ma-fmp-2025

[ma-fmp-2025]

End of project summary

I have now completed my project. Overall I think it went pretty well, Maybe I could have had a less ridged planning structure as my project tended to go off on tangents to allow something else to be made.

One thing I would definitely change is how I manage my time between college and home. I found that I would spend too much time doing blog work at college when I should have been making my game. This is because I had support at college and all of the software to be able to produce my game and assets. After making at college I should have then come home and written everything up. I think this would have saved lots of time and allowed me to not have to keep constantly be interrupted by having to write something up.

[ma-fmp-2025]

Planning my showcase video.

My game is now finished but needs a few layout tweaks. Firstly my game looks very sparsely populated so I will move trees to cover the map more and make it look more full.

This circle shows where I want my area to have more density.

Secondly I may change the grass texture to get a more realistic and full look. The grass I have at the moment is very flat and does not look great.

Also when I took the last gameplay video there was no audio so I have to be careful to add it an make sure it is filmed as a packaged game.

[ma-fmp-2025]

Fixing the character attack

My attacking system didn't work and I didn't know why. When de bugging it the code didn't even fire. I thought this was strange as it defiantly should have. The next solution to this problem was to add print strings with the text being what has happened. This worked really well and proved that the code did fire.

I found that the main problems were here, It was when the checks started to be made.

I eventually looked through all of this code and found a major issue was the target and the actor to attack wouldn't work as they were referencing something in the player controller which is not a physical thing so you cant attack it.

There is also some code that needed clearing up.

On the thing to make the event and it deal damage I don't think I put it in the original post so I will put it here.

This now works well

[ma-fmp-2025]

Creating a better way to loose

I now after playing my game want to make a better way too loose as one zombie getting to the town hall is really hard. I will implement the health system I made a while ago.

This is in the building component so it can be applied to all buildings.

This is in the actual town hall.

Now in game you have a health bar that takes damage when hit by an enemy. If completely destroyed the game ends and goes to the loss screen.

This works well.

[ma-fmp-2025]

Adding music and sound effects

I now need to add sound to my game so its not boring and flat to play. If you watch any gameplay, even triple a games, on mute they are so boring. Sound adds everything to a game.

The first sound I want to add is a general background ambiance, I think I want to have a calmer forest background sound. Then when to undead start to attack I could start to add some more intense music which makes the situation more tense.

I would also like to add sound effects when clicking on a character and then clicking on something else. I want maybe a grunt when clicking to let the player know that a character has been selected. Then when you tell it to do something maybe you could get a "yes lord" or something to tell the player they have acknowledged that command and will do it.

I have added sound to games before but I will use this tutorial as a guide to help the things I have forgotten.

To get the audio I will use a mixture of the music produced by students from the previous project, I may also use youtube audio and audio from a site called pixabay.

The first audio is from pixabay and is called spring forest nature by sound reality. I will use it as a background sound for just the sounds of nature.

After downloading the audio I made and audio folder and dragged and dropped the file into the new folder.

I then make a sound cue for it and place it into my world.

I turn the sound down to point 2, this now makes a noise that just fills space and is not trying to be anything but that.

I will next chop up these affirmative noises for my character selection.

There is also this one which I don't like as much but I cant find any editing software so it will have to do.

I then add a play sound 2d node to my selection code and it all works now.

I next pick up this zombie sound effect.

In the enemy code I then make this to make the zombie noises every 25 seconds.

I might also add an attack noise.

There is this good sword sound here.

I added this to the end of the attack function and now it works well.

I think I will leave sounds here for now as I feel they populate the space enough.

[ma-fmp-2025]

Making the title screen look better.

Now my game is mostly finished for coding I wanted to make it look visually better. The first thing the player sees is the start screen so I feel this is the first thing to really make look good. At the moment it is just a black screen with some standard text and some buttons. There isn't even the name of the game.

I first want to find a font, to do this I will go to a website called da font. I then look at lots of medieval style writing but the problem is they all look slightly like the Nazi font so I wont be using that.

I then found a font called wall axe which I thought looked good but when I imported it it looked like a more western cowboy style of font.

I then typed something different in the search bar. I went with antique, I think this looks like what I want. I then added this to a title of the game.

The next thing I do is I added a background blur to the screen and got rid of the black background.

I think this looks much better.

[ma-fmp-2025]

Researching sound cues and when they are used in games.

Sounds can be used for many different reasons, the main reason being to set the tone of the gameplay. This can make the game feel fun and light hearted or tense and scary.

The other main reason of sound in games it to give the player information. I think there are two types of information given in games, these are sound cues that inform the player of an enemy and sound cues that inform the player of their own actions.

An example of this is in a game such as rainbow 6 siege, when a player is walking and you want to know where they are you can listen to footsteps. This informs the player of an enemy.

An example of something that informs the player of their own actions could be also from rainbow, when the character yells that they are reloading or when they say to themselves that they cant do that, this may be because the ability isn't ready yet.

These examples are just from one game, almost all games will include these cues and every fps definitely will.

Another set of examples now from a grand strategy game called Hearts of iron 4. In HOI4 when you select on a unit the unit responds something along the lines of yes or yes my king. This informs you that you have selected something. One example of enemy's telling you something with sound cues could be, when someone declares war on you an air aid siren type noise plays. This really quickly informs the player of war even if you skip the pop up.

I will use sound cues to show that you have selected a character and chosen to attack or gather something. I will also use an attack sound for when your unit is attacking or when an enemy is attacking. This lets the player know you are being attacked, you can then know this nonmatter where you are in the map.

[ma-fmp-2025]

Final week plan

This week I need to finalize any little problems with my game. I particularly need to focus on finishing and fixing the attack system.

I also need to add in my music and sound effects.

I have added music and sound into games before so that should be fine but I need to probably spend a good chunk of time on the attack.

[ma-fmp-2025]

Playtesting

I first made a google forms.

I will now ask people to play it and fill out the form. My game is close to finishing but not fully done so I expect the ability to attack the zombies will probably come up lots.

The general consensus by those who were asked was that the game needs to have a way to attack the zombies. Another trending thing was that the models need to be bigger or there needs to be a way to scroll and zoom in. A few other things that came up were the need to rotate buildings and there should be buildings that attacked for you as the game is very micro managy.

Upon this feedback I will make the characters bigger and finish the attack system. I also may add a zoom as well. One thing I may consider putting in and have previously researched is an archer tower.

I have now increased the size of the units by 50 percent.

I will next work on finishing the attack system

[ma-fmp-2025]

Final building.

I am going to place a wall as my final building. To do this I will make a copy of the barracks and called it wall.

I then go in and stetch out a cube to represent my wall.

I next add a wall button.

I then took the code from the house placing and made it for the wall.

After testing this definitely works.

I need to make a way to spin it in the future but for now it works fine.

the walls definitely work which is good I will later add a skin to them.

[ma-fmp-2025]

Making my building do something.

At the moment my house does nothing, I want to change that. I want my house to spawn one villager. To do that I will spawn actor after the house has been placed, I will then make the spawn location the same as the house but make it so it adjusts position slightly with collision handling.

This now kind of works but I need to test it further.

[ma-fmp-2025]

Finishing the map

I first made a small forestry area.

Then a small area for rocks.

Then as gold is much rarer I have scattered a few gold veins around.

Overall it looks like this now, I don't really love it but the look of the game was not what I was going for in this project. I wanted to make a techniquely difficult game to make and I think if I was given a little bit more time I would have achieved that. I am still happy with what I made in the time period and with the skills I have learnt the next project hopefully should be easier.

[ma-fmp-2025]

Adding in skins and meshes to my game.

I have already done the research on what I want for all of my skins. I am going for a medieval theme with the enemy being an undead creature.

I will first search for a house, town hall and maybe barracks.

I will first download medieval props. The licence is free if you haven't earned 100k or funding of 100k. I don't think I've been given 100k recently so I'm probably alright.

This is the next one.

This is under creative commons which means I have to give appropriate credit.

This is the next one and is under a standard licence which allows for commercial use when purchased, I technically purchased this but it was free.

I also got this tavern under a standard licence.

I have added the civilians in but I need to animate them. This I will not do.

Next I will add the buildings.

This is my house.

I lastly got this as creative commons.

I used this as my town hall and placed 3 of these together.

I really like how this looks and its also a good model.

in game it also looks really good.

My game now looks like this. I think I next need to add material meshes and an enemy mesh.

I next added these form my mega scans I got probably 8 months ago.

I next need a tree.

The tree I have chosen was just another mega scan one.

I then next chose a normal rock from my mega scans then I put a gold material on it.

Finally I need to get an enemy mesh.

I am happy with this and it is creative commons. The mesh for this didn't look great so I'm having to find a new one.

I have found this one which uses a standard licence and it looks ok-ish

In game it looks ok but when you are playing you can barely see it so i suppose it is fine.

[ma-fmp-2025]

Trying to make the attacking work

At the moment the attacking doesn't work. I think the code I made for it is mostly fine.

The problem is that the code doesn't fire. In debug mode I have found that it doesn't fire at all, this tells me there is a problem with the activation so maybe the initial event isn't recognising that I am clicking on an enemy.

I essentially want to remake another gather resource to where you can click on it and the character moves to it.

The problem in the code is in this part somewhere but I just can not find it. I have been looking at this for a few hours now and I don't really have the time to. This is a major part of my game so I feel giving up on it is something I can not do but if I have not found the problem from looking souly into this for I would say combined about 8 or 9 hours I am not going to find it on my own. I will try to get help on it soon but we are at the end of the project so I don't know if I will get this finished.

While I can not do this I will move onto doing something I can do so I will not completely waste my time.

[ma-fmp-2025]

Fixing the losing system.

At the moment my game works by an enemy going into the town hall. Only that is not quite happening. When a friendly unit goes to deposit resources in the town hall the loss triggers.

To get around this I can hopefully just use tags to determine if the collision should be fired off.

I first of all add a tag to the collision box on the town hall then i will go to the event graph to make a tag check.

I just put in an actor has tag to see if it may be the simplest option works. That didn't work so I will next try will be to add a branch so I can make the condition and see if it is true.

This now almost works I just need to add the tag to the enemy then it should work perfectly.

This did not work for some reason.

After taking another minute to think I realised I was being dumb and did not connect it up properly and forgot the target.

I have now tested this and it now works perfectly.

[ma-fmp-2025]

Enemy spawner.

Next I want my enemy's to spawn in waves for the player to defeat or be defeated.

I first added an actor called enemy spawner.

I then add a collision box but have no physical mesh.

I also change it to no collision and change the size of the box.

After testing to see if the enemy could fit into it it couldn't so I made the box bigger.

I next go to the event graph and create a custom event called spawn enemy.

I then change from a box to a sphere because it didn't work.

Now whenever the sphere is spawned it breaks the game. After taking out the random node it is for some reason fixed. The sky and ground goes back to normal and there is no fog and there is also no lag.

I next add an input to my custom event.

I also add a for loop.

This means now I can choose how many enemy's spawn.

I next added a timer that can loop the behaviour and added a range in how many enemy's spawn.

This now should work

It did not.

After fixing some other problems I have noticed that it did but it doesn't show the units in game.

The white ones are the ones I can see, the yellow ones are the ones that clearly spawn but I cannot see them.

It could be a problem with the space needed to spawn.

I have changed the handling to always spawn. This did not work.

After simulating it seems they are just invisible. The only thing I can think of is setting visibility. There aren't any options that would work.

I will think on this.

After coming back to this I can find A reason to this not working.

After simulating the game and finding where the enemy are spawning there are in the atmosphere. The only thing I could think of is that they are spawning at 0,0,0. I will try to manually change this.

I have gone back to the code and made the spawn location a variable and made the spawn location of a place I can see.

Hopefully this will make a difference.

It didn't.

TO BE CONTINUED

[ma-fmp-2025]

Setting up my game.

I have now started to layout this level. I will have my spawners on each side of the mountain and the resources are near the same places.

I still need to make the spawners and I still need to add meshes to everything but apart from that most things are done.