While working toward my Bachelor’s Degree at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh where I majored in Game Art and Design, I’ve compiled this list of resources for the different prototyping and game development classes as a reference guide of sorts.
ActionScript 3.0: Keyboard Input – The Right & Wrong Way
By Jody Hall, Feb. 5, 2011.
This isn’t really a “how-to” tutorial, but it showed me the light when dealing with character movement. It shows the method that all novice programmers use (I sure did for my first two flash games) and explains how and why it’s not the best method. It continues with an easy solution. You’ll never go back!
ActionScript 3.0: List of Key Codes
By Dan Kemptom, Aug. 6, 2009.
This isn’t necessarily a tutorial, but it’s a wonderful list that I keep coming back to when I’m scripting keyboard events in AS3. It hasn’t led me astray yet!
Creating Custom Characters for UDK
Official documentation for Unreal Development Kit by Epic Games, Inc.
This tutorial is great to follow if you’re working on using your custom character as every player in the game. This includes any and all players in the multiplayer games as well as any pawns spawned (using the Actor Factory in Kismet or named pawns in multiplayer). It goes in-depth to adding sockets to your custom character in the content editor of UDK and brushes on the scripts. If followed correctly, you won’t have any compiling errors.
Kismet Tutorial: The Switch (PDF)
By T. Adamson, Mar. 2010.
This tutorial is great in teaching you how to use the Switch event in Kismet and it’s great for beginners. Once you learn this technique, I’m sure you can use it in brilliant ways for players to interact with your level.
Kismet Door
By Chris Holden, Dec. 2010.
This tutorial was the first Kismet tutorial I ever read. It shows you how to make a door open using Kismet. It even goes further and shows how to keep the door locked until the player finds a key to open the door. Their method, the Boolean statement, can be used for more than just opening doors. I’ve used this method in many applications regarding my attempt at a single-player UDK map for a lot of player-environment interactions. This one is also great for beginners.
UDK Cinematic Tutorial
By Alex Karpati, Mar. 7, 2012.
This is the perfect tutorial to help a beginning UDK game developer learn how to use cameras. It’s quick and to the point. Although it is a video tutorial, I was able to follow along quite easily. All camera work was done through the animation of camera actors and kismet. You will learn how to create standalone videos (like a level fly-through) or in-game cinematic cut-scenes. This tutorial includes helpful information such as using multiple cameras and using fades to transition between them. This tutorial is definitely worth it.
