Game engine theory and research – Task 1
Game Engines used widely throughout the game industry
Within the game engine many different game engines such as unreal engine, unity, gamemaker and the frostbite engine are used to develop different types of games.Modern game engines are used to render the world,calculate physics,play sounds and more.Blueprints are nodes that connect to other nodes ,which forms code.Blueprints are used within the IDE (integrated development environment).Coding in languages such as C++ is different from blueprinting as it requires hand written code in a text editor and doesn’t use nodes,because of this coding is much more difficult to use than blueprints for beginners.
Why are game engines used to create games?
Game engines are software development tools that are designed to reduce cost and complexity in the development of video games.Game engines are also used because it provides specific software to navigate and manipulate a game world, this allows the developers to be more efficient and accurate when working on a game world.Without a game engine game developers would be limited when making a game world.For example the high resolution graphics and destructible environment present in the frostbite engine would be very difficult to recreate without a game engine.Pong was one of these games created without a game engine, it had very limited graphical capabilities and simple physics.
How were video games made before game engines were common?
Before game engines were common games were made through only coding and or 0’s and 1’s, games that were created this way were pong , space invaders and asteroids.Making games this way was time consuming and much more difficult to test for bugs.
What are developers able to create now that we have advanced game engines?
Now that game developers have access to advanced game engines such as unreal engine 4 they are able to make many graphically intensive video games such as gears of war and darksiders 3. Furthermore game developers are also able to make different types of games in the same game engine, an example of this would be cuphead a run and gun indie game and hearthstone a strategic card game were created using unity.
How do game engines differ in the types of games they produce?
Game engines are usually specialised to create certain types of games, an example of this would be that the frostbite engine that is used to create the battlefield games allows game developers to use very high resolution graphics and destructible environments in the first person shooter.This game engine differs from gamemakerstudio 2, which is a game engine that specialises in 2D games.A popular game made with gamemakerstudio 2 was hotline miami, this game greatly differs from battlefield because it is 2d , 3rd person and a completely different art styles.A 2d game engine that is mostly used for creating 2d mobile games is stencyl.
Why is it necessary now to use game engines when creating games?
Game engines are necessary when creating games now because games have become much more advanced than they did in the past.Many games in the video game industry now take advantage of AI, a game engine allows AI to be programmed much more efficiently.This is also true for sound,collisions and physics.Game engines also increase the quality of the game being produced, this is because it allows the developers of the game to get more work done in a shorter amount of allocated time.Game engines also include features such as LoD, LoD (level of detail) is a feature created for the purpose of lowering the complexity of a 3D model as the viewer moves away from said 3D model.
Game Engine Application – Task 2
What are the controls to navigate around in Unreal Engine 4?
The controls for Unreal Engine 4 are similar to many games on the computer as it used the WASD controls to navigate around. This is the most common way on computer to navigate around as it is used in many games such as Battlefield, Counter Strike, The Witcher 3 and World of Warcraft.
There are many different lighting and rendering settings in the view port to help you create your game. These different settings are lit, unlit, wire frame, detail lighting, lighting only, reflections, player collision and visibility collision. These settings can help the user such as wire frame will help showing if anything is out of place or the geometry is out of place.
What tools does UE4 have?
Shapes are used within UE4 to create platforms for the character to use such as floors, bridges and stairs. You can also create different obstacles and architecture with these shapes. Trigger boxes is a box that will trigger an action based on what the user wants. You can use the trigger box to make it so when the user touches the box the player dies and has to restart.
What is an actor within UE4?
An actor is the base class for an object that can be placed or spawned in a level. Actors may contain a collection of Actor Components, which can be used to control how actors move and how they are rendered.
Here are 5 key actors. One of them is the Matinee Actor. This actor enables you to animate the properties of Actors over time via the Matinee animation tool, to create either dynamic game play` or cinematic in-game sequences. Another key actor type is the spotlight actor. This actor emits light from a single point in a cone shape. Users are given two cones to shape the light – the Inner cone angle and Outer cone angle. The next key actor is the trigger actor. The trigger are Actors that are used to cause an event to occur when they are interacted with by some other object in the level. In other words, they are used to trigger events in response to some other action in the level. Another key actor is player start. A player start is an Actor that is placed in the level to designate where the player should start out when the game begins. The last key actor is ambient sound. Ambient sound actors are used to play sounds – in the form of Sound Cues – within the world. These sounds can be looping or non-looping and have spatialization and attenuation.
UE4 introduction to Blueprints tutorial
On the right of the youtube video there is the blueprints. The red one is the event begin play which starts an event when something is triggered. Below it is the trigger box which is a box that when it is touched will create an event. Then the trigger box is attached to the collision which is the event. This event will cause the character to die when the trigger box is touched.
To make games comprehensive there are a lot aspects such a sound, textures and physics. All these have a part towards creating a good game. Sound is a very important aspect of a game as sound creates the tone of the game and tension, sound is the overall mood of the game and also can be dialogue so the character can understand what is going on. Textures are also critical in creating a game. Textures are what makes the game look the way it does. Physics are what makes the character move and do actions, this is including running, jumping and picking up objects. Animation is when their are cut scenes in the game so when the characters are talking it shows them talking with the audio with the textures of the character and the world.
Games are so complex now as the gaming market is getting saturated. This means game companies try to come up with new games which results in games that are very complicated and hard to comprehend. Games are also really complicated because of how detailed the graphics are and the core components are much more intricate. Such as AI does so much more actions and movements than before meaning a lot more programming goes into the AI to do these actions.
2D Game Prototype – Task 3
Development ideas
The genre of the game will be a plat-former and the main mechanics will be the use of speed power-ups to pass levels.The time limit on the duration of the speed power-ups cause players to be forced to play aggressively or have a chance of being unable to complete the level.
Where and when is it set?
Our Game is set in the countryside in an unknown time.our game was inspired by classic platformers such as Mario and Sonic.
play testing
After our play testing session we found out that the 2d character would collide with higher up platforms and cause the jump to be cut short.
making of a pickup item
In this screenshot I added a cylinder to the blueprint class and chose the material metal gold to cause it to resemble a coin that could be collected by the user.
This screenshot allows the 2D side scrolling character to have its movement speed increased by 3 times after coming in contact with the golden coin. Furthermore It also causes the coin to disappear when it comes into contact with the character.
This part of the blueprint causes there to be a 5 second delay between the coin disappearing and reappearing, which is used to simulate that the coin was picked u by the character.
Creating the coin pickup widget
To help me with creating the coin pickup widget I followed this tutorial and took key points and implemented it into my own game. For example I made use of a sphere collision so that I could trigger the count of coins collected when the character came into contact with the coins.
Furthermore I made use of a blueprint used in the tutorial to allow the number of coins to be converted from an integer to a string and displayed on the HUD
Event Begin play
Throughout my 2D game i made use of the event begin play blueprint, this blueprint causes all actors connected to be activated as soon as the scene is loaded.
Multiple levels
In my 2D game, I created two levels that are linked together by the win screen.I did this by creating a button on the win-screen that allows the user to move onto the next level by clicking onto it.The first level is a traditional plat-former and the second level purely reliant on the reaction speed of the user and requires them to jump at the right time or risk falling into the abyss below.
3D Game Prototype – Task 4
How does your 3D prototype differ from your 2D concept?
Our 2D concept and 3D prototype are similar but differ because the 3D concept involves more spinning and moving platforms. Furthermore the 3D prototype also makes use of lighting and creates a certain atmosphere using the different colours created by the lights.
Trigger boxes and blueprints to create player action events
I used these blueprints and added an interact input so that i would be able to open a door with the E key.
Create a 3D level design/playable 3D game prototype
Win state and lose state
I created a win and lose state using trigger boxes attached to the blueprint event begin overlap , which allowed me to cause the HUD to update with the appropriate text and buttons.This was possible because the blueprint event begin overlap allows different actions to be triggered depending on what box trigger is overlapped.
Play-testing
After our play testing session we found out that our door took too long to open sometimes and that some parts of the level were too difficult while others were too easy.It also showed us that some platforms were too close to each other and caused the player to collide with platforms above causing them to fall.
Multiple levels
We created two levels that are linked by the winscreen. This allows players go from level to level.
Heads up display
Using functions ,blueprints and a box trigger I created a HUD that updates whenever the third person character comes in contact with a pickup.When the character comes in contact with a pickup it updates the score is updated by one.
light
In my game prototype i made use of red point lights so that i could create a tense atmosphere.I also purposely made the scene darker using a sky light.
Why is lighting important within a game?
Lighting is important within a game because it could be used to guide the player to their desired location.This is done using different methods such as creating a trail of lights that the player can follow and lighting up and area such as a door , which causes the player to be drawn towards said door.
The absence of lighting or limited lighting is utilized within horror games to create a tense atmosphere,examples of this could be horror games that allow the player to use a flashlight with limited battery , which causes the player to be conservative and become tense when they start to run out of battery.
Evaluation
What went well in the project
Our project overall went smoothly and there were no hiccups during the creation of our 2D and our 3D game. Our win screen and death screen went very smoothly and work very well in their intended use. Another thing that went well was our moving obstacles using the matinee .
What didn’t go well in the project
The only thing that didn’t go well in the project was our coin HUD in our 3D game. During the middle of our 3D game creation our coin HUD stopped working so we had to restart the blueprints and because of this the coin HUD worked again.
How did you overcome any challenges you faced?
We overcame our obstacles by looking at tutorials on how to do it. With these tutorials we were able to overcome the obstacle and move forward in our project. Another way we overcame was looking over our blueprints to find any problems with the way we programmed the game.
What tools and components of UE4 did you find the most useful?
One of the tools i found the most useful was Event Begin Overlaps as it begins an event whenever a certain object goes over the desired area. This was used for our win screen and death screen for both our games so it was used quite a lot. Event begin play is also a useful component as soon as the level starts then events take place such as coins moving and being able to move the character.
How do you feel you functioned as a team?
I feel we functioned as a team quite well as we assigned tasks that each of us will do so we stuck to an organised schedule so we always knew what we were doing. We also asked each other for help when one of us were stuck doing the project so we never lost momentum in creating the 2 games.
The advantages and disadvantages of using Unreal Engine 4
The advantages of using Unreal Engine 4 is that instead of doing lines of code there are blueprints which make it more visual and easier to understand on whats happening in the blueprints. This also makes it much easier to find mistakes in your programming. Another advantage of using Unreal Engine 4 is that there are base packs of assets which you can use to improve the visuals of the game. A disadvantage of unreal would be that the community that supports it is smaller than that of another engine such as Unity.
Unreal’s toolkit
Unreal’s toolkit consists of blueprints which are tools that you use to create games. These tools can consist from making the camera view to third person to be able to use inputs for movement. Tools that were most useful were event tools which make every moving thing and events in the game occur. The least useful tool in creating our game was nothing really as all the tools we used helped create our game.
Elements of unreal you didn’t use
An element of unreal we didn’t use would be character animations as there are basic animations such as running and jumping in the character model we used. Animation in games is used to increase the visual experience and fluidity of the game. Matinee editor is used to move objects such as in our game platforms are made spinning so the player has to land on the platform. The matinee editor is used to create moving objects in the game to help, challenge and move the player.The matinee allowed us to make our game alot more challenging.
Tyree Sealey Games 