BLOG ENTRY 8 9.10.2020

Good News Everyone! I have managed to resolve the animation kit problem, and the player character now holds the gun! Turns out the problem with why I was unable to add the animations to my character is because there are several instances of the SK_Mannequin in Unreal Engine, that while near identical, If the animations are not parented or targeted to that skellington, you simply can’t use them. Once I selected the correct one though, voilá.

So now the player holds the gun instead of the gun just floating around, I was able to attach it to the hand bone, had to do some offsetting but it looks and feels pretty good now. I need to learn how to do the Animation offset so the legs move more realistically and move backwards too. I am pretty happy that I was able to reverse engineer the animation cycle from the standard animation blueprint and add the jump animation for when you use the rocket jump. I feel like it actually cycles really well as the character lands with the feet in the right way.

I’ve gotten a better understanding of the Animation State Machine and will be able to edit to my hearts content. Now I just have to browse through a hundred + animation assets to choose the correct one for when you use the other abilities, it is a lot of work, but I think I’m going to enjoy myself thinking about the possibilities.

It looks pretty simple right now, but I get the feeling it’s gonna get really complex real quick, I have to make sure I’ve got all my logic right so I don’t end up bugging anything. We’ve all seen how weird games feel when this breaks and it’s not pretty.

So now with the animations working as intended. My next step is making a functional UI, at least to have a better way to check the cooldown on the skills other than debug text. I’ve gotten some drafts to use as placeholders, and I’m hoping I can make a nice portrait overlay with the Health and shield bars. I want to have something that feels a little like Halo:CE but I don’t want to directly rip it off. I’ve got a UI asset pack from a few months back so I’m gonna try it see if I can find something there that fits or at least gets close to what I want it to look like.

I don’t have that much else to report this week, It’s not much but It’s honest work. :V I’m hoping by next week to have the UI set up even if it’s functional, as long as it looks pretty. Until then I guess.

Working Hardly

Daniel “Freaky” Aguilar

Game Designer

Plasmapunk Studios

Jumped and Left Holding the Gun