Thanks to the channel of codelikeme I was able to find some useful tutorials on pushing and pulling objects. It was originally made to act like the Force from a Star Wars game (Fallen Order), but I was able to change it to work for my game. The pushing works fine, at first it actually pulled objects for some reason, all I had to do was flip over the force value by making it negative and it worked fine. There might be some unforeseen problems later, at least I know where to look if ever something goes wrong.
I was having problems with the whip getting caught in everything, so I cleared up some functions and started from scratch. I took what I learned from the line traces and worked backwards. I got a decent looking whip out. The blueprint is getting bigger and bigger, it’s becoming quite a monstrosity. Getting to more complex mechanics is always fun. I need to design objects that can be pushed and pulled, and other objects that can only be used for swinging. If I keep the grabbing and throwing mechanics I have to create small objects that are throwable. So far the throwing is very buggy. The animation doesn’t play when you try to pull, and the object in the hand seems to collide with the player. I need to figure out how to turn it off while it’s in the hand then turn it back on again after its launched.
I put a video up here where I show the functionality I have so far. The visible lines are the line traces for debugging. So far I’m very happy with how the whip is working. It can translate to a lot of fun gameplay, and perhaps more platforming than I had originally anticipated.
Debugging it really fun, but also frustrating. I’m gonna need to fix all the catching and throwing before I move on to the next whip mechanic, which should be the swinging. If it becomes too much I am not afraid to simplify it. Throwing objects might be the first thing I cut from the mechanics, it was much easier when the whip simply pulled things towards the character instead of bringing it to the hand. We’ll see.
GG out.
GoldenGratus Games 