BLOG ENTRY 34 - 8.12.2021

DEV STATUS

Everything is peachy, even with the hard work. I have made great strides in the past couple of weeks, clearing tech debt, solving issues, laying ground work for smooth production. It’s safe to say I’m on the right path and getting closer and closer to my milestones.

COVER SYSTEM UPDATE

I don’t know what to say, it’s been a long road to get here. The cover System feature has been core to the idea of the game and I am almost done with a full proof of concept. It feels pretty good to be honest, but there is still more work to do.

At the moment cover is detected, the player sticks to it, If the player gets of the edge of the cover they will stop moving, and most importantly, bullets from low cover work without a problem. Sometimes it collides with the cover if you’re doing complex maneuvers, but it feels kind of good? It gives it a bit of realism that you can really control your weapon that much when you’re flying through the air. If I find it becomes a pain point in testing I’ll try to find a solution. For now I’m keeping it to add to the flavor.

The things I’m currently missing is that It does not detect movement properly when looking down or when sticking sideways to cover. I’m looking to get that resolved within the next couple of weeks. If worse comes to worse I can consult with Ryan Laley at the end of the month and fix all the bugs I come across.

MOVEMENT UPDATE

I have taken Ryan’s Advice and reworked a bunch of base code in order to have things done the proper way. I’ve reparented all player characters to a new Master Character, and with it resolved several issues. The player will no longer be twitching when moving as there is no conflict between the mouse rotation and movement rotation. I will figure out a way to resolve the gamepad rotation and movement when the time comes. For now I will try to focus on having smooth PC controls.

The player now rotates smoothly even with a fast motion. I’ve tweaked it as much as I can right now to get it feeling good without compromising the players ability to turn quickly.

The camera will now lag slightly behind the player in order to reduce motion sickness, I may tweak this further but I don’t want the player to get too lost if the camera can’t keep up with them.

The base enemy’s ragdoll physics now work properly, reacting to the hit direction and getting thrown depending on the damage done more correctly. Further tweaking must be done but It’s currently in a really good place.

Just for comparison this is how it used to look/feel before.

The changes are subtle, but they greatly improve the game feel. And with the ragdoll physics working correctly. I can cross that off my list and just work on making it feel better, without having to worry about glitches.

WEAPON MASTER BLUEPRINT

I’ve been working on a master weapon blueprint so I can do things the right way for the subsequent weapons. I’ve almost got all the functions and information put in the correct place. This work will make it so much easier to add content, maybe even make it easier for modders to make their own weapons and stuff, would be pretty cool.

I have added almost every stat that will be necessary for weapons to work correctly regardless of how it’s supposed to work. This is of course just the Projectile weapon master. I have to make another one for Melee weapons, but I can easily rework this master with a few tweaks. I’m still thinking what information I need to add to the weapon Icon. but so far here’s a quick placeholder I came up with. So far I’ve only thought about displaying it’s rarity and element. Still got a bit of work to be done here, so no rush.

Prototype weapon Icon

NEXT STEPS

With several tech debt issues out of the way, and the weapon master coming together. Once I am certain I don’t need to add any more things onto the main weapon blueprint I’ll move on to the inventory system, In order to be able to pick up weapons and store them on the character. It’s not a complex system, but it takes a lot of work to get right, So I might not be done with it this month, but progress will be done.

I’ve also been watching level design tutorials in order to start making a nice level to test out movement correctly. I want to make a level that’s fun to move around in regardless of class, I know I’m aiming really high but there is no point in a class based game if only one class is fun to play as. I’ll start making the levels once I’m fully done with movement and cover.

Well, that’s pretty much all the updates. I’m looking forward to making more guns and projectiles, as well as implementing elemental damage, I’ve already got them designed on paper, but I’ve got to test them out in game. I hope they work as well in game as they do in my head. Here’s to prototyping.

Parenting and Reparenting and shieeeeeeet

Daniel “Freaky” Aguilar

Game Designer

Plasmapunk Studios

Taking Cover and Making Masters