"They Came From Out of Frame" (Working title)

[5hfifty]

Gday all, I'm just posting some pics my personal UDK project I'm working on in my spare time :)

I think it's at a stage now where it looks nice enough to post screenshots of, and the gameplay, while simple, is pretty much implemented. It's just a matter of adding assets and elements, such as enemy variation and more weapons. and of course fixing bugs.

It's essentially a top down scrolling shooter in the vein of Raptor or Tyrian gameplay wise, since I've never programmed or modeled, or really made much in the way of game stuff before I wanted to begin with something simple.

I'm going for a clean, colourful, 1950s Pleasantville vibe, but more like Pleasantville getting destroyed by retro flying saucers!! And you have to shoot them. That's basically it heh.

http://i356.photobucket.com/albums/oo1/5hfifty/UDK%20WIP/UDKWIP01.jpg

http://i356.photobucket.com/albums/oo1/5hfifty/UDK%20WIP/UDKWIP02.jpg

http://i356.photobucket.com/albums/oo1/5hfifty/UDK%20WIP/UDKWIP03.jpg

Everything there is custom assets, apart from the explosions, the players rocket's smoketrail, and the scorch decal. I didn't model the house models, but I did texture everything myself and model all other assets (not many but that's good right!? :D)

Originally it was going to be a space/sci-fi themed shooter, so the lasers and stuff look out of place and are going to be changed.

What I'm most proud of is the fact that the houses (and fences) all use the one material which is instanced, and in which I can adjust the house colour, roof colour, and even put emissive light coming through the windows, using a single channel texture (plus diffuse and normals) and vector parameter. The oily grime on the road is also a single channel texture which I change according to the road tile. It's all modular too so I have tons of possible house and road/path designs. I love the Unreal material system :)

Next up is to add things like trees, cars, bushes etc.

Please post comments and crits! :) Bear in mind before UDK all I'd used is UT3 editor, I'd never made custom assets or normal maps/shaders or textures for 3d models before starting this

[Drevlin]

This game makes me smile :) Nice work so far.

Some crit:
Your lighting is set up in a way that makes the environment look like a miniture scale model. Try making the shadows more diffused/blurry. Most worthnody in that regard is the saucer/ufo shadow. Is there any way to get those less dark/more diffused?

The scale would be helped alot with smaller props such as cars, trashcans, foliage too but i figure you know that much. :)

Nice one man! looking forward to see where it ends up.

[5hfifty]

Wow that was fast, thanks for the feedback!

Yeah it took me ages before even starting to make assets to get the scale right. It's actually almost 1:1 compared to unreal, as in, if you run around in first person it looks like a lowres street in proper scale. The UFO/rocket shadows are dynamic obviously, but I don't know how I can make those more diffused or lighter.

One thing I can't get to work is the way the player rocket's shading fades to the proper atmospheric blue colour, but the UFOs just fade to a harsh black shading on the dark sides.

Maybe it's because they're spawned in the level? Or maybe my I need to specify a certain light environment in the UFO actor class. I don't know how to set the level specific light settings for them, though.

[zoltanjr]

Looking good, reminds me of some arcade games. Can we expect to see some source for this any time?

[McTavish]

Good to finally see what you have been working on all this time 5hfifty :D Looks good man, what do you asctually control ? Cant see from the screenshots who the player is sorta thing ? wondering if you had some new sort of take on gameplay ? Looks great though man :)

P.s. Love the working title lol

[5hfifty]

Hey guys thanks for the comments :)

McTavish: At the moment the player controls the retro looking rocketship down the bottom of the shots. Originally this was going to all be in space, but I decided I could have more fun with the 1950s retro setting close to ground like this.

I'm thinking of changing the spaceship with something based on the Bell X-1 plane, ( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Bell_X-1_color.jpg ) because it looks so retro and cool. This one would be much more stylised of course, and probably brushed steel with red metallic paintjob and chrome highlights hehe! :D

Gameplay is pretty basic, I don't want to overwhelm myself. Only difference is the player yaws and rolls when going left and right, so your weapons shoot at whatever angle your ship is in instead of always ahead like all of the space shooters I've played. It feels kinda cool, more fluid this way

Zoltanjnr: If you need to know how I did something just ask, but a warning: most of the code is modified from stuff posted on this forum, and anything else is probably really embarrassingly bad, heheh. if it works, I use it, even if it could probably be done better. :p I use the pawn class to handle the different weapons, for example.