davidt2rpro

[davidt2rpro]

Game Updates #2-ish

I had also made unique floor textures for each of the rooms. They don't like up perfectly but the pixel effect voids that.

previously i had a plane under the map, out of range of the nav mesh, for stopping if anything falls out of the map somehow. that's still here but I've added an easier way to recover the grenade rather than just pressing a button whenever you feel like it.

whenever the grenade hits the plane, it destroys it and give it back to the player, if i get the time i could add it for the other physical objects the game has, though that's only the player and enemies at the moment.

[davidt2rpro]

Game Updates

Another big dump of progress updates :v

I've mostly been working on game art , and tweaking existing game mechanics, making it look nice now that it plays well.

the pause menu was altered to fit the font and style i was using for most of the game text, though there's still a small bit of text on other widgets not using the new style, so that's something to alter soon.

I actually added a new mechanic for this, the player now has 6 shots before a 1.5 second reload. That allowed me to add a visual ammo indicator, nothing special. The lightbulb acts as a visual indicator for if you have the grenade to throw, illuminated for 1 and dark for 0.

various sounds have also been included, to make it less empty sounding, not 100% complete in my eyes but at a complete enough state.

the shooting blueprint was edited to company the new ammo mechanic, along with a sound, it now stops you from shooting when you're out, as well as a clicking sound to audibly indicate it.

[davidt2rpro]

Prototype Progress

Lackluster blog upkeep for my actual game again. here's what I've been working on :b

I added a pixilated post processing effect, similar to my arcade game. the pixilation is scaled up a bit more, a bit larger than 64x64, any smaller than that and the player disappears between pixels, which is annoying but its just larger than that to prevent it.

Its also very dark.

the intense darkness gives the game a lot more challenge since you only know what's in your cone of light.

there is also a secondary fire along with the basic attacking, that launches a ball of light that bounces a bit and lights an area around it. with some of the feedback I got from playtesting, this might be removed and replaced with a better feature.

in prep for that playtesting I did also add a list of controls that can be viewed anytime, though the feedback doesn't mention it being used anywhere so I'm unsure if it was ever used. Because of that Made a more 'visible' list of controls.

I didn't really want the entire screen to be taken up by them so I compacted them together a bit, they've been added recently so I haven't been able to see if different people have any trouble understanding it but i have made the help menu a bit more visible just in case.

I also added some menus, one for the start and a pause menu. Coincidentally the game being paused as it starts works quite well for the menu. although the menus are a bit simple, I do plan to improv them to fit the games aesthetic a bit more.

That's Pretty much all the major stuff that has been added so far, got a lot more that I hope to do an the finished product should be quite cool :b

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - S.M.A.R.T Targets

From the feedback, here are some targets that I can work on to improve my project;

'I cant see them'

Specific : I will add some additional mechanics to make enemies easier to spot, and make a setting for increased visibility.

Measurable : Add 2 new mechanics and 1 setting for visibility.

Achievable : Work with some lighting and widgets to implement the new features to the existing game.

Relevant : Adding these features will not only give the game a more diverse way to explore the multitude of rooms but also make the game easier for people with worse sight.

Time-Bound : Complete these additions in under 2 weeks for final playtesting.

'On the initial playtest - I found it a little disorientating and difficult to get started…'

Specific : Add a visual aid that shows a simplified list of controls.

Measurable : Design 1-3 control aids.

Achievable : Work in photoshop to design easy to read control imaging and implement it into the game.

Relevant : Adding a 'Louder' way to tell the player the controls rather than an optional help bar will help with the players that don't know the help bar shows the controls, to make for a quicker start.

Time-Bound : Complete this addition before the 2 week deadline and see how it improves beginner playability.

'Occasionally, I could clip through the top of the wall where there wasn't an exit and teleport into the above room'

Specific : Implement Visual Indictors for the directions a player could go.

Measurable : Design 4 Indicators for direction.

Achievable : More work in PS or simple shapes in UE and added into the game.

Relevant : This is another feature that could potentially help playability for new players.

Time-Bound : Complete this before the 2 week deadline and test if it improves beginning playability.

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - Playtesting Feedback

Yesterday was the first day of some early prototype playtesting, Here's the feedback from that playtesting. a bit lackluster but still useful.

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - Project Proposal

For the rest of this project, I've decided to continue working on the dungeon crawler. one of the main reasons is that its something ill enjoy playing and it will let me add various aspects that I've put in other games into it and have it still fit.

the original idea I had would be to convert it into a first person rather than top down, which is be honest is something I could do, though it isn't something I should focus on, considering this project ends in 3 weeks.

the main ideas I mentioned in the prototype's conceptualization is still apparent, and I actually did a bit of additional work whilst doing the project and managed to get the flashlight & darkness as well as the hallways.

I want the game to play as something that can be played in a speedrunning type fashion but also something you can play slow and methodically, which is one of the big reasons for the dark environment and the flashlight.

the games general appearance is probably going to be like my other games, pixel, since I can make a lot of really nice assets with it.

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - Dungeon Crawler - Research

Gun Knight is a Rogue-like that essentially says what it is in the name, you play as a knight with a gun, running through levels killing enemies and collecting interchangeable modifications for your trusty revolver, and fighting the occasional boss every 10 or so levels.

the gameplay is very repetitive, very much like an arcade styled game, with this is basically.

WindowKill is a very unique game, its a relatively fast paced top down shooter that has you shooting enemies to get a form of currency or exp to use for various upgrades for you to purchase, with the bosses becoming harder and having a different unique mechanic about them that you have to overcome and avoid in order to defeat it.

the main selling point though is how it displays all of this action, rather it being on one application, which technically it is, it displays the game on various different windows while also moving around with the changing of the player area, shrinking overtime and growing wherever the player shoots, which makes you move a bit more of your focus to the surroundings rather than purely the enemies.

Protektor is a shooter with a lot of cool mechanics, one being the restriction of ammo, and needing to stand still to reload, which makes you manage your ammo a lot more and promotes a bit of a slower gameplay unless you're confident in hitting your shots.

along with killing everyone in the level, the player can also collect stars in each level, which makes them explore a bit more and gives a secondary goal with rescuing the vip you're escorting out of the building.

Driftr is quite a simple game, a player with perpetual motion running around and surviving until the timer reaches zero, which is surprisingly challenging with the movement, since you cant stop and adjust where you're going, it has to be all on the fly.

the game shoots for you, probably to not overwhelm the player too much with moving, avoiding, AND shooting though it makes it a whole lot stressful when trying to survive for the 3 minutes you have to. the various powerups the game has also makes it better with various abilities, from percentage chances for double shots or lightning, to a pure luck boost or better handling.

Station is a wave based bullet hell styled top down shooter where you dash and dodge enemy fire while destroying all the enemies to progress to the next wave, collecting upgrades along the way to improve your ships combat and survival abilities.

along with the usual high score, the game also has a chain stat for killstreaks which is neat to have included so you can see how high you can get without losing it.

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - Dungeon Crawler - Conceptualization

I've got a couple cool ideas for this prototype, probably more in-depth since this style of game is the one I prefer out of all the other prototypes. the main idea is having the player need to traverse the map and various rooms with a flashlight, and making the world dark so that it is a necessity.

another idea to spice up the room variety would be to add different corridors and such that could lead to other areas.

enemy variety would also be good, rather than having one enemy that follows you around.

this prototype could also benefit a bit from some sort of story, since it would fit a lot better as a story driven game than the other prototypes, it would just be making the story and all the story related objects and/or interactable.

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - Dungeon Crawler

A pretty simple start, blank template and a character, and then the usual parts of adding movement input and cubes and bits :b

Moved the camera way above the player for the top down view, and for me, I set it to orthographic for the more authentic 2D 'aesthetic'

Input action control mapping is something I covered in the other prototypes so no need to put it here again.

Though since its the only prototype that uses the blank template with the player being a character i did have to add an extra bit for the movement.

I also had to make a new game mode and set that along with the plyer character.

Next thing was the map, quick and easy.

the blueprint was not however

This is for making the room spawn adjacent to each other when the player enters the doorway, it had to be copied and altered for the other directions.

There was also a camera put here, also raised, as the main game camera.

back in the player, custom event was added to change the camera view from the player to the map.

and then it was linked to the tick event.

and back onto the map blueprint to add a macro line trace for detecting whether a room can spawn or not.

thats then added onto the existing room spawn blueprint.

for some variety I made some child blueprints from the master room, using them as alternative possible spawns, with colors and a number indicating its type.

with those created I made an actor class array variable to act as the variable to store the different rooms, and then added that to the spawn blueprint as the final thing for it.

Next thing is the shooting, which also combines with the player rotation following the mouse.

first off I added a scene and a mesh linked to that, named pivot and shoot.

which was then linked to this custom event and set to activate every tick.

I then added another character to serve as a default enemy, with similar prep to the player, just with no pivot and input mapping.

to make it move I made a custom event to make the enemy repeat the move to node.

that was then added to the begin play event so that its always active.

to make it kill the player its just a simple collision box with an overlap event that re-opens the level, essentially killing the player as it resets their progress.

this was then set to auto posses when spawned in the world, along with me adding the nav mesh for the AI to move.

another pop into the project settings to change some settings so the AI can only detect me within a certain distance, and to make the nav mesh reload with every new room.

and now to make the enemy an invoker so these setting changes work as intended, and also set the tile gen to a suitable distance

This was also unchecked so the nav mesh generating ignores the player.

To make them spawn, I decided to go with a scene spawn point, as to make it look cleaner

the spawn blueprint is simple although I haven't been able to get it to work properly, it only spawns at one location, which is fine for this room bot the others have multiple points.

the last main thing is the projectile that the player shoots.

another actor with a sphere and projectile movement this time, nd a new channel for projectiles in the project settings

the code is quite simple, just a branch that destroys the projectile when it collides with something, or destroys the thing it hits and itself, the enemy in this case.

I also added a new input action for the shooting, this helps because I can set it to only function when pressed so it acts more like a single shot rather than a rapid fire.

then its a simple spawn actor with the location and rotation of the pivot sphere And it shoots.

And that's basically the Dungeon crawler done :b

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - Brick Breaking Research

brick devastator plays like a normal brick breaker, with the powerups and different levels, though has a neat twist once you get to the end of a level, with how the powerups for the game work you end up getting a massive burst of powerups that cause so much chaos its actually fun , and the detail of the balls destroying the borders when they get too big is also very cool.

Brick Breaker Bunch is a very unique breaker, since the maps are all very unique and have different challenges for the player to overcome, the detail in the visuals of each level also complement this quite well. The large mount of levels make for a very fun breaker that brings plenty of challenge to the table when it comes to its varying levels.

Brick Breaker Ultimate is another one that looks simple but also have a unique twist with the angled bricks to destroy which spice the game up a little, the tougher bricks, combined with the simple early arcade style make it not to confusing for the simple player and lets them focus on the game rather than the surroundings.

Brick Breaker Ultra is another breaker that uses an extra prefix for some extra cool, but generally is very good, it has a lot of levels, with bosses, like some classic arcades, and has the visual aesthetic of an early days mobile game, or something of the sort (in my opinion).

Brick Breaker Evolved (Last prefix I promise :b) is a multiplayer brick breaker with head to head gameplay putting you to the test against your rival, and with a limitless supply of bricks thanks to the Tetris inspired addition system, makes the game really fun to play with the added challenge of beating your opponent.

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - Brick Breaking Conceptualization

I had an idea to have the art for the game very construction themed, and to make the play area a building and have the platform a big trampoline being carried by construction workers that are bouncing a heavy ball of some kind up towards the various windows and bits.

It would also be better since I could have the more durable brick be a tougher type of reinforced glass.

from a gameplay pov, I could make the bat move slower every fail, as if the workers carrying the trampoline slowly got injured and were unable to carry it, and have other people/workers walk past the window, making it harder since you wouldn't be able to destroy it with the person there. This then opens up for some more animations for certain game over effects.

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - Brick Breaker Prototype

Not gonna be a whole 7 or so posts since there isn't a need to go through everything, just the new stuff.

I made a texture to use as a base glow to use for the textures of all the base prototype assets.

using various scalar and vector parameters, along with some multiply nodes, I replicated a simple white glowing texture.

with that, I made a material instance, copied it a couple times, and colored each of them for the various assets the base prototype will have.

with the glowy textures done I made a pawn to serve as the player, and I added a spline, which is new for me, among some other bits for the visuals of the platform/bat.

in the event graph I added a timeline and made it so the bat would move from the left of the spline (0) to the right (1), and linked that to a world transform and other nodes so that it recognized the length of the spline and used that s a reference for the timeline

once that was done I added some custom events and linked them up to the various connection points on the timeline, for the movement of the bat. (and a restart, just in case)

with the custom events done, i mde some input actions for the movement and then linked that up to the custom events i made.

And then added the mapping context so it would actually move.

for the last bit for the plyer I need the ball that the bat hits, so I made it and added the collision an sphere in a similar way to the bat. but also added projectile movement so I could tweak the speed and not make it as slow as a heavy bowling ball after being rolled by 5 year old, without the ramp assistance bit.

then we can go back to the player and add the blueprint for spawning the ball.

with another input action, I was able to make the blueprint for the ball spawn, to make it only work once and reset when the timeline was reset, and to hide when it hadn't been launched.

and the reset was also linked to the ball shown in the bat viewport to show itself only when the bat was reset

with the main part down, the brick was the only other thing that was missing, and some walls. the bricks were merely a cube with a destroy on hit event.

crude but it works.

and the walls were well, just some simple cubes stretched to meet the proportions that I wanted.

again, simple, but that's prototypes for you.

The real final bit was the death box that triggered the reset for the bat, and that was another relatively quick one.

and with that a small HUD for some extra detail

so detailed.

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - Endless Runner Conceptualization

If I choose to continue this later on, I've got some ideas for what I could change about this prototype.

I'll probably focus on the arty portion for this prototype since something as simple looking as this would take alot to make it unique In my opinion.

My initial plan would probably be to make a redesign of one of my previous characters from my old projects, since at this point I've made my own made up series with all the different games I've used them in :b

The environment would probably transition between forest-y portions and metallic styled complexes to get a good contrast, and its a first for me making a huge full screen background so it could go either way in the terms of quality.

I also had an idea to have a multitude of different enemies, some specific to environments, and some universal across all of them, like a form of security turret in the complexes or a type of foliage based enemy in the forest.

May or may not edit this with more if I think of anything else, and if I remember to :b

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - Endless Runner Prototype pt.7

last bit for the simple runner prototype.

I created some widgets to use as the games HUD, for score and multipliers and such, as well as a death hun for when the player dies.

Most, if not all the text bindings in the game HUD were almost identical, just some changed variables and append text in slot A, the only different bind was the one for the high score which was casted to a custom game instance rather than the game mode.

the death widget had the same game instance bind for the high score and some buttons for restarting and quitting, better than it just restarting itself when you die :b

after that I added some new functions to the main tile for setting the high score and for showing the death widget when, well, dying.

This function makes it so that it removes all the current widgets being shown, that being the HUD, and pausing the game so you don't keep moving once you've hit something, then it'll free the mouse so you can press the buttons when the death widget is added to the viewport.

the high score setting function has 2 back to back cast nodes for so that you get access to the variables within the game mode and instance, base score and high score.

as I said, the score and high score variables, they're linked to a greater than node with base score in A and high score in B so that if the base score is higher than the high score then it will set the high score to whatever the score is.

and that's pretty much the bare minimum for the endless runner rapid prototype :b

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - Endless Runner Prototype pt.6

time to add some relative challenge to the prototype :b

I just created a child BP of the original tile, renamed it and added a cube along one of the lanes so that the player would walk into it unless they move lanes.

then I also added a bit to the event graph so than when the player overlaps with the cube, the level reopens and essentially 'restarts'.

once that was done I just duplicated the tile 2 more times and moved the cube into the other lanes.

I then went into the game mode BP to make the game generate the new tiles. I duplicated and renamed the spawn tile function, and added a new variable for the random tile and made it a class function actor added the tiles I had just duplicated into the variable's default value

when that was done I changed the class of the spawn actor node to be the new actor variable, and connecting a random integer node which would generate a random number to decide which of the 3 new tiles to spawn.

I also had to add a cast node for the original tile since it wouldn't be able to spawn without a connection to the main tile.

and finally I added another for loop node for the new function, and replaced the tile function in the main tile with the new randomized one

and voila,

obstacles that the player needs to avoid.

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - Endless Runner Prototype pt.5

to make it less boring I'm also implementing a mechanic that speeds the player gradually the more they progress.

to start I made a new function in the tile blueprint and simply called it IncreaseSpeed, then linked the exec to a cast to player node.

i then linked character movement and max speed to the cast node.

and from the movement node i linked a set max speed node, which was then linked to a clamp with a minimum of 600 and a maximum of 1500, and then a multiply node, with a value of 1.05, connected the walkspeed variable to the clamp.

with that done I simply added the function onto the tiles event graph after the add score function.

[davidt2rpro]

Rapid Prototyping - Endless Runner Prototype pt.4

With the base movement basically complete, its time to work on the score.

I started by adding some variables to the game mode for the score, its multiplier and collectables.

I then went back to the tile blueprint and added a new function for adding the score, which involved getting a cast to game mode node and linking that to the base exec and linking a set score node to that, and then linking the multiplier and regular node variables to the cast and set node with some multiply and add nodes and finally linking the set score to a print string node to show the score.

and it works as intended.

to start on the collectable, I made a new blueprint and added a sphere.

I then went into the event graph and connected the cast to character and game mode nodes to a begin overlap event.

from there I connected an increment integer and a branch to the game mode cast. then I connected another increment integer to the branch as well as a set collectable node if the branch condition was true.

after that I simply connected the required nodes to the cast game mode node and added a destroy actor node if the branch condition was false and after the collectable variable was set.