We’ve been doing a lot of exploration lately - you’ve met Private Liliya Sergeyeva, seen some armour options…today we have another character to show you. He is the Deck Chief in the hangar level where the seds board.
P.S. His name isn’t actually Bob 
Look at my chair, my chair is amazing.
The control room is getting some furniture!
http://0.t.imgbox.com/m5h8rlfJ.jpg
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Wow this project is looking good and coming together nicely! Keep on going
Glad you like! The guys have been working incredibly hard on it.
Wow, looks fantastic! Can’t wait to see what else you do with this project, keep it up man!
So, we survived GDC, but it has taken us a bit of time to get back into the swing of things since. In addition to the inevitable GDC plague and massive e-mail buildup from a week of travel, we’ve also been retooling a few parts of our GameDev process as a direct result of sessions and I went to. As a result, a lot of our work output these past two weeks hasn’t been visual, though we did post that pretty sweet chair earlier this week.
Leading up to GDC, we were focusing on the main hangar bay area. We’ve decided to continue focusing on the first two levels of the game (which have similar architectural elements because they’re both part of the same ship), but we’re back to working in broader strokes rather than focusing on just one part of the one level.
As a result of the extra attention the main hangar bay received, the hangar sublevel is now visually quite a bit less refined in comparison, so we spent a little time down there to even things out. The stair hub, which used to go all the way from the sublevel to the catwalks of the main hangar bay, has become a utility station in the basement. There are still ladders providing access to the upper levels but, for some reason, the stairs made the sublevel feel less “basementy”. That worked against the general feel we wanted for the first part of the level. You can see the new utility station in the first image below.
The second and third images are of a new blockout we’ve added to the sublevel. The middle of the room was very plain and open, but that part of the level wasn’t being used for much in terms of gameplay. So, we removed the central row of work bays and replaced them with a blockout of a large machine - a gravity generator. This large machine will have several moving parts and is intended to help establish the massive size of the Oberon. Also, because of its size, it should help make the sublevel feel more cramped, and make the transition to the cavernous upper hangar more impressive.
On the story side, our script now covers about 85% of the story arc described in our design doc. One of the things I did at GDC was take a full-day story workshop. Fortunately, we’d done a lot more right than wrong with our story, but the workshop helped reveal a few areas that needed work.
We’ve also started adding environmental cues to the script and to the level - dialogue that plays in the game to help make the universe feel more real, help guide the player, or just inject a little levity.
As always, we welcome questions, comments, and suggestions. Thanks for reading!
Useless Turncoat Universe Trivia #1: as massive as it is, the Oberon is actually a medium-sized capital ship. While the Ares class Light Assault Ship is about the same size as the largest Seditionist ships, Oberon is dwarfed by several Naval vessels. The Deep Fleet flagship, the ERS Serapis, is more than twice the size of the Oberon.
Well, another week has come and gone, and it was quite a productive week for us. We seem to have found our groove again after the post-GDC rut we were in.
We had substantial movement on the programming side this week. Our movement mechanic is based on navigation point scattered throughout the level. Those movement points used to be displayed in the level as 3D objects with a HUD overlay drawn in each movement point’s blueprint. Now, the navigation points don’t show up in the 3D view, only in the HUD, and their HUD drawing has been converted to use UMG. This reduced literally dozens of draw calls down to a single call, so we’re seeing quite bit better performance as a result of what seems like a fairly simple change. Having them displayed just in the hud feels better, too. The old way broke immersion a bit.
Although we’ve had the story and script for the Hangar level done for a while, we’ve been going through and adding cues and side-stories to the level. We created a set of triggers that can be kicked off either based on proximity, or from being looked at. We use these to play audio cues if you look at certain things. For example, in the work bay while the ship is being boarded, if you look at a sign that says “This work area has gone 203 days without an injury”, the character will say something like, “so much for that streak.” We also have camera shakes and explosion sounds that play as you move through certain parts of the level to remind you that your ship is under attack and to sustain a sense of urgency.
There’s also a new security camera system that lets the player look at other parts of the map from a security console. These will typically be in a safe place with no enemies. Since we don’t have a traditional mini-map or radar, they will help the player plan their attack and, for the most part, avoid close-quarter combat. Since this is a game, one of our guiding mantras has been “if you’re in close quarter combat, you probably screwed up”. Now, in reality, if it happens too often, to too many players, it means WE screwed up, but our goal is to make sure that the player has the tools to avoid close quarter combat and engage from a distance unless they make a mistake or just have a masochistic streak.
Along with the audio cues and side stories we’ve started adding, we’ve begun to flesh out some additional non-major characters, adding logs, messages, letters home, and other props that tell the player about the universe and about some of their shipmates. We’re adding a lot of nooks and crannies and side hallways where a lot of this additional information will reside. You’ll be able to complete the game without ever going in these places, but players who like to explore and learn about the world they’re playing in will have places to explore, and many of these passageways will allow the character to flank enemies or get away from pursuers.
Visually, we’re starting to get into final shapes of the hangar bay. We’ve started to break up the 90° angles and add clutter and detail elements to make the place feel more real. The screenshots and paintovers below show some of the movement we’re making in that regard. We’re adding jet deflectors to the hangar level that come up when a ship takes off from the hangar bay. We’re adding greebles to the walls, and reducing the amount of straight up-and-down wall space to make it feel less like a big box store and more like a spaceship.
As always, thanks for reading, and let us know if you have any questions or comments.
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Useless Turncoat Trivia of the Week: The Oberon, where the game starts, is what’s called a “Marine Command Vessel”. Here is an Excerpt from the Turncoat Story Bible about these kinds of ships:
Our master shader with support for RGB masks.
http://4.t.imgbox.com/hgW2rI91.jpg
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We’ve been making some progress on our turrets. No longer are they just stationary props. Nope, these bad boys can now lay down some real firepower for you…
…or against you.
(view on YouTube for HD version)
There’s still some work to do including adding on-hit decals, on-hit particle systems, and shell ejection, but the logic is done except for bug fixes. I’m really happy with the way they turned out. The base Turret class supports several targeting algorithms and is extremely configurable. In the video, the left turret is targeting based on how far away the targets are, the right one is targeting based on which target will require the least movement to target. The one on the left moves around, but is also much more likely to take out the most pressing threats first.
If you’re wondering why the bad guys are contorting themselves and trying to shoot at the ground behind them, it’s because they’re programmed to shoot at the player, but I used Simulate (alt-s) instead of Run to get a good capture angle. In Simulate, there’s no player in the world and the poor guys just get confused so easily.
On a side note, if you use C++ in your project, you should definitely run using Simulate. I discovered a couple of potential crashers from running in Simulate mode.
I should probably mention that the master material is built upon the mat used in Quixels’ “Sci-fi Hallway” sample project. We’ve been looking for a way to do look development right within the editor. Substance plugin was one of the first things we’ve tried, but unfortunately, there’s no mobile support for it yet. Then, I’ve stumbled upon the Quixel setup. In their case, they feed a pre-made texture into base color input and use a crazy awesome RGB mask to separately color tint and darken up to 6 different parts of an asset. The best part about that particular RGB mask setup was that instead of using RGB which limits you to 3 “materials” per asset, they’ve used 100% bright R, 50% bright R, 100% Bright B, and so on. With a magic power of math, they split all this goodness into 6 colors total. Material itself wasn’t exactly doing what we needed, but the RGB mask setup was too perfect. So after rebuilding a few branches and adding a couple things , we ended up with the thing above ^. This mat let’s us quickly color blockout assets right in the editor and, after some mobile optimizations, is actually relatively light to use on a device.
Cheers!
More Turret work. Muzzle smoke, surface-based on-hit particles, surface-based decals, optional blood splatter and penetrating shots, surface-based hit sounds.
I just have to finish shell ejection, and then I can hand the turrets back to the art team to make the decals and particle systems sexy.
Another day, another turret update.
(higher quality: )
Got the blood splatters looking better on light mapped objects, added cartridge ejection and a whole bunch of debugging. With the exception of the turrets themselves, almost everything - including sounds - is either programmer art, marketplace assets, or royalty free assets. Most will be replaced before we ship.
Time for another Screenshot Saturday™ update.
We had a lot of movement on the Orientation Center & Training Range this week. This level has been through many iterations as the has evolved. This is the third time we’ve created this particular level, and the second time we’ve built it in Unreal Engine. We adopted a grid-based system for creating environment “kits” after we built it the second time, so now we’re recreating it again using the Ship Kit we’ve been developing for the hangar.
The Hangar Bay level continued to receive love and attention this week, though. The hangar sublevel has started to take a very definite shape, and we’ve started implementing additional nooks and crannies specifically for gameplay and exploration reasons, including semi-hidden pathways that let you circumvent enemies or flank them with surprise, or that simply lead to additional loot.
Our touch-based movement mechanic saw some refinement this week and it’s starting to feel really solid on the device. We’re experimenting with two control options. Both are touch-based, and work identically for movement. One control option uses onscreen buttons for secondary actions like crouching, raising the scope, etc. The other control scheme we’re experimenting with uses gestures for all these secondary actions and a more minimal HUD. Instead of hitting a button to raise your scope, for example, you swipe up to raise it. It’s unclear which control scheme will win out, or if both will be offered as alternatives.
On the programming side, we saw a lot of progress on the programming of our turrets this week. Turrets are one of the principle enemies on certain levels, and are also a tool the player can use to set traps or cover their rear while sniping. Although we’ve only created a single type of turret, our Turret class is highly configurable, so creating new turrets is simply importing the models and configuring parameters.
http://3.t.imgbox.com/vyeOQtSB.jpg
HQ Version: Here.
Useless Turncoat Universe Trivia of the Week: Historically, Seditionist ships are much smaller than vessels and their fleet is considerably smaller as well. They tend to avoid large-scale engagements, which favor the 's greater firepower and more heavily armored ships, and engage in hit-and-run guerilla-style attacks on vulnerable targets, using the small size and maneuverability of their ships to their advantage. There have been rumors that the Seditionists are secretly building large vessels capable of going toe-to-toe with even the most powerful ships. The Admiralty seems to be regard these rumors as credible , but most rank and file think them unlikely to the point of being laughable.
Screenshot Saturday Update, April 11 2015
There are moments, when you’re working on a large project, where things start to come together. That was the feeling this week when we played our weekly build.
It is a good feeling.
The Training Range, which is the first level of the game, has been rebuilt for a third time. This time, it was constructed using a modular " Ship Kit" we’ve been creating as we build the Hangar Bay. The new version of the level came together really fast, and now we’re ready to move past where we were and start figuring out how to make the most out of the level in terms of game play. The level is already mostly navigable, though a lot of work remains on this level in terms of gameplay elements and mechanics.
The Hangar Bay continued to get love this week as well. In the early days, the storage and work area beneath the hangar really felt like just a big box. Not any more. Layers of pipes, catwalks, machinery, and even a few secret passages are making it feel much more real. I actually got a little lost in there while playing this week’s build.
Our Turret code is basically done, though we did discover a little problem with the targeting that needs to be fixed. When shooting at characters moving laterally far away, the turret tends to shoot behind them. We need to have the turret lead the character some. I do want to leave this current behavior as an option, though, because running to a new movement point while bullets spray the wall behind you as you run really makes you feel like a bad [rhymes with mass] action hero. At least on easier difficulties, I want enemy turrets to use the original behavior.
I’ve turned my attention back towards AI and Behavior Trees. We had a basic wandering enemy BT working before GCD, but since we upgraded to 4.7, we’ve had some weird behavior with the bots. We also need to start defining a little more sophisticated behavior. These guys just wander aimlessly unless they see or hear the player, at which point they start shooting at the player.
We’ve converted a large chunk of our old HUD and UI code over to UMG. This has given us some considerable improvements in performance and it also looks nicer. Our old movements points that were visible in the level are now only visible in the HUD, which helps with immersion and just looks nicer.
As always, thanks for reading, and let us know if you have any questions!
http://7.t.imgbox.com/bXbqYcMh.jpg http://1.t.imgbox.com/waFmUMSW.jpg http://6.t.imgbox.com/CI1GK4Am.jpg http://9.t.imgbox.com/eeaTcgXj.jpg http://2.t.imgbox.com/7FXUUOKy.jpg http://4.t.imgbox.com/hWSbMexS.jpg http://6.t.imgbox.com/sCjgu4Pk.jpg http://0.t.imgbox.com/VhGjQ7vB.jpg http://1.t.imgbox.com/aXRAbl7a.jpg http://3.t.imgbox.com/3OqNkjoa.jpg http://5.t.imgbox.com/uwP9MybK.jpg
Turret Targeting Problem: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5075634/Turrets9.mov
Putting together a set of in-game displays and monitors, check it out!
Coming along nicely, keep it up!
Now that our guys have been blocking out levels for gameplay, things are being reworked and upgraded. Here’s a shot of our revamped training range.
We’re also starting to make some real progress on AI. This is a (very WIP) behavior tree for the basic Seditionist soldier. I’m really beginning to appreciate the AI tools in Unreal. This would’ve been so much more work back in our pre-UE4 switch days.
Lighting hallways…IN SPAAAAAACE.
The team has been laying groundwork for the network of hallways throughout the Oberon.
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Pls, demo. Now.