Quick Update!

Hey everyone! I’ve got a batch of screenshots to show the work I’ve been doing for the last while. I put lots of time into some subtle details (the wooden barricades even have nails in the boards!) and I’m keeping with the autumn/cold/overcast sort of theme because I’ve heard from a lot of people that it was what made the original game so unique in atmosphere (which makes me very happy) I haven’t altered the screens except to put them in that black frame. I hope you like them!

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Ahh, That’s Better!

Just dropping in with a quick update for everyone! This is what the last update should have looked like. I added more details to the scenery and I’m quite happy with the look and feel of it all. The best part is, the game still runs as smooth as butter and I haven’t even done any optimizations yet! Here they are:

The monster you see in those two screens actually looks even more disgusting in-game than it does in the modeling program so it was an unexpected but welcome bonus! Also, expect to see a lot of wooden pallets in this game because Grinwood’s main export is wooden pallets… apparently..!?

Glass And Gore!

I hope everyone had a good holiday season and New Year! I’ve been kept busy with work responsibilites and hadn’t had time to make a meaningful update and for that I am sorry. Usually it calms down after the busy holidays but this year it seems to have been extended!

The screens I’m posting today aren’t as far along as I had liked. I wanted to have more detailed and complete versions to present but I figured I would just get something out there for now since it has been months since the last update.

I am very happy with the visual style of the project so far. It’s more realistic than the previous game but still has the same sort of ‘lived-in grime’ look! It took me some time just to nail that down but I think the effort was worth it.

Obviously, these are works-in-progress but those familiar with Out Of Hell 2009 will recognize these areas. This is basically how I am approaching this project; heavy referencing but altered just enough to make it a new experience.

Before I end the post, I have to vent a couple of gripes about UE4. Though I think it is the most powerful and versatile engine available to Indies, there are some things that seem like a step backward to me.

1: Decals – The decal projection system is AWFUL. Decals don’t even show up in non-dynamically lit areas without workarounds. Give us more options for projecting onto surfaces like box and spherical instead of just planar. I know that we can rotate the gizmo 45 degress to compensate but that just stretches the decal and it looks ugly.

2. BSP – Everything but the props you see here is BSP. I know that it’s an old-school method of building maps but it has its advantages. Please give us better BSP tools and texture mapping options! It’s UE4 but the BSP tools aren’t that much more advanced than UE2x.

I had to go back to the old method of building the map in BSP because the process of building a map in an external program has many drawbacks. Any small changes to geometry need to have UVW maps and lightmap channels tweaked, exported and then re-imported into the engine again. It’s slow, tedious and makes dealing with massive levels a big pain.

3. Lightmaps – In UE2x, shadows were baked into mesh vertices so I didn’t have to waste time making lightmap channels which is a tedious process for EVERY. SINGLE. PIECE. OF. GEOMETRY!

Yes, I know UE4 can do this automatically but it doesn’t do it all that well in many cases. I don’t understand why this was taken out? Just leave it as an option for anyone who wants to approach it that way.

First Look!

Hello! I’ve got a handful of new screens for you all from the current work-in-progress! I have to say before going on that I am having a blast with UE4. It really is what I have been waiting for all this time and what I thought the UDK was supposed to be. I find that it is a lot easier to move away from that ‘Unreal Look’ that most games using previous engines had. So here we go, the first ‘Official’ screens!

I spent the last while just laying down the framework; getting the basis ready for everything being built onto it. I’ve gotten the sky and atmospheric effects in place, the post-processing and all my Master materials set up.

As you can see, I’m going for more realistic visuals and so I am keeping the grime subtle this time around instead of having it caked all over everything as I did before! I also love building the map in an external program. I have to admit, I thought it was going to be such a hassle when I first tried it but now I simply won’t go back.

Please keep in mind that this is a work-in-progress and many things will change from now until the finished product but you can freaking bet that the visuals will only get better as time goes on! Thanks for dropping by!

LPV = q_q

Once I discovered that UE4 was capable of dynamic Global Illumination my head nearly exploded! I went about implementing it and found it was a mixed bag of results. Sifting through forums for information on this feature reveals that it is still in experimental stages and may have been abandoned. Unfortunately, in its current state the quality just isn’t there compared to baked lighting.

I was able to get acceptable results under certain situations…

…but problematic for the most part.

It seems that you can have good results for outdoor environments but you’ll run into problems with light-bleeding and other artifacts in an outdoor/indoor scene. So at this point in time, I’m just going to go back to what I was doing before because dynamic GI out-of-the-box is a no-go for me. q_q

Shedding Some Light On The Matter!

If you remember, in the UDK version of the project, I had implemented a fully dynamic lighting system with a 24-hour day and night cycle:

It looked really nice for the outdoor areas but I had run into a few issues with indoor lighting that I never disclosed. Fully dynamic lighting does not support proper global illumination and while it is cool in many ways, it just can’t look anywhere as good as baked lighting (even when using tricks and workarounds to fake it) Over time, I accepted that I wouldn’t have any nice light bouncing or subtle shadows and was content with it.

Shortly after I posted the last update, I started to re-implement that same dynamic light system into UE4. I succeeded in doing so fairly quickly and I was happy about that. However, I also started to play around with UE4’s Lightmass Global Illumination and I got a much, much better result. I’ve decided that I will be discarding the fully dynamic lighting system because it looks like a shaved asshole compared to UE4’s baked static lighting. Since this version of Out Of Hell will be a bit closer to the original than the previous projects, the whole day/night cycle thing is not really needed anymore.

Dynamic Lighting:

Lightmass GI:

Please note, everything is a temporary placeholder for prototyping purposes. The Lightmass GI settings are not final and will have even better quality in the final version. This is merely to illustrate the differences between the two systems.

I’ve also adopted a new method of building the levels. Before, I would build the level itself out of BSP and flesh it out with staticmeshes. Now, I lay down a rough shape of the level with BSP in UE4, export that into my modeling program and use it as a guide to build the level. When it is all done, the entire map should be made of staticmeshes.

Building the entire level in an external modeling program offers me more tools, way more control and it is much faster as well. Yay for progress!

EDIT: July 3, 2016 – Looks like I spoke too soon! I was able to get dynamic lights to work and have some pretty nice-looking Global Illumination with Light Propagation Volumes! I’ll post screens in the next update!

Hellooo Ladies!

When I was working on the original Out Of Hell I remember someone asking something along the lines of “Why are there no female zombies?” and the short answer to that is because I am a lazy bum that didn’t want to put in the extra work. Eventually I did and added one single, solitary female zombie model to the game.

Well folks, this time Grinwood will be populated by more than just one female zombie model! This time, I give you……………………………….TWO!

Seriously though, with the modular setup I’ve done, the engine should do a pretty nice job creating a lot of variety in the way each monster looks! YAY FOR MODULAR!