Ryan Cooke-Ward's Portfolio

I don't want to go on too long about what I have just done with the inventory system, but all being well, aside from the occasional bug that I am still looking to fix, it will be done, and I can start on the game world mechanics such as a day/night cycle, a calendar, and in-game time. Whenever the player picks up an item, there is a boolean called "Show Obtained Notification?" If this is enabled, the player will receive a small pop-up telling them what item they just obtained. If it is disabled, the item will still be added to the inventory, it just won't show the notification. There is a sort button (on the mouseover) (also, custom mouse pointer!) that when clicked will organise the inventory by the enum to the left, clicking it again will trigger a flip-flop and reverse the sort (From A-Z, then Z-A) It will sort by the item's category (What order they appear in the BP_MasterItem Category Enum) By the amount of items in a stack (From 99-1, the...

This definitely doesn't bode well for the future of this project, but whilst some parts have been successful and milestones have been met, creating long term milestones is actually pretty challenging.  As an example, just how long exactly should asset production take? How long does it realistically take for level design? Just how populated should the level be? What parts should I be prioritising?  As a game that will be based mainly around its mechanic, just how much can I get away with doing? Or, alternatively, not doing? It's fine creating an amazing in-depth world filled with NPCs each with their own personality, litter floating freely through the streets, but none of that is relevant to my proposed game at all. So to see so many production blogs honing in on level design and artistic elements has thrown my time perception off. I shouldn't need to spend more than a month creating all of these assets to a 4k professional quality. That's not what this game is ab...

From the start of this week, a lot of the blog will be updated based around certain milestones to try and keep the development cycle on track. The concepts have been completed along side of a design document and a lab report, so the next steps outside of research are whiteboxing. The previous posts have hinted at some of the whitebox modeling, and by the end of this week the aim is to have all of the whitebox levels completed, and production started on a trial for HUD's and UI's.  There will also be some further development on storyboarding for the scripted scenario, and a production list required for Audio, both foley and soundtrack design. The whitebox levels will serve as a starting point and a building block for architecture in the Unreal Engine, as well as being a good start to receiving feedback. As an example, if I asked a colleague and they would be unable to distinguish the castle interior to the tailoring emporium then it will be valuable feedback and easy to c...

As a part of our university course, we have been tasked on an employability report in order to research and explore the (hopefully) future career of our choice. This includes things like experience, skills, and where to look for these kinds of jobs. The very first task given was to choose a specialisation. To begin with, during this course, I was very interested in 3D modelling. Unfortunately, I don’t have a creative nor artistic bone in my body, and this became apparent when I was modelling for the sake of modelling without any kind of submission or guidelines. So I turned to the other side of the course, programming. We have been taught to use Blueprints as opposed to C++ or C#, something that I am very grateful for as it served as a beginners stepping stone into the wonderful world of coding. Being able to click, drag, and piece together blueprint nodes like a puzzle made learning very easy! And a part of the project I chose for submission also used the Unreal Motion Grap...