W2 - Auld Alliance, UE4, Git

Auld logo

      Welcome everyone to the second post of the Team Auld !

This week we will talk about the Team Auld, the development tools and some game features.

The Auld Alliance :

You are probably interested by the name given to our team, want to know why?

As you should know, our development team is composed of Ryan Kennedy, James Keohane and myself (Vincent Berthet).

Before we began this project none of the members knew each other and each member had differing backgrounds however we believe that each member with there own skill sets will be a benefit to the project. I will now introduce you to the team members who are working on project Auld :

• James Keohane, is a French student that studied 2 years of web development. In the team, he acts like the Project Manager and the Lead Designer.
• Ryan Kennedy is the Lead Dev, he is a Scottish student that studied 2 years of Game Development at the College of the West of Scotland and then moved onto his 2nd year at UWS. In the team he is our coding referee on the Unreal Engine because of his knowledge and experience.
• And myself, Vincent Berthet, I am a French student that studied 2 years of electrical engineering and industrial computing. In this project I will be the Level Designer.

And we are the Auld Alliance

As you have noticed we are one Scottish and two French members 

Ryan told us the history of the Auld Alliance :

Scotland's most famous connection with Europe was the Auld Alliance with France. First agreed in 1295/6 the Auld Alliance was built on Scotland and France's shared need to curtail English expansion. 

Primarily it was a military and diplomatic alliance but for most of the population it brought tangible benefits through pay as mercenaries in France's armies and the pick of finest French wines. 

Source : BBC - The Auld Alliance

          


And then, we were all agreed to take the Alliance of the Auld as the name of the team.

Having 3 points of view due to our backgrounds, we believe that it will make the development of our project more interesting !

Unreal Engine 4 & Git :

As we reported in our first post, we decided to use Unreal Engine, GitHub and Git Kraken as our dev tools.

Unreal Engine 4 have been chosen as the game engine due to it's blueprint technology which is very convenient to use. We can have a good overview of the relations between mechanics with these. 

Since Ryan has good practice on the Unreal Engine he will lead us through the development process

View of the BluePrint of Unreal Engine

UE4 is a reliable game engine with nice features. Moreover it is a very powerful game engine, there is a lot of cool games that have been developed with Unreal Engine ! Check it out.

Ark : Survival Evolved Screenshot- A Game Powered by Unreal Engine

In order to be able to work on the same project we decided to use a source control tool.

As James and myself have already worked with source control, we looked for a software that could allow all of us to code at the same time on project Auld.

We decided to chose to use Github and GitKraken as our source control tool. GitKraken is a handy git client using an aesthetic GUI that help us keep track of every change made within the code and this also gives us the ability to get back an older version of the Project Auld if something went wrong.  

View of GitKraken GUI

Games features :

This week, we advanced in designing the core mechanics of the game in order to complete the Game Development Document.

The main planet will be where the player can develop his or her nation by managing resources and upgrading his technology !

For this week, each of team members will be able to design a "Nation"  with all of their specifics.

In order to help us to design our Nation, James has wrote a template for each member to make use of in creating there Nation.

Stay in touch !

- Vincent