Heh, if it makes a difference. If your UDK can't compile code (which takes seconds)... it's surprising you don't get problems with the editor. Make sure you have last graphics drivers and last DirectX. No idea what else you can do.
No idea then. Never had any problems with the editor itself, once I'v copied an object over it works exactly as it should, and the SGDKT test map is fine too. Oh well.
Thanks alot, Blaze. I'll sure use this one on the package... If it's not a problem, of course... Thanks for the piece of advice as well. The problem is that, all the videos posted and stuff, didn't had the Lighting builded. The "Gears of Wars: Sonic Edition" is due to this and to fact that nobody using some Post Process Chains to make it more bright, colorful... Well, Sonic-ish. Also, almost everyone is using the UDK's meshes which are by standart more desaturated. (I think that the Hydrocity "remake" was the only one 'till now, using custom meshes). Just wait 'till people start releasing stuff for real instead of just those WIP levels... They will have to build lights, use lightmass to make things prettier and stuff. I'm particularly working on a project for that... I wanna push GDK to it's limits. I can't garantee "amaaaazing level design", but I can garantee pretty stuff coming up. Just let me finish the GFX package first. :3
When are you going to get rid of that landing sound already? When Sonic lands on the floor it sounds like he's a starship trooper in his space suit. And also what's with his walking animation? Sonic seems to miss it and start running at really slow speed instantly when you try to move him from his standing state. And it looks really awkward.
That is a beautiful screen, and that is exactly what I'm talking about. You should tell us all how you accomplished that. By the way Felik...Sonic's animations and sound effects are totally up to the person using SGDK. So if you don't like it...remove it yourself :specialed:
How to archieve pretty stuff on GDK: 1st: Don't use UDK's skybox/skydomes... They're already too much desaturated by themselves and you will not get a good looking level with them, at least not for a Sonic game. Go out there, look for some images, color correct them on photoshop, put it all togheter, etc. With some work, you can easily archieve amazing results. 2nd: Spend as much time as you need. For example, for just this dandelion-field I'd spend at least 4 hours just on that. Working with textures, BSPs, etc... What am I saying is: "Be gay, but a cool gay, like Fredy Mercury" (this is not a homofobic comment, is just that <gaypeople3 are usualy the best for this tiny fashioned details... ) spend time on the tiny details "meh, people will never notice, I can leave it behind" NO! If you'd noticed, people will notice! 3rd: Don't make poor materials... If you only have one texture to work with, it's no problem at all... Quick tuto: - Get your texture, open it up with Photoshop, Gimp, etc... - Make it brighter, this will be our Specular layer. Not too much, just for archieving some bright in our texture. Save it (Don't replace the original one! Save as, I dunno, "Mytexture_Specular.png") - Next thing, take your texture and change it to be just a greyscale of it, black, white and shades of grey... Desaturated all the way. Save it. Download a software called "CrazyBump" Thi will allow you to make cool and very goodlooking bump maps without any difficulty. On CrazyBump, tell him that you wanna open a Height Map and look for our greyscaled texture. It will calculate in a minute and you'll have your results. Work with it 'till you get a satisfying result remember to keep it realistic otherwise your scenary will look like it's made of styrofoam. Save the "Normals" as a .png and we're good to go. After that back to UDK, export the whole thing up. Connect your base texture to the Diffuse Channel, your bright-version of the texture into the Specular Channel and your Normal (a.k.a Bumpmap) to the Normal Channel. Note: You can archieve the "bright texture" with a Constant and a Multiply on UDK Material Editor, but I prefer using Photoshop for that, 'cause you have more control of the colors using the various color techiniques avaliable on it... Like the Curves (my fav. <3) 4th: Work on the small things as well... We all want to see Sonic running arround on loops, blasting enemies and stuff. But it's just crappy if you don't work on the ambient as well to make the whole scene look good. A few things to improve your ambient: Particles: If you have a Dandelion field, make little dandelion flowers floating arround the place. If you're in a dirt place, make some dust running around. A big blue sky? Look out for some birds as well. Any of these aren't hard to do with some Photoshop/AfterEffects skills. Learn how to use SubUV textures and look over the internet for stock footages (there is a lot, free as well, believe me) open them up in After Effects, try to create a loop with them, mess up with the time and export as a png sequence or targa, etc (remember to keep the aspect ratio as a power of two, like: 2x2, 4x4, 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024, etc... This will help UDK to read it)... After that, here is the cool part... Photoshop has a cool plugin (which doesn't come with it by default with it but it's totally free... It's called Contact Sheets II. Of course you can just crop the image and paste it on a larger one, etc... Make the sheet by yourself. But you will see that it's too much of work if you have like... 64 frames of animation. So this plugin does the whole job for you, all you have to do is setup the configs like the number of rows and collums, the size of the sheet and the distance between the frames (I suggest changing it to 0)... Make some mathematics first otherwise the frames will be resized, and you don't want that... For example, if I have a 64 frames animation, the best way to place it will be in 8 rows containing 8 frames each. Now, each frame has a dimension of 512x512. The math here is pretty simple... 8 frames times it dimension. 512*8=4096. So, I will need a 4096x4096 sheet to get it all fine without resizing them. Now, remember that UDK does not accept images bigger than 4096x4096 (I guess, I'm 80% sure of that... Someone please confirm :C) so the more frames you have, less the resolution... Ambient Sounds: Even if you have a .mp3 of Slipknot playing on your level you will need ambient sounds to make it more alive, more threedimentional... Put some waterfall sfx right next to a waterfall, put a wind sfx in high places, etc... This is the best way to add depth to your game. Again, search on the internet, there is a lot of librarys with free SFX... Don't be afraid of using soundfx from other games as well, this is a fangame, you can say "fuck the police" to those burocracy. If you're not sure of how to add ambient sounds, go to UDN and check the 3DBuzz Video Tutorials. They have one for Ambient Sounds and it contains all you need to know. 5th: Last but not least, Post Process Chains... UDK have a desaturated filter by default but this can be solved creating post process chains. In World Properties, assign your created post process chain and be sure to check "Show in Editor" or at least switch to Game View Mode to watch the results. Inside of the post process configs, create a uber-something (forget the name) it will allow you to enchance the high lights, the mid tones and the shadows of the scene. It will allow you to create bloom and depht of field as well (which is great to hide some of the skybox pixelated textures due to the scale of it). Mess up with the settings 'til you get a satistying result. There is no easy way of doing it, it's more trial and error than everything else. Don't be affraid of spending time and your ctrl+z ass well. Once you're done with it, you'll get awesome results. Look up for tutorials on the internet, there are many helpful tips around the web to make your shit look amazing. One last tip: USE LIGHTMASS! I know, it takes too much time to render, but there is a reason for that. Everything looks more real and pretty. That's it! :3 [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l8YZxTeZZo[/youtube]
When you're going to build your lighting there is a checkbox saying "Use Lightmass". SonicGDK's testmap has it deactivated by default so... To reactivate it go to: View > World Properties Scroll all the way down to "Lightmass" section, click on it to expand and check the "Use Global Illumination". Now just rebuilt your lighting. PS: Lightmass WILL take some time to finish calculating so if you're going to use it in a big level (like GDK's one) you should consider pickup your DS/PSP or go play some Wii/PS3/Xbox360.
Working on a level using a rip of the official one sans textures as a base for what goes where and how for certain parts; looking hard you should make a guess as to what it is ;P I was running on the ripped level which has per-poly collision since concave collision isn't liked. Obviously I ended up getting affected by every nick in the mesh. That's to be expected; I was just testing how large the stage should be for Sonic to walk on and make it feel like the original. However, I hit a bump and flew up while boosting, and... It pulled a Generations. This is what I mean: The boost effect stayed in place. This isn't a problem with the particle system as the sound for the boost was still in place. A similar thing happened to me in Generations' demo at GamePLay (AWESOME game!) where the boost was going on as Sonic slowed down/was standing, however letting go of X would have the effect stop. Here, it's going on continuously. It also stays there if you keep boosting. I think the problem was I flew off a 90 degree angle while boosting, and the angle was quite short. Even though this bug happened because of something that would be evident in horrible level design, I feel it should be addressed in case it can happen in other circumstances :P
