CAGD 370 - Sprint 4

 CAGD 370 - Sprint 4

Work Completed

Checkpoint System

The first thing I worked on this sprint was the checkpoint system which sets the player's spawn to a new location when they reach the collider. This could still use some fine tuning, such as making sure the player is orienting correctly as well as spawning on top of the actual object instead of next to it. I'd also like to add some sort of feedback to let the player know that they've activated the checkpoint.

Gel Particle Effects and Decals

The second thing I got to work on was representing the gels with decals instead of the colored cubes that were in place prior. For the most part, this system works quite well and the decals orient themselves properly when placed on the ground or the wall. However, there is still one big issue with this system that I need to resolve. This being that the decals stick in space when being attached to the moving wall. I've still yet to find a workaround for this, so I'll be taking a look at it this next sprint. This was easily the most time consuming process over the sprint as I could not find a way to parent the gel blueprint to the moving wall.

Another addition I made was the particle effect of a gel splash that occurs when the gel projectile hits a surface. This was relatively simple with the Niagara system which allowed me to create a custom effect using a template. I altered a splatter design in photoshop and used the omnidirectional burst template to create the effect.

Another addition I added was a cooldown system for the gels so that they could not be spammed one after the other. With the way it currently is set up, the only way to spam gels is to constantly keep switching using "c," but this does not serve to benefit the player. It's a very simple Boolean system that checks if the player is "ready to fire."

Lastly, I added a lifespan for the gels which was extremely easy as I just went to main gel blueprint and added a lifespan node.

Development Experience

This process has been a a bit different as I focused more on polish elements as opposed to core systems. The decals and particle effects aren't necessities, but they help visually communicate to the player that they've successfully placed down a gel. While unnecessary for a tech demo, I think this process aided in the overall playability of the game. I believe that going forward I will continue to focus on polishing more elements with maybe a few additional features here and there.

Problems

One of the problems I ran into was having the decals show up stretched out and stick to the player model. Essentially, if the player ran forward while shooting, then the projectile would collide with them and the gel decal would stick to them.

Another problem I ran into was the gel decal not sticking to the moving wall. The decal would remain static even though I had an attach actor to actor node that should've parented it.

Solutions

I remedied the first problem by changing the collision dynamics to ignore pawns since there will not be a need to directly hit any other character with the gel projectile. As for the stretching, it was a matter of resizing and scaling the decal through the blueprint.

I've yet to solve this second issue and it will be one of the first things I prioritize over this next sprint.

Current Work

Currently, I'm working on fixing the issues I mentioned earlier in this post. After that, I will be working on implementing some basic AI that will walk towards the player and deal damage. This will probably take a majority of the time and I will work to get it as polished as it can be.

As a group, we plan to work on a UI system that shows what gel the player is currently using since that was a key piece of feedback we received from the playtest.