A way to start the game without player weapons can be specified in the UDK editor, which is a refreshing change from all the script i've been trawling through over the last few weeks. To disable weapons, you must go to View > World Properties > World Info and check the box marked 'no default inventory for Player' (highlighted in green below).
This removes the weapon on startup when playing the level but in third-person view the Impact Hammer appears 'under' the player through the floor when game testing for some reason. This led me on to an unexpected problem - third person view is the default setting in my mod and I need the game to be first person only, otherwise a custom character will be required for aesthetics and that would require a substantial amount of time to create - time I do not have with the deadline for the game demo being in May of this year.The camera view is affected by the custom MyPlayerController.uc file that is created when setting up a Mod in UDK. There is no information in the script in this file to define the camera position and so my conclusion is there must be a 'default' setting in which the UDK is referring to.
The remedy to the issue must be that I need to explicitly specify the camera view in the custom game script (MyPlayerController.uc).
However, the crosshair can be removed with a small section of Unreal Script added to this file (highlighted in green above) so I have made some progress - just not as much as i'd hoped for today.
On the topic of HUD editing, I found no hard-and-fast tutorials so far but I will continue my search for this subject. The problems encountered with the camera view dominated today's work and slowed me down somewhat, as well as tiring me out mentally. I am not a scripter and looking at code I don't understand for hours with no progress does knock my enthusiasm somewhat.
I will have to resort to harassing the UDK community again and hope some kind souls will point me in the right direction.
