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Class Whiteboard

The class has made a whiteboard with ideas for the game we want to make for our FMP. This is good for me since I'm not entirely sure that I know what kind of game I want to make.

FMP Year 1 Mind Map - Horizon | Microsoft Whiteboard

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PEGI 12

PEGI is a video game age rating system which is used to warn people of a young or younger age what a certain game might contain. It is used for the protection of young people when they play games. PEGI 12 in particular is when a game has been rated suitable for people aged 12 and above. 3 examples of PEGI 12 games are:

Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Fallout Shelter

Sea of Thieves

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UN Goal in my Project

The UN goal I chose for my project was the Zero Hunger goal because I like food. I presented this goal in my arcade game with the use of food as pickups from the enemies that you kill, and each different food item did something different when picked up. The burger gives you a 10 second speed boost, the carrot gives you 5 seconds of invincibility, and the chocolate bar adds 10 seconds back to the timer.

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UN Goals

The theme for our arcade project is the UN Sustainability Goals. There are 17 of these goals:

No Poverty - to remove poverty everywhere in the world Zero Hunger - improve nutrition and agriculture across the world Good Health and Well-being - improve general health for people of all ages Quality Education - provide education to every country Gender Equality - achieve the empowerment of women and girls Clean Water and Sanitation - ensure clean water and sanitation Affordable and Clean Energy - make sure that energy is reliable, affordable and sustainable Decent Work and Economic Growth - Provide work and economic growth Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure - provide infrastructure and innovation everywhere Reduce Inequalities - reduce inequalities in all countries Sustainable Cities and Communities - safe human settlements Responsible Consumption and Production - ensure responsible consumption and production Climate Action - take action to combat climate change Life Below Water - conserve wildlife in the ocean Life on Land - conserve wildlife on land Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions - promote a peaceful society for sustainable development Partnerships for the Goals - ensure cooperation in achieving the sustainability goals

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Plans for Potential Final Additions

Today is the last day of the actual development of my project. My plans for today are mainly add the sound effects into my game wherever they are applicable. That's the primary goal and it should hopefully not take long. Once I've done that, I will start doing one of two things; make a forth pickup for my game, or make a new enemy for the game. The pickup would probably be a lollipop that would add 1 or 2 seconds of time back to the timer for every enemy you kill for the next 10 seconds or so. The enemy would be a blue enemy that has 10 health instead of 1 and would be pretty slow, but pretty big as well. If i get both of these done, I'll make it so that these big enemies will have a guaranteed chance to drop the lollipop pickup.

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Audio Credits

Music:

Main Menu Music / Final Girl - Jeramy Blake (Youtube Audio Library)

Game Music / Evil Everywhere - Evening Telecast (Youtube Audio Library)

Credits Music / Airline - National Sweetheart (1) (Youtube Audio Library)

Sounds:

Gunshot SJW.wav - Polly Robertson

Health Loss - Polly Robertson

Oscar_C_loss - Oscar Cartwright

Jump SFX - Oscar Cartwright

CoinSound - Polly Robertson

Health Gain - Polly Robertson

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General Game Update

I am doing a general game update, since i haven't updated my blog much.

I have made all three of my pickups and got them working in my game. I have a burger, which increases movement speed, a carrot, which grants invincibility, and a chocolate bar, which adds 30 seconds (subject to change) to the timer.

How i put them into the game, i made a custom event for each of them, added in the code required for their specific functions, and then called the custom event in the actor blueprints and connected a destroy actor node to it so the actor would disappear when picked up.

For the carrot pickup, i had to add a branch and the carrot buff variable to my player damage code, since it wasn't working at all.

I also added UI elements for the active buffs to show how long they have left, or in the case of the chocolate pickup, what it did.

I also added a shield sprite that appears on my player character when he picks up a carrot pickup, to show that you have the invincibility buff.

I was following a video to try and get a black outline on my walls to make the game look more retro. This is the video.

It didn't seem to work, since a setting that was changed at the end was not in my engine, however, since it is a post processing effect, it made the game look darker, which i prefer to the normal version.

For the pickups, i managed to get a system where the enemies would have a chance to drop a random pickup. Here is the code.

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Sprites

I have made some sprites for my arcade game. These will be for the pickups that i am going to have . So far i have a burger, which is going to increase movement speed for 10 seconds, and a carrot, which will make you invincible for 10 seconds. I am, however planning on switching these around. Here are the sprites.

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Timer and Enemy/Player Damage

I have made a timer for the game and a way to kill enemies to get points.

I started with the timer, which essentially acts as the health bar in a way. Since it's a timer, i slowly ticks down, but getting hit by an enemy will lower it by a further 15 seconds. To set it up, i made a custom event and named it timer. I cast to the arcade instance, since that's where i decided to store the time variable. I then added a 1 second delay and got the time variable and a subtract node so that one would be subtracted every second, allowing it to act as a timer.

I then put in a less equal node in, connected to a branch, and from true, i put a 0.8 second delay followed by an Open Level by object reference and put the end screen in it, making it so when the timer reaches zero, the game will end.

I then put this custom event between the event tick and the high score code, so that the timer code will happen every tick.

As for the enemy damage, i had it so the collision capsule would disable on being hit for about 1.5 seconds and then reenable again, but Jake fixed this for me since disabling the capsule collision might cause some problems. Instead he connected a branch, put it between the Cast to enemy_char and the Cast to ArcadeGameInstance, connected the false pin to the game instance cast, and made a new boolean variable called invun (I renamed it to Invulnerability)

Then on the end of the code to lower the timer on taking damage, he added a set boolean node and ticked the box to disable the enemy damage, then connected a Play Animation node to it to play the UI animation that i made for when you take damage.

We then connected a 1.5 second timeline to play after taking damage with this code, and once it finishes, we put a set invulnerability boolean and left the box unchecked, allowing the character to take damage again.

Finally, i set up the score on enemy kill system, starting with a sequence branching off of the event tick, with a branch coming off of the second sequence pin. Connected to the branch is the enemy health variable, with a less equal node set to 0, then connected to the branch. This is to check if an enemy is dead, and since it is connected to the event tick, it will do this every single tick. The branch is then connected to a Cast to ArcadeGameInstance node.

A set score node is connected to the cast node, with a target score and a + node set to 10 branching off of it. This makes it so when an enemy dies, 10 points will be added to the score. On the end of the line of code, there is a Destroy Actor node, allowing the dead enemy to disappear when killed.

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Rotation Problems

Me and Sam were figuring out how to make the gun my character is holding rotate when moving, but stop the player sprite moving. This is so the player knows which way the character is facing and shooting without the sprite moving and looking weird.

We had to make a new input for rotation and apply the Axis2D (Vector2D) value type, then put the Enhanced Input Action IA_Rotation event into the third person character blueprint.

We then put a set relative rotation node with the target being the scene, since the gun it attached to a scene instead of the actual character mesh, and then put a Break Vector 2D and a Find Look at Rotation node, split the struct pin on both the start and target, before connecting the X and Y on the Break Vector 2D to the target X and Y on the Find Look at Rotation. Then the return value was connected back to the Set Relative Rotation node.

Finally, we went into the IMC_Default and changed the movement to Gamepad Right Thumbstick 2D-Axis, with a scalar index and a negate index for the Y axis.

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My Top Down Shooter

I have decided to make a top down shooter as my arcade project. The reason for this is because it allows for a creative art style and they allow for certain mechanics that wouldn't work in any other kind of game. In particular, the limited vision when not facing a certain direction.

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Attract Mode

An attract mode is a screen on an arcade machine that acts as the game trailer that players when the game is idol and isn't being played.

The attract mode is used to attract people over to play the arcade game on offer.

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Arcade Game Ideas

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Animated UI

This is so we can have animated components on our UI when certain things happen, such as flashing words or colour changes.

To start, we navigate to our third person character and make a user widget object reference variable.

I then went into my player UI and selected the score number and made an animation using the transform track in the animation menu. I did the same for the high score but i did opacity instead.

The i go into my third person character and, since the first step was wrong and it was actually the incorrect type of variable, i had to drag off of the Create Player UI Widget node and promote it to a variable.

Once that is done, i dragged the new variable in and selected Get Variable, the dragged off of that and typed Play Animation. Once i'd done this, i dragged off the variable again and typed the name of the animation i wanted played, then connected that to the Play Animation node, before connecting the white pins together.

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UI for the Arcade Game

We made a widget blueprint for our UI.

Then we went into the blueprint and put in a canvas panel and a text box for the score. I have also put the code in for the score and high score.

So far the UI looks like this.

We are also making a UI for the end screen, which uses the same code for score and high score, since they will displayed on the end screen. But to be able to view the UI on the end screen, we had to make a new level and a new pawn blueprint to that the end screen can be interacted with. This code has been put into the event graph of the pawn.

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Arcade Arrays

We made an arcade array for our arcade games.

To start with, we made a new third person project and removed everything in the third person template arena and one of the walls. This is so we have an area for the player to move around. We then deleted the jumping code and the forward and backward moving code from the third person character, so that the character only moves left and right.

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Having Multiple Fixed Cameras Switch Between Each Other

I have made it so that the character view will switch between different cameras when i walk under them.

I started by adding a box collision to the camera viewport.

I then went to the event graph, right clicked the box component and selected add event and "On Component Begin Overlap (Box)". I then put in another "Set View Target with Blend" and put in the get player controller and self variable and connected them, and i also put a "Cast To BP_ThirdPersonCharacter" node between the event node and View Target node.

I then went into the map and placed the camera actor into the world and moved it to where i wanted it. I then moved the collision box itself and enlarged it. Then i copied the entire camera actor, with the collision box attached to it, 3 times so there was a total of 4 cameras with collision boxes that cover the area that my character moves in.

What this does is when i enter one collision box, it switches to the camera that the box is attached to. And if i change the blend time setting in the view target node, it will change the camera very smoothly instead of just snapping to it immediately.

I don't think this will be useful to me for the game i am planning on making. I think, instead, i will have the camera follow the character from a birds-eye view as he moves around.