BLOG ENTRY 24 - 03.04.2021

CLASS IDENTITY

Something that has been very important to me from the inception of Galaxy’s End has been to develop classes that feel unique from one another. Not just looks, but gameplay, equipment that they use, their own story going through the main campaign, they’re personalities and how they interact with the different NPCS. This obviously sounds like a tremendous task and it is. (see image all the way down there)

However all those years playing class based RPGS and looter shooters have actually helped me understand what makes players choose different classes. Why pick a tank when you can pick a damage dealer? or a stealthy character over the healer? It really comes down to the fantasy of the character you are choosing.

You pick a tank because you want to feel like an unstoppable force. You pick the damage dealer because you want to take down enemies as quickly as possible. I’ve been designing this game for the past 3 years and making each class their own character has been an interesting challenge. Skills have been moved around. Weapons have been adjusted. But without a doubt I can honestly say I’m almost there.

There’s a few skills I need to adjust and debug, and a few others that need to be made from scratch. but once I do I’m gonna try to make a cool class intro video. Might go with the borderlands style. I dunno yet. We’ll just have to see what strikes the mood when I get to editing that video.

NPC PROTOTYPES

I’ve been working with the Ryan Laley tutorials trying to make the base NPC interactions. I’ve managed to make a cool transition from the main player camera to the NPC camera where I will add the Armory, Equipment Lab and Workshop. I also intend to have a “Shady Dealer” NPC type character as well as a Customization station of some kind. but those will have to wait until I actually have full model construction finished.

NPC Interaction Camera Transition - Sup’ Foo

So far everything works mostly as intended, with the exception that it’s an automatic camera transition, I’m still working out the kinks as it should do it when you press the interact button or key, however, it when I apply this logic to the transition it does not work properly at all. I’m going to have to do more research but it should be a somewhat easy fix. once that is done I’ll start making the HUD widgets to actually do something when you interact with the NPCs and make sure that each have their own dialogue and function. that means 3 different types of inventory/huds, you’ll forgive me if I haven’t done them yet, Still figuring a lot of this out.

DEV NOTES

It’s always a bit hard to come up with something interesting to say whenever I work on basic things like cleaning up assets and organizing tasks. Since I haven’t added any new features or interesting mechanics I figured I would try some stuff in Unreal. I ended up just doing housekeeping and clearing out a whole lot of assets that I do not intend to use and are only making the game take longer to load since it’s trying to load the playable stuff as well as all the unused guff. So It’s been a productive week but not on the coding front.

This is only the Coding tab of things… oh wee…

I do feel like things are going to move forward a little more smoothly now that I have everything planned, It’s a huge relief not having to have a 130+ things to keep track of relying only on your memory. I think this will help me focus on one thing at a time without having an open tab in my brain reminding me that there’s a 100 other things to do.

I hope I can get some more cool stuff done this coming week, at the very least finish a few things so I can check them off my list. If not we’ll just post another stylish group picture.

Hanging with the Squad ready to save the Galaxy

Daniel “Freaky” Aguilar

Game Designer

Plasmapunk Studios

Hail! Hail! The Gang is all here!