Our level designers internally pitched two different levels this week and we decided to combine both of them along with the narrative and started working on implementing the mechanics made by the gameplay department by making a small gym level.
Apart from this, we got feedback on our “Definition of polished”, mechanics and enemy AI and art documents from our instructors and SME and we decided to clarify and change some things for a better definition. We also started work on the middle part of the level which we decided was more crucial compared to other parts in addition to the gym level. We also worked on finding a suitable female character from the marketplace that matches the themes of our narrative.
What we did this week?
Programming:
- Gameplay:
- We implemented the basic moving abilities of the character: walk, run, jump, double jump, crouch. We gave up the rolling ability as its function is too similar to dash.
- We implemented one of the moving skills, dash, and decided the details of this skill with level designers (time, speed, dash distance, whether can be used when jumping/double jumping).
- We started to work on the health system, including both the character part and the enemy part.ย
- Our enemy AI programmer, Mike, spent a lot of time this week learning about the transition from BP to behavioral tree. He figured out how to change an animation sequence to an animation montage.
Level Design:
- Our level designers pitched two action levels that introduced new mechanics with a complete game loop.
- We chose a better overall narrative/world setting and a set of unique mechanics we plan to introduce to players.
- As our character mechanics were finalized, we started putting together a gym level and a tutorial walkthrough for mechanics for playtest purposes.
- We also started working on making a blockout of a part of the level
Art and VFX:
- Looked into optimization methods as tech artists.
- Continued on shaping our art language and gathering reference, aiming to ensure it resonates well with our project’s vision and goals.
- Started to work on props.
Production:
- We worked on defining the deliverables for our next sprint i.e. from this Wednesday to the Tuesday next week and what we should take to the playtest nights. We decided on taking the gym level along with the mechanics made by the programming team to the playtest nights.
- We also worked on defining the metrics for our project and weighing what is important and has high priority for our project. We decided that the primary metrics for us are: Gameplay / Interactivity, Prototyping (Critical, Iteration, Variation), Playtesting (Explore, Refine, Prove) and the Secondary metrics are: Documentation / Archive, Art Style, Quality Assurance
Some challenges we faced and their solutions
Programming:
Problems –
- Gameplay: Our team decided to use an asset package named CharacterSkills from the UE store as we need the character animations. However, this package doesn’t work very well in the new enhanced action input system in UE5. After migrating the content to a UE5 project, there were many bugs when running it.
Solutions to the problems –
- Gameplay: Our gameplay programmer, Jinyi, rewrote some parts of the Blueprints to make it adjust to the new input system. Now this package works quite well, and we set up our new team project based on it.
Things we learnt –
- Gameplay: The CharacterSkills package has a very complete Actor Blueprint as well as an Animation Blueprint. We learned a lot from these Blueprints, including how to use different variables to organize multiple skills, how to efficiently switch between skills and how to manage and blend a number of skill animations.ย
- Animation event and interface/enums.
- We found that a good feature with animation montage compared to animation blendtree is that: it is very easy to play compared to blendtree if you just want to play a single animation. whereas for Blendtree you have to set various variables.
- Also, for montage, we can set on montage notify so the Blueprint knows exactly what point of a montage is being played. This is useful for BP to do things such as determining when an attack hits, and when should an effect be played.
Level Design:
Problems –
- It was difficult for us to decide what to use as breadcrumbs in the beginning part of the level so that the gameplay is interesting and also the player feels that they have agency in the path they are choosing to traverse to reach the goal.
- The main part of the problem was that having basic collectibles would make the breadcrumbs too generic however, having too narrative specific breadcrumbs might not make sense to the player because they would not have the whole game to teach them to follow those breadcrumbs.
Solutions to the problems –
- We solved this by keeping a form of breadcrumb that is not too random and detached from the story and is something that makes the player naturally curious to know what it is.
- We decided to make a magic VFX effect that will be at one place in the level and when the player approaches it, it suddenly disappears and moves to another place.
Art:
Problems –
- We had problems deciding what we should focus on as the level design team was still working on the blockouts and the game mechanics which required VFX are yet to be implemented.
Solutions to the problems –
- We discussed with the team and decided a few props that we can start making for the final level which would be eventually required and also started working on the background scene for the level which will be visible as a vista to the player but won’t be playable.
Production:
Problems –
- UE5 is a powerful software that requires a lot of hardware support. Constantly running out of memory is slowing down our development process.
Solutions to the problems –
- Our second year requested a RAM upgrade from 16G to 32G, which helped to have fewer crushes.
Things we learnt –
- Optimization is essential in game development. Some studios work with limitations of hardware constraints and keep performance in mind while designing. Some studios have better computing power and move optimization towards the end of the project. In our case, we need to work with limitations and keep performance in mind while developing.ย
Things to do for next week:
- Get feedback on the combined narrative from our instructors.
- Do our team bonding activity.
- Define the deliverables and what to present for halves.
