DAY 48
Been wearing quite a few small and different hats since the last update. Mostly level design, game design, project management, a tiny little bit of modeling (I'll get to that later), bug fixing... you know, everything and anything in between.
1) Level Design: I've been attempting to continue working on the Dam area, but this has proved mostly unsuccessful. Everything that I threw at it just didn't stick...well, mostly everything. I tried implementing the wall running mechanic I did a month or so ago, but I built the wallrunning mechanic into the FirstPersonCharacter blueprint (which by default is deactivated) and could not get it to activate in the Level Blueprint. There is definitely something so obvious that I can't see it. Will definitely try again later. The mechanic works as intended, for those who didn't read the post about it. Here's a video of it in action.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qNvoi0UCmOJZbicYhzglptBN3fXfRDXh/view?usp=shari...
There's something about this area that pulls into the "transitional area" design. It keeps wanting that, even though there is so much potential for mechanics here. I'll leave the "transitional" design for last on the list, an "if all else fails, use this" option.
I also had the idea of creating some modular blocky assets to serve as placeholders for a dungeon-like cave exploration level. L-shape, T-shape, I-shape, plus-shape, U-shape, you name it. Square rooms, rectangular rooms, round rooms and the list goes on and on.
This would take 2 hours or so, but maaaan, it's gonna take a looooong time, with the amount of iterations I have to make in order to pull off a good cave level.
2) Game Design: So one of the new features I thought I'd add is a Hang Glider. This adds to the "movement, motion and traversal" philosophy I keep banging your head about by way of allowing 6DOF movement (something I don't have at the moment). Possibly having some upwind bits a la Zelda BOTW.
And I do have a clue or two about how I'd make this: If falling and when equipping the glider, the player character would actually have only a quarter of the gravity (or at least a lot less) than the current gravity amount and will have slightly increased air control. Should be easy peasy, this one. I mean, I hope it will. I don't know about the upwind bits (hopefully a Launch Character on the Z axis will suffice, given that I'm avoiding wind physics altogether)
3) Bug fixing: so I pulled my last ace up my sleeve with the rope swing and it just didn't work. I have no idea where the script went wrong, and I looked everywhere to the best of my (limited) ability. But I'm not giving up on the rope swing just yet. I'll just have to re-think the entire thing, starting with using the Grappling Hook base script and altering it so that it fits the rope swing description. The target would be for the new rope swing to play like the grappling hook, maybe having Left Mouse button for grappling hook and Right Mouse Button for the rope swing.
4) Modeling: Hey, remember a little bit earlier when I said something about a glider? Well, did some prototype modeling for the glider as well. Check it out:
I know I messed two things up (no tail on the glider and the handle bar is not big enough). I wasn't really paying attention to the details and was like "I just want this done, and fast". This was mostly done so I could feel that the project is moving along, even if slowly.
Because that's how it felt like, like I didn't do much to impact the project lately (albeit I did take some time off two days). But this week definitely paved the way for next week's tasks:
- make glider functionality
- wall running communicating with the level blueprint
- make placeholder modular dungeon-like cave assets
- figure out wall/vine climbing and ledge/gap climbing
For sure, when the wall climbing and ledge/gap climbing is figured out and implemented, I'll try them on the Dam area. But for now, the Dam is simply a transitional area towards the next level. And I will try having tunnels in the dam and make the player go inside the tunnels.