httpsemophonkinc

[httpsemophonkinc]

Evaluation

Overall, I think my game went okay. Of course, I am very happy with all of the things I made whilst doing it, however I feel like I spent more time doing little things rather than making it even better. And although I really love to add little details like many objects to make it feel as real as possible, I wish I had made the game a little bit longer, or made it so that you could even walk outside of the house and move around from there. If I ever do a similar sort of thing again, I think I'll focus more on the experience next time rather than the details. Though, there are people who have a better experience from a good environment so I’m not gonna completely cut off the idea of making a pretty environment, I’m just gonna spend more time on the actual game next time.

Another improvement I would make to the game would be a better HUD. Like having to actually walk around and find things to use like batteries to fill the torch up with etc. Basically, I just want the game to be a little bit more interactable. And a tab on the side to show you what you’ve picked up. Like an inventory system where you can use the items you’ve gathered. Make it a little bit more interactable. 

Other than that, I don’t think I’d make many more improvements. I never really stuck to a theme with the 3D models I downloaded, so maybe that could be a thing to consider for the next project. However, that definitely is the last thing I would improve for the next project.

- More attention in the gameplay rather than environment

- Better HUD

- Possibly a single theme with the 3D models.

In conclusion for this project, I think that I’ve done well to improve the environment, but for the game itself I feel as though it hasn’t really gone any further than it was last year. Maybe a little, but not enough for me to be impressed about it. It’s good to see that I’ve improved the environments though, because I will be making a car game next time, so I’ll mainly focus on that instead. Though, I will be keeping in mind the gameplay itself.

So for my next game, I’ll take the feedback and my own evaluation of the project into consideration to hopefully improve my next one.

[httpsemophonkinc]

Fixing A Bug

There was a bug with the movable interaction items. They would all start to glitch out if you spammed the button E, so I made it so that you can’t break it anymore.

So what this is doing is setting the drawers to “can open” when you press E, and then it’s going through a “do once” just before the original code for the drawers. However, if I left it just as that, there would be many bugs and issues, so I had to put a few pieces of code into the reset so that we could use it again.

The first three being when we hold the note and put it back down again so that you can open and close the drawers again, the next one being if the line trace hasn’t hit an actor component so that even if we press E when looking away, it still can open the drawers up again, and last of the first three but maybe the most important, when we hit another static mesh that isn’t the drawers. We put a “can open?” and set it to true after “cast failed” and then put it in the reset of the “do once”

The last two are once the timeline has finished for both open and close. There’s a 0.05 second delay so that the player can’t just spam E and break the drawers. It also means that they can’t interact with another drawer until the 0.05 seconds is over, but it’s so little time to the point where you hardly even notice it.

[httpsemophonkinc]

Feedback For My Game

Positives:

There were quite a few positives from a little play test someone did. One being that the mechanics were good, the interactive parts of the game were nice, and it was fun solving the problems that I gave them instead of just being told what to do. Overall, most of the mechanics, atmosphere and game as a whole were good. Of course though, there are always negatives and ways to improve the game.

Main thing: Definitely more rooms. And make sure unreal doesn’t break all the textures and other materials since it’s pretty unplayable without it since you can’t pick up or see all the clues etc.

Negatives:

The only few negatives were that the system I used for the drawers and also sliding random objects was a bit broken, but luckily I’ve managed to fix that now, and that the game should be longer. If I had more time, I would definitely make the game longer, like adding in more locations, more mysteries to solve, and basically just times what I have by about 3 at the least. Of course though, for a starting point of the game, I would say it has been rather successful. There was also the case of adding in more text prompts to let the player know when they’ve done something, which I fixed as well.

Overall, I’d give the game a 6 or even 7 out of ten. I think it’s not long enough to get anything higher than that, but as a demo, I think it’s pretty decent.

[httpsemophonkinc]

Code Message

I decided to make a little message you have to decipher in order to get the password to the laptop. I didn’t want everything to be flat out obvious to the player, or spoon feed the information to them, so I made this so they used their brains a little, whilst still making it obvious what information they need. It uses mostly the dame code as the note in the drawer, the only difference being you can’t move. What this will do is put a widget onto the screen, which is the exact same as the note on the floor. 

These are the two notes that are used for it. The top one is what you have to decipher, the bottom one is the answer to each letter. for example, the first word says LWV, which translates into ITS when you translate it to the correct word.

[httpsemophonkinc]

Rooms (Completed)

These are all the current rooms that I have made for the game. These are now fully completed. I wanted to add as much as I could to make it feel a bit more lively and real, also without sticking to a theme. I did try to keep all the assets I downloaded looking similar so that it wasn’t just ultra realistic in one section and totally cartoon like in another.

[httpsemophonkinc]

Key

I decided to move the key from the drawers into the bedrooms instead. I noticed how far the rug on the floor could actually move, so I figured that it would be a cool idea to make it so that you have to move the rug to get the key. The only downside to this method is that you could just stand on the rug and because the box collision wasn’t big enough, it overlaps the rug. So, in short, you might end up picking up the key without actually moving the rug, but if you don’t realize you can move it, you can just imagine that the game character actually just found it instead. 

[httpsemophonkinc]

Living Room Edit

This is now an old edit of the living room, but it was practically how the final room looked. the only real difference is the walls changing, the floor too, and a few more pieces of decoration and such being added to this. Much like the bathroom, I hated how all the walls and floors were the same material, so I decided to change them for the better. I think it looks much nicer now, and there’s an updated picture above.

[httpsemophonkinc]

Bathroom

Same thing really as the living room. The bathroom wasn’t updated much more than it already is, but the floor and walls also did change like I mentioned in my living room update post. I think that the bathroom looks a lot more better now that the update has happened. Updated look is above.

[httpsemophonkinc]

Keypad Door

This is my widget for the keypad. It uses a simple text block for where the numbers will display, and buttons for the player to input what they want. The text is binded to a custom string so that we can display what the player inputs.

For my keypad door, we used a custom string to determine what number the player inputted via button press. And the reset button just removes all the numbers from the screen so that you can remove the numbers incase the player accidently clicks the wrong button.

{Made this code into a function so that it was simpler to copy and paste for the other buttons) We made the code that we used to input whatever number was pressed so that it was much more cleaner and easier to repeat for all the numbers used.

And this is the old code that got updated to fit with the new widget.

[httpsemophonkinc]

Laptop

This laptop uses basically the exact same code as the pin door, but I’ll briefly go over it again. What this is doing is getting the letter you typed in via button press, and updating it to show it on the text. The text on screen is binded via a custom string to decide what letter is hit.

This code is just to see if the player is in the collision box. If they don’t have a key, the screen will bring up a widget saying that they need a key. If they do, but the computer isn’t unlocked, it’ll add the computer widget to the screen and then let the player type what they want. And when they get the password right, it’ll hide their cursor and remove the widgets from the screen. After this, I want to add my cinematic but I haven’t figured out how yet.

[httpsemophonkinc]

Water Material

I’m just gonna be honest and say I have not a clue what most of this code does. I watched a tutorial to make this and they didn’t really go in depth much with it. However, even so, I do like how it came out. 

Using that material made, you make an instance and tick all the boxes on the right to edit the material. From what I’ve seen, these options basically change how the water moves, the colour, depth etc. 

This is how it looks for me. I really do like it since it’s much better than the water materials you get by default from UE5. It looks more realistic and that was what I was aiming for. Especially with the cinematic cutscene I’ve added

[httpsemophonkinc]

Rooms So Far

This is my rooms so far. I like how all my rooms are currently turning out so far. I like how many objects are in the rooms right now, and I do plan on adding some more to the rooms just to make them feel more lively but so far I think this would be the minimum I SHOULD have anyways. 

[httpsemophonkinc]

Cinematics

Cinematics are quite simple to understand once you get the hang of it, but it also tends to be quite annoying with the camera. Basically, all you have to do is add a key frame, move the camera, add a new key frame, repeating that process until you get something you like. If you click the camera (the one in the blue selected line) then you can come out of the camera and edit the key frames more in case it’s too difficult to do it whilst in the camera.

[httpsemophonkinc]

Note in drawer

Since I’ve previously made the drawers, I’m not gonna talk about them, but I will talk about the note in the drawer. Basically what this does is checks to see if the player has picked up the note. If they have, it’ll remove it from the drawers and put it on the players screen, and then once you press E again to put it down and can continue moving around and stuff. And then the second part is to make sure that you can still open the drawer if you don’t hit a note. 

I also decided to add a key to the drawer that you’ll use on the laptop. It’ll check to see if the actor is hitting the key from the line trace. If it is then it’ll give the actor the key tag, and then bring up the subtitles before it destroys the key to show that the key has been picked up.

EDIT:

I decided to make two separate drawers in two separate places to ensure that the player goes everywhere before they can get to the laptop.

[httpsemophonkinc]

Pin Door

For one of the doors in the house, I’m gonna make it so that you can’t open it unless you have the pin for the door. This is basically here just so that I know people have found the main clue and story before they try to proceed through to the next part. Basically what this code is doing is putting the widget used to type the code in onto the screen, and then it’s checking to see if the pin that the player types in is the same as the one for the door. If it’s not, then it won’t unlock. If it is, it’ll remove the pin widget from the screen, and then allow the player to open the door, leaving it unlocked. I’m gonna try and change this so that I can use a keypad, but if I can’t then I think this way is pretty alright. 

[httpsemophonkinc]

Generator Room

Here I made a generator room. I made it so that it’s impossible to use the lights without having the generator turned on. I have added a flashlight at the get go for the player, but I think it would be cool to have it so they have to have the lights on before you finish since I’ll add a clue in there. But, with the portals randomising where you go, you might even end up going there before you even get to the main end part of the game.

[httpsemophonkinc]

Building The Ground Floor

I decided to use a building I found on Quixel to make the bottom floor of my house. I do like how it looks, but I had to put a wall on the inside too because you could see through it. Personally, I think it could look better but for now, for a small project, it will do.