BEAT-EM-UP! | Bal
polycounter lvl 17
Eh, working on too much stuff already, but still gonna try and make something for this challenge.
Looked around for ideas alot yesterday, at first was gonna go with a tech-ish environement, but I decided that was too common for me, want to make something out of my comfort zone.
I'm going to try to do a traditional japanese environement, inspired by a place I went to this summer in Japan, called mount Koya.
Plan to split it up in 3 sections (might remove one depending on time) :
First is a walkway in a cemetary/forest (might replace the cedar trees by more traditional bamboos). Lots of old stone graves, covered in moss, with light shafts passing through the leaves.
Second part is a small bridge going over a river, similar atmosphere to the first section.
Third is a traditional japanese building you enter, mix of bhoudist temples and old samurai houses. Want a more red atmosphere here, with red wood, and some opened panels showing the forest outside. Final area could be some temple room with a large buddha statue.
Here's a quick idea board, using the photos I took in Japan, gonna start looking for more reference online now.
(ignore the silly frenchman in the middle image.)
On the tech side I'll be using UDK.
For style, not so sure yet, mix of Trine and Muramasa.
Challenges :
-Have never made much natural stuff.
-Gotta figure out a good way to show it off in UDK, haven't messed with Kismet at all yet.
-Learn more about UDK shaders (texture blending, water shaders, waterfall).
-Try out FXs in UDK (falling leaves, waterfall mist).
-Make a nice interface, maybe directly with UDK's built in interface system?
-Finishing on time!
Gotta start sketching some stuff...
Looked around for ideas alot yesterday, at first was gonna go with a tech-ish environement, but I decided that was too common for me, want to make something out of my comfort zone.
I'm going to try to do a traditional japanese environement, inspired by a place I went to this summer in Japan, called mount Koya.
Plan to split it up in 3 sections (might remove one depending on time) :
First is a walkway in a cemetary/forest (might replace the cedar trees by more traditional bamboos). Lots of old stone graves, covered in moss, with light shafts passing through the leaves.
Second part is a small bridge going over a river, similar atmosphere to the first section.
Third is a traditional japanese building you enter, mix of bhoudist temples and old samurai houses. Want a more red atmosphere here, with red wood, and some opened panels showing the forest outside. Final area could be some temple room with a large buddha statue.
Here's a quick idea board, using the photos I took in Japan, gonna start looking for more reference online now.
(ignore the silly frenchman in the middle image.)
On the tech side I'll be using UDK.
For style, not so sure yet, mix of Trine and Muramasa.
Challenges :
-Have never made much natural stuff.
-Gotta figure out a good way to show it off in UDK, haven't messed with Kismet at all yet.
-Learn more about UDK shaders (texture blending, water shaders, waterfall).
-Try out FXs in UDK (falling leaves, waterfall mist).
-Make a nice interface, maybe directly with UDK's built in interface system?
-Finishing on time!
Gotta start sketching some stuff...
Replies
Also started making some mockups in UDK, just to get a feel of the view angle etc, here's what it looks like so far.
Not sure how I'll work the background yet, if I want more forest, or some kind of sky popping through the bamboo... Probably go with lots of forest, and some light rays coming from the top through the leaves.
Will also add some bigger trees to add more diversity.
I wanted to get a feeling of light going through the leaves, creating shapes on the ground, I used an animated material that I plugged into a dynamic dominant directional light's LightFunction. For now it's just using 2 cloud alphas, so it doesn't look like much, but it shows the idea (will make some proper blurry leaf alphas later). Not yet sure how I'll transition out of it when on the bridge, so it doesn't show up anymore.
Here's a quick video I made, this is the first time I use youtube, and haven't done much video compression in a while... Dunno why youtube didn't put a 720p version (as it was big enough) will have to look into that later on. The colours were a bit borked by the compression to.
I just used Fraps for now, but apparently there's a way to render out an image-sequence when using a Matinee, will try to do that later on for better quality.
[ame]
Here are some shots too :
Silly robot, get out of my environement!
That kick ass!!!
Started working on the bridge area, and a bit on the textures (did some high polies to generate the maps, but to be honest you can barely see the normal maps at the moment), they are still pretty rough, trying to find the style I want to go with.
Couple things I plan to do :
- Water for the river, haven't ever made any water shaders before, time to learn.
- Adding a waterfall behind the bridge, and maybe some falling leaves, will alow me look into some FX in Unreal a bit maybe, something I've never done.
- Gonna try and mockup the interiour section soon, to have the whole level in place. Want the final room to have a big Buddha statue.
- Make a few simple rocks with textures.
- Make a moss shader I can apply to my rocks to paint mossy areas via vertex colour.
I have a quick question, if you have time. How do you get a 3rd person side scrolling type camera view? I am slightly experienced with udk but that is something I would like to know how to do. Thanks
Seconding this. I'm looking for an easy way to get the same effect.
Mode Magenta, I'm sure there's plenty of cool traditional Jap stuff to go around for everyone, don't let my submission stop you from making something in the same style!
levin, yeah I plan on adding more fog and trying to figure out how to make falling leaves.
Permanent, ceebee, you guys should check out the main challenge thread, Cholden and Lee3dee have posted how to do this, here's how the setup looks : http://a.imageshack.us/img237/895/sidescroller.jpg
I added a console command node to change the player walk speed (setspeed), and I just also set up a quick Kismet/Matinee network to be able to change my camera position with triggers (so I can make it come closer when the player eventually goes inside buildings). I can share that if anyone is interested.
I'm really enjoying working with UDK and learning more about it, I'd really like to make a mini game out of this eventually, with a character, some pickups, and a few enemies.
My initial idea is an overworked salaryman (japanese business man) who's been asked by his boss to go bring an offering to an ancient temple lost in the moutnains, before an important meeting to bring them luck.
Unfortunatly, ninjas, crazy schoolgirls, and other baddies are on his path trying to stop him, with the final boss being the Buddha statue he was supposed to leave the oferring for. He could fight with his suitcase, use his tie as a whip, and chuck his many cellphones like kunai.
Will try to post some more work this weekend.
More work has been done, the temple exterior is pretty much in place, now all I need is the final area (inside the temple, with the big Buddha statue).
Obviously everything is still very WIP, only started working on a few textures and shaders. Made a nice moss buildup shader inspired by Virtuosic's stuff.
Here's a video of the walkthrough at the moment, HD this time (click on the video to see it in HD, haven't found a way to embed it directly in HD, guess it's not possible on PC). I'm still losing alot of colour when I encode the videos, not sure why.
Music is a quick loop my brother made for me, he's working on a more complete track for the level at the moment (check out his cool music here : http://people.happycoders.org/kamih/ ).
[ame]
Still lots of work to be done, I stole the water shader from the GDC map, have to remake my own.
Keep having so many ideas, my to do list is getting pretty long. Have to look into importing animations in UDK, I want some carps swimming around in my pond.
when u enter buildings, you should have the camera fly through an open window or something
real awesome work tho
T.
dtschultz, yeah branches are planned, I just suck at vegetation and haven't gotten around to it so much yet.
JohnnyRaptor, good idea for the window, I'll do that!
So yeah here is how far I got for the deadline, I will continue working on it to finish it up when I have the time.
Was pretty slowed down these last weeks cause of job hunting and art tests (and those pesky video games!), so I didn't do as much as I had hoped, but oh well.
Still lots of work to do on it!
New music, still by my brother Kamih ( http://people.happycoders.org/kamih/ ).
Click on video to see in HD.
[ame]
Whole map is around 140k triangles at the moment, would probably have gone over the limit if I had finished I'm sure.
Texture sheet here (didn't use up all the space yet, and some of those textures are still pretty WIP) : http://born-robotic.net/stuff/balbeatemup_11.jpg
Nice work!
(I'm telling Bal that he should have post his work in the Final Entry thread even if it's not finished)
Yeah I wanted to submit what I had done anyways, but I missed the topic, was created and closed while I was sleeping.