Unreal Meetup

So last night I went to Futureworks in Manchester along with some classmates to attend the 3rd Unreal Devs meetup. This was an incredible opportunity to showcase my work and get some feedback.

For the past 3 days I've been working frantically to implement a quick select menu which I intended to test out at the meetup. A critical piece of advice I took away from the meetup was to let people know there was a quick select menu in game, because absolutely no one knew it was there.

The response was mostly positive with a lot of feedback on things bug fixes and in general cool ideas. One of my favorites was a guy who suggested that when an enemy fell off of a platform a small helicopter would appear above them and they'd fly back onto the platform.

I'm going to be taking some time off of this project for a while, though. I want to create a 2D platformer. I honestly believe that it's a strong direction, I have concepts for the character and how it'll play. I feel that within a month I could have a very solid playable that is not only a lot simpler than my current project, but also shows off just as much.

I won't stop on the little bard guy, but I'm taking a break from work... With more work,,,

Rock n roll

A huge amount of work has gone into the tutorial rocks from the beginning of the game. They teach the players the different spells in the game, so they need to be near perfect for the 30th.

They're activated now with pressure pads, and a particle will play to let the player know something has changed. The stone then acts as usual, and the player continues.

I've also drawn up a list of secondary effects I want spells to have, if they don't have one already. Implemented so far is the Fire spell. It creates a small blast wave, knocking back enemies that come into contact with it.

One of the last things I want to compliment is a huge step in customisation. I want players to change how each spell can be cast, ranging from how fast the spell travels, to strength, to potency of the secondary effect.

It's a lot, and only 2 weeks before the showcase, so I'll probably shift focus now to the boss of the level, a duels shield wielding knight that can reflect magic, but not much more. The intent is to teach players to find sweet spots in enemies, given that the boss will always be deflecting things from the front. Canon fodder might adopt a similar approach, so it's up to the player to work around them.

Down to Earth

It's decided; I'm continuing with my Semester 2 practice, giving it a huge coat of polish and possibly developing it into a much bigger project.

So, what's first?

I have a little issue with the spell casting. Sometimes, it can take a while to pull off an intricate combo (I suck at my own work, hands held high), so what to do?

A couple weeks back I bought myself Kingdom Hearts on the PS4, and realised that they got around the issue of huge menus by having a quick select menu, so I'm thinking of something similar.

As well as this, there's an Unreal meetup going on in Manchester on the 30th, so I'll be sure to attend to that. It's a really big reason to make sure that my spells and tutorial are all working immaculately. This will mean a LOT more polish on the tutorials, something I have plenty of plans for. With just over 3 weeks to go, hopefully I can get the project to a standard where I can get really good feedback.

The Final Frontier

So I've been having thoughts about what to do for next semester, and I'm a little unsure.

I wanted to create a new project in a first person perspective that revolved around piloting a spaceship to meet an end goal, be it dog fighting or racing other ships.

The twist on it was that the player wouldn't use the controller to control the ship, rather control the pilots hands and, through extension, the ship. This would make the player reach for different controls such as a thrust, a steering stick, as well as redirecting power to different parts of the ship to ensure the pilot achieves their goal.

I also thought about the opportunity for cooperative play, with other pilots taking on other roles, such as an engineer to repair the ship, or a gunner to fight off incoming threats.

On the other hand, I just read your feedback Josh, and a summer of polish would be a great opportunity to expand the project even further, create more levels, more spells, more enemies, and try to incorporate an entirely new element to the project which, right now, I have no idea what it could be but with 5 months I'm sure I could make something great.

What to do...

A Challenger Approaches

On Friday I submitted a video for my second semester Practice module. The main body of work came in the form of a video (Link below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-oYN5As7Bg&t=3s

For semester 3, I'm a little stuck on how to proceed. On one hand, I really enjoyed this project, and I loved coming up with ideas on how this world works, but on the other hand I wanted to look into controls in Virtual Reality.

Unreal Engine is very VR friendly, so I'm confident in creating a prototype, but my main issue is access to the equipment. Working on a VR project means I need unlimited access to a VR headset, and I can't afford anything close to that. My solution is to use the VR in the studio office, but then there's another issue- From August to September the studio is closed, meaning an entire month without work.

I'll mull it over with the tutors, and see if there's absolutely anything that can be done about the VR situation.

For now, I'm continuing production on my last project, starting today with making some potential enemies.

I'll create some ideas for new levels outside of the forest area, thinking up some cliff/mountain/volcano area, featuring the spiky on the far right.

I've been making shapes and seeing what comes out of it, and it's been giving me some cool ideas for new spells to include, but I'll have to make the actual enemies first.

Updates soon!

Almost Time

Tomorrow I submit for my Practice 2 module. I have 2 levels working, both made as an introduction, but one of them is probably gonna have to be scrapped due to being pretty poor.

I've got a character casting 10 spells with different combinations of inputs on the right stick, and 2 enemies in place that can attack the player and be defeated. One of them has a complex brain, making them able to execute different attacks depending on a number of variables.

So what's left to do? I want a proper save mechanic where the player respawns in an appropriate checkpoint space, rather than at the beginning of the game. I also want an actual save game, where it saves more than just the player location, although I'm not sure what I could use for it.

Lastly, I want collectables, and this will tie into the save game. Collectables are nothing new to me, I've done my share of them. Just a brief matter of putting them into the game.

It's gonna be a rush.

Let's do this.

Easter Holiday

Since the last update, I managed to make an AI that I'm happy with, for something so small!

Here's a list of how it behaved;

If there's no player, loiter or patrol, there's a choice of the two

If the player shows up, use whatever weapon you have available (There were five, ranging from a pistol, shotgun, revolver, tommygun and a hatchet, each with a unique behaviour)

If the character doesn't have a weapon, run and hide for cover before thinking about combat

After hiding from the player, begin searching for a nearby weapon (Even the one the player has equiped)

Run up, pick up the weapon and fight!

After this project, it wasn't back to my own studies yet. I wanted to learn a little more about AI

A music student wanted a project with an enemy roaming around so that he could add in his own sound effects. I was happy to take it on, and 2 days ago handed him the project with a fully functioning AI.

Now I'm back to my own work, and after looking over everything, it's an absolute mess.

I have too many functions doing similar things, and a very lazy approach to making the AI work. In all honesty, it's amazing that it does!

Now I'm taking it back to the drawing board so that I can make the AI not only more efficient, but universal between different enemies. Not sure how, but that's the goal. I plan to get the most of it done by the end of the day, as well as lay in foundation for a levelling system.

Should be fun!