Book Image

Unreal Development Kit Beginner's Guide

By : Richard Moore
Book Image

Unreal Development Kit Beginner's Guide

By: Richard Moore

Overview of this book

Unreal Development Kit (UDK) is the free version of the award-winning Unreal Engine 3. It is used to create a wide variety of games ranging from amateur to professional standard next generation AAA titles. This book will show you exactly how to create an enjoyable and immersive game environment using the UDK. You will learn how to implement, level design, lighting, environmental effects, movement, terrain, map creation, item placement, kismet, materials and complex event sequences. You will work through the level design process from navigating round the editor to learning how to develop a fully playable environment. You will quickly master all of the engine’s key tools that are accessible through Unreal Engine 3. You will then start putting together your first level using step-by-step instructions. Next we will implement real world features such as dynamic lighting and shadows, particle effects, physics, terrain, item placement and advanced AI/bot pathing. Finally you will learn how to use UDK’s cutting edge high level scripting. By the end of this book you will be equipped with the skills to create an entertaining and imaginative game world.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Unreal Development Kit 3
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Pop Quiz Answers
Index

Time for action – making your material easy to read


Almost over, but we've got one very important topic to cover—clean-up and commenting. You may be able to read your material just fine now, but when you come back in a week, or a month, an organized material with some useful comments will be a lot easier to understand.

  1. The first step is good organization. As we've seen, data in the Material Editor flows right to left (the inputs of our nodes are on the right, and the spit out data to the left). Take some time now and organize your nodes so that there's no backtracking (the Texture and Constant nodes should be on the right, and the Multiply nodes should be to their left). Also organize things to minimize crisscrossing lines—the nodes controlling Diffuse should go on top, with the ones controlling Specular below. Try to get a network that looks like the following screenshot:

  2. The next thing we can do to organize our network is label the nodes. For instance, what if you decided at some point that...