Finished off adding the decals to the existing rooms. Really makes everything look nasty, I am glad with how much texture it adds. Upon some research with how to delay the spawning of the character, I saw that with Unreal I had to basically figure out a way to trick the character into loading when the level was ready. My solution was to move the player to the proper position once the level is done setting itself. We shall see if this holds up as I continue, for now it is working fine.
My biggest obstacle and time consumer for the day was fixing this game breaking bug where the player could phase through the walls while the castle was moving. I know it has to do with the janky collision, and after a lot of testing and experimenting with ridiculous solutions I found that the problem most consistently or even exclusively took place in tight spaces. So I had to move some placements of the flowers because it is from those points that the building can rotate, so it needs to be placed more strategically. I also found that it may have been the “roll” the character did when falling from a high place that is causing it to phase through walls. Basically it is suppose to track the character’s falling speed and if the character fell fast they would execute a roll. But since gravity is weird it seemed to trigger the roll very frequently. Once I removed the rolling I haven’t encountered the problem again.
After spending a few hours on that issue I moved onto easier updates, adding more physics objects that would help tell a story. I put rib cages, skulls, and other bones around the level. I added shield decorations on some of the flags as well.
I added sounds to when the castle rotated. I will probably change them eventually, since I didn’t like how it turned so silently, the sounds I put it were found in a rush.
I didn’t expect to have to make a whole separate blueprint for the inspect-able objects for this level, but I should have known since the entire level cannot stay static. I still didn’t have a flat color texture for the items so I made one quickly and I started to test it out. First thing I realized was that the object would return to the place it spawned in, but since the castle rotated it could be in a different location. Then I made it return to the place from where you picked it up. But it would attach to the player and I couldn’t get it to attach back to the castle. Instead I made it that you simply inspected the item without picking it up. Which makes sense for this level since most things are supposed to be stuck in place.
I made sure like the save points and all the other objects, you cannot interact with it while the castle is rotating. Also I edited the item description so the background covers the entire screen because while testing I found that the text could go past the black box. Making it cover the entire screen was much easier.
With the items figured out I can start filing the rooms with important clues and story bits to make the castle’s story come alive. And through that I will also slowly figure out the flow that will get the player to the boss of the level. Creating the boss and the boss fight will probably be as difficult if not more difficult than making this entire stage.
GoldenGratus Games 