Midterm

Unreal Editor Tutorial files:
Tutorial 2 - https://wfs.bc.edu/tylerd/Tutorial2.ut2?uniq=cqwoab
Tutorial 3 - https://wfs.bc.edu/tylerd/MyFirstMap2.ut2?uniq=cqwoa6
Tutorial 4 - https://wfs.bc.edu/tylerd/Tutorial4.ut2?uniq=cqwoal
Tutorial 5 - https://wfs.bc.edu/tylerd/Tutorial5.ut2?uniq=cqwoaq
Tutorial 6 - https://wfs.bc.edu/tylerd/Tutorial6.ut2?uniq=cqwoav
Tutorial 7 - https://wfs.bc.edu/tylerd/Tutorial7f.ut2?uniq=cqwob0
Tutorial 8 -https://wfs.bc.edu/tylerd/Tutorial8.ut2?uniq=cqwob5

Maya Files:
Cannon (Maya 6.0) - https://wfs.bc.edu/tylerd/CannonSmooth.mp?uniq=cqwo9m
Cup (Maya 6.0) - https://wfs.bc.edu/tylerd/Cup.mp?uniq=cqwo9r
Egghead (Maya 6.0) - https://wfs.bc.edu/tylerd/Egghead.mp?uniq=cqwo9w
Hammer (Maya 6.0) - https://wfs.bc.edu/tylerd/Hammer.mp?uniq=cqwoa1

Teamates Blogs:
Tom - http://tom35801.blogspot.com/
Ryan - http://bowleyryan.blogspot.com/

3D News Story:
http://web3dnews.com/games/2005/10/mits-e-distribution-prophecy.html

BTP date:
Our team created a sword (Maya 5.0) - https://wfs.bc.edu/tylerd/Cutlass2.mp?uniq=cqwra8
Sword exported into Unreal Editor and placed next to horse on land so easily located - https://wfs.bc.edu/tylerd/BTP-DartmouthxzAlt.ut2?uniq=-fh508l
(upload of BTP map to BC Agora system extremely slow)

Here is a picture of the cutlass next to the horse's leg.

Previous Graphics

I figured out the problem I was having with the graphics in Blogger. I was attempting to import BMP files when Blogger requires JPG files instead. Silly me. I have converted them and posting for your viewing pleasure.

This is a post of my tutorial 6 map, playing with the terrain.

Here is the same map with terrain modifications made. This was rather fun to do but a bit annoying in one way. If the height of your terrain in the room is incorrect you have to restart from the beginning to do the terrain, you can't just move the terrain actor as this will cause errors with mesh collisions.

This was a part of the design that gave me problems. As you can see from the inside it looks fine, however from the outside the hole is covered by rock and cannot be entered.

As I mentioned before I placed the skybox quite a distance away from the rest of my map. Otherwise it all works fine.

I had to get somewhat creative in order to combine my terrain room with the rest of the map. Since the terrain is not actually on the ground level of the room the opening for the terrain level is higher than the floor. So I used static meshes to create a stair walkway from one level to another. While doing this I did notice I had trouble placing static meshes on top of static meshes. For example placing a weapon mesh on one of the stairs. I'll have to look further into that later on.

Light & Sound

The last part of the tutorial deals with placing sunlight and sound into the current map. I already have lights in the indoor section but nightlight needed to be added to the terrain area. That and sound to make the outdoors appear to really be outdoors. This was fairly simple and does give quite a bit of realism to the map that was lacking before. This map can be found here.

I may have gone a little overboard with placing my skybox away from the rest of the map. They barely both show up when zooming out. But I didn't want to make the same mistake I did with the previous step of adding the terrain and having the box not lined up correctly with the rest of the map. Besides this way if I expand the level I will be all set.

Web3D News Story #1

This the Crumpet's team first news story for posting on the Web3D news site.

MIT's E-Distribution Prophecy

In this article, Chris Weaver speculates on the future of communications technology, and its impact on the 3D gaming world. This would affect the ever increasing amount of online or network games available on the market today.

Fiber optic technology, while widely used, is capable of achieving much higher transfer speeds than what is known today. The key component that currently holds optical technology back are the electric devices that are used in conjunciton with it. A switch to a 100% optical network will allow for much faster speeds. He predicts that speeds will seem instantaneous; human perception will be the slowest factor in the experience. With these faster speeds, users will be able to tap into nearly unlimited storage and processing power. This will allow for truly real time gaming, with a more detailed experience with a level of realism not yet encountered.

There is no mention of how long it will take for these advances to come. I assume it will be quite a while, because the technology has to become widespread before it can really work the way Weaver predicts. Broadband internet is not yet available in some areas of the US, and it has been around for years. I would think the timeline for things to unroll would be similar that of current high speed networking technology, because it involves a similar process of replacing the existing systems.

Midterm Files

While I have been saving my files for each step of the Unreal Editor tutorial I have not posted all of them. So here they are, in order. There is no tutorial 1 step as that step did not have a map associated with it.

Tutorial step two
Tutorial step three
Tutorial step four
Tutorial step five
Tutorial step six
Tutorial step seven

Terrain Creation

In continuing to work with the tutorial for the Unreal Editor one of the parts of the assignment was to create terrain in our map. This means the outdoors: trees, grass, rocks and the like. Well to start off we just worked with dirt and rocks. The first part of the assignment was fairly straightforward, following the directions was simple. The end result was a fairly large rooms with some hills, valleys and different rock texture.

I would show a picture but unfortunately Blogger is having "issues" and refused to allow any picture uploads.

Continuing with the tutorial I then had to connect the two sections of my map together. This is when problems began. Overall I believe I restarted at least 4 separate times as I missed lining up certain corridor rooms at least once. Then once I did have the corridors corrected and was placing static meshes in the original rooms as stairs for going from the new level to the old level, trying to "build" the map resulted in Static Mesh placement errors. Apparently when I was trying to line up the floor of my terrain with my original map level I moved the terrain I had created, downwards to make connecting the two sections easier. As a result this also moved all of the terrain meshes that I had created in the new room, and part of them ended up outside the room where nothing should exist. It took a while to correct this as I had to start all over from my last "good" saved file. This is a reminder to myself to continuously use the "Build All" button and save quite often.

Finally both parts were connected and I figured I would play the map once to ensure everything worked right. Apparently I had missed one step, as when walking around my map I realized my tunnel entrance to the terrain area was one way, I could go out but not re-enter my underground structure. Unfortunately when trying to correct this issue using the Visibility tool in the Unreal Editor. This tool caused nothing but headaches. When attempting to use the tool one of two things would happen; either nothing or an error message would appear and the Unreal editor would crash. Not a good thing as this halts my progress in working on the level.

I do have screenshots to post, however until the Blogger system stops being fussy I can't post them now. I will try again tomorrow.

Version Solution

We have come up with a solution to the Maya version problem we encountered last class. Since there is a plugin for Maya 5.0 that allows transport of objects into the Unreal editor we will all need to install this verison of Maya. This also explains why Ryan and I were unable to open Tom's musket object. Maya is not backwards nor forwards compatible (which is very odd) and therefore our objects are not visible by Tom and vice versa. By going to Maya 5.0 this means all the work we have done up to this point will be unusable in the Boston Tea Party mod. I'm guessing we'll have to recreate everything in the future.

Lights...Camera...Action

We continued to work on the Unreal Editor Tutorial for this upcoming class, with a sizable chunk of the material being placement of the light and usable items. Up to this point we had only created a simple layout and placed lights where we wanted. However, our lights were rather ghostly as there was no visible source for the light. Now we have covered that idea and updated our old layout with an additional room along with light sources and weapon/ammunition placements.

Unfortunately I have not had much of a chance to work on this project. It ended up taking me over 4 hours to do the last two steps of the tutorial so I am a little bit behind. The static meshes are the part that are giving me the most problems. Lining up all of the pieces so it looks like they are connected is quite the challenge. I had to narrow the gridlines down to level 1 to get it looking correctly. The above map can be found here.

Version Problems

For class we will be importing objects that we create in Maya into the Unreal Tournament Editor. Normally these two programs do not communicate on our computers, in order to get this done we will need to download a plugin. Unfortunately it appears that everyone in our class has either Maya 6.0 or 7.0 and no plugin is available at the moment. Our instructor is researching alternatives. In the meantime we will be working more with the Unreal Editor tutorials. I have an idea on a level I can create on my own time as a side project, when its more than a thought in my head I'll post what I have later.

Along the lines of version issues, my team has determined why neither Ryan nor I could view Tom's musket. When we tried we receive a message stating that the file was corrupted, odd since it works just fine on Tom's computer. Tom has Maya 7.0 installed, Ryan and I have 6.0 installed. Apparently there are new features in Maya 7.0 that were implemented in Tom's musket and caused the error. Tom may have to download Maya 6.0 but first we are going to wait to see what the answer for the class problem is, so that we don't download anything we don't need.

My First UnReal level

The homework for today was to follow along in the UnReal Editor 3.0 program and create our own little level. The tutorials were very well detailed and documented so following along was no problem at all. We were given a basic overview of the simpler tools and then let loose. Below is my first attempt at a room.

Basically just a big box for a player to run around in, only a few players could appear at one time. The next step was to expand this level into two rooms. A duplicate of the current room was created and then a hallway was added to connect the two. Lights were also added to give the level illumination. However in the tutorial lights were not added to the hallway. I found that when actually playing the level one of the walls in the hallway was completely dark and you could not see the texturing. Therefore a light was added to the hallway as well. Below is the improved level.

This map can be downloaded and played from here.

Ryan's Axe

It was my turn to view and alter the axe that Ryan has been working on for the past week. In preview of this I have been searching the internet for pictures of axes from the 1700's. They are fairly basic and not very ornate as they were more functional than anything else. After some research I felt I was ready to tackle the axe.

However once I opened the Maya axe object Ryan sent me I realize how much my research was not helpful. I will be honest, I didn't alter the axe at all. I was unable to determine how I could make it any more authentic than it already was without completely redoing the object. And even then I am rather certain I wouldn't be able to recreate it. Therefore the axe was left as is and can be found here.

Next up is the musket I will receive from Ryan. Beforehand I believe I need to redo some of the Maya tutorials to ensure I can keep pace with my teammates.

Crumpets Team

The Crumpets team consists of Tom, Ryan and myself(Dan). We are each creating an object for the game, since we have two weeks, following this schedule:

Dan working on cannon Monday - Friday
Tom working on Musket Monday - Friday
Ryan working on axe Monday - Friday

Dan working on axe Friday - Monday
Tom working on cannon Friday - Monday
Ryan working on musket Friday - Monday

Dan working on musket Monday(2nd) - Thursday
Tom working on axe Monday(2nd) - Thursday
Ryan working on cannon Monday(2nd) - Thursday

On Thursday all the objects are returned to their orignal owners for fine-tuning. This being Friday I have smoothed out my orginal cannon to look less block-like along the barrel. Now it needs to be passed along to Tom to work on. Tom can download the current draft of the cannon object here.

Files Update

The one thing missing from my previous posts was links to download the files in question. Therefore I am adding said links now for your viewing pleasure.

Hammer
Cannon Draft
Egghead
Cup