I’ve learned a lot about cameras today, at least in Unreal. It has made the game more dynamic and visually interesting. I added some camera lag, but not too much. Enough that sometimes the camera has to catch up with the player to give a sense of speed and thrill. I was able to learn a way to pull the camera back and push it to its original place which is something I wanted to do for awhile but the lessons wouldn’t stick or made sense to me. Sometimes all it takes is a lot of focus, and coffee. I’m not sure if I did it right cause I stuck two timelines after another, but hasn’t broken down yet so it’ll stay.
There is also a way to transitions between different camera views which I have been aware of for awhile, I just didn’t know how to get it working. Thanks to the YouTube videos I watched I now have a working camera that spans the boss room and transitions to the player’s camera. It looks very simple but it does a nice job of giving a show of the available space and coming battle. There is so much to play with and I had a lot of fun today playing with camera settings such as having ease in and/or out at different speeds. And thanks to having different aspect ratios on the camera it adds black bars when it first transitions, it’s a nice cinematic effect.
A great and easy function that makes a huge difference is camera fade as well. So I can fade to black (or whatever color) and vice versa. This is incredibly helpful when moving from one perspective to the next or giving the scene a different look which I do when the player dies, and make the screen appear to be yellow which communicates they are inside the lantern. I also took the time to fix and organize the mess that was inside the animation blueprint for the main character. It was a spaghetti of wires but it wasn’t too hard to untangle. This will be incredibly useful when I add more animations should I need to.
The final bit of work I did was on the settings of the whip. I felt that it was still too bouncy like a jump rope or large rubber band. I wanted it to appear a bit more stiff, and match the power of its impact. With a change of some settings I think I’m heading in the right direction. It doesn’t recoil too wildly after it hits an object. A good word is oompf, it has more oompf.
Going down the things I want to do and need to do, I may look at learning more about particle effects and material effects. There is definitely a better look for the light weapons I can achieve, and it’s something I have been putting off for awhile so I am excited for that. I may be able to give it electricity effects or something even more unexpected.
GoldenGratus Games 