Unreal Development Kit game design cookbook : over 100 recipes to accelerate the process of learning game design with UDK

In Detail UDK is a free, world class game editing tool and being so powerful it can be daunting to learn. This guide offers an excellent set of targeted recipes to help game artists get up to speed with game designing in UDK. Unreal Development Kit Game Design Cookbook contains everything you need to jumpstart your game design efforts. The lessons are aimed squarely at the artist's field of production, with recipes on asset handling, creating content within the editor, animation and visual scripting to get the content working in gameplay. Unreal Game Development Kit Game Design Cookbook exposes how real-time environments are built using UDK tools. Key features are examined - assets, animation, light, materials, game controls, user interface, special effects, and game interactivity - with the view of making UDK technically accessible so users can transcend technique and focus on their creative design process. The book has well prepared recipes for level designers and artists of all levels. It covers core design tools and processes in the editor, particularly setting up characters, UI approaches, configuration and scripting gameplay. It is a technical guide that allows game artists to go beyond just creating assets, and it includes creative, extensive demonstrations that extend on mere functionality. Approach Written in cookbook style, this book offers many recipes to learn game design with UDK. Each recipe contains step-by-step instructions followed by analysis of what was done in each task and other useful information. The book is designed so that you can read it chapter by chapter, or you can look at the list of recipes and refer to them in no particular order. Who this book is for This book is meant for game artists who are getting used to UDK but may feel the need for guidance on matters of implementation. It also targets brave beginners who are struggling to find an all in one package for getting started with UDK, and want a ready to hand reference. Level designers can use this book to gauge their understanding of the editor, check for specific problems, and discover gems they may not have come across before. Cover 1 Copyright 3 Credits 4 About the Authors 5 About the Reviewers 6 www.PacktPub.com 8 Table of Contents 10 Preface 16 Chapter 1: Heads UP—UDK Interface Essentials 24 Introduction 25 Installing UDK and folder structure 25 What content comes with UDK? 27 Beginning, building, and testing a new level 31 Deciding on your preferences 34 UI survival steps 37 Navigating the Content Browser 41 Accessing assets in the Content Browser 45 Creating and managing packages 50 Importing your own content 53 Cooking a map in Unreal Frontend 58 Mobile device emulation 61 Kismet debugging 63 Chapter 2: Notes From an Unreal World—Constructing Game World Elements 68 Introduction 69 How to handle BSP geometry 69 Building a hollow room 77 Adjusting surface properties of BSP 78 Generating volume from the BSP brush 79 Handling StaticMesh actors in the scene 81 Setting collision in the Static Mesh Editor 87 Creating Terrain, Deco Layers, and Material Layers 89 Creating a Landscape 94 Scattering meshes on a Landscape using the Foliage tool 103 Creating a steamy plume in Cascade 106 Chapter 3: It Lives!—Skeletal Model Setup and Animation 112 Introduction 113 Installing ActorX and exporting skeletal animation 114 Importing SkeletalMesh content into UDK 119 Morph targets and .FBX importing 124 Setting up sockets 126 Attachments to SkeletalMeshes without using sockets 128 Setting up a custom AnimTree 131 Defining animations in your AnimTree 134 Configuring your character to use your AnimTree 136 How to use a single bone control chain to correct an offset crouch animation 143 Setting up a physics asset using PhAT 145 Adding limits to physics asset joint rotations 151 Adding a physics-driven tail to a key framed SkeletalMesh 155 Enabling the head to face in a given direction for tracking purposes 159 Setting a LookAt target for head rotation in code 162 Setting morph weights in code 167 Calling up SkeletalMesh animation using Matinee 171 Associating sounds with character moves in Matinee 176 Sound for non-Matinee controlled animation 178 Chapter 4: Got Your Wires Crossed?—Visual Scripting of Gameplay in Kismet 182 Introduction 183 Kismet UI essentials 183 Creating a simple enemy Bot 189 Event-based movement of scene objects in Matinee 194 Trace actions in a shooting situation 197 Revealing and hiding scene actors during gameplay 200 Producing sounds through Kismet 205 Using Take Damage events to produce explosions 207 Understanding the usage of Named Variables 211 Tidying up Kismet networks using Sub-sequences 214 Tidying up Kismet networks using Remote Events 217 Toggling Materials through Kismet 220 Toggling lights through Kismet 223 Animating PointLights in Matinee to mimic texture animation 225 Making a comparison following a countdown 228 Using Integer Counter to count enemy deaths 234 Controlling node flow using a Gate action 238 Making Bots follow a path 240 Chapter 5: It Is Your Destiny!—Scripting Complex Gameplay Flow in Kismet 244 Prefabs including Kismet references 245 Swapping control of a Bot using Possess Pawn 250 Ways to stop a recurring loop 255 Setting up cinematic cameras 260 Animating cinematic cameras 262 Obtaining a trigger event off a RigidBody 270 Creating a firing pattern based puzzle 272 Allowing the player to pick up, carry, and place an object 280 Exploring 'following' and 'attracting' behaviors 289 Creating a regenerative health shield 301 Creating a per-session checkpoint series 308 Chapter 6: Under The Hood—Configuration and Handy Tweaks for UDK 316 Groundwork for adjusting configuration defaults 317 Enabling the remote control for game inspection 319 Changing the Play in Editor view resolution 322 Removing the loading hints and similar articles 322 Editing DefaultEngineUDK to allow 324 4096x4096 texture compression 324 Setting the preview player size reference object 327 Binding a keyboard shortcut to a player action 329 Adjusting player speed 333 Creating your own Kismet node for speed 339 Changing the default player sounds 341 Replacing the HUD 344 DrawText and GameType concerns 347 Handling level content streaming 352 Spawning objects from a hit impact 355 Chapter 7: Hi, I'm Eye Candy!—Ways to Create and Use Particle Effects 360 Introduction 360 Editing the color graph of a particle over time 361 Animating particles using SubUV charts 366 Adding one particle's movement to another 372 Making collision detection work for particles 376 Controlling sort order for translucent Materials 379 Making animated textures using particle systems 381 Making trails with AnimTrail TypeData 386 Assigning Level Of Detail (LOD) to a particle system 388 Leaving a bloody trail 392 Chapter 8: Then There Was Light!—Manipulating Level Light and Shadows 396 Introduction 397 Emissive lighting 398 Comparison of static and dynamic lighting 401 Light exclusivity using channels and levels 404 Adjusting shadows through light environments 408 Distance field shadows 412 Penumbras and hotspots 414 Accessing the main PostProcessChain 421 Ambient occlusion 427 Depth of field 430 Ensuring shadows work with translucent or alpha based materials 435 Enabling and controlling light shafts 442 Enhancing sunrays using lens flares 444 Creating caustics using projected imagery 449 Translucent colored glass 454 Chapter 9: The Devil Is In The Details!—Making the Most of Materials 460 Introduction 461 Animating a Material Instance Constant in Kismet 461 Forcing a mesh to always face the camera 469 A cloth-like effect using WorldPositionOffset 472 Creating murky liquid 475 Creating a scanning effect 480 Quick glass 482 Creating transitions between Materials 484 Static Cubemap creation and real-time reflection 488 Wet surface reflections with dynamic actors 491 Making a holographic effect using Bump Offset 496 Interactive Foliage Actors 501 Getting varied hit impacts off models using a PhysicalMaterial 505 Chapter 10: The Way Of The Flash UI—Scaleform, CLIK, and Flash Interfaces 510 Introduction 511 Setting yourself up to work with Scaleform 511 Working with images to skin a button 514 Cursor design and script for cursors 518 Importing SWF content to UDK 521 Placing an SWF on a BSP using Render to Texture 522 Index 530 UDK is a free, world class game editing tool and being so powerful it can be daunting to learn. This guide offers an excellent set of targeted recipes to help game artists get up to speed with game designing in UDK. Unreal Development Kit Game Design Cookbook contains everything you need to jumpstart your game design efforts. The lessons are aimed squarely at the artist's field of production, with recipes on asset handling, creating content within the editor, animation and visual scripting to get the content working in gameplay. Unreal Game Development Kit Game Design Cookbook exposes how real-time environments are built using UDK tools. Key features are examined assets, animation, light, materials, game controls, user interface, special effects, and game interactivity - with the view of making UDK technically accessible so users can transcend technique and focus on their creative design process. The book has well prepared recipes for level designers and artists of all levels. It covers core design tools and processes in the editor, particularly setting up characters, UI approaches, configuration and scripting gameplay. It is a technical guide that allows game artists to go beyond just creating assets, and it includes creative, extensive demonstrations that extend on mere functionality An intermediate, fast-paced UDK guide for game artists. The quickest way to face the challenges of game design with UDK. All the necessary steps to get your artwork up and running in game. Part of Packt's Cookbook series: Each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possible.