#unreal editor
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someblakearts · 1 year ago
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System Shock 2 in Unreal Engine 5
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Tools, tools, tools
Back when I worked in the games industry, I was a tools guy by trade. It was a bit of a mix between developing APIs and toolkits for other developers, designing database frontends and automated scripts to visualise memory usage in a game's world, or reverse engineering obscure file formats to create time-saving gadgets for art creation.
I still tend to do a lot of that now in my spare time to relax and unwind, whether it's figuring out the binary data and protocols that makes up the art and assets from my favourite games, or recreating systems and solutions for the satisfaction of figuring it all out.
A Shock to the System
A while back I spent a week or so writing importer tools, logic systems and some basic functionality to recreate System Shock 2 in Unreal Engine 5. It got to the stage where importing the data from the game was a one-click process - I clicked import and could literally run around the game in UE5 within seconds, story-missions and ship systems all working.
Most of Dark engine's logic is supported but I haven't had the time to implement AI or enemies yet. Quite a bit of 3D art is still a bit sketchy, too. The craziest thing to me is that there are no light entities or baked lightmaps placed in the levels. All the illumination you can feast your eyes on is Lumen's indirect lighting from the emissive textures I'd dropped into the game. It has been a fun little exercise in getting me back into Unreal Engine development and I've learnt a lot of stuff as usual.
Here is a video of me playing all the way up to the ops deck (and then getting lost before I decided to cut the video short - it's actually possible to all the way through the game now). Lots of spoilers in this video, obviously, for those that haven't played the game.
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What it is
At it's core, it's just a recreation of the various logic-subsystems in System Shock 2 and an assortment of art that has been crudely bashed into Unreal Engine 5. Pretty much all the textures, materials, meshes and maps are converted over and most of the work remaining is just tying them together with bits of C++ string. I hope you also appreciate that I sprinkled on some motion-blur and depth of field to enhance the gameplay a little. Just kidding - I just didn't get around to turning that off in the prefab Unreal Engine template I regularly use.
Tool-wise, it's a mishmash of different things working together:
There's an asset converter that organises the art into an Unreal-Engine-compatible pipeline. It's a mix of Python scripting, mind numbingly dull NodeJS and 3dsmaxscript that juggles data. It recreates all the animated (and inanimate) textures as Unreal materials, meshifies and models the map of the ship, and processes the objects and items into file formats that can be read by the engine.
A DB to Unreal converter takes in DarkDBs and spits out JSON that Unreal Engine and my other tools can understand and then brings it into the Engine. This is the secret sauce that takes all the levels and logic from the original game and recreates it in the Unreal-Dark-hybrid-of-an-engine. It places the logical boundaries for rooms and traps, lays down all the objects (and sets their properties) and keys in those parameters to materialise the missions and set up the story gameplay.
Another tool also weeds through the JSON thats been spat out previously and weaves it into complex databases in Unreal Engine. This arranges all the audio logs, mission texts and more into organised collections that can be referenced and relayed through the UI.
The last part is the Unreal Engine integration. This is the actual recreation of much of the Dark Engine in UE, ranging all the way from the PDA that powers the player's journey through the game, to the traps, buttons and systems that bring the Von Braun to life. It has save-game systems to store the state of objects, inventories and all your stats, levels and progress. This is all C++ and is built in a (hopefully) modular way that I can build on easily should the project progress.
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Where it's at
As I mentioned, the levels themselves are a one-click import process. Most of Dark engine's logic, quirks and all, is implemented now (level persistence and transitions, links, traps, triggers, questvars, stats and levelling, inventory, signals/responses, PDA, hacking, etc.) but I still haven't got around to any kid of AI yet. I haven't bought much in the way of animation in from the original game yet, either, as I need to work out the best way to do it. I need to pull together the separate systems and fix little bugs here and there and iron it out with a little testing at some point.
Lighting-wise, this is all just Lumen and emissive textures. I don't think it'll ever not impress me how big of a step forward this is in terms of realistic lighting. No baking of lightmaps, no manually placing lighting. It's all just emissive materials, global/indirect illumination and bounce lighting. It gets a little overly dark here and there (a mixture of emissive textures not quite capturing the original baked lighting, and a limitation in Lumen right now for cached surfaces on complex meshes, aka the level) so could probably benefit with a manual pass at some point, but 'ain't nobody got time for that for a spare-time project.
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The unreal editor showcasing some of the systems and levels.
Where it's going
I kind of need to figure out exactly what I'm doing with this project and where to stop. My initial goal was just to have an explorable version of the Von Braun in Unreal Engine 5 to sharpen my game dev skills and stop them from going rusty, but it's gotten a bit further than that now. I'm also thinking of doing something much more in-depth video/blog-wise in some way - let me know in the comments if that's something you'd be interested in and what kind of stuff you'd want to see/hear about.
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The DB to JSON tool that churns out System Shock 2 game data as readable info
Anyway - I began to expand out with the project and recreate assets and art to integrate into Unreal Engine 5. I'll add more as I get more written up.
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gamereporter · 4 months ago
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Bandai Namco e Look North World se unem para criar jogo de Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance no Fortnite
Em uma colaboração inédita, a Bandai Namco Entertainment America Inc. e a Look North World anunciaram, durante a edição 2024 da San Diego Comic Convention, a criação de uma ilha no Unreal Editor para Fortnite (UEFN). A iniciativa celebra a estreia da série de anime Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance, que será lançada em breve na Netflix. A Look North World, conhecida por seu trabalho inovador em…
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hugelogan · 5 months ago
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shawnthebro · 6 months ago
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Patch notes and news are important to keep players in the loop. Let’s improve their experience!
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the-ghost-bird · 11 months ago
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Based on a dream i had last night about a haunted house screaming at me to stay.
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traceyc-uk · 7 months ago
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Do you ship your mc with any hogwarts legacy characters?
Thanks for your message 😊 I thought I’d draw an answer and maybe I’m misunderstanding the term ship so someone might have to correct me because I’m old
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But to answer the question: not at this moment. But that’s not to say its something that won’t develop in time, but like this scenario for example it’ll be small moments open to interpretation 🩷
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aviyx · 2 months ago
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satine -1 hand because hands are hell when you have no reference
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rebellionsuite · 5 months ago
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one of my favorite pastimes is looking up “____ hozier edit” and seeing what kind of devastation or life-changing concept i’m met with
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nrcnewspaperclub · 8 months ago
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At least it’s not worse than the anon from the nrc confessions that sells Leona’s feet pics -lost anon
THE ANON FROM NRC CONFESSIONS THAT WHAT???
HOW DO THEY EVEN GET THOSE???
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gumbuk9 · 9 months ago
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somewhere between proof of concept and actual development
clan arena (like) map for Fortress Forever, heavily Unreal Tournament inspired, still in development. devbox_carpark_v3 (it's like greybox but with devtextures)
sorry, some of these screenshots are kind of awful (and also there's some visual bugs, not much i can do)
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development of this map is ongoing, i'm happy with how this version looks right now, but i plan to advance past this (mostly with actual textures, and replacing the more intricate brush detail with models, and adding more detail overall)
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tanadrin · 9 months ago
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feeling the urge to bust out the level editor for ut2k4, but trying to find online documentation for a 20 year old version of UnrealEd sounds like a huge pain in the ass
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hazyaltcare · 1 year ago
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Icons of Editor ARG Wilbur Soot with dreamcore and lovecore.
Like and/or reblog if you save. Credit is appreciated if you use these icons.
Mod Haze (🎮Greyson)
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shiveringsoldier · 6 months ago
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There is so much wrong with this statement that I don’t know where to begin, but also watching Lawrence of Arabia on your phone should be punishable by firing squad I think
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no-good-username · 1 year ago
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listening ain't enough anymore bro I gotta drown in the song
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storybounded · 1 year ago
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Because I literally have no self-control, I went ahead added Adrien too. I was already going to add him in the future, anyway, and why not while I have my page editor up. Although, info for both will be worked on during the weekend!
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goodomens-julesedition · 1 year ago
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Hozier single handedly causing the second (third?) coming of the good omens fandom with unreal unearth
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