What Noonan did next…

I couldn’t have asked much more than to progress from one good open world title to another. Wheelman had it’s fans, and Crackdown 2 recently broke 1 million sales with it’s praises being sung by fans of the franchise and genre alike. I also contributed to Kinect Star Wars, which is well on the way to hitting the 1 million mark.

During the last two years I’ve worked on some great pitches and prototypes. Unfortunately a lot of this won’t see the light of day, and that’s a shame, as it’s some of my best work. I wish Ruffian all the best with it’s current and future projects.

However, it’s time to move on.

I’m moving away from the country I was born, from the family that brought me up, from the friends that I spent my free time with and the companies that kept me afloat financially. Thanks for the opportunities, but it’s time to leave for foreign shores.

My days at Ruffian will be coming to a close sometime in the next month or so – I’ll be around for a bit for anyone who wants to buy me a drink or give me a high five...

Out with the old, in with the new.

In August I will be starting at Ubisoft Montreal to work on Watch Dogs, a game that got a more than positive response at E3.

Lookin’ good…

I will try to document my move away and settling period through my youtube channel for the benefit of friends, family, and most importantly, myself.

…and yes, this is why my UDK projects (Shootan and On The Run) have seemingly been put on hold – getting a new job and moving country kinda gets in the way of hobbies. I might get back to them when I’m more settled over the pond.

Wish me luck!

UDK Game: Day Seven

The UDK forums have been a great help. I’ve got the initial stages of the combat camera in place and managed to get a mouse cursor on screen – I have a feeling it’s going to be quite a pain to get that mouse cursor controlling the player pawn, as all of the tutorials for doing so are horribly out of date. I think I’m going to need some programming support to get any further.

That doesn’t stop the paper and level design portion of the project though – that will continue whilst I try to get the support I need.

UDK Game: Day Six

Hello world.

UDK Game: Day Five

I’ve found some good tutorials that go some way to achieving what I want out of a camera system, so I’m getting Visual Studio Express set up with nFringe.

In the meantime I’ve been writing some characters as well as planning how I’m going to present story and dialogue in such an action heavy game with so few resources (no voice actors = text based dialogue). It’s all the fun of fleshing out the high level design.

Slow progress is still progress.

UDK Game: Day Four

I’m still reading up on how to get the camera working the way I’d like - so no progress there, however I’ve come up with a good amount of mechanics and features.

On paper at least there’s some elements of Gears of War, your typical dungeon crawler and a little Panzer Dragoon sprinkled on top for good measure. In a weird kinda way I’m designing something not too dissimilar to the new Kid Icarus title. Though obviously a great deal more violent (it’s me, remember).

There won’t be much progress for the next day or two as it’s my birthday, I’m going to be 27.

Epic sad face.

UDK Game: Day Three

I’ve made a significant amount of progress on the narrative for “Shootan”. I’ve got a rough story and plot laid out, as well as a good idea of how many characters I’m going to need to write/make.

The story takes influence from a lot of Japanese media including Evangelion, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII and VIII which will juxtapose nicely against the rather Western mechanics I have planned.

I’ll need to get back to working out the camera system in UDK. Lots and lots of reading.

Wish me luck.

UDK Game: Day Two

Second day on “Shootan” and I’ve gone back to the drawing board. Simply using and tweaking source code just isn’t going to cut it. I need to gain a greater understanding before I deserve further results.

In any down time (between reading) I’ve been nailing down the design for “Shootan” - something which has helped my search for answers in regards to learning Unreal Script. I might not know “how”, but I at least know “what”, which helps me work out “where”.

It’s time for Noonan to do lots of reading.

UDK Game: Day One

Today is my first day at attempting to create my own game from scratch in UDK. I’m dubbing this effort, “Shootan”.

I don’t really have much pure code experience, but have a little experience with text based scripting whilst working on the duel mode for Kinect Star Wars - I’m hoping that will be enough to carry me.

It’s rather difficult knowing where to start. The UDK documentation whilst extremely useful, is scattered about all over the place and assumes a goo knowledge to begin with.

…all I’ve managed to do so far is dump a guy in a level with a custom camera angle.

Sleep time.