BLOG ENTRY 21 - 02.11.2021

It feel like I’m finally getting into a decent groove without having to be watching tutorials in order to get stuff done. I know I’m using the same base for the weapon and I need to make a proper pipeline but goddamn these guns are turning up way cooler than I intended.

WEAPONS

First off I reworked the base pistol to finally fire how I Imagined it when I thought about alternate fire in the first place. I’m also reworking projectiles so they don’t actually have a physical mesh and is more just a blank collision sphere. It sounds boring but the results are fucking awesome.

Ol’ Reliable. This will be the signature weapon for the Lieutenant Class. Ol’ Reliable. A Double Barrel pistol that converts to a short barrel sniper. It’s technically a 6 shooter but it fires 2 shots at a time, giving that “double tap” Feeling The alternate fire consumes the same ammo for 2.5 x Damage, A sweet high powered shot that currently kills tier 0 enemies with a single hit. I’ve added some decent sound effects from the Unreal Marketplace and it does give it some pep. I’ll post it on my twitter later this week for screenshot Saturday.

I have yet to fuck with animations in order to get the right feel of it changing from pistol to rifle. but That’s still some esoteric alchemy I’ve yet to wrap my head around. I know once it clicks I’ll be able to start adding a bunch of animations that will make the game feel more like the vision I imagine.

MagNail. The Technicians trusty tool. It fires low damage nails in standard semi-auto mode. The Alternate fire mode is a Magnetic charge that will tag an enemy to have projectiles home in on them. The magnetic homing component hasn’t been completed. I banged my head against unreal for a while until I gave up for the day. I’ve got some ideas on how to fix it, but I think I’m gonna have to look for tutorials to get it done right.

SKILLS

Due to a lot of iteration I’m changing some skills around. The Plasma charge for the Lt. is currently a contact/timed explosion. but It seems to me like having a Wrist weapon that fires a high power projectile AND the explosive seem redundant. So I might end up reworking it so the charge is a variation of the wrist weapon. which leaves a skill open which I cannot wrap my mind around for now.

Flawless Grappling Glove

I was able to fix the Grappling Hook skill as it had been buggy since I first made it and I could not figure out why it didn’t work. I put in a debug line trace to find out what was happening. and It turns out that every time I used the grappling hook it shortened the distance. and if you didn’t hit a surface, It would not end so you were unable to use it again. It was a bunch of bugs but now it can be used with no problem and it feels really cool, not spider man cool, but still pretty cool. I know I have to fix the cables tension because it looks a little wobbly, but I don’t know which settings I have to mess with in order to get that looking how I want it.

As far as the rest of the different Class skills I have to start working on prototypes. I believe they will be pretty clunky at first, but I will try to rework into a more organized workflow and not have things so messy. I do think however that proving that the skills are fun is pretty important, As I’m figuring out class identities more and more I really want them to feel like they play differently, even if they use the same weapons.

I’ll get working on that this coming week as well as some cool diegetic ui options as I have to redo the HUD for now. Since I also learned a little bit about how to set the luminosity of objects recently, I’m going to try and set up the cooldown of the skills to affect the luminosity of players equipment. so even if you’re not paying attention or should you want to turn off the UI (you crazy player you) you would still know what is going on with your skills.

DESIGN DOCUMENT & WEBPAGE

I haven’t done the soft reset for the page, because I want to be able to fill it up with something rather than just leave it blank. I’ll try to squeeze in some time in the weekend to think about what I want to do with it and see if I can add some flare to it. right now It is pretty bare bones but what can I say, I’m game designer not a webpage manager. I’ll watch some tutorials maybe get some ideas on how to make it flashier. For now, outdated info and art will remain.

I am also working on revamping my Design Document as so many things have changed, and I believe I have more proof of concept than I did before and can actually use that information to show off the skills in the document. I wonder if you can use gifs… hmmm…

In any case I am burned out so I’m going to call it a night. I’ll work on more stuff tomorrow. and post some cool vids on saturday.

Have a nice weekend and a lovely Valentines day.

Daniel “Freaky” Aguilar

Game Designer

Plasmapunk Studios

Gearing up the Squad