Bard

A doozy of an update!

So I’ve decided to start my side-scroller project! Although I really enjoy working on my Bard game, I wanted to try something new and this seemed like the perfect opportunity!

After some head bashing and research, I decided that this project would be themed around a Ye Olde setting, which starts in a fishing village. I knew from the start I wanted a lighthouse to be the aim of the level, so I based everything around that. With this in mind I did some research into games that follow a similar theme and created some moodboards to help broaden my idea.

From this research I started to mock-up the game in UE4, I started by adding in a double jump and a wall jump. Character movement is also very crucial to this games design, so I changed how quickly the player can move and how high she can jump. 

Wall Jump

Then came the tougher stuff, I put in some attacks that affect the player, making them hop and jump back when attacked. As I couldn't visualise how she would navigate the level until the character was designed, I had to wait until I'd modelled, rigged and animated her.

From here I needed a character, I asked Becky to help concept the protagonist. The character design had to look rogue-ish as I thought it'd be fun to make a dual wielding character. I gave her loose instructions and she came back with this:

With these quick sketches, I 3D modelled a character that was very much out of my comfort zone, I'm used to making float-y armed characters that have a large head. I made two copies of this model and squished her to make the style more charming. 

After UVing the smaller one, I set this to Becky to texture whilst I rigged the character. Below are some WIP shots of the texture work: 

Two days passed and I was still trying to get the skeleton to work, I had to decide to make some changes to this design. I ran into trouble with making the hips animate right and with a deadline looming I'd rather have this done. So I went back to what I know, and tweaked the design to fit with what I'm comfortable with. 

Then came some problems with the style. It was really difficult to translate the poofy pants into the new style and sadly they had top get scrapped. After some humming and ha-ing Becky managed to find a design that looked cool and worked! So off I went to model it!

Here's a screenshot of an older model:

So this money thing

So I've got the very basics down for the platformer, should have a character going for it soon. I've been really busy with looking for a job and a house to live in, seeing as though I have another 3 weeks before I'm out of this place.

I have a job lined up, but it's not in industry. As for a place to live, I've been looking, and I'm still looking.

This is putting a real brake on my Master's work at the minute, and man, I hate it.

I've done about 2 days worth of work since the last Unreal meetup, and that's not with me not doing anything, I've had no time with a constant search for a sustainable income and a roof over my head. With the timing of everything, I'll be having a very tight budget for the next month or two, with very little progress on my work.

I'll talk to my tutors about maybe some extra time, because as it is now, my work is definitely nowhere near where it should be. I might ask for some work too, anything to pull in more hours for more money.

Crawling on through, wish me luck.

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!