So for the past 3-4 months I’ve been working as Lead Programmer for Emotional Robots, Inc on UDK-based game Warm Gun.
Its a post apocalyptic post World War 3 Old Wild West + a bit of steam punk multi-player shooter.
We need you to vote for us for the Indie of the Year 2010 award at IndieDB.com! At the time of this writing we are rank 27 out of 2,661. Just a few more ranks and we can be listed on the front page as one of the popular games!
It only takes one click to vote, however if you’re extra nice you’ll register/login an account as registered account votes weigh more than guest votes. Also, there can only be one guest vote every three minutes so if it is saying you can’t vote, just watch our trailer as someone just voted right before you did! Each person can only vote once though, so tell you’re friends and family! Please!
Alright, my fellow student game development team “Team Forecourse” just mailed our submission off to the Indie Game Challenge! Heres hoping we get somewhere…
But as per submission, we were required to do a 60 second ‘pitch’ video. Its amazing how short 60 seconds really is, the video was hastely done to get it sent in time so there is a bit of an aburpt ending but hopefully later we’ll be able to smooth that out in the future. Watch it, and enjoy!
Preview of one of our first levels done by the QueSpeck Studios team. Our Lead Environment Artist (among other things) An-Tim Nguyen, has put together this nice little video. Enjoy!
Subject: Migrating From February to March
Skill Level: Beginner
Run-Time: 30 Minutes
Author: Michael Allar
Notes: Migrating our code base from Feb. to March.
Subject: Migrating From February to March
Skill Level: Beginner
Author: Michael Allar
Notes: Migrating our code base from Feb. to March.
See video for an in-depth explanation. Sorry about the indentation, it seems like my indentation will not survive copy paste… D: I will create a written tutorial soon.
I’ve just gotten back from the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, and it was pretty amazing. I shall resume my tutorial series tomorrow (March 16th) so be welcome to post feedback and what I can do to make it better around here. I will post more about GDC as well when I am feeling a bit better as I caught some sort of sore throat during my time in San Francisco. Until then, happy development!
Subject: Beginning Your Game Part 4
Skill Level: Beginner
Run-Time: 54 Minutes
Author: Michael Allar
Notes: Setting up HTInventoryManager, HTInventory, HTWeapon
What we did there was move the DefaultMapPrefixes from DefaultProperties to this .ini file, as thats where the March build put it. You will learn how to do stuff like this later on as well.
When you compile, you will get a warning about HTInventoryManager. This will fix itself when you complete step 4.
Then continue to Step 4.
Also, skip Migrating From Feb. To March. since you are now using the March build. <_<
Sorry. These were my first tutorials I’ve made and I was bound to mess up somewhere. All the future tutorials after this will go smoothly. I will try to redo these first three later when I have some spare time.
Subject: Beginning Your Game Parts 1 and 2
Skill Level: Beginner
Run-Time: 1 Hour
Author: Michael Allar
Notes: This is really incredibly long but goes over how to create a blank slate for your game. Also goes somewhat in-depth on a line-by-line basis.
Subject: Beginning Your Game Part 1
Skill Level: Beginner
Author: Michael Allar
Notes: Gets your UDK set up so that you can start coding into your own game class!
You will have needed to have done Beginning Your Game Part 1 if you are sticking to the written series of these tutorials. The video tutorial on both tutorials covers both parts.
Why Is There A Part 2?
So, we now have an empty game mode that we can now start coding into. Great! Why don’t we start going over UnrealScript and start adding our own things?
Well simply put, we aren’t done yet. While we have our own game mode set up now, we still are using Epic’s player logic instead of a blank slate for us to use. The way the Unreal Engine handles player interaction is pretty important to understand:
These beginning 4 tutorials got screwed over in a Feb/March mixup. These first two used Feb while the rest of this entire site uses March.
You will get a few warnings when following the first two parts, but there isn’t too much code here. It will begin working fully after parts 3 and 4.
If you can make it past 4, these tutorials are pretty solid and will be a hell of a lot easier.
I’ll try to remake these first tutorials soon.
Video Version
Subject: Beginning Your Game Parts 1 and 2
Skill Level: Beginner
Run-Time: 1 Hour
Author: Michael Allar
Notes: This is really incredibly long but goes over how to create a blank slate for your game. Also goes somewhat in-depth on a line-by-line basis.
Subject: Beginning Your Game Part 1
Skill Level: Beginner
Author: Michael Allar
Notes: Gets your UDK set up so that you can start coding into your own game class!
If you haven’t already, you need to install a fresh copy of Epic’s Unreal Development Kit (UDK). Without it, you can’t really build anything.
You also need a way to edit .ini and .uc files. Notepad will work, but I strongly recommend setting up nFringe or Notepad++.
It is highly recommended that you also set up UnCodeX.
At the time of this writing, the UDK version used is UDK-2009-12.
Setting Up Your Code Package
In order to begin coding your new game, you first have to put your code somewhere where the Unreal Engine can find it. This is where the DevelopmentSrc folder comes into play. All the code for your game belongs in the DevelopmentSrc folder, and your code that you will create will be in a folder with a meaningful name that represents your game. Each folder in DevelopmentSrc is a script package, so we call GameFramework, UTGame, UTGameContent, etc “script packages”. In each script package there is a folder within labeled “Classes” where all your UnrealScript classes will go. UnrealScript Classes are how you extend functionality to your game, making it your own. There lies a folder upon installation in Src named MyMod, you may use this folder to place your code in but I highly recommend naming it similar to your game name but keep in mind that you shouldn’t use spaces or weird characters in your package name as it will have to be referenced in code many times. You will see that for this tutorial, I have used “UDKGame” as my script package name. Inside this MyModClasses folder you will find a DO_NOT_DELETE.txt, but feel free to delete this. It seems that this file was only needed for Epic to package the installer correctly. Right now this script package is empty, so lets get ready to add to it!
First you need to set up your Unreal Script coding environment. There are many ways to do this and you may have your own preference as these environments are subject to the taste of the individual. I personally prefer using nFringe with Visual Studio 2008 to develop code, but lately I’ve been preferring a lightweight solution which uses Notepad++. Some use WOTgreal as well. Currently none of these offer debugging solutions to developing with the UDK, but hopefully one will come around in time.
There is also another powerful tool out there called UnCodeX, which allows you to browse through your code with ease, use shortcuts for creating subclasses, and generate HTML documentation for your code. I use UnCodeX no matter which of the three above environments I am in.
