The past fortnight has been a rather chaotic one, as time was spent on other odd jobs. The purpose of this prototype was all about building on the slow-motion of our previous game, adding to the tactics and in forcing the player to make more difficult decisions under pressure. The first prototype made it all too easy to run-and-gun – somewhat defeating the intended action of our game.
The first week was spent attempting to add some more feedback, framework and structure to the game. Since we wanted several characters with several guns, we would need models to distinguish them, and so I blocked out some very quick models of a rifle, shotgun, shield and pistol, and then attached them to the character meshes themselves.
In conjunction with our environment artist, we added and expanded on the current world to create the feel, Easing the transition for the environment models into the engine. I also managed to utilise some Unreal starter content in order to work on a neat bullet distortion effect.
In the second week, I decided to further mess around in blueprint, to little avail as I still struggle to grasp the workflow desired of blueprints. After attempting to add sound, I managed to inadvertently break the entire build several times. Sometimes it felt like I was breaking more than create. Talk about chaos!
We also were in need of adding important feedback, such as adding an ammo count. Quite a no-brainer, I suppose, but its importance becomes increasingly obvious once the player starts being blindsided from running out of ammo without knowing it.
It’s clear that it will take a lot more than a week to learn how to make these things work. One should also have no shame in asking for a helping hand, as sometimes you just need one to set you on your way. Any managerial roles took a backseat in comparison to the learning experience, almost falling behind in task logging, documentation and paperwork.
Stay tuned for next time, where we hope to expand on the tactics further while experimenting with alternative perspectives!