lots of updates

Been hard at work on our game, lots of ships and assets built, check them out at http://galacticrogue.com/?page_id=401
not much more work and all the ships will be blocked in, then generic textured so the game will have everything except final textures. Then I'll go back over everything UV'ing and textureing.

Where the F Have I been?

Sheesh, let me go back to where I left you. I start scripting and coding. Its going slowly but moving forward. As I go I fix almost every bug with the help of Unreal Developers at work, and they are things were I'm like WTF?!?! I keep going back trying to solve them myself but the devs here fix them in under 10 minutes, while I stare at code and try things for hours. One of the developers is working on an XNA game that looks like complete garbage, b/c he only cared about the code and game mechanics. he's particularly talented in what he does, solves many of my issues. We come up with a game idea to work on together, but first he need to finish his 3 years of work already invested game. I decide if I want a team-mate I need to, in this case, help him first finish his game and we can re-work and reuse the assets in the next game that will be in Unreal.
So where does that leave us? Well I've been making space ships, lots of them. But that's not very easy when you have to redesign, UV, and texture them. I had to re-learn a hard surface texturing workflow and practice a bunch of things (doing it wrong many times) before I got it right. So now I'm like a hand full of ships down, with 2 more hand fulls to go. Whats the game you ask? The Dev blog for that game can be found here: http://galacticrogue.com/ a lot of the art, like the characters, will not be redone, and will look as good as it does, the ships and planets are the things I'm working on. Also Andrew is art directing the game b/c in the end this is his game, more than it is ours. I feel like the style we're going for is a 60% good lookingness (up from 10%). Basically crank this shit out and move on to what I really want to do, but make them good enough to re-work/re-use later. While I can write HLSL I don't care enough to do that to make this game even better. Its going to be good enough ...then back to Unreal.
I'm not in love with this idea, me working on this project, but I think its smart enough to see what working with Andrew is like, and its only logical to get someone of talent on the same page/team. He's a great developer, works a lot on his own projects after hours. I know lots of talented guys but many have long since burned themselves out working on their own projects. I think small teams are the only way to make a living as an indie developer. Each person is so key that you're really investing in each other if you choose to work with someone.  So I'm learning a lot about better more efficient content creation methods, only making me better more ready for the future projects.
Make ship, neeext, make ship neeeext...

Scriptin' Update

So what's been going on? Well hey thanks for asking! I've got the main classes put together and plugged in with some of my content. I'm mainly working on the PollockPawn, PlayerController, GameType classes. I also have AIController, EnemyPawn, and I think another but I'm forgetting as I write this. Anyway. I also have a LOT of work to get the enemies ready even to put into Unreal. They need to be re-UV'ed and Textured, bound (they're rigged) and animated. Joy, so there's that. But as Far as PollockPawn goes I think he's just about ready. I mean its more flipping a few switches than it is writing any code. Yet, despite the simplicity of some of it, I'm still moving forward slowly. I'm trying to read through some classes, and re-read them again trying to get a sense of things and where things will be when I need them later. There's so much a LOT of sound controls, which I'll have to come back to. Anyway, its not working in game yet, actually I don't know exactly what it will look like when it is working in game. I've found that most tutorials that use Unreal Script don't really know what they're doing (I've seen a lot). If anyone knows of a really good one, I'm all ears. So I'm paving my way forward, steady and slowly.

Unreal Scriptin'

Well not really. I started doing a tutorial for bot AI and I felt like I needed a bigger refresher on Unreal Script so I started watching the Eat3D Unreal Script videos again. I feel like I missed a lot the first time and am getting a lot more information this time than I thought I would. its good. I also made a playlist of SMU's Unreal Script youtube video's here. There are more tutorial videos these are just the ones I want to watch or re-watch, as I've seen a few already. Anyway going well, I'm going to push forward on the tutorials even if I don't know everything I'm doing, just to keep momentum.

Dragging my feet

Well right now I'm sorta dragging my feet b/c I know I need to write my own game classes and start really making this game. I got a bot working in my test enemy level, but its AI is Deathmatch so if I want more than one, they will kill each other. Sure I could spend time to get that to work, but the point is I need to do it right away. By right I mean make my own game type, and pawns. Its not hard, I just have to do it, and that means fixing my visual studio, getting back on the horse of Unreal Scripting. I even know what I need to write, and I can see lots of problems I will already have before my game is workable again. However when it is, it will be all but ready to level design it out and play, but more importantly I'll be making a game "right" and be better for it.

TO DO's:

• Get Visual Studio to "see" all the other class files in the src folder.
• Write my own game type.
• Edit PollockPawn to be a working class file.
• Write GuardPawn, SoldierPawn, EenemyPawn classes.
• Make a death/respawn scenario & end game conditions.
• HUD UI, working health and weapon ammo meter.
• Might as well make the controllers in code if I'm going this far.

A.I. Bot Trouble

Well I knew it wouldn't be easy, but it seems that all the tutorials 'n such online say basically the same thing and none of that works anymore in the current UDK. I've tried a bunch of different variations but so far, nothing fully working. I got an invisible guy to die and drop an item but that's not really useful.
Meanwhile I'm getting back into studying architecture and design theory to help in making more interesting levels. Got a few books I've started reading, 1 is the updated version of a great textbook from Architecture School in collage.

All Fixes Check

Fixed and updated my list last night. New Mesh & Texture, fixed collision/blocking models, testest vertex colors, and colored lights both working.

Now enemies/bots/AI.