My main priority has been working on getting core gameplay in, even if it means making small decisions in order to get the project moving forward. Incessant discussion about the most menial design decisions often hurts our progress, especially when a decision can’t be made at all. Most of the time we just need a starting point before moving from there.
As a consequence of trying to micromanage our workflow, I end up limiting my own tangible output, with tasks boiling down to the fairly simplistic. While not artistically challenging so far, I feel these are often the small features that you don’t notice until they’re not there. As these are often something that we as a team tend to overlook, I considered it a part of the game’s infrastructure that we should spend time setting up, if not in a rudimentary manner. I’m currently more interested in learning blueprints and engine functionality at this point, so I’m willing to put aside some art in order to get this done.
With some placeholder images (if only we could make a Hot Fuzz game), I went ahead and came up with some simple menu functionality to alleviate some pressure off the programmers.
Warning: Hot Fuzz may or may not exist in the game.
Setting up the game’s HUD itself was a little more involved, as the prototype initially functioned with a healthbars that hovered above the player. As some of our project has been built with C++, it takes a little more effort to actually set them up to work with blueprints. On the bright side, I did manage to successfully set it up without any major trouble, though I’m not sure that’s because I’ve actually learnt more, or because some of it was set up from the previous time. Either way, I seem to have a better grasp on handling UI throughout this project, and at the rate of oddjobs taking on, I will likely end up taking on some visual effects as well. Only time will tell.
Setting up the HUD had to be made from scratch due to the initial concept not having one in the first place!
Stay tuned for next time!