Welcome to the Dev Blogs!
Hey everyone! I typically try to get a blog post out every 1-2 weeks, but don’t hold me to that! I like to try and keep you all updated on the progress, what I have been working on. I try to share interesting videos and screenshots during the development as well as some of my general thoughts around my development process. All blogs can be found below, I hope you enjoy!
Some thoughts…lets release the 2021 demo
Hey everyone, Hope you are well. This isn’t the blog post / release post I intended to go with when I talk about releasing a playable Underhell UE4 demo. Yes, there is now a demo release – however its from 2021 and there hasn’t been much progress since. I write this as a sporadic idea…
Something is better than nothing (A partial update)
Hey everyone, I hope you are all safe and have had an enjoyable holiday & new years. First thing to get out of the way, I’m finally getting out of the toxic work environment that has severely dragged down my morale over the last year. I handed my resignation in last week and will be…
There is no news
I hesitated to write this blog post as I hate to have to write depressingly boring posts with nothing interesting to say, but I’ll try to make this one interesting with a few new screenshots. The TLDR is: IRL, I have been swamped, overworked and a little fed up. I took a little time off…
Whole lotta loadin’
Hey everyone, I just wanted to give this quick update in the event that anyone does not follow me on Twitter. I’ll recap the last 2 weeks or so and give a little more info on what’s going on, since I’m not limited to a word count! I’ve been trying to participate in the weekly…
Brief Update
Hey everyone, I just wanted to give you a quick update so you know that things are still moving, just rather slowly due to my busy schedule. Earlier in the week I tweeted the following: I had declared an early victory, which is something you should never do, I then realised that I had an…
Somebody saaaave (and load) me
Hello all! I wanted to update you with the current progress, on the last blog post I talked about Saving & Loading. I’ve come to realise just how important it is for the project, which sounds silly…but If the demo is intended as a technical demonstration of Underhell running in a newer engine, then I…
March 2021 Update
Hey! I apologise for the long delay between the last update. Things for me have been very busy and I have had a lot of things to deal with, so my time and energy for the project has been severely reduced. I won’t go into detail but it’s not been a great month. Today, I…
Bit by bit
Hey everyone, I originally intended to get this update out on Monday, I can’t believe it’s almost the end of the week already. I’ll start with a few visual updates to grab your attention (before I bore you with paragraphs of text). I posted this some time last year about the Hermit area of the…
Development / Testing update
Hi Everyone! I’ve had a lot of time these last two weeks or so to really continue development on Underhell and it’s going great. I still have a huge list of things to do but now I at least have something to talk about (unlike the last dev blog) I managed to find someone who…
Happy New Year (Tiny Update)
Hey everyone, sorry that the update is a little late – but it will be a little sparse also as I am quite busy at the moment. Testing a portion of the game is going well, however a few things that I thought I could ‘get away without’ have come back to bite me. I’ve…
Where is the Playable Alpha Demo?
Earlier last year, I posted the following on Twitter. My goal for this year was to achieve just that, give you guys the chance to play my best possible ‘proof of concept’ for Underhell running in a newer engine. For those of you who don’t know what this means, this isn’t about ‘porting’ Half Life…
Monthly Review (November)
Hey eveybody, This month really flew by. I’ve had a few IRL things that have been taking up a lot of my time and some of these have been harder to ignore, so I’ve been a little distracted this month compared to before. Early in the month I released the ‘Prison Shootout’ video which people…
Test, Fix, Repeat
Hey all, I just wanted to give a quick text update. I haven’t managed to record any newer footage yet but I’m working on it. I’m trying a new approach for development / bug fixing this week. I was drowning under the mountain of post it notes, todo lists and unfinished / partially implemented systems.…
Prison Shootout
What’s this? Two meals devblogs in one week? Hey everyone. I had an idea today after work that I’d record a little A.I progress video for you to enjoy. I setup a few things in one of the maps to help make the recording session fun and then I started to record several takes and…
Monthly Review (October)
Hey there! I thought a monthly review might be a good idea for a post, that way even If I am busy IRL, there would still be at least one blog post a month. I thought of this idea for several reasons but the main one I will explain below. Last night, I felt myself…
Game Improvements
Hi everyone, The update for today is geared towards data geeks, but its an interesting one and an important one for ensuring a good foundation for the game to be improved upon. One of the new improvements is that I have been working on some rather common NPC actions / response systems, things that you…
Look Ma, no hands!
Hey Kids, don’t put your hands into machinery or you might end up like Jake… Jake has no hands! I didn’t come to this decision lightly but after wrestling with stock animations from multiple authors, I had nothing but animation problems. I was attempting to setup an IK system so that the hands could grab…
Tick Tock Clock
Hello everyone, I’m afraid not much of an exciting update today, I’ve been working on a few things that I’m not quite ready to show off just yet and I needed a break from banging my head against a wall and decided to work on something smaller just to help fill out the overall world.…
Kicking Doors Down
I added some new functionality today which expands on the doors, again. I promise I’ll shut up about these soon. Previously I had no AI Action to handle bashing down doors. This has been added, as well as the Door behavior being configurable per NPC. This means all Infected can try to bash down doors…
The Massacre
Whilst developing AI for Underhell today, I ran into a rather amusing issue. I walked into Terry’s Office / Saferoom and found that everyone was….dead! It turns out that the Infected NPC that I had placed a few rooms earlier (the one that breaks the lever to a door after you leave the Butchery) had…
My first dev blog
Good to have you here with me today! Please be patient with me as I get used to this platform again. I’ve not used / been involved with web page admin for a very long time, so I hope I don’t screw things up too badly. Thank you for visiting my blog. I aim to…
Underhell UE4 