ue2r newbie, actually unreal newbie, engine questions

[ehendrikd]

hi all

before downloading the ue2r about 3 days ago, i had played unreal once. that was the extent of my knowlege of unreal.

i have fiddled with modding the source of wolfenstien: enemy territory, and am a programmer by day proficient in c/c++/java.

i have been directed towards the ue2r as another possiblitily for modding, i do not intend to release games with it, it will be for educational purposes (teaching at a university).

i have succeded in getting the udn MyFirstCode example working, and have been starting to make my own changes.

the notion of an 3d engine suggests a open and general design to allow not only 1st/3rd person perspective games, but just about anything 3d. therefore i am toying with the notion of using this engine for a different kind of 3d game, trying to steer away from the above paradigms, and perhaps test the limits of this engine.

my idea is to create a 3d pinball game, using the ue2r. not ground breaking in any way, but would demonstrate some if the capabilities of this engine.

is this possible? from looking at the existing classes i have thought of this scenario:

map that would define the actual pinball machine
2 pawns being the 'flippers'
1 actor being the ball
using PlayerController::event PlayerCalcView to set the camera in a position that would show the entire machine

i have experimented having a custom pawn class (A) that has 2 other custom pawn members as the 'flippers' (B), and when A's event PreBeginPlay is called i am setting both B member's Controller member to A's Controller member.

this is as far as i have gotten, not much success, but i would love to know what others have to say about this design, tell me if it the right way to go about it, if it is the wrong way, perhaps suggest another method.

thanks evenyone in advance
ehendrikd

 

[patrickrho]

yes

 

[ttl]

The flippers wouldn’t be two separate pawns. If anything is going to be a pawn it would the table itself (well technically the ball probably should be the 'pawn'...)

If you were looking for a challenge and a way to embrace the engine & perhaps push it to its limits, a karma pinball game might be interesting.

 

[ehendrikd]

so what you are suggesting is the whole table as a pawn, the flippers being animations contained within the table mesh, and i would assume that when you animate the flippers being moved, you would also amimate the collision mesh around the flippers.

yes, i have done a little reading on karma, this is a standard set of physics rules? can the force interactions between the ball, the flippers and the table be taken care of by karma?

so the plan could be:
1 pawn (no map) with 2 animations for the flippers
when the collision mesh is created, include the above animations (i dont know if this is the right method, any suggestions?)
the ball as a KActor

(ps. any one know of any good reading for karma?)

thanks for the replys
ehendrikd

 

[ttl]

If you went along the karma road, most things would be done via the mapper. Also if you've played any pinball games (I am quiet the fan myself =]) you would know that there is often more than two flippers. As for the other parts of the table, I would make them all karma parts too with kconstraints etc.

See http://udnbeta.epicgames.com/Two/IntroToKarma for the karma reference.

As for the pawn, I would extend the "Vehicle" class (not KVehicle or SVehicle) and make parts such as the flippers (ie. user controlled parts) vehicle parts. I would do this because it removes all standard pawn movement code etc. I would probably make the drawtype DT_None(EDIT: Actaully DT_Sprite so you can see it in the editor) and set bAlwaysRelevant and bHidden & Physics to PHYS_None.

The coder should make some generic parts for the mapper, such as flippers, standard parts of the pinball table etc so a mapper doesn’t have to recreate these each time. So basically you'd be making a component library, the actual playercontroller and pawn(vehicle) code should be easy.

If you do it correctly, using constraints etc you could probably make some parts use PHYS_KarmaRagdoll (ie. parts that need to bend etc), however this might produce undesirable results and you may instead prefer to go to animations etc for those sorts of parts.