map creation

The map was definitely my most challenging aspect and took up the majority of my time due to many bugs appearing every time we updated code leading me top have to put all my resources into the map as my team reached their goals that were set. 

I had no idea how to make maps in unreal engine and started to look up tutorials I first accidentally started to make a 3d map without knowing about tile sheets and how to create and use them to make the map . A tile map is a system used in game development, particularly in 2D games where a world or level is constructed from small, regular shaped images call tiles. Think of it as a grid overlaid with these tiles, allowing for the creation of detailed and interactive game environments. 

I had many attempts at tile maps throughout my project i had to learn from these attempts and make changes based on what I did wrong at first I made a random walls, doors and floors for one of my teammates but they ended up telling me what he needed which was also wrong so I took the responsibility of making the map.

After my research I figured out tile maps are set up in a grid like format I wanted my tiles to be 32*32 pixels so that meant I needed a gap of 32*32 between each tile something I hadn't been told when I designed my first 2 tile sheets.

once I had my tile sheets done I constructed the map and added it to our file thinking I was done little did I know I was only starting. Once we added character models I encountered my first bug the survivor not showing on the map after many days of scratching my head I concluded that it was an issue with the work 1 of our coders did as the other coder did the killer code and it worked fine unfortunately this was never resolved I set it as a task but was not completed I tried to understand his code but with very little unreal engine experience I was not able to find it and resolve the issue . 

my second problem was the collisions I set on my tiles would sometimes bug out and the sprites would walk into the walls and get stuck to fix this a put a small invisible 3d wall inside all my tiles using unreal engine to stop players from walking into them although it tokes ages as i had hundreds of tiles it was well worth it as it fixed my issue immediately.

I next had to make a door for the middle part that only allowed the survivor inside it to allow for a safe haven during the game this was my first attempt at using blueprints fully on my own in unreal engine and I was excited thanks to the help of a YouTube tutorial I got the basics on unreal engine blueprints

This video is extremely useful as it has time stamped what he is doing so you can watch only what you need so all credit to Smart poly on YouTube for the tutorial please if you use unreal engine check him out. I first made a sprite for my door using the art knowledge i already had gained so far 

I then started to use 2dpaper in unreal to make it a sprite and add it to my blue print i then put in code to rotate the door 90degrees once the survivor attempted to walk through it this need much tweaking to work and it ended up with me rotating it to the next tile so the survivor could fit through without colliding with the hitbox.  This was a working feature but due to the survivor bug not being fixed it wont register him on the map so it does not open and couldn't be included in the final game for anyone looking for a guide here is a good one (IMPORTANT to do this p[art you must have done part 4 also can be found on Ryan Laley YouTube channel)

here are my attempts at a tile map before my final version 

now here is my final tile map and the finished product