Excuses :)

I haven't posted an update for 2 months because my Alienware is on the fritz :(
And i had been getting along with UDK so well too.  :( x2

Screenshots

Thought i'd give an update on the progress with screenshots. First thing to notice is that it's a custom game, camera, pawn, controller and weapon (though the weapon doesn't have a mesh yet, it does fire though).

More screens after the break:

Having a stare down with a rock

Step 2.2 Complete

When was my last post? 4 days ago?
Well after 4 days of another exhaustive search on why my custom camera wasn't working i've finally fixed it. The problem lay in extending my controller class and input class from UTPlayerController and UTInputController. Extending them from UDKPlayerController and UDKInput solved the problem.
What a waste of 4 days.

Personal Reference to Typecasting in UnrealScript

Lazy post

Sorry for the lazy post:
http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?p=27762773
http://x9productions.com/blog/?p=250
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3331710&pagenumber=2
http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=775475
http://forums.epicgames.com/archive/index.php/t-726436.html

Step 2.1:Complete

After hours of going through the UDN Forums, unrealscript reference,googling, dev docs i managed to fix the problem i was facing:
1. I hadn't added my custom game type to DefaultGame.ini. Unrealscript was defaulting to UTDeathmatch which is why CoinGame(WorldInfo.Game) always returned zero.
2. The line mentioned in the post before last was fixed by copy pasting the same line off of a website. There were no syntactical differences between the two so i don't know what went wrong there.
Whilst looking for a solution i stumbled upon some material that could help anyone starting off with unrealscript (will add more as i remember them):

• DefaultGame.ini or DefaultGameUDK.ini
• Unrealscript Typecasting

Step 2.1: Extending GameInfo

Problems in casting and calling classes and functions still persist. Have scoured the community posts but couldn't find anything that offered a specific solution.
The only option is to go the UnrealScript Reference and read it thoroughly. Kind of begs the question; why haven't i read it already? Had to get to it sometime, guess the time is now. 

Step 2.1: Problems in extending GameInfo

This patch of code here:
simulated singular event Touch(Actor Other, PrimitiveComponent OtherComp, vector HitLocation, vector HitNormal)
{
WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self,"Coin touched");
  if(Pawn(Other)!=None && Pawn(Other).Controller.bIsPlayer)
{
    if(CoinGame(WorldInfo.Game)!=None)

    {

      CoinGame(WorldInfo.Game).CollectedCoins(self);


      WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self,"Coin touched by pawn");


  }
  else
  {
    CoinGame(WorldInfo.Game).Broadcast(self,"Huh!?");
    WorldInfo.Game.Broadcast(self,"Huh!? World Infor");
}
}
  else
  {
    CoinGame(WorldInfo.Game).Broadcast(self,"Okay, my files aren't included");
}
}


is giving me errors. Specifically the part marked in red.
It's most probably because i have a custom GameInfo class which extends UDKGame. Going to review Baptism through fire: Adding mod packages again so that my custom classes get compiled better.

Step 2: Gold coin, and new tutorials

Decided to title my posts by steps so it's easy to follow them from now on. So I have the beginnings of my own coin class taking shape.
Found some nice other tutorials that cover isometric cameras here:X9 Productions. They seem old, will probably have a lot of compiling issues that will need to be resolved. Will update on how it goes with the X9 documentation.

Collisions getting solved

Awesome! I just got a bump() event fired off of one of my static meshes. And it's also blocking my pawn. The solution was to regenerate the sphere's collision model from the UDK editor itself. It had a 'Sphere Simplified Collision' earlier, i changed it to 'Auto Convex Collision'. That seemed to do the trick.
The only drawback now is that i'll have to go back to unreal script and turn off all the extraneous collision flags that i set up trying to get my meshes to collide with something.
Back to the drawing board. 

Collisions remain unsolvable

I don't really know what i'm doing wrong right now. I have three static meshes. Two of them have collision models applied to them. Out of those three meshes only one is sending out any bump() events, and none are sending out any touch() events. BUT THEY"RE ALL BLOCKING WEAPON PROJECTILES!
It's probably just a matter of tweaking some parameters to include Pawn in the collisions too ( did i mention blocking isn't happening at all?).
Can't wrap my head around this one right now. Taking a break. Going to go play some music.

Portugese Musketeers and Touch Events

Ok, so i'm stuck again. My static meshes aren't firing off any touch events. Need to fix this to move on with the project.
On the other hand things are looking up a bit. Had a talk with the portugese musketeers and they'll cover the art side of the project for me.
I may be way over my head with this, but at least now i have three other people i can drown with. 

The way it's going

So i'm going through Mougli's Unrealscript code, which is awesome.
http://www.moug-portfolio.info/index.php?page=class---gameinfo
Figured i'd make a golden material by myself and realized i didn't remember half of the unreal material editor ( hats_num>head.size() ) so i did the next logical thing. Copied someone else's design:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v238/DefaultHuman/gold_wip.jpg
Works alright for me. Going to be going through this to change my static mesh's material to the gold material i just created:
http://okita.com/alex/?p=454
I'm also going to be going over to Ryan Pelez's tutorials because he has spawnable actors popping out of a crate (spawnable actors FTW)
http://pelcz.squarespace.com/tutorials/

Should also definitely check out the horse-fly swarm overview:
http://www.celticwarriors.net/Website/Mirrors/CHiMERiC/Tutorials02/Tut21/UnrealScript%20Tutorial%2021%20-%20Horse%20Fly%20Swarm%20Tutorial.htm