Eye of the Abyss - WIP#1

[ArcanisLupus]

Version 0.2.2a - Sibling Rivalry

New week new version!

This week was not quite as work filled as the past two, but was work-filled nonetheless.

Here is a download link for 0.2.2a - "Sibling Rivalry", just hosted on Mega for now, while I get my website system working more smoothly. Sadly no working MAC install yet.

Have fun!

Major changed in this version:

Sister arc added:

-Sister can now be chosen for play.

-Cutscenes (placeholder) edited to properly represent their content, depending on which sibling is chosen.

Full changelog here:

TD0.2.2a(19/05/2014)
-Sister animations added
-Walking in all directions
-three attack swings
-block, hurt and death
-also working in script
-Player toggle added to test map.
-Sister map-arc added

(20/25/2014)
-Remaining sister animations added and implemented
-SisBlob set up, all animations imported and implemented
-Enemy spawn on test map changed to spawn appropriate enemy.

(21/05/2014)
-Sis version of place holder cutscenes added.
-Bro version of place holder cutscenes amended.
-ESnow attack swing cut down to avoid second hits, ugly.
-SisBlob socket added so it actually attacks.
-Brother attack swings tweaked to actually face forward. proper damage yay!
-ESnow backing into corner bug actually fixed this time.

(23/05/2014)
-Footstep sounds added for sister
-New music added for when ESnow is killed, helps set the mood hopefully.

[ArcanisLupus]

Hello all!

First things first, I am very sorry for the absence of an update last week, but after powering for two weeks to get the first playable alpha out, followed by the second playable alpha, I was feeling pretty **** terrible. One week of absolutely no work was not a wise idea it turns out because apparently I lose all momentum and find myself chronically fatigued. Quite confusing.

But I'm back now and making headway, however not on the game proper. I am instead shifting my focus onto the written paper while I also do clerical work for the game, taking full stock of where I am up to and where I want the project to go from here. Boring for all of you out there, but also less than exciting for me.



Carry on.

[Cinder]

Hang in there, keep moving forward.

[ArcanisLupus]

thanks muchly Cinder, I appreciate the support ^_^

anyway, onto the weekly update.

Nothing too big to report this week, however tomorrow I will be recording the MoCap for the cutscenes, so big stuff is right around the corner. Can’t wait.

I actually had a small mini-mocap session this week, unexpectedly. While nothing of consequence was captured for use, it did give me a chance to experiment with acting out the motions for the Evil Entity villain, who walks quite like a large gorilla, tiny hind legs and oversized arms. While making quite the fool of myself trying to act it out I discovered that it is a lot easier to do backwards, which my brain train continued to remember that reversing footage is a good way to make something seem creepy. So, I will probably be recording all the entities takes in reverse. I will of course record forward versions too to be on the safe side.

As for showing you all these tests, I dun goofed. Recorded it all, exported in the wrong format, deleted files off the MoCap workstation because I’m a clean worker on the Uni machines, get home, discover wrong formatting, alas too late as the files no longer exist. Rookie mistake.



Anyway in a week or two expect the cutscenes to be in place and from there its all constant work and fatigue

[ArcanisLupus]

Hello all, early update this week brought to you from the Melbourne international animation festival! I'm posting this from my phone, so it won't be a long one.

With the mocap data recorded (only partially at this point) I got it in and started powering into getting a cutscenes working. A day of frustration later and I found an awesome dialogue system for UDK 3 which I successfully implemented, with which I bring you this:

http://youtu.be/BhdCqdfYJm0

There is still plenty that needs fixing, and even more that needs doing. So once the festival is over, expect to see a lot of good quality updates here.

Have a great weekend (watch out for those steam sales)

[ArcanisLupus]

Another week has passes us by, and here is the update for you all.

The starting cutscene is complete and working, A bunch of animations there were missing or not working have been replaced/fixed, some functionality around sprinting and blocking has been tweaked (you can’t do one while doing the other now) and I have added colour selection to the dialogue system so characters can be differentiated between when its not obvious.

Here is a change log (last weeks included because I forgot):

TD0.2.3 (17/06/2014)
-Dialouge system implemented, kismet based.
-Mo-Cap for intro animation (Sister only) added into engine.
-Begining animation begun.

(18/06/2014)
-More cutscene done
-Brother added.

(24/06/2014)
-Finished initial cutscene placeholder.

(25/06/2014)
-Missing and broken animations added to Sister, Brother and ESnow
-can no longer sprint when locked on and cant block while sprinting
-BroGame and SisGame classes retored BECAUSE YOU STILL NEED THEM IDIOT

(26/06/2014)
-Added colour selection in Kismet Dialogue system.
-Tweaked all the colours of the dialogue, probably should make it all editable in kismet.

Have a great weekend all!

[ArcanisLupus]

This week has been rather productive to say the least. I have taken all the animations for the two playable characters and added everything that wasn’t possibly in the mocap: blinks, hand movement, hair movement, facial expressions and the such. I’ve also made it so that when you lock on-to an enemy and do nothing the character will look at the enemy instead of playing the usual idle loop. It’s the little things.

Once I have cleaned all the enemy and boss animations I’ll release another build and hammer away at the cutscenes full force. So watch this space!



Full changelog:

(30/06/2014)
-All brother idles and blocks cleaned up and inported (working)
-Sword socket on brother aligned properly. NO TOUCHING!

(01/07/2014)
-All brother animations cleaned.

(03/07/2014)
-Brother and Sister skeletal meshes re-imported with better elbow weights.
-Sister hands fixed. Past me can go jump.
-NOTE: Animation from rotation is the only animation that is noticed!
-Sister sword socket relocated, probably need touching.
-Sister Idles, blocks and attacks cleaned.

(04/07/2014)
-Sister animations all cleaned up.

TO DO:
-CUTSCENES
-Polish all dem animations.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

[AmyP]

I'm digging this thread! You're really fast with updates. Great job

[ArcanisLupus]

Thanks Amy! It's really encouraging to hear that. Every friday is a good way of keeping myself on track.

Speaking of which:

This week sees the release of the latest build of Eye of the Abyss, with all the progress made since the last build, which are numerous:

A place-holder cutscene and working dialogue system.

Cleaned character animations with new Blink™ technology.

Tweaked functionality in player controls and behaviour.



As for know bugs:

Sister reflects Snow White’s ball poorly, usually resulting in a miss. I can think of no reason why this is happening, investigations are continuing.

Sisters fingers are disgustingly deformed, she’s sensitive about it.

The pause menu is still being silly and needs to be unpaused for any selection to be performed (exiting, quitting etc)



After done and said all, here is a download link:

Eye of the Abyss 0.2.3

A note on installing and uninstalling:

Some computers will give warning that the installer has no Certificate or known Publisher and won’t want to install without some encouragement. Don’t worry about this as I haven’t spent nearly two years working on a virus.

To uninstall you will have to goto Control Panel > Programs and Features and removed it via that list. This is a known issue.

With all that said here is the changlog since last week:

(07/07/2014)
-Sister Lockon Idle added.
-ESnow Skeletal Mesh fixed. Ready for animations and cloth.

(08/07/2014)
-All ESnow Animations cleaned and working.

(09/07/2014)
-All blob (brother and sister) animations cleaned.

(10/07/2014)
-Further investigation shows Brother rig incapable of blinking at this time. Leaving for now.

(11/07/2014)
-Version 0.2.3 released
-Day forest map has leaves again, because its pretty.

TO DO:
-CUTSCENES
-Polish all dem animations.

[AmyP]

I'd like to try the demo, but always I installed any UDK game in my PC, it messes with my project configurations, mainly UDKInput file... I'll try on my other PC

[ArcanisLupus]

Aye Amy sorry about that, UDK can be pernickety sometime.

SPEAKING OF WHICH:

Maya and the UDK both decided that it would be a fun week to crash over and over. I had to reinstall the UDK entirely as it decided to start crashing on start up. Fun times.

Another week finds me not making quite as much progress on the game as past weeks, as I have put time and effort towards the Academic Paper I am tasked with writing to accompany it. Quite an enjoyable change of pace it would seem.

That said, after digging around for paper to draw some plans to improve my maps, I came across some old scribbles for designing the castle, which led me to begin completely rebuilding the castle interior and exterior. While they aren’t quite ready yet, here is a teaser:

[shot]http://www.nicholas-ferrar.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Castle_Ref.png[/shot]

The interior is even prettier I promise.

This weekend will see more MoCap recorded for cutscenes, and so shall the following weekend, maybe. With that, all assets are done, and all that remains is getting it all up to scratch. Here is a modest changelog from this week:

TD.0.2.4(17/07/2014)
-Throne Room Map created
-Better castle interior
-new assets.

(18/07/2014)
-External Castle Assets created.

[AmyP]

UDK crashing? It's bad. But usually it happens when some config is messed up (or problems with RAM and other things like video card), and last, with some loop in the programming part. It happened with me when I modified a little thing in AI, adding a Set Time in a condition and Bam, UDK crashing. When I fixed it, everything went fine again. But talking about UDK, anything can happen to make it crashes -__-.

About your project, it's still a great (and big) update you have here!

You found a very good solution for the castle exterior. We always hear about modular pieces and how it is the king but I'm starting to doubt it because the performance and optimization issues,making our processor draws a lot of meshes together. I asked it in another thread, but no answers.

Anyway, great update! Thanks for sharing your project with us.

[ArcanisLupus]

Yeah, the crashing was caused by one of my UC classes, which although happens, was odd because I didn't really think a custom class could crash the UDK on its splash screen.

Thanks for the kind words! My external scenes are all quite lacking in the performance area, so I'll be doing lots of testing and Game Profiling when the times comes.

[AmyP]

Yeah, the crashing was caused by one of my UC classes, which although happens, was odd because I didn't really think a custom class could crash the UDK on its splash screen.

Yep, they can do it. When I had a big crash, it was my bot causing it in my custom GameAIController. Hahaha, code looping and their problems ^^ they always crash the things because we're extending classes.

Thanks for the kind words! My external scenes are all quite lacking in the performance area, so I'll be doing lots of testing and Game Profiling when the times comes.

Will you give a chance for modular pieces? I'm almost positive you know this tutorial for modular environment, but... just in case, it's here: http://www.thiagoklafke.com/modularenvironments.html
It helped me a lot, but I'm still searching for that answer about modular environment (attaching everything and messing all UV lightmapping up pushes me to modularity too).

[ArcanisLupus]

Funnily enough I built this castle entirely with modularity in mind, somehow I missed that in your last post. Great minds I'm sure. I hadn't seen that tutorial before actually, but now it is on my reading list for sure. Thanks muchly for the linkage.