Hi there! Welcome to this awesome little personal challenge of mine.
I have been making games for about 10 years (as a hobby) with FPS Creator, UDK and now UE4 (been fiddling with the engine every day since day 0). Though I have never actually finished a game after all these years, and I haven’t really been a part of this awesome community (other than lurking in the shadows, watching others having fun).
So now is the time for some change 
At first this was meant to be a 7-day challenge, to see what I could do in such a short time. Though I could only work a few hours per day, so I will just keep on working and see what happens
My goal is to use Houdini for everything. I have been using it for some cool effects during the last couple of years, but this will be the first time I use it all in for something like this. I have already found out lots of workflow-stuff, so feel free to ask if you want to use Houdini together with UE
The game:
This will become some sort of cannon simulator. Like “Hotdogs, horseshoes and handgrenades” but with a giant 18th century cannon instead. You must clear the pipe, swab with sponge, put down the packed gunpowder, ram it with a ram, put down a cannonball, ram the ball with a ram, fill the ignition-hole (or whatever it is called) with gunpowder. Aim the cannon and then use the lint to fire the cannon.
The goal would be to hit targets like a castle, house, dragon or similar and do as much damage as possible with as few rounds as possible.
Maybe I will be able to add multiplayer support, so you can man the cannon together with friends :-)**
Current features:
**-The cannon can only be fired once you have done everything in the right order
-The cannon can actually fire a projectile. I am using the awesome BallisticsFX from Cubit Studios as a base
-You can pick up things, I am using physics handle for this to make operation of the cannon a bit more smooth
And lots of small random stuff
Make sure to come back to follow the progress Will try to share as much as possible from this project (I am recording everything to make some sort of speed-videos)
Cheers!
Joakim
Day 1 update:
Been wrestling with both UE and Houdini. Feeling a bit rusty, but it’s going along quite nicely. Most of the core features have been added.
Here is video showing the modelling of the cannon in Houdini:
More or less 100% procedural modelling. Only used one edit-node for a tricky thing, and one polyextrude where I did the selection in viewport.
Here is the cannon in UE together with some cannonballs:
&stc=1
I did record how the cannon functions as of now, but I found out I had recorded in 5 FPS, so will have to do a new recording tomorrow.
Day 2 update (or really, day 3):
I was out and scanning dirt and stuff yesterday, so didn’t work directly on the game.
Figured out how to properly bake normal maps and masks from Houdini today, so I can start texturing stuff now
Some gameplay:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=f3nGU_oiw7c
Will try to find a way to make the “insertion of sticks” much more smooth, to prevent frustration when trying to reload quickly.
I came up with an idea of how I could implement multiplayer in a fun way. May give it a go later this week.
Cheers!
//Joakim
I have been really busy with renovating my apartment this week, so having this as a 7-day challenge when I have only been able to work a couple of hours per night feels a bit pointless.
Though I will continue to work on this. It’s really fun and I keep learning lots of new stuff. Just got into rigging in Houdini, will add some 3D-scanned hands instead of the default robot hands. Looks amazing! Will post a new video later tonight showing them off when I am done with the animation
Here is a video showing the progress of the high detail mesh that I am baking normal maps with. Had some problems with UVs so had to cheat and use zbrush for the barrel. Then run it through DDO2 to get a quite decent material (though I didn’t record this since I had a lot of problems with random stuff)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=fKEPsQd2Pss
Got the hands working, rigged and tweaked in Houdini. I am more and more falling in love with Houdini
Also shows the new materials of the cannon barrel.
This looks awesome! Could you help me or tell me how you’ve done this? What steps it takes? This is exactly what I need for a current project i’m doing. I have no idea where to start as i’m quite new with Unreal Engine and was hoping you could help me?
