Each time I go back to a topic I had learned about a few months ago I always find myself a bit lost. This is because that even with the notes there is so much to remember and I had not prepared well enough for the future. Well now I know way better so I continued to work on the base necessities of an enemy entity, making sure the animations were ready for the basics. Made a quick adjustment to how the effect of the melee hit appeared because since this boss is so large it was appearing at the center of his body no matter where you hit. I instead shifted the appearance of the effect on the sword whenever it dealt damage, that way it makes more sense.
Since the ground of the level is uneven I convinced myself that the boss animation should have IK (inverse kinematics) for the feet. That way the feet should adjust to any angle the ground has, but the one I made for the player was very complex (and for good reason). So, I tried out a different tutorial that did seem very good at first, it was involved but not too complicated. After about an hour or two of implementing exactly what the tutorial told me to, the logic just wasn’t working right. The displacement of the feet was way off, the character kept descending into the ground, and it made too many sharp movements. Frustrated I decided to scrap it, as much as it was a waste of time it was a good mental exercise and from it I learned a new blueprint trick the “validated get” which checks if the variable itself is valid. Saves a lot of time and helps with a lot of unnecessary logic.
After being mad about the feet I came to terms with the fact that sometimes the enemy’s feet would hover. Perhaps in the future I could implement an easier way for the IK, but it’s a lot of unnecessary work at the moment so I moved on to more important things. The rotation of the enemy was strange and even more noticeable because it is so large. I learned about using the Orient Rotation to Movement setting which makes the rotation smoother, rather than sharp turns. This worked very well for the first boss too because he would turn too easily to follow the player it didn’t feel proper. I then started laying more basic functions and AI for the enemy that I could easily use for future entities. I made an attack task that included the logic so attacks didn’t repeat and I put footstep notifications to place sounds and visual effects if necessary.
Once those were in place I couldn’t think of anything more that I needed to include in the basic logic for the AI so I began to work on the specifics for the Golem boss. I grabbed another free paragon character from the marketplace. His name is Boris and he is a big ol’ bear and his animations are perfect for the golem. Large, lumbering, and primal. I’ve used only two animations so far, the idle and the walking. Tomorrow I will check what attack animations a big boss can use to reach the small player, along with other dangers the level could summon.
GoldenGratus Games 