We've been busy at work for the last month or so migrating all of our content over to UE4. It's going pretty well so far. All of the art and animations have been moved over and we have resumed our normal schedule for level and character/animation production.
Programming Update
The programming team is busy at work focusing on translating all of our codebase from Unrealscript into C++ systems in a way that we can easily produce and implement gameplay. We are close to being back to a state where we can playtest weekly with most of our basic Samurai Kenshi mechanics working as intended. Within the next month, we hope to move into production of our 3rd development phase which will be complete completion of the Kenshi with all of his training tree mechanics and gameplay.
Character/Animation Update
Recently, our second character, the Samurai Archer, was completed in a rough phase. Our character artist is currently working on textures and polish to get the Archer ready for its playtest debut sometime in the next 1-2 months. The archer is a bit of a deviation from our initial design in terms of "personality" and "character" and we'll see how it works out. We're excited to have our second character in the game.
The Kenshi animations are completely done, and there's some time left in-between to really polish between the two. We've especially been emphasizing on basic attacks, and making sure our animation blending doesn't detract from the weighting/impact of each sword swing. Animation development will be focusing on the Archer shortly, now that the rig is complete. The rig turned out really nice, we're really excited to show it off soon.We are also developing our next character concept to begin production while the Archer is being animated. We're really looking forward to the production of this one, you guys will find out why soon. (Any guesses?)
Environment/Level Update
With all the art moved over and our maps reassembled, we can resume set dressing and art production on populating our Gifu Crossroads battle map. Matt has been working on an interior/exterior modular set to construct a nice teahouse in the central area of the map that can also be used to make buildings of any size. This set has taken some time, but has a lot of versatility so we're happy to show it off. Besides that, our junior artists are helping build small-to-medium sized cover props, cliff faces and other assets to help populate the level and give it life.
Hopefully we have some more video footage of UE4 things coming soon.
Wasn't5 it cool they gave Unreal 4 for free to all us guys, who had bought UDK? I still can't believe I am subscribed until the end of 2015, just for my support of UDK. You'd be fools not to upgrade engines, seing all the ease and power Unreal 4 adds to making games. I congratulate you on the switch!
Also, this house has nice attention to detail! These rocks look like they make sense there, but you could probably do with 20-25% fewer rocks; it would still look good, perhaps better. And those woodplanks on the roof look very thick+heavy. Wouldn't that bend the roof slightly, due to weight? But honestly...who would remodel that? It looks alright as it is and I'm always criticising things that don't matter much when it comes to gameplay. Nobody goes around inspecting environments, during a fight.
Ahh good to hear from you SinKing. Thank you very much, I was super excited when UE4 dropped but also a little intimidated by the pending re-work. Thankfully, we're only a few weeks from being back to where we were in UDK (Art is already ahead and back on schedule).
Thanks for the feedback, I agree with you, I could pretty easily make the wood a little thinner, and give it a little give for visual interest. I spent a lot of time on this set and want it to be good (It's an 8 piece modular set that can make buildings of any size with interior walls as well).
I do agree it has too many rocks, I'll do another pass on it later. Doing a really awesome focus point for the level (hint: it includes Sakura trees and a waterfall).
Give me your email or something, we want a solid test group to help us get accurate match sizes soon.
That would be interesting, as I am also developing with U4 and could perhaps become helpful in some other ways, too. Plus, I could check out unpackaged stuff, if that is easier (I haven't checked the pubishing procedure in U4 yet. Don't know how difficult it is to bake a project, compared to UDK)
I sent you my contact details in a PM. Thanks for the kind words!