Final Game Evaluation Report - WordPress.com...I loved the game idea that our group came up with but it was a complex idea. I feel that when this class is taught, it should be made

Emma Smith, Kyle Culbert & Zubin Vandrewalla

Final Game Evaluation Report

Mortals Meet the Undead

This is the final game evaluation report for team Braintree’s game demo.

Section 1 – Setting, Storyline & Genre of the Game

Section 1.1 Setting:

The location of the game is the Manchester Metropolitan University, John Dalton building. It is the

central block of this building.

Section 1.2 Core Idea:

Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) staff and students have turned into zombies. These

zombies eat live humans. The character is a live student of MMU, and needs to navigate through

levels, to defend themself, with weapons found, in the hope of getting out of the building alive.

Section 1.3 Storyline:

The cafeteria in the MMU JD building has sold some exotic fruit. This exotic fruit is turning anyone

that eats it into zombies. These zombies only know survival and that is to eat food, which is any live

human. If a zombie bites a human then this human turns into a zombie too. Due to this zombie

infestation, the building is on lock down to stop the zombies getting out. There is only one way to

get out of the building which is through the Chester Street exit, and staff ID cards are needed to get

through some doors in the building, including this main exit.

The playable character (a student) has fallen asleep in a computing lab on the top floor of the central

JD building. The computer makes a noise as it goes off (due to the building on lock down), and wakes

the character up. The character is unaware of what has happened in the MMU JD building. The

player must complete the tutorial in the room before continuing on with the game.

Section 1.4 Genre:

Action/Adventure


Section 2 – Demonstration of Competence in Different Implementation

Areas

Section 2.1 Good quality graphics modelling, rendering and animation:

All group members created some kind of animation within the game using Unreal Matinee. Examples

of animation within the game are the doors and the characters. Furthermore, interaction was used

with the character collecting staff ID cards to undo doors. This was implemented using Unreal Kismet

and all group members have a good understanding of this.

Section 2.2 Sound effects and music:

All group members have collectively found free sounds on the internet to be used in our game. All

members have edited the sounds using Audacity and imported them into UDK as a sound wave.

Then the sound waves have been made to use sound cues.

Section 2.3 Efficient character/sprite management:

Out of the group members Zubin was in charge of characters. However, he explained how he had

found the template for the characters online and adapted it to fit our game specification in the best

way. Therefore, all group members have a good understanding of how the characters were

achieved.

Section 2.4 Good user interface design and implementation:

As this game was just a prototype, we used the standard built in HUD that was already available in

UDK.

Section 2.5 Visual Programming:

All members of the group did some visual programming using Unreal Kismet and Matinee. This

included a variety of aspects from interacting with objects, triggers for doors, and voice

announcements.


Section 3 – Demonstration of Kismet, Matinee & Unreal Scripting

Section 3.1 Creation of Zombies in Kismet:

Below is a screenshot of Kismet for the zombies in the second computer lab.


Section 3.2 Triggers of Doors & Interaction of Staff ID Cards & Doors in Kismet:

Below is a screenshot of Kismet showing how the interaction of the staff ID cards works, as well as how the triggers for the doors work.


Section 3.3 AI of the Zombies in Unreal Scripting:

Below is screenshots of the code used for the AI for the Zombies.


Section 3.4 Voice announcements in Kismet:

Below is an example of the implementation of a voice announcement in Kismet.

Section 3.5 Third Person View in Kismet:

Below is a screenshot of how the third person view has been set up in Kismet.


Section 4 – Other Areas of Computer Game Technology that the Project uses

Section 4.1 Three-dimensional modelling, rendering and animation:

3Ds Max – this was used to manipulate and edit 3D objects used within our game. Also, it

was used to export objects in FBX format, from .3ds, .max.

Blender - this was used to manipulate and edit 3D objects used within our game. Also, it was

used to export objects in FBX format, from .obj, .blend.

Maya - this was used to manipulate and edit 3D objects used within our game. Also, it was

used to export objects in FBX format, from .ma.

UDK built in Animset Editor – this was used to add animations to our characters.

Section 4.2 Sophisticated characters/sprite or intelligent agents:

Unreal Scripting – found a template to use to create our own bots, with AI, as our zombies.

Unreal Kismet and Matinee – this was used to create the third person viewpoint.

Section 5 – Overview of the Breakdown of Tasks between Group Members

Section 5.1 Emma Smith:

Added textures/materials

Added objects

Door triggers and animations

Staff ID card interaction

Sound

Documentation

Section 5.2 Kyle Culbert:

Built simple level and lighting

Added textures/materials

Added objects

Door triggers and animations

Staff ID card interaction

Sound

Section 5.3 Zubin Vandrewalla:

Characters

Zombie AI

Sound


Section 6 – Summary of Enhancements if the Time was Available

If more time was allowed on this game then we would of implemented our own characters instead

of using a template found online. Our implementation of characters would of involved the three

playable characters discussed in the design document. These were Emma, Kyle and Zubin.

Furthermore, we would of created our own melee weapons, which would interact with enemies

upon collision. We did spend time trying to complete our own weapons but it was decided that our

time needed to be spent on other tasks to complete the game by the deadline. These melee

weapons would be different for every level, and are stated in our design document. Also, the

vending machine from our design would have been added in to allow the player to improve their

characters health. A multiplayer cooperative component would also have been designed and

implemented, with the rest of the levels explained in our design. Therefore, the stairs would have

been added in as well. Also, we would of created our own HUD instead of using UDK’s default HUD.

Section 7 – Software & Hardware Tools used

Section 7.1 Software Tools:

Windows operating system

UDK

3DS Max

Blender

Maya

Photoshop

Audacity

Section 7.2 Hardware Tools:

PC

Keyboard

Mouse

Suitable graphics card

4GB RAM

Speakers

Section 8 – Personal Views: Emma Smith

While working on this assignment I did encounter some individual problems. This included the fact

that I do not even play games, let alone had any experience designing or making a game. I did not

have experience using UDK, and I found it a challenge to even move around in it. Working with 3D


objects took time to get the principle of, as I did not have any experience with 3D objects either.

These issues did slow me down in the completion of tasks. However, I do feel I have learnt how

much time, resources and manpower it takes to produce a game. I have learnt an overview of the

games industry, but do not have an interest in developing a career in this field.

I loved the game idea that our group came up with but it was a complex idea. I feel that when this

class is taught, it should be made clear that the game should mainly use assets already in UDK, as the

lab sessions only made use of UDK. However, as this limits ideas that groups can come up with,

another approach that may be useful is if the lab sessions were geared more towards the game ideas

the groups had come up with. I suggest these ideas because not that many of the lab sessions were

useful towards our game idea, and a lot of time was used completing labs that were not helpful to

us, when we could have been spending the time researching aspects that would have enhanced our

game.

Section 9 – Personal Views: Kyle Culbert I found a lot of problems I had were caused by UDK and limitations of its features. Majority of the techniques I had been taught previous to the assignment would not work or weren’t applicable to our game. Time was also a big factor as I (and also the other team members) had other assignments to complete, which increased the workload onto other team members which effected the group overall. To deal with this issue we devised a quick breakdown of the tasks between group members and allocated specific time sectors where a particular task had to be completed by, otherwise this would flow into the next task and cause problems in the long term. As for the features and capabilities I found that certain ‘shortcuts’ had to be placed and some features unfortunately had to be removed as a direct consequence of this. A major problem of the project was the building of the game. As the game increased in size so did the amount of CPU and GPU required to build the game, in particular the lightmass starting procedure would continuously run for around 6 hours, which happened on numerous occasions causing a loss of time for actually implementing the game. Again, I managed to find a ‘shortcut’ around this problem which allowed me to build the game without lightmass i.e. Global Illumination and have only point light sources to illuminate our level, at a risk of quality of lighting. But as the game building was essential, this ‘shortcut’ had to be taken. I feel like I have learnt different aspects of game creation as well as some new techniques to try with different software packages i.e. 3DS Max and Blender. Also I have learnt some valuable lessons in group decision making and time allocation. I think having a well rounded team allowed us to create a high standard game, decision making was vital in this project as a lot of features we initially planned for had to be substituted and generating ideas as we created the level was a very important aspect that we all helped with. I think if the lesson was to be taught again, then some more features of the UDK engine itself should be explored into more detail such as animation/character modelling. I found that when animation was concerned with the game, it seemed we hadn’t touched on the subject in the lectures/labs. As for the character modelling, because we wanted to achieve a high grade we aimed to create our own models for use in the game and the lecture/lab notes didn’t provide us with the information we needed.


I think the engine for UDK was ok to use, but for things like Kismet and Matinee I found we were researching lots of different methods of making a simple action work. Maybe a lecture on detailed Kismet and Matinee methods would have helped when creating the more complex procedures.

Section 10 – Personal Views: Zubin Vandrewalla

While working on our project the most important factor to overcome was the time constraints we

had in order to complete the project. To overcome our time constraints we used online templates

and resources for many objects and entities within the game. This helped save time which would

otherwise be spent creating these objects.

Also, while working on our project we first had to learn the required component before being able to

implement it as well as various softwares such as Blender, 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya. This caused

an issue as we were already on a tight time constraint. However we managed to overcome this issue

by using online tutorials explaining just the tasks required than learn the whole program from

scratch.

We learned about how to use various new softwares such as:

o Autodesk 3ds Max

o Autodesk Maya

o Blender

As a team we learnt how to use each members strengths to achieve our tasks quicker

The project also helped us experience time constraints and how to overcome them.

In my opinion the practical classes placed too much importance on just video tutorials.

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Final Game Evaluation Report - WordPress.com...I loved the game idea that our group came up with but it was a complex idea. I feel that when this class is taught, it should be made