UDK Packets and scripting

This week work had to do with taking the music and sound files that I had worked on for this project and put them into packets and script the sounds for the characters for our teams game. This did not run a smooth as I was hoping for, for this part of the process of the game making. I ran into quite a few set backs in this last stage of our project.

Last week when I started putting the remainder of the sound and music files into UDK packets, I notice a couple of the music files would not import into UDK. All the sound and music files where .wav files (which UDK should not have a problem with), but a couple of them would not import. It turn out to be a convert problem from my Pro-Tools system, when I bounce the track into the .wav file. All that was needed was to reconvert them .wav files in a converter that I have on my computer and all was fine.

A second thing that worked against me was the levels on some of the sounds and music files where low, when playback on my PC. I had to redo this tracks to give them enough levels without distorting the sound quality (mixing) that went into it. I went through every file checking levels into Pro Tools, adding gain if need be, and evening redoing some tracks. When all this was finished I had to remake my sound and music packet again, since it was updated. This took me the longest to do, but I really didn't mind it since this is what I live for.

The last thing I needed to do was work on the scripting of sound cues for each character (six total). This proved to be the wost for me. I never have done scripting before in UDK or any game engine before, wanted this challenge.....well I got it. I want to learn more about sound for gaming and get my hands on everything (or as much as possible for this project) dealing with sound, so I pushed to do the scripting for sound. Well, I got a quick lesson of it from my teacher on scripting and thought I had it down. I worked on the scripts a couple of days and was unsure if I was doing it right.

Today I brought the scripts to one of my teammates Tate to put into our game engine to make sure that they worked properly, unfortunately they did not. Our teacher Prof. Santello looked at the scripts and pointed out where I went wrong and how I need to do these scripts.


I did learn a lot from these experiences this pass week, that is for sure. If I could redo this week again I would definitely make some changes.  Some of the changes I would make would be making a sound packet for each character, a packet for weapons, the tank, and miscellaneous sounds (beside just dividing the .wav files in file folders) instead of lumping the sounds in one packet. Another thing I would change is making sure when I did one scripted send it Santello first, have him check it out, then I would send the script to my teammate Tate to make sure it worked. As for the sound levels, I looked as I broke even on this. It was unfortunate to go through all the files to check the levels, but in return I reedit some sounds, deleted extra copies of sounds, remixed some other sounds, and even added some new sounds for the characters. Well, that is it for this week. Until next week....