Creating a Custom HUD

In this article by John P. Doran, the author of the book, Mastering UDK Game Development, we will guide us in creating a HUD that can be used within a Medieval RPG and will fit nicely into the provided Epic Citadel map making use of Scaleform and ActionScript 3.0 using Adobe Flash CS6.

We can have the most fun game in the world, but if the player has no idea what's going on it is next to impossible for that fun to be experienced by anyone other than the creator. One of the main tools that we use within the game industry to pass on information to the user is a heads—up display, more commonly referred to as a HUD.

The tool that most modern—day games use for doing user—interface (UI) work, such as HUDs, is Scaleform. Scaleform has been used with great success in Unreal games such as Borderlands 2, Mass Effect 3, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Bioshock Infinite.

Scaleform allows users to bring in Flash animation files to UDK to be rendered directly on the screen or rendered onto textures that can be used within the game world. We can interact with these movies using both Kismet and UnrealScript to create whatever kind of interface you can dream of.

Inventorying Servers with PowerShell

This article explains how to inventory the hardware and software configurations of Windows 8 Servers and create a detailed inventory and configuration report. Additionally, this article will cover methods to track configuration changes over time, export the configuration report via Word. This article should cover everything necessary to create a centralized hardware and software inventory of all servers in the enterprise.

This article by Ed Goad, author of Windows Server 2012 Automation with PowerShell Cookbook, covers the following topics:

• Inventorying hardware with PowerShell

• Inventorying the installed software

• Inventorying system configuration

• Reporting on system security

• Creating a change report

• Exporting a configuration report to Word