200 years in the future, perhaps a little less not quite decided yet, it all comes down to my available assets i can use.

Rough story outline - a dormant super volcano has erupted, majority of the planet survive but the clouds from the massive volcano covering the skies, the fog is so dense it interupts the satellite signals which in the current age are the only way nations communicate with each other, this cuts off the countries from each other and to add to the situation the fog traps the heat which leads to the ice caps melting. This causes floods in many places, dark, warm and freak weather storms and everyone is cut off from each other.

The plot of the game is you join into a new global coorporation who intends to find out where old internet relays and phone masts are around the planet and get them working again so countries can regain communcation and become united to work together against a greater enemy (enviroment).

The RPG elements will be from completing missions, gaining ranks within the coorp and gaining access to specialist weapons/equipment as you progress as well as help from individuals whom you may have helped earlier in the game

I plan to make 1 zone using the Unreal Engine from UT3, the idea is going to be based a little on Canary Wharf in London but obviously not totally accurate due to my limitations and only planning to use whats available to me in the Unreal Editor so there will be a main area built up, buildings, shops/skyscrapers etc, there will be a river which has flooded and water will be over a lot of the map due to this, cracked roads, and such, i intend to start on a grassy island and then cross over a bridge, you will then navigate through a park area then into the downtown section completing objectives as you go, similar to Call Of Duty eventually leading to whatever the level objective of this particular zone is, probably switching back on a generator or back up satellite

The zone will be empty as such except the bandits who are just trying to cause havoc/rob anytihng they can - who will also be your main enemy in the area.

Aswell as doing this zone in UT3 i also will need to create all the user interface and main menus/char select etc in flash and will probably have a video of the level with the custom HUD.

Fun...fun, well it will be i hope, except i need to learn UT3 engine as my previous work was doing using the 2k4 edition