Level Design

Yo!

Today I loaded up my level, for all the textures and static meshes to disappear! Meaning I spent around a hour reloaded all my textures and decals. The decals was easy to reload, as all I had to do was use F4 to bring up the properties and reload the decal material. I managed to place my driving board into my level. I had to go into Maya, got to windows - settings - plug-in manager and auto load and load the ActorX plug-in to use the axmesh. With the diving board in my level, I'm now watching a video tutorial of Kismet. I'm using the tutorial to learn to create a moving door, I'm placing in my level. At the moment the video shows how to create a sliding door in the level, but I'm planing to change a few setting so the door rotates.

Creating my kismet door

I had to place a InteractiveFoliageActor on the floor where my door was going to be, while having the door selected in the Content Browser. After that, I had to place a trigger on the floor in front of my door. Then I had to scale my trigger to a collision height of 60 and a collision radius of 30, before placing the bottom of the collision on the floor and centred the trigger in the middle of the door. Once I created the set up, I then opened Kismet.

I opened up kismet and created a Trigger_0 Touch. I then had to turn the Max Trigger Count to 0, this means my door will open and close each time. Once I set up the trigger, I had to create a Meatinee sequence in Kismet. I had to connect the touched box from the trigger to the play in matinee before double clicking on the matinee to open up the matinee. Then I had to select the door and Add New Empty Group. Once I named it OpeningDoor, I had to right click on the group and add new movement track, that automatically sets the first keyframe ready for animation. I then had to drag the time slider, located at the bottom of the matinee, and place it at one second before hitting enter. Once I hit enter I was in Adjust Key mode, where I can now open my door.

Here is the kismet, matinee and my door partly animated.

Once I cut the animation down from five seconds to one, I had to close down the matinee. Then I connected the untouch node to the reverse, this means when the player isn't anywhere near the door, the door will close by itself.

I tried the door in real time, but my door won't open at the current settings so I'm having to change the settings. After reading the warning, I changed the physic mode of the door to PHYS_Interpolating. Even changing the Physic mode the door still didn't open. I've tried the door several times but the door still doesn't work. I've added different start points in my level, one in each area, one ontop of the buildings, one inside my small building, one by my swimming pool and the other one inside my garden.

Project Schedule

For my project, I had to create a schedule with dates and tasks

The whitebox level must have been finished by the 28th January. I choose this date and task as they was the first task to be completed. I already created my whitebox level during my design process. The whiteboxed level is designed to test playability, scale and is made to be very basic. I managed to complete this before the date of the 28th January so I was ready to go onto the next stage.

Visual Target is the next stage of the production. The visual target is designed to test the look of one area of the map before completing the level. At the moment I am currently working on the Visual target (11th March), but I did state I would of completed the Visual target on the 18th February. On the 18th February I was creating my assets for my level, leaving me around three weeks behind on the visual target deadline.

Assets was going to be completed for the 1st April, but I'm completed making my assets on the 4th March, meaning I'm a month ahead of myself in terms of that deadline. I was working on my assets when I should of been working on my visual target, but now they're in my level, I can now work into creating my visual target and making it look better. I did write in my schedule I would of finished my assets by the 22nd April, but because I've manged to complete my assets before the deadline for my visual target, I've changed my schedule around with my visual target and my assets.

The deadline for my level is the 13th May. As of today (11th March) I have eight weeks left of the project with two of those weeks a half term. By the 13th May I need to complete the whole level.

Today I tried to create my kismet door which didn't work and I ended up deleting it, I will try again to create my kismet door, and because I had written down the instuctions so I can follow them for the next try. I also used Crazy Bump to create my normal, diffuse and specular maps. I did load the all into my package and place them in my materials to forget to save my package and level before UDK crashed, making me lose all the new materials. So, my task next week is to create the materials again and continue to create my visual target. I should be working on creating my assets, but because I have already completed them, I will have to backdate my work and work on my visual target for the next few weeks.

Next weeks tasks

Next week I will be making my materials better with the maps I created with Crazy Bump and place them onto my static meshes and continue to make my visual target.

Chow!