Ryan Cooke-Ward's Portfolio

To top the day off and give the blog a little bit more attention, I want to showcase some of the assets I have been working on. Originally I was working on a more complicated asset for 2 hours every week, however I recently decided to get a lot of the smaller assets out of the way first, as I was finding myself slowly chiseling away at the intended asset list and not having much to show for it. Texturing is still quite a way off, and a lot of these assets are still in a whitebox state. The busiest, most populated level in the project will be the marketplace, which will require a lot of small assets, and a few of these I would like to show off in a blog post! Please bear in mind for the time being these are untextured save for one or two of the assets. Seconded to Crates, Barrels are an easy way to flesh out any level in almost any setting. Many games will have these be destructible or contain loot, but I'm afraid given the nature of my project I'd much rather have them ...

Unfortunately, every time I screen record, the unreal engine crashes. So, I'm instead going to have to backtrack through what I have already done to try and showcase it in several screenshots instead, so that I can upload a small amount here and there whenever I have added something to the games blueprints! Woo! The following posts will be following an already existing tutorial that I will be talking through, made by user " Unreal Gaime Dev " - Please make sure to watch his tutorials and show him some love, whilst this inventory isn't clean or crisp, it is a very well functioning inventory using physical slots instead of a list. I just got done adding a very very simple currency system that currently isn't used anywhere else in the game, that's something that will come at a later date. Instead of spending two 6-hour days coding, I figured I'll stop until tomorrow and show the blog some love. The screen shot dimensions may be a little off on the ...

Quick explanation of why there wasn't a blog post last week! I had originally intended to have a video uploaded as there was a lot I wanted to talk about regarding blueprints, and audio design, although the main reason was to showcase the inventory system I had been working on over the previous weeks. Unfortunately, trying to record the inventory system crashes the screen recording equipment and crashes unreal at the same time. I am trying to find a work around, although a lot of the functionality would require gifs or videos. The inventory system at the moment is still a WIP, although it is coming to a close as I start preparations on the crafting widgets and blueprints to start the games core mechanic. Currently, the player can drag and drop the location of the inventory, right click to access a menu of actions, read maps, drink potions, stack items, and sort the inventory by pre-determined categories, as well as discard x amount of the stack of items. A lot of these would be...

As mentioned in a previous blog post, some time has been set aside for creating a story board that serves more as a concept reminder than a strict story board, however it does detail and annotate the introduction to the game, as well as give a brief look into player psychology and why certain concepts have been chosen. Whilst I could upload the whole storyboard, I could also keep some mystery going by only teasing you with a few select images as well! Project Management Expect to see a video blog entry detailing the blueprints I have been working on in order to create an inventory system! It's not entirely finished but it has a decent amount of functionality and had to be implemented before a crafting system could be put into place.

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...

News, everyone! Now that all of the boring paperwork is out of the way, it's finally time for Game Development to begin! This means that the blog will be significantly more active (Very sorry for the big delay between posts) To kick things off, the name of the proposed game has been settled as Adstus Fabrica: 21 days to save the guild! As such, the old placeholder name of You Must Construct Additional Assets has gone, but the domain for the blog remains the same. And then, a little bit of teaser art! From someone who is very bad at art, so please do excuse the crummy concept art, but it is worth mentioning it is still WIP and a whitebox teaser! Just to prove that stuff is finally happening! This Friday will be our first architecture lesson where I will start piecing the core mechanics of the game together before I start with any levels, but it's going to be great for sure!