thegingergamingstudent

[thegingergamingstudent]

The date 02.01.2022

Hey person reading this! hope you are well. This is my next blog for thing that I have been doing and will be doing this is going to be note book.

so today i bought an asset pack that included 10 cats, animations, etc my programmer tells me after installing them into the game that it may have broken the hold thing and that his back ups aren't backing back up. 

he tells me there is an upside. 

mosquitos suck less blood after listening to screllex 

any who. This project that we are working has been stressful with manage 8 people including myself, I have found that the people who communicate with me the most, are the people that put the work into the project and give me the results I want. 

[thegingergamingstudent]

3D modelling pains and grumbles

this is an object that i have been creating in Maya to be able to move into the substance painter. 

i am currently trying to make sure that everything can fit in to this box because the space between each thing is wasted resolution meaning that if you look at all the big gaps there is plently of resolution wastage. I want to change this by moving the 4 blue long parts around the hole square. 

I have rearrange the shapes to fit into the square. there is still some spaces that left everything is slightly bigger also. 

[thegingergamingstudent]

3D lessons

I haven't been consistent on Tumblr for a while but I wanted to jump back on to start also blogging my journey 3D modelling. I have only been doing 3D modelling for around a month. My progress has been going relevantly well although because i am not confident with I don't do which doesn't help me get confident (i seem more confident when the teacher is around). although I rock my own confidence with the 3D modelling I love it. along side breaking old habits such as box modelling stuff instead of starting with one cube and deleting all the sides bar one. the new posts that i plan on is a before and after post one of my first model and one of a model now I also want to go back and redo the model that I started (at a later date). 

other posts I will be researching the reason to have a lower poly count and what a poly count is. 

the different tools basic(thats all i know currently).

How to UV unwrap wrap then put into substance.

once i know more about substance then i will post blogs about it also. 

this is a project I am currently working.  I am using this to learn how to UV unwrap and wrap up to put into substance. 

It takes a while for me to get into the throws again. but i am doing what I can at the moment. 

[thegingergamingstudent]

3d modelling and combining

I have started to see more confidence in my work since starting 3d modelling. this is some of the stuff i have started in the same day. i will place a after for the bench but that asset was at a place where it could be used within a game engine. although i cut some corners with the building of it for my own ease of production. under this is a fence/gate that we needed this was a quick build for me. as i needed to rush this item. One of the problems that I had before this was using the mirror tool where you could work on one half of the object and then it would keep working the other half, quarters, etc. I didn't know how to get the mirrored items to become actual items. i asked my tutor and he told me and my confidence with trying it over took me today. i tried to combine the whole bench and it went weird. ( i do not have a photo sorry) but everything tried to combine with everything else. and that didn't look good so i had to combine all 3 parts of the legs then the other side. then combine both sides to that. thing all the planks. then the planks to the plank holder( cant think of the name) then the plank holder planks would be combined to the legs, this seemed to have been the right way to combine parts of objects together although this maybe wrong. i will check with my tutor monday. 

[thegingergamingstudent]

3d modeling

[thegingergamingstudent]

building windows for a front door.

21I am currently modeling a front door for my sceen that i need to create I am trying to keep up with x amount of detail (the detail is that i have to be happy about what i have along with using tools with each object) 

currently i am on the window part of the door, there are 4 windows to this door. 

these two photos are without nurbs mode one so you see the basic should without knowing what it would look like smoothed the top box has more geometry. when using the nurbs tool it adds to the shape without doing anything to it so these look pretty much the same right when you use nurbs this is the difference in what you are seeing.

although the top square has been edited this is the different when in Nurbs mode. and it shows so when I eventually smooth the top one that will be roughly what it looks like without Nurbs turned on. The first square has also been bevelled (1) and creased (2). 

bevel is used to create a softness to an edge if you look at your phones edges you possibly wont find a hard shape edge to it. this is part of what beveling does. creasing does the oppose to bevel, as it brings straighter lines to a shape.

this is now with being smoothed 

The white one is the before and it both show all the geometry the green one is now also been smoothed and has to have some of the smoothing lines removed to be able to cut down on the overal poly and face count to be able to be loaded into the game easier. 

now all i need to do is to group it and group it with the door itself. then i can uv unwrape it and put it into the painter software. 

[thegingergamingstudent]

problems with 3D modelling

swhats going on everyone. 

I am doing some 3d molelling today and thought i would do some curtly this was going to be the handel to a knife  

i selected the side that i was having problems with and decided to delete it. 

this then gave me 

The two objects which I was like what is going on there. so I decided to then delete the side again which made this object look like half of what i wanted. and then duplicate Special.

I am finding this difficult to do for some reason. but I will get there. 

[thegingergamingstudent]

sword stuff and things

today i have UV unwrapped and exported and imported into substance painter although i dont think i did a great job this is now a finished Ish product. I want to use the sword as a template to be able to practice my use of substance throughout this last few months. I am kind of happy with what i have although some of the process that i had in Maya, when wrong with the UVMapping because one quarter of hand guard is streached looking which isnt the best. 

I want to work out how this happened. i believed it was the way i Cut the object while unwraping it in maya before i exported this was something that i was confused about but will hopefully be able to change in the future

here are the close ups of the pieces of the sword. starting at the bottom to the top.

i dont like the way the stubby part looks but the rest of the parts look semi okay. 

anyway i am happy that i have done something. 

[thegingergamingstudent]

building a rooms hallways and obstacles

hen building the little ruins I started building rooms out of the blocks themselves if you look the walls are different where the main door is but the square door is made out of single blocks now creating a prototype of what i am going for I came up with the idea that player wont go through exterior door but though another one. or that they have to interact with the bricks them selfs to be able to move them i have not decided this yet but will update over time

while play testing I found that play testing I already could anticipate that the 

players would try to go over it because that is what I would do so I made sure that if you look at the red line I placed a block that isn't at an angle to walk up, I didn't  anticipate  I would be about to get up from inside the room. 

i would like to have a cut scene in this level If i have time to add it in. although i am not sure if i want to add one off the blocks blocking the door or one block falling before the player tries to climb over the blocks from inside the room. 

I am adding in more rooms than I thought I would and I am going to see and try to see how well it is to be able to build another hallway as like an S shape 

the exit will be a broken wall that i have to create like i have with the door for the room itself 

key:

dark blue line is courtyard walls 

red is walls of ruins 

light blue will be a broken wall/ exit

black line with arrows are the path the player can take hopefully from start to finish. 

cycles with c in them are collectables. 

using my plans for this i have started by using the wall walls to build the walks around the ruin in order to keep the player boxed in a little bit.

I can start to see the building take shape although sides my become different and my plans for where the divide is for both court yards may be different from the plan.

[thegingergamingstudent]

level design stuff and things

This is the start of me building and figuring out an design for the beginning of the game. 

I wanted as a vertical slice to start off in a ruin where the character was exploring for a while.

 I wanted to create a path that the player will follow i started with one two block asset if you look at the highlighted asset below and started copying and pasting it in. once in a place that I like; I then transformed it and rotated the asset to then fit the angle and curve of the the ground. 

i wanted areas where the player will then pick up the items I thought of auther and the sword and the stone and found this platform asset and thought it would be a good indecater for the player to go toward.

the side of the platform was higher than the player and move up so I added these stairs assets. although they look good I didn't like that you could see through the stairs

I have since reangled the platform as the character would get stuck behind the wall and the platform if the player used the roll function. 

i used a rock asset to cover both sides of the stairs i felt that made me feel better and it mean that the player wont know what is there. 

The first aerial view of the level. you will see plans with drawing on the photos of basic plans although these are going to be changing. 

Plans:

key: 

purple = walls/ obstacles 

red crosses = pick ups 

blue cycle = player start 

white cycle = enemies 

white arrows = where other enemies are 

yellow lines = hopeful path the player will take. 

I want to build but the level for the ruins and find away to keep the players having to “explore” the ruins as a possible tutorial "level” I dont know how i am going to do that by this is going to become the tutorial level and the games testing level parts like sounds music and cut scenes throughout this part of the level. 

Problems: many of the assets aren't UV wrapped fully if you look at the photos below you there are examples and also how I have gotten around some of these problems with the assets. although they are free they also can be course more of an issue then helpful. 

  I like the idea of burying the assets I have used this asset twice now if you look at the asset photo below you can see through the asset from above and from the sides.

this is the grey wall, underneath the wall I was going to use it as a solver for a problem. but it didn't help as much as I thought it would because it was also see through. I managed to patch it with little blocks. I kept the wall there because I  didn't want the player to manage to get up on there and fall through 

this is a early look of the building and there is some wasted space on the left hand of the photo beyond the platform.

these are all the assets in a tutorial I was shown a great way to be able to copy and move assets in and around the engine. if you have an asset selected then use ALT key this will reproduce the item selected. 

having the assets out like this means that I have copy one and move it without having loads of problems. 

I am enjoying the process although I am forgetting to to document what I am doing there are big gaps in between photos and what I am doing. 

although it is more work then I am used to its also work that I forgot I enjoyed I haven't been at a level over these last two years that I have been able to produce anything close to this. I’ve missed doing this. I am going to be spending a few more days on level design before moving back onto blue printing.

[thegingergamingstudent]

colour coordination

when creating a game/project making sure that bug testing and problems can be understood quickly is a problem i have had before. while building this project i started heavily using print string which is a word or sentence you place in the code to tell you what is happening when it is running. an example of this is my current project.

one of the reasons i have tried to be better with my print string is because i have less than great orgazation skills and my naming conventions are even less great. I could look at my blue prints and be like oh thats there but others not so much. this way if i can colour code even a small amount it’[ll help who else may look at the project.

keeping the what is said in print string can be a challenge for as you need to write something for each line and most of the time there are loads of lines for each enemy. the default for the is client 0: hello this is the same word HELLO and the same colour so the server would also be the same. 

this was me prototyping and becoming more colour coordinated with my testing although its not at a standard yet i wish to make this a standard. 

its less about the words and more about the colours and its only in time where i will see what is working or what isn't. but I tried to have a different colour for each Print string with a different sentence afterward.

these are notes like where it says loops I think because before hand this might not have been working. 

AIMove to on success means it was successful and it moves

hello was one of the first ones where I pick up an item i needed something quick so it stayed like it is.

I want to make begin to make it a two tier system the main colour then a sub colour of the original colour so red is the main colour to tell me its working then a dark red to test it so that it known and slightly different to the red. 

the next thing i would do is say that that colour or colour range is to do with say item pick ups. where as green and lime green are for the main player character then sub colours for sub characters like dark green as a stub. but i may use one green to test then change it once it works properly 

The idea is to be able to then give a sheet with colours and then the catorgory of those colours to someone and them being able to find what they are looking for easier. 

this print string are only there for testing, building and play testing once the project is released then they will be removed from the main project.

this photo will help I plan on making a document to help me with this. 

[thegingergamingstudent]

Bringing Everything under one banner!

Over my years as a student I have “made” many websites for different years for the courses I've attended. I can count 6 at the moment of the sites that 4 of which I can access from my main computer with only 3 of them being from a email I have created 3 of the others are given by a college email this is my research blog to see if I can bring all of the emails into one place some maybe harder. i have this and another Tumblr at least 2 Wix's pages 1 maybe 2  WordPress sites. one YouTube site. 1 LinkedIn most of these sites have different email addresses to them.

I am going to customise some of these sites to be more professional and more like me. 

currently this Tumblr has no personal stuff on it. making it barebones in terms of professional looking. 

I need to get a Photo and screen shots to show off the project that I am working on. I also need a picture for each site that I have so that when looking for the sites when there is a photo that represents that. 

[thegingergamingstudent]

Happy New Year!

Happy new year everyone. I had a little break over Christmas. Update for people I did a twitch stream for VR as an experience I found that I was useless with it. the reason being was that I would using my laptops mic in the first part of the stream and because i wasn't close (sitting next to it) I couldn't be heard so well. 

for my second stream I used my wired headphones, and without looking i tried to turn the headphones down by using the headphones. I pressed the mute button and didn't realise until later in the stream. I was embarrassed and a little annoyed with myself but this wont stop me I am planning on live stream once a week at least.  in the hopes that I wont make a mistake. 

I also had a break from building the game. I am going to be getting back to this this week

there will be an update for the Monday 11th, and not before because i am writing this at the weekend before Monday the 4th. 

I am also doing surveys on survey monkey for my next hand in this month.

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/MCBBHGT

if any one could fill this out would be a big help for me. 

hope your dreams come true this year have a good one! 

[thegingergamingstudent]

Size does matter!

Today we are looking at the size of our characters upon looking in the character blueprints gives you a scale but doesn't give you a Hight with width of a character this does not help when trying to build worlds getting sizes correct is needed other wise a chair could be 10 times bigger then the character or 10 times smaller then the character this might be wanted for a fantasy tavern that has fairies and giants in the same place but when its not its a problem. 

I am also going to say that upon looking that the height is going to be in meters unless you want to measure in feet.

this is the player character scale but there isn't a tab or place to say this is the distance from the floor to the height of the character. but if we use a cube in a level then you'll be able to measure a character.

using a cube this will help you get the height of a character this helps with messuring objects such as door frames and the doors in them. size of walls trees etc 

if you look at the cubes z its stands at 2 

 we now know that my the scale as a measured in meters but  

at the same height the troll over shadows the cube 

the troll stands at 2.6 with using the cube to measure the characters. having a level devoted to size of characters would be a good idea for any project. the can be a level that has each asset put into it for measuring purposes not testing perposes.

have a good day 

[thegingergamingstudent]

software issues

The course i am following online has now gone onto the level design which is awesome and has taken me to a site that gives free assets from the Megascans collection instead of downloading 30Gb worth of assets when you only need say one item that is only a few MB this is great but I think i have messed up the installation on the set up as I cant export onto the PC currently this might mean that I will need to create a blank project download 30 gb worth of assets and then move over the assets that i wanted anyway. I am currently looking into how to change the location to see if this fixes the problem but currently I am struggling.

the website is 

https://quixel.com/

[thegingergamingstudent]

it spawns behidn the troll :(

todays problems have been many and today was going to be a chilled day a quick day. so I thought I have a small bug one of the AIs attack features also the first bout of attacks don't register for the players health and I am unsure why I have this bug other than these two problems it works and it will kill you eventually 

[thegingergamingstudent]

organization its a process

my version control of my project needs more refining as I now cant find my latest version in my PC which is fun when you want to start at 8am this is a problem that needs solving, i am hoping that i haven't lost progress from yesterday and this will cause great pain.

i am hoping that opening 6 different projects in unreal engine wont destroy my PC but already I am facing a lag in everything I don't know how i am typing this. 

now that they are loaded i have to go through and check them i want to move the versions that don't work. and remove versions that now dont have the enemy AI into a older folder 

renaming may cause issues that will be unknown because these are problems that I haven't dealt with yet.

It is done I have got the project on up 

I have placed a new thumb nail now onto the project so that they are easily found.

which is this fine peace of art work for the thumbnail its basic but it will work and I will be able to edit this with numbers to signify what version i am running with already.