Ground rules

Today I spent a little time and fixed the UV's on my microscope statue as well as cleaned up the geometry for the Microscope a little bit (made the base look a bit more level).

This level showed in the above screenshot is the Foyer level which serves as the hub for all environments. The hope is that if this world were to be expanded that different rooms could be added to this hub level (If say I added biology, chemistry, or mathematics to the mix).

I have also been watching more and more of the video tutorials for UDK and I have decided that my game is going to use unreal script for anything pertaining to more than one level (anything "engine" specific) and will use Kismet for any scripts that pertain to things that only happen on one level. So if I need a dialog system throughout the game, that will be in Unreal script and if I need a button to turn on a light or a door that opens that will be coded using the Kismet system.

The reasons for doing this are that the hope is that people will be able to edit the work easier. Also if a script is only ran very infrequently than speed is not really that much of an issue. I would rather not invest time on doing everything in Unreal script if it can be implemented "quicker" in the visual kismet system with no real speed loss.

My next journal entry is going to go into some information on UV texturing. I would like to describe the process I am going to use to add a series of opening lab doors which will work similar to one of my first journal entries where I described something similar in my former code base. The difference is this time we are doing it in full 3d, we are going to be doing it in UDK, and we are going to be animating it using the Matinee animation system, opening it via a UDK trigger, and implementing the door open using the Kismet system. This lab door will lead to another room where we will begin an introduction level for the physics lab.