I'm happy to go either way as for UT3/Source. It's just UT3 is very much dead in the water on the mod front, whereas source is brimming.

We could call it Minifig SPP. Minifgs are much easier to make and animate than people models.

I think some more research on Source's tutorial's capabilities are in order.

Do you like the idea of LEGO SPP?

well phase 3 and 4 of make something unreal are kicking off late April and those do tend to completely revitalise the mod scene for UT.

The lego thing is a stylistic choice which doesn't really impact the amount of work to design an complete the system behind it. That sort of thing is something we should leave till we actually have a working SPP prototype ( or SPPP :) ) with all the gameplay elements and vehicle mods in place with stock or improvised models. If we get that far we can look at the graphics till then that's just a distraction.

Source is a fairly capable engine though I've not seen it do anything like what we are envisioning. It probably is still capable of it it's just we'd have to do a lot of the leg work.

it is a c++ based system rather than the obscurities of Unreal Script which reduces the learning curve a little. Since it's a lot older than UT3 there are a fair number of tutorials and a lot of official developer support http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Category:Tutorials

I know the people graphics are secondary but I have been wondering how the fuck we were going to make the characters.

Something like makehuman would do the people or there is always the old classic reskin existing models

or replace all the people with robots they're easier to model

I think i might slide toward UT3 as it is designed for vehicles.

Sounds like UE3 is the same as Source in terms of rigging and animation you have to use 3dmax maya or XSI

You can use others for static meshes but not including the armatures and bones underneath

There is a free non comercial version of XSI called "Mod Tool" that works with UE3.

So for either source or UE3 we could develop the models in something we are familar with I'd go with Blender but there are probably other options. Do all the UV mapping and bake the normal maps add ambient occlusion and so on then we can export that to something that XSI would read and do any rigging and animation in the free version of XSI.

For any static props we would just skip the rig stage altogether.

From the gist of some of the tut's I've looked at we may need to rig some things even if they are going to have no animations as UE3 has this concept of sockets which are bones where something attaches be it a model of a weapon or in a vehicle a model of the driver or turrets or what have you.

Hi Guys... you know how you are talking about not being able to make characters in Maya or a similar program?

I can make characters in Maya (with normal maps and everything) and rig them too...

www.aserash.com

I think so long as the skeletal structure and animation content is within UE3 format norms it should be possible to cookup compatible models for the mod without needing to have finished mod with all the customised weapons and vehicles ready. This is the advantage of the sockets thing, we just hang the weapons off the same bones and it should all just work.

So some parallel development might be achievable.

We probably want to have a good plan of attack before we go off half cocked again though

Pete's concept is awesome but it's too big for us to go straight into and even then may not be achievable with the time, skill, and tools at our disposal

so we need to break it down into a series of smaller more practical steps

Last time the lack of any good tutorials or examples left us floundering plus the whole switch from UT2k4 to UT3 and the sheer scope of the concept scuttled us before we got going.

If we want to have any chance of making this thing this time we need to work smarter.

So baby steps is the order of the day, a series of small (possibly independent) modifications to the exisiting code to show progress and make it easier to get to the end without getting overwhelmed.

My current thinking is this

1) water levels we make some basic water levels (probaly with two island to serve as spawn locations) in UT3 to play with they won't have the advanced features like wind and swell and currents and so on but they will make a start. We can use the tutorial I found above as a starting point.

2) Game type at it's core it's more or less vehicle capture the flag where the flag is replace by a horde and it's on a moving base. We can implement that by degrees add the changes to make it a horde then try and work out how to spawn it on a mobile ship etc. Add the distinction between place you take the horde to and where it spawns.

3) ships we'll need to implement basic ships then work our way up to things like wind and damage.

4) the various weapons will need implementing some of these are simple reskins of exisiting stuff with a few parameter tweaks. Others will require more complex stuff behind them.

We will need some sort of basic plan for who does what so we can work independently but we want to break things down as simply as possible and make the source and notes available to all so people can try in make suggestions for improvements add more appropriate art and so on we might need some sort of repository of our stuff online somewhere.

Good thinking. I'll start by reintroducing myself to UnrealEd.

Vehciles - a volunteer!
I'd like to start looking at how to do custom vehicles. I won't start with a model - just use a big block but need to play with uscript to understand how they are used to move and so on.

Online repository
We will need an online repos. Everyone have FTP access? We can use the Lack-Of space as there is plenty of it. Action Tonight: I'll see about setting up some FTP accounts for special parts of our online space.

LEGO?
We need to decide if we're going to use a LEGO style ASAP. I think it's good because more of us can have graphical input and we can create a lot without putting too much effort in. It'll be quicker than doing a more realistic version. It's a style we all know, there are plenty of resources online and can look really cool.

Organising Ourselves
Should we break these posts into a few? Graphics, Gameplay, Mapping, Other?
Perhaps have a box on the main lack-of four columns (at the bottom) with quick links?

LEGO is easy, but aren't we in danger of treading well-worn ground? Wouldn't Travellers Tales Games be a little pissed?

I don't think I have FTP access, but that can come later, once I have something to add...

www.aserash.com

Lego wise I'm of two minds it may simplify the model making a little but it perhaps clashes a bit with the other themes we want in there

I think we might be better if we just stick to our steam punk ideas

It also depends if we want to publicly distribute this at all if we use a load of lego stuff in there without a liscence we probably can't

yeah slightly cartoony is good and it fits with the theme we do afterall have the pirate cannon

we could even do it cell shaded

http://help.hourences.com/tutorialsue3mated3.htm

Byrn, perhaps you're right about taking this off Lack-Of. Perhaps a special area of lack-of? Separate the comments, etc?

I was thinking today about weapons most of the ones in petes initial concept seem good but I wonder about specialising it a bit more having dedicated weapons for repelling boarders or attacking or what have you.

we could limit the number of weapon slots so people have to choose what they carry (perhaps with the old fall back of a basic pistol or cutlass or something) it might make for a more varied game with more thought behind it if you cant just load up on every weapon under the sun

I wouldn't mind seeing what you guys have so far...

www.aserash.com

I was thinking of a boarder repelling weapon that is a sort of spring loaded boxing glove.

It doesn't actually do much direct damage it is more a physics toy bouncing boarders off the boat. It could be a charge up weapon so you hold down primary or alt fire and it winds it's spring the longer you charge it the further it propels someone

it would then have to wind back in so would have a relatively long reload cycle but it would be a comedy weapon.

I've noted that my ancient post should have pictures, but they have gone walkabout (they were probably on imageshack, as I think I did all that in a lunchbreak at work).

I'll see if I can dig the images up tomorrow.

here is a fairly complete tutorial of making custom weapons in ut3 using that abomination 3d studio max the renderer written by blind monkeys with hooks for hands. It goes through all the steps of preparing the model getting the model into UE3 then processing it for use in the game and even a hacky version of coding it to work (there are better tutorials on the scripting side of the weapon stuff but this is a pretty decent quick jab at it just to test out the model).

I suspect this can be retooled to mod tool or maya or what have you.

http://www.ut40k.planetunreal.gamespy.com/unreal-Dateien/ut3...

Or you could just have a current start slowly pulling you to the edge if you get too close and if you don't steer away, you get swept over. We could even do a comedy last minute save where you could (if you catch yourself just in time) sail like hell up the side of the waterfall and actually make it back on.

www.aserash.com

Smashing. I've got the UE3 running and went halfway through that terrain tutorial from hourrences (did I tell you this?). Going to keep getting through that, then I'm going to work on water.

oh ho ho what's this http://code.google.com/p/unrealtacticalmod/wiki/Main_Tutoria...

we may not need to fuck about with modtool after all it seems some resourceful person has done a PSK (skeletal meshes) PSA (animation sets) ASE (static mesh) exporter for blender (unreals own format) cutting out the middleman so to speak and supposedly it works in UT3

Not sure whether this is all wishful thinking as it is too late to try it now but it looks promising

Nice work mate. I'm going to do some more mapping this w/e.

Anyone find anything to be used to export from Maya? and I actually don't know the limits for models going into the engine...

www.aserash.com

I managed to get a custom weapon from model in blender into ut3 and actually running in a game (using the shock rifle code as a base)

So far it hasn't worked for the mesh I drew and I'm not sure why but I'll keep working on it a promising first step at least

One think I've noticed with these tutorials a lot of the intermediate steps seem to be missing I only managed to get this far by looking at multiple tutorials and reading heavilly between the lines.

Still not sure if we can have hands in 1st person reloading our weapons we may have to manually recreate the rig for the arms and tweak it till it lines up

It had crossed my mind that putting together some tutorials would be an idea.

EMW, you've done a superb job. The boxing glove is great. The ideal mix of comedy, steam and punk!

I'd love to read/follow your weapon tutorial. Lightwave 9x users can import into Blender!

Add Normal and UV Mapping in. Assume we have the model.

Ok I've got most of a tutorial up to the import into unreal ed part

where should I put it so people can tell me what more I need to add. Just post it here as a entry? I'll need to run off the images so people have some idea what I'm on about. I think I'll also do each stage's separate blend file to show the progression and how things are positioned.

I found these videos on you tube
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=98A8C5D356626C71

some great little how to's for UT3 like how to add a weapon to a level or a vehicle as well as more advanced texturing tutorials and kismet stuff

OK got a modified hellbender working using a really basic mesh

Took a lot of fiddling to get it working the key seemed to be sorting the physics model out it seems if you get the colision model too close it means the wheels don't make contact and the thing can't move. Conversely give too much contact and the thing won't move at all.

The wobbly background is just because I've not added a skybox to this test level

I had another go after this with a more elaborate model. It was far too small (like a tiny toy car) I also must have gotten the axis wrong as it was on it's side. It was very disconcerting to drive as the wheels kept falling off.

Some more things to figure out I think.

This learning is invaluable, sir. The internets are bereft of articles on vehicles! I'm loving watching this. :)

Maybe we should set up a project on google code for keeping all of our tutorials and other files in one place with version control etc.

They seem to have a reasonable set up for doing these sorts of things.

I think so the UT3 exporter for blender is on google code and has blender files and unreal script etc all stored there so I assume it's possible to add what ever you want.

What are the options?

Ah. It's all open source. I'd just pick one at random, if I were you.

super! add me under brainwiped @ googlemail.com

Please add me as jdvdm @ london.com

www.aserash.com

I've finished my wheeled vehicle tutorial off I'll try and put it up in the new google code project tomorow. Heres some pictures of the finished vehicle thing

only a couple of things that might have gone better the shocks are a bit random I think I may have group their vertexes incorrectly. Other than that it works pretty well. You can even get out of it this time.

The wheels which you can just about make out in this are spirals so it looks really crazy as it rolls along

Ported the Custom Gun tutorial accross and added the game concept to the wiki to keep everything in one place

Been tinkering with making a skimmer (ie manta or other hover type vehicle) tut made a suitable model but then got distracted by teh internets

probably give it another go tonight

Cool! All our vehicles will be skimmers at first, I imagine. Love the bath tub.

I suspect the turret-firing mechanism will be useful.

Are flyers next on your list? (I seem to rememebr gliders/hot-air balloons were quite popular ideas...)

The turrets thing is interesting you basically just create "seats" in a vehicle for them which are parameterised and vehicles just have a list of how many there are and then details like whether they are gun turrets (and if so what type) or act as control hubs for the vehicle where the camera goes if the character is visible and so on. Each layer builds on each other layer so I suspect we could create a custom weapon type that we could then use as a turret.

pretty much you would basically rig the cannon on the boat model with a set of bones for movement and the positioning of the seat then you can constrain those bones to various axes with some skeletal controls that the unreal script will then bind to the seat controls

A useful tip when making a vehicle and tweaking parameters on the sim

you can edit then in the game engine on the fly see the results in action and then copy the output out for recompiling into the code

The command is "editactor class=svehicle" when inside a vehicle

it seems pretty useful for getting all those parameters correct

yes

Finally got Morph targets (which is how unreal shows damage on the meshes) working so I will probably do a skimmer tutorial that has the few differences and these new bits

(to be honest skimmer is pretty easy to make once you know how to do vehicles at all it has less moving parts after all, I'll probably just focus on the new stuff and how to make the damage stuff work and all the material instance business that needs)

Anyway here are a few pictures

before

after you can see the burn texture coming through and also the mesh distorting as it get damaged (you can also add prop bits to fly off it at certain health values)

before

after

Ok did a tutorial for skimmers and damage morphs last night just need to write it up on google code I've got the images all checked in to the svn ready to go. I'm not going to cover old ground but I'll add a few new blender tricks I used for the thing like weight painting, texture painting, and displace modifiers.

not sure if I've quite understood damage masks yet and how exactly they need to be applied but I'm getting there

So what's next then custom flyers? custom characters? Something else?

Start working on some actual games stuff?

I was thinking we probably want two different teams, probably not actually different in mechanic to avoid balancing issues but for more easy enemy identification and so forth.

Maybe one side is pirates the other is the navy or some such.

I think custom characters is going to be the trickiest part as we don't have the base skeletons to build onto plus there are some pretty odd UVW requirements you have to stick to.

I've got a OBJ format version of the rigs someone did so I might be able to regenerate it in blender once that's done and checked into SVN we'll be fine but it might take a few goes.

As for boats. One of my tests was boat shaped if a little mantaish, I think I've figured out the main issues with creating boats that don't sink the moment you get out of them or when they spawn in water. limiting them to water is something I've not tried and difficulty will depend on how subtle we want to be. There was also a slight problem with stability on water I think the hoverwheels get a little confused and then can get under the surface and the thing goes mental.

Blender Foundation have just released a new version of Blender 2.49 most of the updates and fixes are in the game engine and not really of an interest but there are a few nice new touches. Projective Paint has been added that allows texture painting directly onto a mesh without some of the niggles and bugs the previous version has. It also has an option to turn off occlusion so you can paint through the mesh which could be handy for making damage masks.

I've not yet tested if the new version supports the scripts we use (it should do their python and that part of the API hasn't changed that I'm aware of) I'll probably do some evaluation and then update any tutorials as need be. If in doubt stick to the old version which is still available from the website.

The new additions to the texture nodes might conceivably be useful in generating textures from blenders procedurals but probably a bit of a niche thing.

I recon not being able to to shoot is the best way. Nor should they be allowed to swim.

just saw this on the epic forums someone making a procedural ocean material

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=676659

looks pretty good maybe we should "borrow" it

So they storm the boat in force from what the other boat? That would leave them open to having the same done to them.

Maybe we need to rethink the mechanic a bit

was pissing about doing a dragon head model using this sculpt tutorial I was thinking might be useful for a ship head thing or some such and was impressed by how much of a difference normal mapping makes

the hi res 98k face sculpted model is on the right then I have two different levels of mesh with the normals generated from the high res mesh a 380 face and a 1530 face model. All I've done is add the normal and the texture from the ambient occlusion.

here is a shot of the base mesh.

LOL! Loving the maps. Do they import into UE3?

Did some more toying with custom characters in UT3

Also did some tinkering and made a head that looked like one of us in the vaguest possible sense

Ok so far so good it has an entry and a very odd picture
now lets see what the model looks like

Oh dear
maybe it will look better in game

No

NO! And seeing it move is like that bit in the horror film where the hideous mutated freak is crying "KILL ME KILL ME! END MY PAIN!"
Ok maybe the bone axis need some better alignment . An hour of tinkering and rejigging later and ...

ah well at least the head appears to be on the right way round this time

strike that this is a behind view and the thing is running sideways

that's a bit disturbing

ok I spent ages trying to get that rig to work and just couldn't seem to get it to function so I went back to the drawing board and redid it with some better references.

it looks initially promising a few bits that need work his thighs don't meet his waist and there is something off with the boots couple of odd triangles poking out where they shouldn't

so let see what it looks like ingame

bloody sideways again and his kneed apear to have come unhinged

he appears to be firing a flak cannon out of his arse

so still not quite there yet but much closer than the last few attempts everything is more or less in the right position give or take it looks like the origin is off a little but it seems to animate much more accurately now

Ok I've finished my custom character tutorial and it is here
http://code.google.com/p/steam-punk-pirates-mod/wiki/CustomC...

I've glossed over a lot of the stuff that I explained in more detail in previous tutorials and just explained the differences and new things. I've also uploaded my blender rig that I made from the Epic rig this allows us to plug models straight in to the existing types.

Having used the unreal tools It's amazing watching developer videos how many times they show a screen of someone doing development and bam there's unrealEd

Mass Effect 2 showed some level design and there was unreal ed

Batman Arkam Asylum showing some cinematics and it's all in unreal ed

it just pops up everywhere

A lot of the UDK people are interested in the blender tuts and it got me fiddling with them again decided to have a bash at making a more custom character fixing some of the niggles and I found a few bugs in the rig I was using as a result

so a sort of piratey character


you can just about see the arm on the left is sort of dangling oddly this is due to a missnamed bone in the rig.

you can see the arms seams on this one so it needs a bit more work on the weight painting


this is confusing I though I was matt



This one has the corrected arm IK bones


The left arm now lines up correctly when using the turret




There is still a strange issue with the fingers on the left hand on the character select screen but only on that screen nowhere else. The near identical right hand is fine so it must be something a touch off somewhere. I had hoped fixing the ik bone would sort it but no such luck.

I've learnt a fair amount more about exactly where epic expects things to pivot and how to weigth the model correctly I also learnt some stuff about the emissive and specular maps which would explain why all the characters I've created seem to glow they need an alpha channel for them to work. Might put some extra notes in when I'm done maybe look at adding a bone heat compatible rig which would simplify the rigging no end.