Kismet Wheel Puzzle Sequence

Screens of Level

Assets

Above are some of the assets ive started creating for my level. This is my favourite part of creating the game - Asset design and as such will enjoy creating many more objects, architecture and interesting things in the next week and on to add to my level

Outside of Rough Level 1

So Ive started putting together the outside of the temple based on the blueprint I created as a layout of what exactly the temple exteriour looks like. I then started modelling the stairway and some Aztec torches as the beginning of assets to creating how the level is to look. I am currently now in progress of working on the interior of this temple, plans are to have multiple chambers and secret rooms/dungeons where the player will explore. Finding out exactly what has happened to his people in this village.

I plan to have wreckage outside along with the temple as this village will have been through chaos before the player arrives. It looks bares now but this is the starting point for the level layout and assets and detail will be greatly added through these coming weeks to get the level ready for playtesting.

Tlaloc

Tlaloc was one of the Gods or Deity's in Aztec religion. He was known for being in control of water, rain and fertility. A God praised for giving life but feared for his storms of hail, thunder and lightning. Most Aztec Temples had at least one of these Deity's that they worshiped in the sanctuary. For my Temple I've decided the sanctuary shall be home to Tlaloc.

Through doing this, the sanctuary will be in his theme and some of the level designs could have the theme of lightning and water. (Traps, events)

Below is an Aztec portrayal of this Deity.

Aztec Temple Research Board

Just to demonstrate how the Aztec Temples were built and to help myself a get a better feeling of creating a building such as this in 3d Ive collected various research that portrays these pyramids. Below you can see some of the images that I looked at. One main example that helped me was the Temple Mayor which stood at the heart of the capital of the Aztecs - Tenochtitlan

Outside Temple Map

Below is the first draft of what the outside of the Aztec Temple will look like and include. Inside this temple will be where the majority of the level takes place.

Variety of Guardian Designs

Below shows different rough designs of what the Guardian may have been looking at fantasy, spiritual and more realistic ideas.

And below further shows the design i decided upon, taking the more realistic approach and feeling that I could create an interesting contrast between the two main characters from reading up on the history of the Aztec and Spanish war.

Main Mechanic and Timeline Breakdown

A slide taken from my 1st viva pitch showing a brief summary of my main mechanic.

 

 And below that a timeline chart explaining the exact time period I wish to have my game during the Aztec civilization records.

As you can see the timeline reveals the exact year intended for the game idea. This being a year after Cortes and the Spaniards come to the Aztec lands

Variety of Aztec unique weapons

So i started researching into the weaponry that the Aztecs possessed finding out the comparison of technology against the Spanish during that time period. Below are some of the unique weapons originally from the Aztec people.

Custom AI Character so far

Currently I have a custom AI character in my game next to my Custom Player character with just an idle animation, even though i have not gotten any warnings or errors while compiling the scripting in UnrealFrontEnd, following the player still seems to fail and I will continue to investigate this.

Below is a video of what im trying to achieve with the AI following the player, I can also try to move onto adding pathfinding afterwards to stop AI from getting trapped behind certain areas.

Trial and Error

So Ive been working on getting a custom AI character to follow the player as a companion, and through numerous attempts of scraping code and starting from scratch, putting together knowledge ive gained on unreal scripting I have a number of failed attempts to show for it which is quite frustrating.

Ive been able to get the custom AI into the game standing with an idle animation and the closest I have gotten to having the AI follow the player is it running off the map and standing idle twitching...

I'll continue to work on this until I have it solved and functional.

I mostly extended the classes for UTBOT and AIController, above are some samples of code i currently have produced.

Custom Character In UDK

I have got my Own Custom Test Character working in UDK so I now know how to do this when it comes to implementing my finished character model into my game, above is a video demonstration of this. Below are some images!

This took a fair bit of time and trial and error to get working, mostly playing with the FamilyInfo.UC and playerreplicationinfo.uc files located in the UTGame folder and making my own extensions of these in my own Custom Game folder.

Aztec Empire Rise and Fall

Below is a documentry i watched for more research on the rise and fall of the Aztec civilization. It discusses some of the topics of the expansion of their empire, the creation of their own aqueducts, how they favoured human sacrifice and the clash between themselves and the spaniards led by Hernán Cortés

Movable Crosshair

Currently, I am working on getting a cursor or moveable crosshair working once the game starts, I want this crosshair when moved to make the character rotate to its direction so this helps for aiming as well as giving the possibilty to issue commands on the screen for my mechanic.

Ive tried to implement the scripting to do this but havent been successful quite yet and will continue to try and get this working.

My Custom Game Camera

I then began altering the CustomPawn and CustomPlayercontroller.UC files adding scripting to implement my own custom camera. As shown below is part of the code.

After this I edited the IsoCamAngle and CamOffsetDistance numerous times until I had a camera I felt was correct for the game. Below are screenshots and a video of my Custom Camera in UDK.

 

Setting up my Custom Game

Below I organised the files for my Custom Game using Unreal Development Kit. I used a tutorial as guidelines to do this created by a student from the previous year that mentioned the tutorial to me named Henrik. First of all I went to the folder located in my "Local Disk (C) Drive >> UDK >> UDK-2011-09 >> Development >> SRC" and created my custom folder called AztecGame.

 

Within this folder I created a Classes folder and within that folder I have currently created 3 .UC files named CustomGame.UC, CustomPawn.UC and CustomPlayerController.UC to extend the default Unreal Classes. 

From here I could then begin implementing my own scripts to alter mechanics, HUD, camera's etc.

Project Plan

Above is a detailed project plan I decided to create to help myself manage each topic of work accuratley. The project plan may be edited as time goes on and I have currently made the plan up to March. For now I aim to stick to this current plan for my work flow.

Possible Guardian Design 2

This is the 2nd possible Guardian design which is still unfinished yet. This design still goes along the lines of a character thats meant to look unique and not from the aztec enviroment. I will continually build up on this design as well as one or two others until I have a design I feel is appropriate and fits the Guardian.

Aztec Book References

Above are two more images from the book "The Aztecs" by Eduardo Matos Moctezuma. The top image is a small Aztec shrine. Terra cotta, It stands 12.5 inches in height. Since i origianlly had the idea of the Guardian possibly being summoned from a shrine I will reference this image along side some others for that design when concepting. The second object is an art piece of a Jaguar Warrior standing 31 inches in height.