Hynes' Game Engine Technology

Development Delay Work on Phantom Culprit had ceased for the past month due to an illness which lead me to be hospitalised and away from Cambridge. Because of all this lost time and with a new deadline in a weeks time, I had to work hard to get the level with all features finished.

Lights, Objectives and Doors For Phantom Culprit I wanted an interactive environment to bring it to life. Around the level are many objects the player can interact with ranging from doors, light switches and pickups. Turning on the lights reveals some of the levels darker secrets. The player's first objective upon entering the station is to find the fuse box and reset the power to the building. Once the fuse box is turned on, all the lights in the building come back on revealing more enemies and hidden details relating to the attack on the station. All the doors in the level are created using a blueprint which allows me to say which doors are locked and the state the door is in. Every unlocked door has a 3D world spaced widget with the Interact key shown, giving the player direction around the level. The objectives are also made using a blueprint called ObjectiveMaster. Every objective in the level is a child of Objective Master. Each objective can be configured ...

Glock 17 Gen. 4 My chosen weapon was the Glock 17 Generation 4. The Glock 17 is an Austrian made handgun chambered in 9x19mm and is used as the main sidearm for most law enforcements around the world. The biggest reason for choosing this gun apart from meeting my needs for a handgun is that it fits the setting of my game. The Glock 17 being the main handgun used by police and military forces in the UK and my game being based in the UK it made sense, giving the game some authenticity. The Glock 17 is also highly customizable with different attachments, such as torches and laser sights, as well as different grips, slide and colour patterns.  A Glock 17 Gen 4 (Image by Buds Gun Shop,  https://www.budsgunshop.com/catalog/index.php ) The Model I created the Glock 17 using reference images in Maya 2018. The gun was separated into 4 components to allow animation. These components being the slide, receiver, trigger and magazine. Each component was then  assigned a la...

Tools To create my characters I used a mix of Adobe Fuse, Substance Painter and Maya. Each tool respectively allows me to create their models, textures and animation. Adobe Fuse Adobe Fuse is a free character mesh builder that allows for users to start off with a basic array of body parts. These can then be edited with finer precision and then equipped with clothes and accessories.  Adobe Fuse also rigs the characters with a skeleton which can then be used for animations. Rigged meshes can be exported to Adobe Mixamo for some quick, pre-made animations which I used for my characters walking and zombie attack animations. My main character in Adobe Fuse. Substance Painter Substance painter, a material editor as mentioned in the previous post, allows me to add finer details to my characters and meshes. I used it to add more gore to my zombies but to also create high quality textures for a few props such as the ammo boxes which can be found in the game. The hand...

The Player Creating my player character was a tough part of the design as I feel the character choice should reflect on the gameplay and story. Do I want a super trained solider with a machine gun to mow down zombies or do I want a rookie police officer armed with a basic weapon and no training with it. The latter was my choice. This fits in with the gameplay I wanted, a weak weapon and tough to kill enemies. The character went through a few design choices but was settled to look like someone with little training who was not fully prepared for the situation but had adapted quickly. To show this I designed a character in normal every day clothing but with equipment they found very shortly after the zombie outbreak. This includes the torch, weapon holster and the handgun. (See the next post for the design process). The Zombies Every great zombie game needs some scary looking zombies. Seeing as the game would be set in a police station it makes sense most zombies would be for...

Creating the Level: The Meshes To find the best way to create a level I looked into modular design. This is something I've seen most AAA and Indie studios use. The point of modular design is to create assets that can be 'snapped' together to create levels easily and allow changes during development.  An example of this can be seen by Bethesda during the GCD of 2016. During their presentation they showcase the methods used to create the meshes needed for their levels as well as tips on UV mapping, texture issues and how meshes are optimised, such as single sides meshes. Using the video by Bethesda as a guide, I set out to create multiple modular pieces, all using the same techniques such as being single sided, to create my level. Each piece I made has 2 UV maps. One map is for the texture and the other is t he light map. The light map is designed to give a mesh correct lighting during a lighting build in the Unreal Engine. Without a light map the mesh would ha...

File Structure To take a look at how AAA studios structure their games I looked at modding. Specifically Battlefront and Battlefield series, created by DICE. Using a tool called Frosty Editor, which can be found here  https://frostytoolsuitedev.gitlab.io/downloads.html , I could see how DICE structure their games. My idea would be to structure my file directory's similar to theirs whilst also using the same approach to my folders inside the Unreal Editor. This keeps things the same between my folders and Unreal allowing me to search and find assets quicker. The downside to this is if I change the folder name for on directory I will have to manually change it in Unreal and vice versa. Examples of my folder layouts. Heavily inspired by DICE's methods of structure.

Inspiration Every game developer needs inspiration from somewhere. For me it was the announcement of the Resident Evil 2 remake at E3. I've always been a fan of the Resident Evil series and seeing the game return to its roots of survival action horror gameplay really inspired me to make Phantom Culprit.  Resident Evil 2 Remake, by Capcom The Game I decided on the setting of a police station, not only because of Resident Evil 2, but also it is a good place for a horror atmosphere that can be confined to a small, single location.  The objective would be for the player to explore the zombie infested police station, find out what happened there and then escape. Perhaps a power switch or a door code. The zombies would be slow but tough with head shots doing higher damage. The zombies would use swing attacks instead of grabbing due to the previous attempts to create a grab system was too buggy and caused problems in tight spaces with multiple zombies. The ch...

The Brainstorm Straight from the start I had 2 ideas in my head. An action set piece set inside a plane mid flight, or a slow paced horror game, comparable to the old Resident Evil titles. I had so many ideas for both options with the gameplay laid out, the features of the game and the weapon I would create for the player to use. PAN-PAN Pan-Pan would be set on board a 747 airliner mid flight. The aim of the game would be to fight your way through from the back of the plane to the cockpit. The level would have dynamic events such as cabin pressure loss and changes in gravity due to the plane losing altitude. The reason I didn't pick this was due to game lasting only 2 minutes, if that and repetitive gameplay you can find in your latest FPS game. Phantom Culprit Phantom Culprit is a project I started in the summer as a third person, over the shoulder shooter. The game had working online functionality and one fully blocked out level with a working weapon system, in...