Greeting and welcome to newsletter # 8 which is a bit delayed due to me being sick last week but things are back on track once more!
The latest video dev log has been released on YouTube and can be found here:
Last Week:
Since I was sick last week I focused on learning more about making materials in Unreal to complete the weapon materials and I researched texturing tools for upcoming work on the level assets
My goal was to make a holographic energy looking material so when the weapons appear and disappear it will feel more natural. The solid transparent colors also complement the darker themes of the characters and environment. These are store bought assets for testing but I’ll be making my own for the final assets in game
I also took time to do a bit of research on texturing tools, to find a free one that could be used to make all the textures for the levels. I’m pretty good at hard surface modeling in blender but I haven’t really learned texturing yet. I played around with Substance Painter but the price on it is too high so I found a great alternative that integrates with Unreal really well called Quixel Mixer
I created some concept art that I’ll be using for inspiration when creating the level textures, the end result won’t look exactly like this but it will serve as a guild
The modeling for the guards was also finished last week so I have some initial concepts to show you. I still have to rig them and put them in game but this is a sneak peak at what they look like
Week before Last:
We only had a 4 day work week so I focused on getting the mini map working and I think it came out pretty good
It leveraged the Unreal SceneCaptureComponent2D to capture specific objects from a camera above the players head and saved them to a render texture every frame. I did this by splitting up every object in the level into 2 parts, the regular visual and a special visual that only the mini map camera could see.
Eventually I’ll have levels be put together from a bunch of parts that have both visuals inside them so generating the level procedurally will also generate the mini map at the same time
The other thing I did this week was do some more research and design of the procedural generation system itself. I don’t have a lot to show as far as screen shots but I do have a few links to interesting articles I’ve come across and will be using to help me build my system
Making Meaningful Dungeons with Cyclic Dungeon Generation
Dungeon Generation in Unexplored
I will be modifying these systems to allow me to make dungeons or levels that take stealth into account and the ability for the player to climb. I have plans to split the nodes into 2 stories so each elevation can have its own path and nodes with flags to indicate if there are ways for the player to go up or down an elevation level. This is still a work in progress so I’ll have more to show later with specific examples
This Week:
- Integrate New Guard Models
- Add Dagger and Choke Movement and Attacks
This is a regular work week so I’ll be getting back into my regular routine, looking forward to making some great progress!
That is all for this update,
Tony D
Cronoforge Studios Inc