Tech - Week Six
I did a thing, so we now have a somewhat finished tool. The Modular Building tool that I’ve been working on for the past 2 weeks I’m now putting aside until it comes to further testing and polish towards the end of the project. It currently has all the features we said we wanted out of it at the start of the project, plus changes we have made along the way to make it more user friendly.
Here’s the list of all the features we proposed to have implemented in our documentation:
Creates building comprised of a combination of modular assets
Ability to change what assets are being used within the tool
Scale the size of the building
Tweak location of assets placed within the tool
Change material parameters within the tool
Must be placeable in a level
Usability Guide
All of which are working as well as additional ones including:
Work for variable modular build component sizes
Ability to add additional meshes to the edges of the building
Text overlay to aid ease of use
I don’t currently have any bugs on the list to fix for this tool, but it still has to go through some more testing as it’s still only in Alpha. All the tools will go through Beta testing before hand-in where they will be tested by people outside of the project.
Each tool that I make is going to be accompanied by a user guide. The format of which may vary depending on what suites the tool best. I’m hoping to get videos made on how to use them, but for now I’ve got a PDF for the Modular Building tool. For more information on what features the tool has and how to use it here’s a link to said PDF tutorial.
The PDF is also accessible through the tool itself, there is a button in the details panel of the tool that will open the PDF in your web browser, making it super easy to find.
Unreal Engine 4 happens to have its own built-in tutorial system. It’s the same one that EPIC uses to guide you around the engine. It is also made so that you can create your own tutorials. I have taken the stages out of the PDF and put them in the Engine using this system. It has some great interactive features as you can tell it to highlight key areas in the interface at certain points as well as add images and move the location of the tutorial window to emphasise the point being made.
Next week I’m moving onto the Spline Based tool. Like when I started the modular building one I have a working prototype already. It’s going to be more about adding the additional functionality we want out of the tool and making it as efficient as possible at doing the jobs we want.
