Through this unit, I have been following through with plans from the previous unit, which was to lay the ground work to create a map within the Unreal Tournament Editor.
Though I was tasked with only creating a blockout variant of the map, I am fairly confident I have stuck to my initial plan fairly well, which was to create an industrial styled steel mill, with an environmental hazard in the centre.
When comparing with my mood boards, I am reasonably happy with my outcome to this point.
(Mood board located at: https://uk.pinterest.com/plissken1989/unit-75-ctf_mill-moodboard/)
The idea was to have the BSPs within the boundaries of the map be placeholders for groups of pipes, with the possibility of their own tunnelled sections at a later point in the design process.
The implementation of my environmental hazard is almost exactly as I had planned it out in my head, there were only two alterations from my initial plan is that three molten steel containers are involved, I did not have a pre-determined number of containers planned for the interactive portion of my map and I originally intended the hazard to be activated on a button press, this was of course edited out through the rule of the loop, allowing the hazard to be triggered autonomously.
Dundoc & Trello usage:
Whilst I have continuously updated my Trello board throughout this unit, moving items between categories as appropriate, due to how closely I have followed my original plan, I do not feel my Dundoc needs any alterations making to successfully show the progression I have made from the beginning of the project to my current position.
Both my Dundoc and Trello boards can be viewed via the links below;
https://trello.com/b/mkTzLuNb/ctf-mill-development-board
https://www.dundoc.com/project/1046/3zlyioul6
The Rule of the Loop:
To implement and utilise industry standard techniques within this project, I have been working by the rule of the loop, essentially trying something, play-testing, gathering opinions and tweaking any elements which either don't work properly or could be improved upon. This can factor into anything, things such as map size, layout, functionality and flow of the map too. Once an issue has been fixed, the map is generally saved out under another version number to keep development history log and so that I can personally see my own progression through the process or map creation.
Through a total of 11 iterations or my multiplayer map, using my peers for feedback with every progressive build, I have developed what I believe to be a fairly competent Capture the Flag map, which acts as a basic Team Deathmatch map also, the Team Deathmatch variant of my map does however need a good amount of tweaking to things such as amount of and placement of weapons, armour, ammo and health pickups. I also need to modify the environmental hazard to reflect that which occurs within the Capture the Flag variant.
Whilst these are changes which can be made at a later date, it proves my map as least functions for both CTF and TDM game mode variants.
Below are screen captures of my CTF and TDM maps in action.
Capture the Flag:
Capture the Flag (Environmental Hazard Active):
Team Deathmatch current functional build:
Overall Conclusion:
Through this unit I have utilised industry standard techniques to produce through iterative measures, a multiplayer map for use in Unreal Tournament 2015. The map is built mainly from BSP brushes, with some Static Meshes in place for interactive elements.
Whilst I already had some knowledge of the UE4 blueprinting system, it is somewhat different within the Unreal Tournament Editor, and feels more akin to UDK than UE4 itself, limiting some of the content I can edit with blueprints when compared to the blueprinting system in Unreal Engine 4.
Despite this, I feel as though I have built on my previous knowledge from multiplayer level creation in at least UDK which will benefit me when building further, going forward in Unreal Engine 4.
For example I now have some basic experience in adding in interactive elements, which are more complex than simple lifts or teleporters (which are now physically provided within Unreal Tournament Editor itself) from implementing my environmental hazard, aimed to affect the flow of a multiplayer game by forcing the players/bots to use alternate paths..
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