Took a lot of time to think about what I wanted the game to be, and had to adjust my expectations for the future to match the work and progress that I have. Going in I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to create, because I had no experience and only a vague idea of what I wanted the game to be like. Now that I have some knowledge and capability I am more equipped to plan ahead and decide accordingly.
I was a bit too lenient with how I decided the numbers/values of all the costs for all the abilities such as the heal, and blocking. As the combat progresses I need to be aware of how to balance the stats and will probably do more research as well into the philosophy of numbers in game design. I have played enough to know what I like, but I feel an academic perspective will help as well as I play around with the numbers. I was slow to start on creating and improving the mechanics because I will still considering what I really wanted to add. In the meantime I adjusted the user interface so it can communicate clearly about the player’s resources. Added logic as well so that it disappears after some time. From playing other games I have come to appreciate when the screen isn’t littered with tons of text or information. It’s nice to have an empty screen with just the game environment to look at.
Improved the particle spawn rate and speed for the interact effect, so it appears faster to the objects that are being indicated for the interaction. And I set the images to all use the same color so if I don’t have to edit each individual image. The melee is still a thorn in my side, I realized if I added a failsafe at the end of an attack it may solve the issues of it being stuck. I hope it works.
After a lot of thinking I looked upon the grapple logic I had and told myself I didn’t need it anymore. Early on in development I spent a lot of time with the swinging and grappling, because it was definitely fun overall. But I didn’t consider what it added to the game or what kind of game it needed to be because of the swinging and grappling. They are essentially tools to travel far and fast, and would require a large space to truly be used to its fullest potential. Well I wasn’t making a platforming game and I didn’t want to create huge worlds or stages. It felt out of place being able to use a grapple hook. And while it was a fun mechanic for awhile, it didn’t serve a purpose in the slow-paced exploration part of the game. So, I removed it all. In it’s place I added a new ability which I am calling the Dark Power, the opposite of the Light power, which is currently the heal. My plan is to have more powers to use and each one will have a light and dark side. This dark power regenerates your Primelight at the cost of health.
It wasn’t too hard to get it working. It’s fairly simple and works very similarly to the healing power. I added logic to the UI as well to tell the player if their Primelight is full or if they don’t have enough health to use the Dark Power. I have some ideas for future powers that I am excited for.
For a long time I’ve struggled with getting the proper aesthetic for the game. I’m still an amateur in basically all the crafts, and I need some shortcuts. And adding post-process effects is a good way to achieve nice looks easily. I just could never find one I actually liked. I took another crack at it and used some pre-made effects that I was able to edit. With some tinkering I ended up with a look that has nice outlines and added sketch lines to shadows that really help make all the flat textures look more visually interesting. This is probably my favorite update of the day because it’s been something I’ve been trying for so long and I finally found a look that I like.
Updated some of the tutorials and their images because they were outdated. Then I had the idea of adding a shockwave attack to the boss. With the removal of the grapple I still wanted vertically to play a part in the game. Having an attack that needed to be jumped over is a good addition to the combat and adds variety to the dance. I stepped into blender quickly and got the model that I once used to make a donut and I made a large thin ring. Imported it into Unreal and lit it up. I had some trouble getting it to detect the player but that’s because it didn’t create a collision box when it was imported, but I easily added one and it was able to hurt the player.
When it spawns I simply scale it up each tick and it acts as a very simple shockwave.
April is coming to an end and I might try packaging the game just to see if it can even run on its own at this point. Added a button to clear the save data so it can be cleared outside the engine.
The way I set up the block to negate damage had caused it to heal the entity if their block value was higher than the damage. This caused a lot of problems early on, I should have fixed it earlier but I only got to it now. My previous solution was just to make all the damage higher than the block, but that caused a lot of attacks to deal way too much damage. Now the health just simply does not get affected if the block is higher than the damage. Plain and simple.
Added one last inspect-able item to the stage. This is an important one because it lays out some important info especially about the boss. Put more damage on physics objects because some were getting stuck in walls and wouldn’t break. Then added a loading screen. Which doesn’t seem to always play, but I assume it’s because the tutorial I watched was only showing the simple way of putting it to the screen. Made sure the mouse made sounds on the buttons as well.
Overall a very productive day. Not quite the focused work I had done for the previous weeks, but I had a lot ideas I wanted to flesh out. The core gameplay is coming together very well. Tomorrow I will see if I can learn how to package the game. It can hopefully serve as a demo.
GoldenGratus Games 