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[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Evaluation

What went well:

In this project I think quiet alot went very well As I was able to learn alot of new thing not only about settings but about unreal Widgets as a whole. First off I really enjoyed learning about all these different settings and how they actually change in unreal engine, Some of my favourites include Re Binding keys and changing player frame rates and sensitivity. 

Secondly I am really glad that I know alot more about the widget tool in unreal like scroll wheel boxes, Horizontal boxes, ComboStrings and so on as these are useful for future things that I will be making with widgets.

Finally I am happy with making my menu able to work with not only mouse but keypad and controller aswell. This is something I didn’t think I could figure out but it was surprisingly simple enough to do.

What could of gone better:

As well as this project went there is still so much more I could of done as there are millions and millions of other options and things I could of done. One of the main things I wanted to do was Add a bunch of different audio options. I sadly never go around to doing this as I was focused on other things and never really came back to the idea of finishing it.

On top of this I also wish I could of added more key bindings to change however that would of needed me to change the whole movement of the default third person character and that lead me to choose to do other things instead of that.

Finally I feel like I Could of Done a bit more If I didn’t take too long finding out harder things that ended out to not work and that made my final work a bit less as of what it could of been.

What will I do differently next time:

Next time I think I should try and stop doing something after it has taken me way to much time as I found out I lost alot of time that I could of used to make many other options that I didn’t get to add. 

I also would like to do more at home next time as if i have worked more at home I maybe could of added many things that didn’t get added On top of this I want to do more blog work at home as I always end up leaving a big chunk till the end and from there end up having to rush them all at the end.

Finally I think I could of planned this better and If I could of stuck to my plan a bit better than I did. I believe that I could of made more progress than I ended up doing. I think my issue is getting to stuck up on one thing and taking that idea further to a point where I forgot and leave behind the plan I made.

Conclusion:

Overall I am actually really happy with the menu I was able to create Even If it didn’t make it into the final menu I learned alot of thing about unreal engine to do with settings and the unreal widget menu. Ive wanted to make something like this for a while and I’m glad I could make something I think is really cool.

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Evaluation

What went well:

In this project I think quiet alot went very well As I was able to learn alot of new thing not only about settings but about unreal Widgets as a whole. First off I really enjoyed learning about all these different settings and how they actually change in unreal engine, Some of my favourites include Re Binding keys and changing player frame rates and sensitivity. 

Secondly I am really glad that I know alot more about the widget tool in unreal like scroll wheel boxes, Horizontal boxes, ComboStrings and so on as these are useful for future things that I will be making with widgets.

Finally I am happy with making my menu able to work with not only mouse but keypad and controller aswell. This is something I didn’t think I could figure out but it was surprisingly simple enough to do.

What could of gone better:

As well as this project went there is still so much more I could of done as there are millions and millions of other options and things I could of done. One of the main things I wanted to do was Add a bunch of different audio options. I sadly never go around to doing this as I was focused on other things and never really came back to the idea of finishing it.

On top of this I also wish I could of added more key bindings to change however that would of needed me to change the whole movement of the default third person character and that lead me to choose to do other things instead of that.

Finally I feel like I Could of Done a bit more If I didn’t take too long finding out harder things that ended out to not work and that made my final work a bit less as of what it could of been.

What will I do differently next time:

Next time I think I should try and stop doing something after it has taken me way to much time as I found out I lost alot of time that I could of used to make many other options that I didn’t get to add. 

I also would like to do more at home next time as if i have worked more at home I maybe could of added many things that didn’t get added On top of this I want to do more blog work at home as I always end up leaving a big chunk till the end and from there end up having to rush them all at the end.

Finally I think I could of planned this better and If I could of stuck to my plan a bit better than I did. I believe that I could of made more progress than I ended up doing. I think my issue is getting to stuck up on one thing and taking that idea further to a point where I forgot and leave behind the plan I made.

Conclusion:

Overall I am actually really happy with the menu I was able to create Even If it didn’t make it into the final menu I learned alot of thing about unreal engine to do with settings and the unreal widget menu. Ive wanted to make something like this for a while and I’m glad I could make something I think is really cool.

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

getting a static camera

Source: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/InteractiveExperiences/UsingCameras/Blueprints/index.html

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Evaluation For First Project (SideScroller)

What went well:

I believe that what I did best at or this project was the code I think this because i feel that I understood well how everything pieced together and made the game work I also think that I did well at was creating the tile maps for my level as I found that I really enjoyed making the terrain and obstacles that my character had to go through and i though that my designs for the terrain were well done. Finally I enjoyed making the win and lose screen for the game as i just found it very interesting to do and i really liked the outcomes of what i had made.

What could be better:

The main thing I think I could of done a lot better at was the paper art this is mainly because I am not confident in doing art on paper and feel more confident with art on computer and i was personally not happy with any of the art I produced from paper. The only other thing i felt i struggled with was the animation process as I was completely new to it however I am more used to it now so i hope to do better with my animation in the next project.

What will be different next time:

Next time I want to spend most of my time improving on my character design and animations. The reason for this is I feel these were the things I struggled with most and want to spend the most time working on so that as I go through the course it keeps getting better and better so that i end with a respectable character design and animation cycle for not only the character but background objects and npc sprites etc.

Overall:

Overall I feel i have really learned a lot already from this course and I'm really exited to continue learning new ways to code games and new ways to design well thought out characters.

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Win and Lose screen widgets

To implement our win and lose screens into our game we will be using widgets. First off we need  to create a widget to do this we need to right click on the content browser look all the way to the bottom and click user interface and from there click on widget blueprint.

from here we name our widget and open it. inside there are 2 menus the design menu for the visuals and the graph where all the code goes. to get our win and lose screens into the widget we take one and drag and drop it into the widget then change its x and y size to 1920x1080.

now we need to get the win screen to show on screen when we press a key to do this we need to open our characters blueprint and code it so that when a key is pressed the win screen widget will be shown.

with this code when the key q is pressed it will create a widget which we will have to change in the class section from nothing to the winscreen widget. and then we end the code with a viewport connecting both lines so that the winscreen will actually be shown on screen.

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Adding Animation to our character

After we created our walking flipbook we then replaced our old static sprite with the flipbook so that the character was constantly in a walking animation we also dragged the flipbook into the mesh. the problem was that the character was constantly moving so we had to fix it.

To fix this we had to code all the different flipbooks so that in different situations different animations were played. First we got an event tick so that there would be a constant beam of information checking what animation should be played at the time. from there we added dragged in the default character movement so that we and with that we dragged out is falling with that bit of code plugged into a branch with a tick it is constantly checking if the character is airborne and we now have to add what to change the animation to if the character is falling.

We use a branch because it is a simple true or false if the character is falling is true we need to add a jumping animation so to add it we pull our character out from components and drag out from that with set flipbook and set the flipbook to the jump animation. we then drag that into the true section of the branch making the jump animation play whenever the character is airborne. 

Finally we also needed a idle animation for when the character is not moving at all. and to make it simpler instead of adding a whole other section of code we drag off from false on our last branch  into a second branch.

Now to get this to figure out the speed we need to drag out of an axis value from some default movement code and what the axis value does is constantly make the computer aware of what direction the play is moving or if they are moving or not.

After we have dragged out from the axis value we want to let go and search for a == node and that will say that if the axis value is equal to zero something will happen. what we will do with this is drag the == node into the branch to make it a true or false being if the axis value is 0 (true) play idle animation and if false play walking animation.

to make the certain animations play from true we want to drag out our character from our components again and drag from that a set flipbook and with that we set it to the idle animation and from false we do the exact same but instead of setting it to the idle animation we set it to the walking animation.

full code

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

creating flipbooks in unreal engine

To crate a flipbook you first need to transfer your sprite sheet from photoshop to unreal the file has to be either psd or png. from there you now have a texture in unreal next we will need to extract each sprite to be used in the game to do you this you click on your file on unreal and go to extract sprites.

After you have separated the sprites by cutting the spreadsheet into 64x64 you should have a bunch of images of the animation cycle.

To finish and create the flipbook you need to select all of the images you want to use in the animation right click and select create flipbook.

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Idle and death animation

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Making death and win screen

Font used is called super mario bros. 2 font

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Death screens

Undertale

When you die in Undertale you get a classic game over at the top of the screen making you very aware that you have died but instead of only having that they also give you an inspirational message at the bottom every time you die telling you to get back up and try again they do this because in the game a main plot point is your determination and that is what is telling you to keep going.

Super mario bros

In super mario bros when you die you are given alot og information on how you were performing on the level before you died with showing you your coins, score, world and time while in the middle of the screen telling you how many lives you have so you are aware if you need to be more carful.

mike tyson punch out

Mike tysons punch out is different as they dont treat it as losing a game they treat it as if you had lost a boxing match as it shows you little mac thinking of giving up and retiring with someone telling him to push forward at the bottom only showing 1 line of text being game over so it doesn't completely ruin the feel

Cuphead 

The win screen for cuphead is very flashy and gets you exited as a catch tune played while loud effects take place as you are told how you have done on the level. They give you your time, parrys, super meter, skill level and hp bonus.

Geometry dash

Megaman

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

upgraded sprite sheet

To make the sprite sheet better i have added multiple different kinds of dirt so that it fits into place with the hills dirt color change and doesn't look out of place like it did when i only had 3 different layer blocks for dirt.

I have repeated this process for the sand blocks aswell as I wanted to add a sand level or areas to my game to give it a bit of diversity to the dirt and not making the game become repetitive with just the dirt blocks everywhere. that reason is also why i had made the fence that could be used to make certain terrains look just that bit more interesting.

Finally I added some new background objects as the crate, tree and cloud. i have added this so that there is some depth to the background instead of it being a plain blue colour. I plan to scatter all the background objects all around the level to make it more detailed   

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Friday week 3 home study / Research and play

What are all the steps/screens/interactions that a player has with a game which isn’t the game itself? 

Game 1 Genshin Impact:

application launcher 

company logo loading screen

main menu

loading screens

quest menu

character selection menu

map

inventory 

achievement menu

friend list 

story cut scenes 

interaction with shop keepers menu 

cooking menu 

weapon selection 

attribute selection 

talent selection 

settings 

quit game menu

shrine praise menu 

heal player menu

dungeon start screen 

glider selectino screen 

talent tree

Attribute screen

Game 2 Dota 2:

booting up screen

opening cinematic sequence

main menu 

settings menu

friends list 

chat box

players feed 

mini profile screen

heros menu

global items menu

guides menu

store 

watch live games menu

learning techniques menu

shop item showcase

arcade game menu

proifle page 

starting game features:

hero ban phase

hero selection phase

preparation phase 

highlight player screen

Game 3 Osu!

opening sequence

main menu screen

song selection screen 

options menu

edit song menu

song selection screen

mode menu 

leader board ranking 

mode selection 

ranking panel screen

pause screen

fail screen

friends menu

chat box 

closing game sequence

Flow chart of menus through Osu!

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Thursday week 3 home study Mario/ UI

New Super mario bros was a remake of the original mario game Super mario bros which is a 2d platformer where our main character mario and side character Luige have to travel different worlds fighting various creatures and overcoming many difficult landscapes to finally make it to Bowsers castle and save Princess peach from Bowser himself.

I chose to review this Mario as it was the first Mario game I had ever played and one of the Mario's I have the best memory of. One of the best things about Mario is the amount of unique level ideas and powerups they have for the game. tones of different themes for whole areas where the levels inside them all have there own style while also keeping in the theme. The power ups are also very interesting and change the game enough to keep the game fresh and let you be able to access stuff that you could of access earlier without this powerup. Finally I Like all the different enemy creatures they have all of them looks completely different and serve as obstacles to block your path or throw projectiles that you will have to dodge.

Also as this game is a remake of the original the games graphics have been polished to look so much nicer than the original. obviously it doesn't stand up to todays standards but it still  was very good for its time and you can still play it and have a good time these days too. 

The level selection screen is also something that I really like as it adds an extra layer of stuff to the game to make it more interesting as you can look around the world at the levels you need to go to and complete while also hiding secret levels to get power ups and hidden enemy's that will be waiting at levels to sneak attack you

What is UI and UX?

UI- UI is short for user interface

UX-  UX design is the process of designing (digital or physical) products that are useful, easy to use, and delightful to interact with. It's about enhancing the experience that people have while interacting with your product, and making sure they find value in what you're providing

Why is it important?

UI is important because it lets the player see there health, map, ammo etc while still being able to play the game with not much interference. UX is important because it needs to fulfil the players experience keeping them playing the game not switching to something else.

What is a Win and lose Screen? 

A win and lose screen is a screen that plays after the game to confirm if you have won or lost. it is used in many different ways to when you die on mario to when you win a game on csgo.

5 visual examples.

Read this post from medium.com about the best game UI’s what is your opinion on this post?

I agree that UI’s are underrated in gaming scene and thankfully the more unique and original UI’s are finally getting the recognition that it deserves. however i do think that very cool looking UI’s  should not be an obscurity and more games should try and develop original UI’s to make there game stand out a little bit more than the rest.

What is the best User interface you have used in a game? And why?

I believe the best UI I have used in a game is probably destiny 2 as i feel like it was something completely new to the old scroll through everything until you find the right item and as well as that it was just interesting and nice to look at. finally it also let ps4 player use the analog stick to get to there item instead of constantly spamming the d-pad.

Plans for my UI / Win and lose screen:

For my win screen i would like to base it off something to do with pirates as my main sprite is a pirate from this i could use gold coins, chests of gold, treasure maps, pirate ships and secret islands.

For my lose screen i would like to base it off Undetales Lose screen as i like the use of black with the direct opposition of black and white used from this i will make it my own by adding something as a representation that you are stuck in dead like chains or something similar.

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Wednesday week 3 home study Animation Research and Top 3 2d games review

Max Fleisher

Max Fleisher was an animator, inventor, film director and producer who was born on July 19 1883. One of his most notable works was Betty boop as she is a very recognizable character in the early animation history but on top of that he also was the inventor of the rotoscope, set up his own studio called Fleischer studios Inc and also made the animations Popeye the Sailor Out of the inkwell Talkartoons Screen Songs Song Car-Tunes Superman.

Eadweard Mybridge

Eadweard Mybridge was a English photographer and became famous for his photography work in motion and coming out with the first animation being the running horse. From this he also made other animations in motion some being a man jumping a running man and 2 men fighting.

Richard Williams

Richard Williams is a animator, voice actor, director who is best known for his animation work in who framed roger rabbit he is known for this as it was one of the first times that animation and real life had been mixed together and the animation being done so realistically. However he did have a side project called the thief and the cobbler and sadly it never saw full release as he never had the funds to finish his work off.

David Perry

David Perry was an Irish game developer and programmer who was most popular for his work on plat former games Earthwork Jim and Disney’s Aladdin and also made lesser known projects them being cool spot drakmaze, savage and many more.

The Act by Cecropia

The act is a game that is played like a short movie as you follow the adventure of a window cleaner trying to save his brother not get fired and find the love of his life. the game has a slapstick comedy theme to it while also letting you in on the game so you feel involved in the movie as if your actions have an impact on the characters lives and it could better them or worsen them.

3: Undertale

I really enjoyed playing undertale because of its unique combat system of being able to choose how you play the game that being sparing or killing the monster this also effected the games ending which made the story of the game so good as it was an enjoyable ride throughout the whole thing with twists and humour put out through it and you could change the outcome of the game by killing everything or killing nothing giving the game replay ability as you want to seek out the different endings and see how the games story changed with the different paths taken.

Another thing that makes Undertale great is The characters in the game. Almost all the side characters are rememberable as they each have there own Loving personality's and drives that makes the player feel like they are friends with the character connecting them to the game more than others.

2: Pokémon Black and White

Pokémon black and white is a game close to my heart as i played it loads and loads as a kid it was the game that time into completing again and again never getting bored of it and it will stay as one of my favourite games for that reason. but there are many other reasons the game is good.

For example the amount of original Pokémon, npcs, rivals, leaders and ect are amazing the amount of originality in this game is amazing. I can also appreciate the battling as further down the more games they make the cooler the animations in battle are to see. furthermore the story for this pokemon had a deeper meaning than just beating the elite 4 it was also about the morals of keeping Pokémon to battle and if humans were in the right making it one of my favourite Pokémon games. To end off the music for this Pokémon was something they had nether done before but it is actually a beautiful and hype soundtrack perfect for the game.

1: Osu

Osu is one of my favorite games right now And is my favorite 2d game. this is because of the simpleness of what the game is and how you can improve and it makes the game get more and more advanced as you get better. the game is all about improving and there are leaderboards for all players which if u have a competitive side you will want to move up the ranks and that makes the game very addicting to play. there is also no time where u have to stay on the came so you can come on and off when you please meaning your only playing the game when you want to making people not get bored and not being able to leave wiithout getting a game ban.

there is also a very nice learning curve and when you get better or make a new top score you feel an adrenalin  rush even though your just clicking circles to the beat. Finally i like the customization that you can have with the game such as making your own skin for the game letting you be able to complete change how the default game looks to your liking.

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Cutting spread sheet And texture collision

First thing to cutting up a spread sheet you need to drag and drop the spread sheet from your Photoshop file into your unreal engine from there you want to right click on it and apply paper2d texture settings and then right click again and then go to extract sprite and it will open the grid menu.

from here you would want to change the sprite extraction from auto to grid this will let you know decide the amount of grids you want to cut out for us we used 64 x 64 as all our sprites where in a 64 x 64 square. From there we click export and we get all our sprites separate all at once.

next we wanted to add our game grid so that it matches with our sprites grid that being 64 x 64 to change this we went to edit then editors preference to open up the editors menu from there we type up grid on the details scroll down to decimal grid sizes and from there create our own grid size being 64 x 64.

Next we had to edit sprite collision on the map of our game. to do this we needed to double click the sprite we wanted to change and that opens up the sprite editor. from there we go to edit collision and then click on the sides to then be able to change the collision.

To get our character to go up a 45 degree angle we need to change his character angle. to do this we have to open his character blueprints then click on the charactermovement (inherited).

From there look in the details section and search for walkable floor angle after you have found it change it to 46 so that it can get over 45 degree hills and not walk over the whole level.

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Making our sprite the character / Huds

to make our sprite the main character of the game we need to open up our characters blueprint then drag and drop our sprite on top of the character.

After that because our character is 2d we do not need any visible rotation when we turn from side to side but the other character was 3d so he had rotation settings. To change this we needed to locate the rotation speed and set it really high so it is not possible visible. 

The final thing we need to do is hide the 3d character so only our sprite is visible. We did this by going into the characters rendering settings and unticking his visibility setting leaving only our sprite as the character. 

Hud

To make our hud in unreal we need to right click in the content browser go to the user interface and click it then from there click the widget blueprint and name it hud.

From there you will need to double click it and it will open a hud menu so that you can edit your hud with this all we need to do is make a text box and name it points so that when it is shown on screen the player will know how many points they have.

[sidescrollertylermorgan]

Unreal 2d, Textures and Sprites

To make your game 2d in unreal Engine. You will have to open up your characters blueprints and then click on the camera. from the camera there will be a choice of mode under camera settings for perspective (3d) or orthographic (2d) for our 2d game we picked orthographic.

To get our textures we made in photoshop to unreal its a simple drag and drop you will put your photoshop file in your documents into the content browser of unreal. png files will also work.

After this you will have a files as shown above which means it will not work in the game. To change this you have to right click on the file go to Sprite actions and then click apply paper2d texture settings this will make the sprite become pixilated in game and have no background.

To make this sprite now able to be used in your game you right click again and for to sprite settings but this time you click create sprite and then a sprite will be created with a blue line under it meaning it can be used and dragged into your game.