This new system, written by Marko Permanto, and based on James Tan’s UI Kismet system allows you to build, control, and animate menus and HUDs through nothing but Kismet!
I’ve never gotten into Scaleform. I’ve always thought it is ridiculous to require someone to get and learn Flash and Actionscript just to get a little image to appear on the screen. When making indie games and prototyping concepts you need to be able to get result as fast and as easy as possible, and these Kismet blocks are a major step in the right direction in my opinion. I can make stuff appear on the screen again! Hurray!
We will be using this system in the upcoming UDK game Marko and I are working on – Unmechanical – Join us on Facebook also! We are hard at work at getting the game done at the moment so for the time being we don’t want to spend too much time yet on releasing screenshots and videos and all that, but we will soon begin ramping up our media efforts :)
Last September I started my annual fall and winter lecturing at Future Games. Normally we start the school year by having the students create a couple of traditional board games, followed by a few months of regular teaching before we let them make their first full games. Contrary to previous years, we decided to throw them in the deep end right away this year and have them make their own games after just 3 days of teaching!
The objective was to create fully functional UDK iPad board games.
Brand new students with no or little prior knowledge.
They had just two weeks available for these games.
They only received three days worth of teaching from me before they got going.
All these games were made without anyone having touched a single line of code!
At Future Games we are convinced that the best way to learn game development is by doing it. Theoretical knowledge is important, but at the end of the day you learn the most by trying things out, and by experimenting. Like many other developers who’ve started out before the era of “game development educations” I got into game development by making one level after another, one mod after another, and so on. We are trying to capture that spirit of proactive practically focused entrepreneurship many game developers in the industry have, in our education. If anyone in the vicinity of Stockholm would like to visit us, we regularly organize informal evening get togethers – follow the event on Facebook for information on when.
Either way, here are the results from our 35 new students and two weeks of work:
Knugen
In the age of knights, honor and treachery, the black (and merciless) king has been ruling the green lands of Landora since he slew the white kings father, who had been a just king for decades. Now the white king is eager for justice and to reclaim what (he believes) is rightfully his! Can he succeed? Or will the black king continue to rule it with an iron fist?
Knugen is a turn based, strategic two-player game where you affect your opponent, either by griefing him or helping him, by grabbing the goodies on the way to the throne. One must also beware, the race for the throne will awake blind spirits of fallen warriors from past times to fulfill their pledge to defend the throne from intruders!
Swipe in the direction you want to move and stomp your way through your opponent and the ancient, beautiful hallway to claim the throne for yourself! A quick and fun game with unlimited replayability to play whenever you want to show your friends who the real king is!
So, which king will prevail? The fate of Landora is your hands.
Mischief
“MISCHIEF!” is a family friendly multi-player game that features classic gameplay, that fans of traditional board-games will appreciate. Control one of four mischievous goblins seeking to earn their riches, and purchase the four mystical trinkets from across the realm. If things aren’t going your way, throw down a ‘Mischief’ card that will mess things up for the other players – Steal their items, teleport them away or just make them lose their precious gold! Featuring simple intuitive controls and cure colorful graphics, “MISCHIEF!” should keep you, and maybe your own little Mischiefs, entertained for hours!
Polarity
Polarity is based on a boardgame we all remember from our childhood: The Labyrinth, more commonly known as “the one where you tilt the board around to avoid the ball from falling into holes”.
Contrary to the original game, tilting the iPad has little effect on the direction of the ball. Instead you are to travel around the board attracting and deflecting yourself from the magnetic power plants by switching their polarity.
They See Me Rolling
Experience the next generation of labyrinth games! They See Me Rolling brings new life to an old genre, using open environments, dynamic obstacles and a revolutionary advancement system. Controlling a lonely and previously immobile rock yearning for the power of flight, you must navigate unique environments on your quest to steal the sandals of Hermes and finally fulfill your dream.
Jungleprod
Jungleprod is the latest sensation to hit the iPad! Using the iPad’s touchfunctions you will get a truly breathtaking experience swiping through the jungle! Tread carefully because the jungle is as lively as ever. Beware of Crocodiles, monkeys, and other jungle critters on your way to the treasure!
Currently going through my yearly fall and winter teaching sessions at Future Games in Stockholm. First thing I had the new class of students do this year was to build a UDK iPad board game, after just three days of teaching. The results were impressive, I will put it up here in my news later this year!
As I posted on Twitter a few days ago, the game that I worked on before I started up Teotl Studios to work on The Ball full time just got announced by EA: Syndicate.
And related to that, I thought this was quite a nice parody.
That aside, I recently read through a couple of game design books for my course at Future Games.
Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton and Rules of Play by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
I thought these two were too academical and very tiring to read. I gave up a few dozen pages into both books. My students experienced the same..
A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster
Great tiny little book. Very easy and fast to read and gives some interesting insights..
Level Up by Scott Rogers
Was ok. I read through it entirely which means something in itself, and it was interesting at times but I did feel like it stuck to the basics a bit too much and I did not feel like I got much out of this book. Perhaps better fit for people starting out with game development..
The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell
This was by far the best book out of the bunch for me. It goes quite deep into certain subjects, gave me a lot of insights and perspectives into various topics, and it managed all in a non-academical way. Even though its subjects were a bit “heavy” at times, it was quite easy to read through. I can recommend this book.
Spending the month in the Philippines at the moment of all places. Vacation. Great place. The climate is a bit too warm perhaps but life feels free and relaxing here. Flying back next weekend, and then I will begin teaching my regular yearly courses at Future Games until February.
My friend Teddy and his colleagues over at Quixel have released the nDo 2 beta! I can highly recommend it. It allows you to paint and modify normal maps directly in Photoshop, and as I never really got into all that Zbrush and Mudbox stuff this is really the missing piece of tech I had been looking for for a long time. Go check it out.
In this DVD Sjoerd “Hourences” De Jong continues his series and goes through the entire production of creating an iOS game using UDK. Sjoerd starts with a blank scene and immediately begins placing custom meshes and then goes into mobile materials, particles, sounds, and fog. Sjoerd then demonstrates setting up the plane, creating a joystick to control the plane, adding speed/fire buttons, creating destroyable ground targets using prefabs, adding a scoring system and time limits, creating the full HUD and compiling the final. Finally Sjoerd goes into great detail demonstrating how his team ported “The Ball” from PC to iOS.
You will also learn from an Unreal Master exactly how to create or port your games to iOS for playing on iphone/ipad device
I am still available for private classes. If anyone is looking for some one-on-one or two-on-one training on the Unreal Engine or level design I am all up for it. Couple of quotes from people who’ve been here:
I think it’s probably the single most useful piece of training I’ve done – to have an expert just dealing with my questions and queries was absolutely invaluable as was just watching someone work who really knows the editor – quite a lof of the most useful things I learned were things I didn’t know I didn’t know!
Simon Booth – Teacher at William Howard School – United Kingdom
Teaches you alot of tips and tricks that you cannot find anywhere else. Helps with hard questions on the spot, judges your work and gives solid feedback.
Sander “ZixXer” Vereecken – Student – The Netherlands
Hourences’ lessons are a turbo charged jump start from an experienced UDK veteran, It would have taken me months or years to learn what Hourences taught me in a few days!
James Che – Senior Animator at Sony Computer Entertainment America Santa Montica – USA
Send me a mail – me@hourences.com – if you are interested and want to hear more!
And I came across a couple of interesting articles, books, and a program:
Dave’s Mapper – A top down map generator. Can’t really use it for anything serious, but it may give you some inspiration when you try to come up with a floorplan. It is actually remarkably UT’ish/Quake’ish what it generates :) Modular Environments in UDK – A tutorial from my friend Thiago Klafke on creating modular meshes for use in the UDK (or other engines if you wish). Motivating Players in Open World Games - An article on game and level design in open world games from someone from Bethesda. Spacescape – Free star texture generator.
Also I just bought a couple of books, two most notable ones are:
Also have two game design books to still go through, and a book on castles. I figured since games are usually about assault/defend, lets read some in-depth info on castle design.
