Mistakes Were Made...

At the end of week 8, my unreal project was going ok, but progress was slowing down and I was no longer enjoying working on it. After speaking to a friend about it, I realised I had made a big mistake. In the assessment information, it stated that the player must remain in the '"arena" boundary walls of the first person template. I had been working in the third person template, but had modified it to first person (this was so I could get a complete character model), but I had also developed my level way outside of the arena boundaries, which was the main problem. So, last weekend I had a choice, either significantly rework my level, or start a new project.

Since my game didn't seem to be progressing how I wanted, I made the decision to start again from scratch. I needed a basic idea that I was going to be able to get working quickly. I decided an arcade style survival game might be a good idea, and with the help of a short tutorial series on You Tube, I had a basic game working by the end of the weekend which I could build upon.

I quickly replaced the primitive shapes with the mannequin from the third person template. I set up the animation states, and it was already becoming quite a fun little game. I used a lot of what I had previously had learnt to add more features. Although the mannequin was a fine target, their was limited animations, and I really wanted to put some actual zombie character models into the game. I had a quick look on the asset store, but wasn't really impressed with what was on offer. This is when I discovered Mixamo for the first time!

Mixamo is website offered by Adobe, it allows users to download a selection of models and animations for free. It also allows you to upload your own humanoid character and apply animations to it. Although I had heard of Mixamo before, I had never used it. The site offered a large selection of zombie character models and animations, perfect for what I wanted. It also allows you to preview all the characters with different animations applied, and various adjustments to speed, frame rate and other variables before downloading.

After finding a model I liked, I download it, along with idle, walk and run animations to begin with. The model and animations were quickly imported into Unreal, and I used what I had to learnt to create an Animation Blend Space. This is basically a blueprint that allows a model to transition between various animation states depending on a condition, in this case, character velocity. When I first replaced the mannequin with the zombie character, the animation seemed very jerky, I quickly realised that when I downloaded the animations, there was option to animate "In Place" which I needed to check. After that, it was getting the speed right, and they started to look really good. I've been really impressed with the Mixamo site, and plan to add some other zombie characters and animation to the game from there.

Even though it was very late in the semester, I think restarting the project was a good move. Although the shooting range/training game was a solid idea, it wasn't developing how I wanted. I was having issues, my ideas were not always working, I wasn't enjoying developing it and the game just wasn't fun. Although this game is quite a simple idea, it can be built upon, and even as it is, its fun to play.