UDK Map finished

My little jungle creation is about where im going to stop, it gets tiresome adding clumps of grass 1 by 1 but in the end i think it paid off due to only using about 1000 instances of grass instead of the hundreds of thousands it would have done with a foliage layer.

For my personal site ill probably change the post processing effects to how i had some of my development shots as although they look a bit washed out in places they reflect how the map would look at different times of the game and they are quite artistic i think!

Anyway ive probably jumped quite a lot since my last update blog for this little project as its been a bit of a mad rush so it may look quite different and ive only taken a few shots so here she is:


This is the start path, shouldnt look too diff to previous shots just this is the colour scheme how im gonna submit the map. adjusted the fog and such to make it look more dense aswell.



Another dense part, this is on the small island area



A gap in the trees has this area hidden away, would be quite useful for npc camps as its a break from all the thick forest.



This is a new pond type area ive made as solid trees and foilage made it look a little boring and it was getting quite demanding on the computer so i think this was a good move



A shot taken from the island showing how ive changed the "coast" area to add a beach instead of just the mud i previously add, this makes it look a lot more realistic i think.



Close of up the coast showing the transition from the grassy area to the coast, maybe could have been blended a little better but i think it works quite well with the available resources.



Final shot looking from mainland out to the island, shows have ive finished off tidying the tree tops on top of the cliffs and tidied up the section on the right to add more realism.

All PS mock ups done

Had quite a frantic few days spending it entirely in photoshop creating as many mock ups as i could for the screens im not able to use in UIscene (which is quite a shame!)

This is the updated version of the shop screen which i hinted at in my last post, ive changed it read and added some line grains to try and give it a computer screen look, its not as good as id have liked but it works for a prototype. Also as my document now contents shop inventory lists and prices etc it meant i was able to add some additional information to bulk up the shop screen to a more realistic standard.


This one is the main screen


And this is how it would look when you go into one of the sections for a more detailed view.

To accompany these ive created a rough prototype of how the weapon upgrade system would look, its not how i originally drew but i didnt want it to look too cluttered in the end

Looks similar but as its in the same room i thought it would make sense.




First screen showing how it looks when you initially select a weapon which then gives you a selection of upgrades on the right.



and now in this screen an upgrade has been selected, the new stats are shown in green in the upgrade stats box and the upgrade button is now pressable to confirm the changes.

One final screen that needed addressing was the map screen which was another mock up that took hours.



As you can see it incorporates the world map i designed months ago back we i began this. I wanted this to remain as its the screen you interact with in the warehouse aswell. The information is pretty self explanitory, you click on the dots on the map which gives you information and a small iconic shot bottom left. If you have unlocked this level the travel now button lights up which means you can port instantly to the level selected.

Additional things i wont post, ive added chunks of information to the example loading screens aswell as tidied up my document considerable seperating my previously shown weapons into some nice tidy tables! which tooks actually..ages

Beginnings of final PS mock ups

Short post, this is what im thinking for my shop screen to look like, its meant to be on computer panel however so i need to incorporate that effect in..aswell as deciding how much information to include since theres only a week and a bit to go!

Well it crashed once..but its still nice

Ive carried on adding grass and foliage and changed the colour to green things up a bit, who know i might keep this tone, anyway ive added about 1100 clumps of grass..which sounds a lot but compared to the 5000-6000 for foliage layers/factorys for the same effect its not too bad, however the meshes were made for a bit of a tech demo so in conclusion they are way too detailed compared to normal unreal meshes and end result is im struggling to pull about 30fps in this shot which although would be fine for a prototype/demo thing id be taking shots of, if i intend to record a video im going to need a bit more framerate



This is where i had them weird bumpy cliffs i wasnt too happy with so ive turned it into a canyon type thing with another path of water leading in with some small sections where it would look like you would be able to acces (on the left) if id made the map big enough..this is still new so i may change it a little or at least break it up with some greenery but its an improvement and hasnt hurt the framerate too much



This area doesnt look too bad with the new colour scheme although with the heightfog i now have a plain blue sky which makes some reflections look a little weird but im not sure what to do with that yet.
However i decided to abuse water again in this part of my map as it should save me a couple of hundred grass meshes as i can just have another "pond" type thing, it might not be like this if the game was proper but for a prototype i think its the best i can do

This is just another shot showing the new colours and the depth of field effects near the work in progress pond!..and it appears ill be back to manually placing grass again soon yay


Here is the new water section, its still quite bare round the edges as ive only just made it, i like it but its higher than the rest of the water in the area, the idea is to have a tiny 4-5 feet mini waterfall streaming into the main pool of water but end result is the heightfog doesnt reach so the waters not as blue, ill see what i can do about this over the next few days


Another angled shot of the pond with a few more details, im much happier with the pp effect anyway

Im getting into these arty shots showing off depth of field but its taken from the players height so this is quite an accurate view of what you would actually see in game, maybe id add more foliage over the next week or however long i plan to spend on it im not sure ive got my fps back up to 45-50 which gives me some room to drop when recording but in total its still around 5.3 million triangles and theres a lot of empty places left.

UDK..still hasnt crashed!

Back to the one side i havent touched at all, im still trying to mould it these "cliffs" or hills whatever, now im starting to not like this post processing effect..it doesnt work so well looking this way, but anyway ive made it less square but ill defo be coming back to this later on when i get a better idea.



Doesnt seem too bad here ive added some more slopes down the left to make it look less flat and its looking a bit bright as i havent built yet..but its got a pretty flower!...as you can see i really need to do the grass




This is about head height of how it would look like walking through the main jungly area, again im not liking the colour effect too much and as you can see..no grass it just looks naked im going to have to try and see how i can add some grass and save me a lot of work



Alright so the clumps on the left are deco layers...it seems to only go in clumps and stays lit, so thats no used...the dense clump in the right is a foliage factory it works it accepts lighting properly but its so dense to cover my entire area my quite top end pc drops to about 12fps as its rendering about 5000 instances of grass clumps so it seems im just going to have to do it manually and hope i can spread it enough to not affect performance too much



manually placing grass....oh what fun but doesnt hurt performance too much yet



seeing how it looks with a little more detail..i like it but im now really hurting the colour so thats going tomorrow

UDK UDK UDK (it doesnt crash much!)

Back to tackling that river...pond..thing?



its taken some damn work with the terrain as adjusting one likes to mess the other one up so trying to get them to meet somewhere in the middle is quite awkward, however after spending god knows how long on this its actually starting to take shape



and then with the heightfog to give it some colour its fairly close to how i planned although im sure ill have to stop myself fiddling with the terrain over the next few days



IVe gone back to playin with the PP effects, ive got this swampy looking thing going on and it seems to work quite well or it will do when ive decorated the area more, not sure if ill keep it as it does wash out a lot of the colour but im not sure!




I really should build all before i take screenys anything thats lighter than the rest of it is probably new, ive added a few rocks and some waterfalls and whatever, it needs more work but its taking shape, i need to go back and tidy up the base of the river bit however as as it stands theres just a big hole




This is the area i was talking about, ive been working with the terrain tools for a while, adding some rocks trying to add some realism to the scene, with some trees on both sides now its looking more and more how i first imagined



Bit of an arty shot, was meant to show off the depth of field effect but its not quite as strong as i thought but as u can see ive now got some trees at the top near the waterfalls so the water appear to be coming from another part of the jungle just just..the sky..i think it needs more layers of trees behind them to add depth but they are quite a performance hog so we shall see

UDK..the empty half

No time to arse about with the island bit i need to attend to the completely bare rest of the map and im not sure how im going to do it yet so ill have to chip away bit by bit and change it where i see fit, Also note ive removed the post processing effect for now, i dunno if it was washing out the colour too much, the meshes looked quite nice but the sky was weird, i wrote down the settings however so i can just use it again later on when the maps more populated to see.



This is on the left of the map its meant to be like the map is on a plateau and these waterfalls fall down into another part of the jungle which obviously i wont be creating, i like the idea but with heightfogs its going to be an issue to mask the apparent..nothingness



Ive shaped the lake a bit and started to mark out some of the edges with trees and give some more shape to the cliffs



And heres me trying something different

i wanted a small river running into the main section from elsewhere and although i could imagine what i wanted it took me hours messing with the terrain editor and i couldnt get what i wanted so i thought maybe i could get a little dip shaped better using a 2nd piece of terrain and merging them together with materials, i had no idea how this was going to turn out




But ive wimped out and ill come back to it later on ive gone back to shaping the rest of the area but its still looking annoyingly "square" but the slope at the background is where you would start in this demo type map



Looks a bit better now ive painted the rocky faces and smoothed it out a bit to make it actually accessible on foot



Got a few meshes in to add some depth and it seems im having to plant these damn grass meshes once again..one by one..its tolerable on a flat surface but on this awakward shape ramp its taking hours but i really dont like how it looks without the grass there so i have to do it



Out of curiosity i tried a foliage layer, its lined up better to the floor than me..which is to be expected but its using about 500x instances than i was and they stay perma lit no matter what i seem to do i just dont like it so im sticking to my old save file with the manually placed grass



Yeah im glad i placed the grass manually and now with some more meshes in for detail i quite like this