Game development techniques was introduced in the first semester of the second year at Derby university. The focus of this module was on introducing us fundamental issues in game development and state of the art development technologies for modern game production.  Although formal teaching started from when we went back in September, we was given a heads up form our lecturers over the summer to start looking at the modding community and get some practice in using Epic game’s UT2004 editor. Later on in the summer we were sent a description on what we were going to be doing in terms of course work and what we should have done for when we start back.

The Project

The assignment for this module was to create a total conversion based on one of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books. In 12 weeks we were required to have a full finished 10 minute demo based on what we had learned from the module playable via a Xbox 360 controller on the PC. We were required to make the level in the Unreal level editor and then using unreal script, make a new framework for which the new game code we wrote would work with. We was given certain assets but was required to create some of our own as part of the requirement such as at least one model made on 3DS max and include a picture of yourself somewhere in the game. The game itself was to be based around a chapter from one of the books which the player would then play out. Slight alterations to the story were allowed to an extend, however it had to follow the book with relative accuracy.  

Why the famous five? was the first thing I thought ” Because it’s my choice ” was the explination from my lecturer.

So the first thing to do was to start painfully reading some of the books and even whatching video adaptations on the Internet to decide which book and chapter I was going to base my game around. At this time I started to research the action/adventure genre to look for inspiration and ideas I could use as mechanics, as well as writing up a design document. My aim was to have a design document written before I went back as I knew this would be a time consuming module and I would need every minute to work on it. Once I had written up the document and decided on a book and chapter I started to get to grips with Unreal Ed by following on-line tutorials at www.3DBuzz.com and slowly building up a few maps of my own before I went back to university. I started by following the tutorials before branching off and trying to make my own levels including the Gaurdian level from Halo 3. At first I found the Editor to be really useful and had loads of fun toying around with levels and making little maps of my own but eventually I found some really, really odd bugs with it that absolutly drove me mad. For some unknown reasons Unreal Ed loves to crash and close itself on an almost regular basis often deleting or undoing hours of work. I know that saving work often does help, but as ever there comes a time when you forget. Luckily I found this out before starting my main project and so was prepared for it when starting my assignment (not to say it I didn’t loose any work because I did).