Height issues and texturing

Over the last few days in have been working on some of the existing issues within the level so far, I have fixed the heighting issues with all the doors and windows within the level, these being at the players shoulder level giving the player the ability to look over the wall through the window but just barely and not having the ability to shoot through them. I then moved on to the tiling issues with the assets, the assets didn't seem to be fitting together perfectly and had slight seems running between them with light shining through from the exterior so I had to go about fixing this issue before I carried on creatingbthe level. With the assets being created to scale with each other and created to fit perfectly and fitting seamlessly inside 3DS Max I turned my attention to the drag grid and noticed that with the grid on there was a slight gap between the assets that was barely noticeable even when fully zoomed in so after simply turning off the grid the problem was quickly solved.

Next came creating the rest of the assets for the exterior of the guard room, I had already created the wall and it was just a quick case of creating the other prices to fill in the corridor's, so I quickly created the floor, roof and the opposite wall price and the corridor section was created.

The guard room side of the wall

The opposite side of the corridor

A render from the inside off the corridor

Upon this being completed and set up I have decided to move onto texturing the rest of these assets before moving any further with the asset creation. All the assets seen in the images above have been UV mapped and are currently being textured like the doorway seen at the back of the image above and in the images below both in 3DS Max and inside of UDK inside of the level.

Close up of the asset inside Max

Door way placed inside of the level

The last of the corner assets have also been textured and the textures have been imported into the level editor and placed onto the assets. Over the next few days I will be finishing the rest of the textures and creating the basic gameplay for the beginning of the level, the gameplay inside of the prison cells so that I can start building the level even though the cells need to be updated.

The corner inside the level without the normal maps

Initial Lighting tests

Throughout the day i have been creating lighting sequences inside of the corridors that i will be using within the level. Having created a great chunk of them and then running into problem when trying to record the level, this causing the editor to crash and the recently saved file to become corrupted leaving me with a previous save from not long into the workload. This leaving only two lighting sequences to be left fully created and ready to record as initial tests. 

This video was made to show what the parts of the level with power cuts will look like obviously they will be made up of more than just lights flashing on and off but for the moment these are just place holders and tests for reference. I will next be looking into having the lights in the walls and floor pieces flash on and off along with the lights, giving the sections true power cuts to vary things up throughout the level.

Cell Block Corridor

Before the file corruption occurred i had also created a lighting sequence in which the player walked into a trigger and lights would come to life down the corridor lighting it up as they came on slowly one by one progressing down the corridor. There was also a sequence that was a revers of this in which the lights would shut down as the player touched the trigger and walked through the corridor having the lights shut down in front of them. The final other sequence i made was that of the alarm lighting in which i had a trigger set up so that once the player had stepped onto this the lights in the section before them would turn from white to red quite quickly before then blinking on and off repeatedly, this to be combined with a warning alarm at a later date. But unfortunately that will have to be remade at a later time due to the file corruption. 

As the next thing i am going to work on is fixing the height issues of the windows now that i have finally come to changing the game type and the windows being to tall for the newer character size. This and finishing creating the corridor section for outside the guard room before i can move onto creating the things for inside it and thus begin the start of the game play for the section.  

The new layout

Earlier this morning i have been working on the restructuring of the cell block and the layout of the prison, restructuring this to fit with the new game play that i have planned for this section scrapping some of the old more theatrical aspects to that of actual game play and player interaction. Although the prison will have various objectives inside of its layout the main idea for this is for the section to be a straight path to freedom and into the next section while allowing the player to get to grip with the controls and the envelop them into the character and story. Below are two images of the new layout for the prison section in both unlit and wire frame to show  the new structure.

Prison section - Isometric with no lighting

Prison Section - Top down

Returning to the project after a busy period

So after a busy period i have had over the last few months i now have some time to return to the project and focus my attention back onto it. Since i have came back to the project i have focused on setting up the layout of the level and how the prison section will be structured, it has taken me some time to create and texture the assets needed to build up the corridor alone before moving onto the specific rooms that will be accessible throughout the section. This is a task that is still currently being worked on but i have decided to create the layout and plan the game play while i continue to create these assets to speed things up.

Since coming back to the project i have created the corner section for the corridor to finally finish creating the assets to create the standard corridors, the only thing that is left to do is texture the smaller pieces that will be joined to the assets that will make up the corners. There is still a few issues that need to be fixed with the corner wall one of which is a logo of the faction that owns the ship is going to be added into the middle of the standard metal panels.

Corridor Corner - Corridor view

Corridor Corner - Wall side

Corridor - Fully built

As shown above the assets to create the standard corridor have been fully created and this is what most of the corridors throughout the level will look like, i will later be adding variations to the textures and adding assets and decals into them so that they don't become repetitive and boring.

The next section the guard room

The next thing i am working on at this moment is the guard room this being directly outside of the maximum security wing that the player starts in. So far the maximum security doorway has been created along with doors and all other assets to create the set piece along with the guard rooms outer wall and door way. With this guard room the player wont be able to go inside of it as it will be locked but they will be able to look inside of it so i am cutting down on the detail to save some time creating it.

Video issues and corridor lighting test

I said that i would post a video of the level today but due to my video software playing up and some unforeseen issues i am unable to at the moment after many hours of trying but i have taken screenshots again of the progress that i have made.

Today i have focused on putting the corridor pieces together and testing out how they would look with lighting, i have been adding normal maps and specular maps to all of the assets in the scene and concentrating on the basics of putting the level together finally, I've been placing all of the corridors to map out the beginning sections. But unfortunately that's all i can do at the moment as i still have to make the rest of the rooms, but now that all of the corridor assets are created and with the last few needing to be textured i have begun designing what the rest of the rooms will look like.

These images are just with basic lighting i haven't got it right yet or done the fine tuning as it was just a test to see what the assets would look like, as they were showing up corrupt and distorted when just imported into a scene without rebuilding the lighting.

Corridor section completed

Corridor with light placement

Corridor from the players viewpoint

The roof of the corridor

All about the detail

The complete wall and pillar

Back to it once again

So after another long, long break away due to stress and distractions in my day to day life i have been working away on creating all the rest of the assets for the corridor so that i can begin to move on with the level and begin getting some game play implemented into it now that i have re-planned the level and narrowed it down a tad, giving the starting section a bit more structure and focus.

Coming back to the level i have recreated assets and created new ones to make a better look for the level for example i have created a new door section to fit in with the new wall section, this piece will be on the corridor side of things instead of on the cell block side like before, it is now bulkier and has a specific door section, in which there is a specific room for the door so that once animated the door can now sit snugly in this indent and not stand out like it did in the previous version. I have also created new doors for the entrance sections, as well as a floor piece to go under it.

Changes will need to be made to all of the old cell-block assets as most of these will no longer fit with the current assets and schemes. Mainly the main floor piece of the cell blocks as it must now fit in with the higher poly floor pieces that link up to the corridor sets. At the moment i am currently finishing creating the grates for the floor and roof pieces. I will be placing all of these assets into the level and creating the main corridor late on today, i will be posting a video of the my work so far on the level later.

This is just a quick update to show what i have been doing over the past few days, again i will upload a video later today showing what the corridor will look like in game and the basic layout of the level. Here are a few images of what i have been doing.

New doors and entrance to cell blocks

Corridor with cell block entrances

A wall communication/ command console

New wall model and slight issue fixes

So even though i haven't been posting over the last few days i have still be working away on my projects, now setting my full focus on my main project once again going back to creating the assets and starting to build up the level inside of UDK.  The first thing i addressed when coming back to the level was finishing the texturing of the new wall piece off and making sure that once placed inside of the editor it worked with the lighting and didn't have dark shades across it where the old piece did. As i did this i bought myself a texture software package in which i could create myself some normal and specular maps for my models.

This is the rendered image of the new wall asset from inside of max.

Asset with standard diffuse map

Asset inside UDK with specular and normal map

What the wall pieces will look like when placed into the level.

Once i had finished texturing the wall piece and had placed it inside of the editor i found that there was an issue when it came to joining the wall pieces together when they came to create a corner. There was a gap in the middle of them so i had to go back and make some quick assets to place in these corners. You can see the pieces in the image above, i created the metal beam for the inner corners and another wall piece for the larger outer corner gap. With building these another issue arose this being that now i had built this extra asset to place along side the walls to join them, the floor piece that was created would no longer be long enough to fit together when connecting to the corner section. This problem is the same with the roof, so i am currently working on the smaller assets to fit in these to fix this slight little issue. Also as i mentioned before i have just purchased a new texturing software package, so now i can create normal maps and specular maps etc. for my assets below is the floor as this is and the wall above are the only two assets to have them on at the moment i will be getting around to creating them for all of the assets currently made as soon as i have fixed the corridor and have gotten that fully finished.

The floor with just a normal texture added to it.

The floor with a normal map and specular map added.

The difference between the two.