Unreal Scripted Sequence

The task was to produce an Unreal Tournament 2004 map and create a cinematic sequence that had moving characters that would fight each other in order to win. The theme that the level map had to be was a space cruiser particularly the hanger.

To begin with I had to think about what I wanted to happen in the sequence. When I thought about what I would like to do I drew my ideas down as a storyboard. Using the storyboard I began with the creation of the map. Once the map was created I began to start the animation of the pawns (characters). This is where my problems began.

When I had made a few actions for the pawns to follow I added a trigger and player start to the level in order to test my progress. To my horror it wouldn’t work, which began a minimum of two days to figure out. I managed to solve my problem while I was on the brink of just giving up. To see if I had made any problems with the map creation I made a simple 256 X 256 X 256 map added a light, pawn, player start and began my adding a few actions to the pawn. To my surprise it worked which instantly made me realize what the problem was.

Although delighted with this I was still annoyed by the time lost. I then began creating another level, only this time not adding any static meshes or textures just the room and the lighting. I began then creating the pawn animations and testing it each time to make sure that there was no problems. Once I was happy with half of what animations that I wanted the pawns to do. I began to add details to the map. This helped me in visualizing what and where the pawns can do and go.

While keeping notes of names and tags I started to add the cinematic to the map. Following the storyboard I was able to create this pretty quickly. With the map, pawns and camera work done I began adding little details and perfecting areas of the sequence.