Day 20

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The big 2-0, eh? Well, the project achieved a big milestone today. I put the map up for download so that the rest of the team could take a look at it. Unfortunately, I don't think it is complete enough for its first public airing, and so it will stay within the development team for now. Apart from that, all I've done today is remake a few doors, so nothing very interesting to show. However, here's the final structure plus annotations.

Day 18

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I added some meshes to the entrance earlier today, including the door. But, more interestingly, Autodesk 3Ds finished downloading about half an hour ago and I've had a quick go at making some stuff.

The door to the Failbunker!!1 I think it's about big enough.

The shaft down into the depths of the bunker. There should probably be a lift.

Another view of the entrance room.

Work in progress: the Puka-Launcher! A ridiculously simple shape at the moment.

Day 17

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Well, today I completed all the structure for the level. Right up to the entrance doors! Hooray! Now it's all down to finishing the meshes, textures and lighting. So hopefuly, I'll have that done in a couple of days, and then I'll package the level and send it to the rest of the team for testing.

 Overview of the level.

 The entrance - and, of course, exit - to the bunker, and the shaft leading up to it.

Day 16 - The Furniture Problem

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 Hello again children. Today's post is all about how to furnish your newly built rooms! Or rather, how I don't know how to add extra mesh packages to the UDK yet. But never fear! Google is my tool, and with the holidays approaching I'll have all the time I need to find out all this stuff. Anyway, here's what I did today:

• Built staircase to "overlooker"'s office.
• Fixed a failish mistake on the Residential floor, which we won't go into for self-esteem reasons.
• Improved lighting in the first areas I created. 
•  Added some meshes to the office and started a small vent/turbine thing.

The stairs to the Overlooker's office.

 An air vent in the Overlooker's office, air-con! I need to put it in some sort of mount, and hopefully it can be animated to spin, as a proper fan should.

Overview so far - lit.

Overview so far - wireframe.

Also, the team may be expanding soon - two people interested in helping out. Also, LP told me he downloaded the UDK - finally! So maybe we can get this thing done before I'm 80.

Day 14

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I'm afraid it's another short update today. Spent a while watching some UDK tutorial videos in preperation for the harder stuff - animation, pathing, cinematics etc. Added textures to the Administration Floor, which - at the moment at least - consists of two medium sized rooms. I'm planning for the Overseer's office (Overseer? We need to think of a new job title!) to lead off from this corridor too, although I think it needs to have a more significant place in the level as a whole.

Day 13 - Avoiding Ladders

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Ok, so the title is really about the number 13 being unlucky, but I made some stairs today in the UDK, so it's all relevant. I built the basics of a new floor too, administration or something, and fixed the lighting in the residential area as well as making it look prettier in general. Haven't seen LP around all day, probably aliens.

 Added bars across the front of the second reactor terminal thingy... well I wouldn't let people touch it, would you?

 One of the corridors on the residential floor. Pretty much the same as the others...

 One of the apartments. No furniture yet, obviously.

 Wireframe showing the new area in red.

Day 12 - Let's start a war

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 A nuclear war. At the ga... yes, you see where this is going! Tonight Din left very early and in very suspicious circumstances, so LP and I have deducted that he is visiting an establishment for the sale of beverages to those of a... different orientation.

Anyway, enough about my colleague's sexuality. Today I textured the Residential area and added more stuff to the Reactor thingy.

A second Fuclear Reactor terminal. I told you you'd be able to see it from other areas, didn't I?

A store room on the Residential area. Barrels ftw!

A few of the residential apartments. Homely, huh?

I think the eventual size of the level might start to give my computer a complex. My poor overclock is cooking itself something bad whenever I build lighting.

Day 11

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Greetings Failures! It's day 11, although it just passed midnight here... but it's yesterday, ok?
Anyway, I did a bit of work on the new Reactor area in the Failbunker. I know I wasn't going to go into details about it yet, but It's all I really did today, so otherwise I'd have nothing to post. Besides, they're not exactly spoilers. I haven't even decided what's going to happen down there yet!

 A rather inviting shaft. Stop it, I can hear you giggling! There is nothing amusing about the word "shaft"! I need to think of a way for the player to get down there without dying...

 The Reactor level corridor - Will be packed full of wires and stuff when I'm done. I wanted to give the place the look of a hub for all the power/water/fail in the Bunker.

The small fraction of the Fuclear reactor that's visible. It looks too insignificant at the moment. Maybe I'll make some visible from other levels or something.

Day 10

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I apologise for letting Din do yesterday's post... I hope he didn't mentally scar anybody too badly. Anyway, I had some time to do stuff on the UDK today and built a few more rooms onto the Failbunker. I've extended the main stairwell even higher to give the place a real sense of scale, and added the beginnings of the residential area. I've also put in a shaft down to the depths of the bunker, but I won't go too far into that for now. After all, you've got to find something out yourselves. "A picture tells a thousand words" - No idea who said that, but he was smart.

The extended stairwell - now six stories high.

The entrance to the maintenance shaft. Oooooo mysterious.

Lit view of the bunker so far

Wire view showing the entire Failbunker so far.
Note the two new areas: Residential corridors above and maintenance shaft below.

Day 5

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Just continued with the level design today. A few new rooms made, but nothing much else to add.

 This is the main stairwell that will join all parts of the level. The room is actually around twice the height shown, but I've only completed this part.

The pump room on the second floor up.

A cave-in in one of the second floor corridors - a perfect excuse to leave the room empty!

The progress so far.
This is probably the last thing I'll post about the levels for a while. For the next few days I'll write something about my ideas for the rest of the game and its features.

Day 4.2 Epicfailbunker?

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Continued with the work on the first level of our failtastic project and, despite a scare caused by one particularly rude system crash, I have built a couple more rooms. Progressing slowly at the moment, because I'm still getting used to the UDK, but I hope to have the entire Failbunker landscape finished in about a week. Maybe.

Here's the map so far in wireframe:

These rooms took me a few hours, so I'm hoping to be able to make allot of progress over the next week. Of course, it would be faster if Lp and Din would download the UDK and help too! Probably too much to hope for though.

A view of the biggest room so far, guess this is where the first enemy will be encountered, whatever the hell it'll be. Should probably think about that...

The first corridor and door to the generator room. A bit plain, but... meh. 

The decoration things above the stairs don't completely fit in with the surroundings, but that's alright. I'll cover it up by saying that the Failbunkers were built by Aztecs or something. Okay, maybe not Aztecs... I'll think of something.

SO MANY WIRES! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMG. Lighting looks weird on them, gonna have to fix that.


The main staircase up from the maintenance rooms and... more green thingies! At least they make sure it's not all beige.

Looking into the Generator room from the other side. Just noticed that the doorway is wonky... I blame Din.

So, looking good - if a little simple. The outdoor areas will be much harder, I expect. Really hard.
Like a- nah.... that just sounds weird.

Day 4.1 - The FailBunker

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Started working on the first world area - our version of Vault 101, the FailBunker - on the UDK, and so far it seems to be going well. I'm rather suspicious of how easy it was to learn the basics. Later I'll take a look at some tutorials on AI and custom models. For now though, I've successfully completed one room:

Progress! Sweet progress!
Silly Lp and Din doubting that this could work! They're far too pessimistic.
Like a.... yeah.