DAY 11
After two days in which I have not worked on the project, today was a slightly more productive day.
I've implemented a new interactive object in the form of Audio Logs. These are in the game mainly to convey lore and backstory, with the occasional level hints where and if needed. They are present in the form of an old "portable" magnetic tape player. When the player is in it's range, he/she can press the interact button and when the button is pressed, the tape player plays an audio log.
It was a lot easier than I had anticipated functionality wise, but will be pretty difficult to model the final version. it did pose three issues I did not expect to happen.
For one, the are 2 tape reels (2 different static meshes) on the tape machine and both reels need to rotate around their Z-axis in the same direction. The problem is that the reels begin to spin ridiculously fast and stop just as the audio starts to play. While the intended functionality is for the reels to start rotating, the audio plays and as it finishes playing, the tapes stop rotating. This I did not manage to fix today, but hopefully tomorrow.
I do have and idea on how to fix it, but it requires placing the rotating meshes in the level blueprint (which I absolutely do not want to do), not in the object blueprint itself (which I absolutely do want to do).
Luckily, the other two issues are fixed and tested.
Mainly the first 0.2 seconds of the audio log played repeatedly 4 times. After that, it proceeded to play the audio file properly. This was caused by a delay node in the blueprint of the Audio Log. Of course, the delay node was removed. The other issue was that the audio started playing right as I started the game. Which I knew fully that this wasn't supposed to happen under any circumstance. And had absolutely zero idea what caused it... UNTIL I looked in the audio component of the blueprint. And, lo and behold, Auto Activation was ticked true. Of course, this was fixed and now it works as intended.
On the game design part, I'm in the process of fleshing out the lore and collectible/interactable items. On the functional side of the lore, it will be delivered via the Audio logs above and by handwritten letters. At least for now. I might add some other types of lore-delivering mechanics.
Regarding lore content, this is still very much up in the air. I do however know 2 things: 1) the player must find a particular individual who has gone missing for a very long time. 2) the dream-like direction that was hinted at in the first few posts will most likely go away. True, it was hinted at as an art direction thing, but in my mind it crossed over the storytelling and gameplay aspects. This dream-like direction will be replaced by a more grounded direction.
That's kind of it for today. See ya tomorrow, bye.