It’s Time To Move!
Since the last post I’ve been looking into UE4 as the new alternative and so far I really like what I see. Epic has made some major improvements to the workflow and a lot of the features that were strangely absent in UDK finally made their way onto UE4. Royalties for commercializing a game with UE4 has also been cut down to 5% of total revenue instead of 25% as with the UDK (though the first 50k stayed with the developer) This is good news for independant developers like me.
At the moment, my rig is unable to run UE4 but with some help from a friend, we’ve put together a beast of a system that should run it without any problems. This is my first computer upgrade in…over 10 years? Talk about being out of the loop! The new rig should be here fairly soon so I’ll be able to get my hands dirty with the new engine.
About the only thing I regret is that all of the work I put into the Dynamic Light system on UDK and Day/Night cycle will go to waste. However, as nice as it was, it still had some problems when it came to faking Global Illumination. Outdoor scenes were lit nicely but if you had any interiors such as a building with no lights or an underground sewer that needed to be dark, the GI would still apply itself because I wasn’t able to occlude it for those areas. Since all of my other assets (aside from the code) can just be re-imported into the new engine, not much else was really lost.
I will have to rebuild the functionality and game mechanics from the ground up again because UE4 uses C++ instead of UnrealScript but they’ve developed a really powerful visual scripting system called Blueprint which I’m hoping will save me from having to do any programming. It seems like UDK’s Kismet except on crack so I can’t wait to play around with that.
I’m very sorry if my last post seemed harsh but I was just really frustrated with working with the UDK for all this time and having little to show for it. Though I hate the UDK with every ounce of my being I would have never abandoned the project.
Out Of Hell: Complete (working title) will be going true next-gen and with the kind of power UE4 has inside of it, we’ll see what I can do with those kinds of tools at my fingertips!
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LONG NGUYEN | Digital Artist & Game Designer 
Yo Nguyen, I’ve have looked through the content files of that old demo build of Out of Hell
and the amount of different monster types you’ve used to have screams for multiplayer potential. Rather the left 4 dead style approach im thinking something along the lines of an RTS form, which the only known examples are these two http://www.moddb.com/mods/zombie-master-2 http://www.arma3.com/dlc/zeus/ In regards to it’s implementation Dark Souls invasion system seems to suit Out of Hell best IMO. Once the master wins/loses the game ends for him but the other player continous on as normal or when killed it’ll restart the map with AI enemies. It’s an idea worth exploring in the future since there’s other UE4 zombie games already coming out.
I can’t be certain if you remember who i am or what name i commented under last time but i am still here keeping up to date (mostly, i started college to be a petroleum technician and have less time) with your progress on the project and while this is a bit of a setback i feel this is going to speed up the process an incredible amount, which is exciting news! Your work in Out of Hell to this day continues to inspire me and gives me urges to start working on an environment this very second, alas i have no time right away, but i can’t wait to see what you can do with the new power in your fingertips… Since Out of Hell it has been a personal dream of mine to accomplish something so beautiful in a grungy “zombie” theme, because it is just an incredibly immersive and unique environment. Yes zombie is nothing new, but when i played Out of Hell it made me FEEL what i was seeing, and i have been craving more ever since. I have actually installed Out of Hell just to drool over the environments numerous times.
Hey dude! You’ve made a few comments here on the blog so I definately remember you! Thank you for your kind words and for coming back to check out on the progress. You know, I really can’t wait to do the post-mortem write-up for the new OOH once it is complete. It’s just been a really…eye-opening experience…I guess I should say!
It will be a little over a week before the new rig gets here and I will be diving head-first into UE4 to see what kind of juice I can get out of it. I think that this engine will actually, finally provide the kind of power that I need to make OOH the way I really envision it (or as close as possible) I think that incorporating the grungy/dirty style with the lighting and photo-realism that UE4 is capable of will provide some amazing visuals and will set OOH apart from the next generation of horror games. đŸ™‚