Sorry I’m 7 hours late with this posting, had to do some stuff.
Day 6 (11/23/2010)
11. Weapon Archetype System
When designing the system for towers to be placed, I thought it would be cool to only have a few base tower classes and then allow for a lot of per tower customization and attributes through the use of Archetypes so I can tweak settings within the editor instead of compiling every time I wanted to change a setting and so that if anyone picks up my project they can add their own towers by just creating archetypes instead of figuring out how to derive and code their own towers. I figure I want to make modding design elements as easy as possible so that if one design doesn’t work I can quickly switch to another. The problem with this was, I have had no experience in creating a dynamic system that uses object archetypes rather than actual hard coded classes. Being that towers might be a complex feat to make into an archetypal system as my first project with archetypes, I decided that I should convert the current weapon system to use archetypes so I have something to base on. This took a bit of time to figure out all the kinks, but what I ended up with was a solid base for a really cool way to create new games with ease and test weapon systems without compiling. This means that once I fully develop a custom weapon class, all in-game weapons will be based off of the same weapon class but their attributes will be set with object archetypes. Of course, the archetypal system should also allow for archetypes of classes that derive from my base weapon class, and that is supported simply by the fact that UnrealScript is already heavily object oriented.
Here is a really long and boring video of a brief overview of my most recent Dev Diary posts and how to use the Weapon Archetype System. One day I’ll get a better voice, I swear. <_<
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.
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!
