Greeting and welcome to newsletter # 13
The latest video dev log has been released on YouTube and can be found here:
Last Week:
I spent last week in the proverbial programming weeds working on hooking up many of my individual tests of the Unreal enhanced input system and the Unreal gameplay ability system (GAS) into one cohesive system. This also involved setting up 2 new pieces of equipment (dagger and sword).
My goal was to get all my test code out of random functions and into the GAS system and have them driven by the Unreal enhanced input system. I was able to do this as well as port the pistol logic over to the new system as well. It also involved cleaning up the materials I use to spawn in weapons and have that effect trigger when you select the equipment you want to use
To improve performance I also created 2 visuals on each weapon. The first was the standard visual that is relatively performant for a translucent material. The second was the mesh that had the spawn material on it which isn’t as performant due to it running a lot of extra instructions to make the materialize effect work. I just swapped out the visible mesh after the weapon appeared since the visuals were identical at that point and the player would not notice the change
Although I have 3 test weapons currently and up to 6 possible for debugging, in the end I’ll only have 2 slots that will be filled with equipment you pick up. This will be similar to the Dead Cells game as far as item management goes
The difference is that instead of having two other sub items I’ll have secondary abilities of the 2 pieces of equipment. Its possible I might separate these out after more testing but this is the initial design
I also took some time to tie the glow of each weapon to the stealth level of the player so the player had another indicator that the were in the shadows and because it seemed weird to have guards not notice you hiding when your carrying a bright glowing weapon
I also took some time this week to try and fix an issue I came across with the pistol where if you were standing on a step the gun would be offset incorrectly. I think I know what is causing this and a way to fix it so I’ll be getting that fixed this week as well
This Week:
- Choke and Dagger take down animations including death from above!
- Fix issue with pistol location when player on steps using knowledge gained this week
- Environmental energy barriers and wall details
- More work on voxel effect to clean it up and tie into ability systems
- Skybox and distant background details (Time permitting)
That is all for this update,
Tony D
Cronoforge Studios Inc