It's been 3 weeks. I took a week and a half off as I needed a break and I missed last weeks blog due to (now solved) hardware issues. I'm back.
I have a lot done, I am close to finishing the project as a whole. Here is a list of the things I'll be covering:
- Crafting
- Player Animations
- Warehouse Final Room
- HUB Level
- Obstacle Course
Crafting
From the beginning I wanted players to be able to craft grenades to use out of components dropped by enemies. In the last blog post I covered enemy drops, this includes crafting parts. Now I needed a place to craft. I started out by creating a craft bench. This was easy enough done by moving assets together that I already have included in the asset packs.
From here I needed the player to be able to open it and use it. I need to use the same blueprint that I use for other interactions, this is also easy as the player can interact with many items so far. I have had to do this many times. At first, I wasn't sure on how to have the camera shift to the new actor but I remembered the "set view target with blend" node that I have normally used in the level blueprint in different projects to move between cameras. I set this up on interact.
Now the player needs to be able to craft, I made simple UI that allows this. The buttons, on highlight, display the item to craft on the bench.
As of now, the items can not be crafted but it will be easy enough to implement as it will only do a check for if the player has room and if the player has the parts. After that it will just add to the integer in the inventory.
Player Animations
I found an issue with the player animations, more accurately, the shotgun firing animation would sometimes trigger twice once the player started moving. To fix this, I only use the "fire while walking" animation, since the player is aiming, the feet can't be seen anyway and I can get away with the legs walking on the spot for that brief moment.
I also needed to create an aimspace for the pistol animations as the asset pack did not have this included. I made a 3 copies of the idle animation for the pistol and rotated the arms both up and down. I used these 3 animations to create an aim offset that I could use in the animation graph. It doesn't look amazing but it does the job. Normally I wouldn't settle for it but I am not an animator, I don't desire to be one. As long as my mechanics still work, that's fine.
I am not going to lie here, this is as bad as it looks. Maybe even worse. Next time I work with this many animations I will use two different state machines, one for arms and one for legs. This thing right here looks awful. Does it work? Yeah, for the most part. I still need to link up a few shotgun animations and the pistol animations. It's all the transitions that kill me on the inside. Not looking forward to it but I have to do it. Sadly I don't have a choice. Moving on.
Warehouse Final Room
The main area I have been developing throughout the project needs to come to an end. I created the initial level design in GIMP. A software similar to PhotoShop.
I then blocked it out in UE4.
Overall it looks ok. But I wasn't happy. I reached out to the Seneor Level designer from Machinegames once again on Twitter. I got a lot of really helpful advice.
This is advice I am definitely using on future levels. And I did.
HUB Level
Since I knew I wanted to add an Obstacle Course and make my Shooting Range playable for everyone, I needed a way to transition through each level. I created a HUB. This is where the player will start the game. The HUB looks fantastic and is where I got my motivation back for the project.
The motivation came back with this as the style is similar to the kind of pictures I would save on Pinterest. TV screens and excessive CCTV. Forcing the idea that the player is being watched. Because of this, I also added cameras.
These can also be shot if the player ever chooses to do so. Little details help.
The gateway works by turning the wheel. Once turned it will cast to both the screen and the gateway itself. The gateway will close then open, the level it will load will have been changed in the blueprint and the screen will display a name/description of the level selected. This both looks good and works well. I like it.
Obstacle Course
This is where I used some of the level design techniques from Twitter. Here is the level both with and without guidelines for routes.
The method used to create this made it so easy to do so. In the end I created, what I believe to be, a believable network of rooms. I then designed where the levers would be to open a door.
The player needs to pull all levers in the quickest time possible. I also wanted the high score to be saved. So I jumped into UE4.
Designing and blocking out actually took surprisingly little time. I don't plan on filling this with art.
For the mechanics, I started with the levers. I made a simple model in blender and imported it into UE4. I then made a simple interact event just like the other interact events but made the lever rotate 180 degrees in relative space. It then does a cast to the main safe door to see if all levers have been pulled. If so, pause the timer and open the door. Easy. I made a few one way doors that also work by interacting and rotating, these use world space. When the timer pauses, it does a check to see if it is the highscore. If it is, it will save it. This is the first time I have ever used saving in a project so I think it went pretty well.
Overall
I made a lot of progress and can see the project being finished this week. Lighting may have to be the week after but that should only take a little longer. While I have enjoyed working on this, I am looking forward to working on something else. I have an idea for a boss rush game I hope to develop in Unity. The thought of working on that is getting me through this.
If you made it to the end of all that, well done, hope you enjoyed the read.