BLOG ENTRY 38 - 3.31.2022

DEV STATUS

Well… Lets try this again, I was already halfway done with the post when it all got erased, why the fuck it happened I don’t know but well I guess my sunny disposition is no long as sunny.

While I realize that i’ve been radio silent for the past couple of months (since december) It has been mostly because I’ve been working on clearing up old tech debt and redoing weapon code in order to fit the updated parent classes. Most of that only reflects in the backend and not really noticable once playing it. However we have done some several upgrades and I think things are looking way better, and since I’m clearing up all that tech debt everything is working a lot smoother.

VISUAL UPDATE

So while reaserching how to blockout levels we came across an asset pack called supergrid which has some really good assets that you can use for your game regardless of genre. This has made it so much easier to distinguish between safe cover that never breaks (green), Cover that breaks after a few hits (Yellow) and cover that is fragile and will break with one hit (Red).

While this will not represent the final visual style of the game it has been so useful for testing purposes. now we can plan out maps a little better and test them out real time in game to see what we need to change. For now I’m still making the building blocks, turrets, items, weapons etc. so it’s still a bit before we start making new levels.

Also on this GIF is Fiona’s Special. It has been a testing weapon which switches elements, this way I cant test each elemental effect seperately without breaking anything. Since this gun has been so useful I think I will end up adding it to the final build as an Experimental weapon. I’m sure If i balance everything It should be a fun little weapon.

WEAPON ROSTER UPDATE

For the past year or so I’ve been working on learning the basics of weapons and how they work in unreal, I believe I’m almost to the point where the master weapon is complete and I can start making new guns. All of the guns above are placeholders, but they should be able to represent the idea of the weapons final identity. Colors, Shape design. Reload style. but most importantly weapon Mechanic. What will each weapons alt fire do?

This is much harder to design than you might think, because you have to think about how each gun will behave and overlaps have to be kept to a minimum. Why bother using Weapon A if weapon B does the exact same thing but better?, It has to be sufficiently different that It justifies it’s existance as a weapon in the roster, but with an understandable mechanic that won’t leave the player to confused about what it actually does or how to use it.

I may Implement some kind of Codex for all the information in the game, maybe have it unlock when you reach certain milestones. Encountering a given number of enemies, reloading the weapon correctly, or even something as simple as firing it any given number of times.

Given this limitation, I’ve opted to reduce the starting roster (21 weapons so far) to just a couple of weapons of each element instead of the intended full weapon roster (around 60+). I may just end up making new guns once in early access once the other more important bits of the game are solved.

CLASS SPECIFIC WEAPON UPDATES

Because of the reworks done on the master weapon and the projectiles themselves, I ran into several issues which made the base weapons unusable. Therefore I spent quite a bit of time making sure they work as I originally designed them. These weapons are unique in that only the player class will have it. It would basically be an experimental weapon that you start with and upgrade over time to reach to “Legendary” status. In theory if someone wanted to do a starting weapons only run of the game they should be able to finish it without any type of major hinderance.

Here is the starting weapon for the protector class, Main Fire is shock projectiles that can distrupt shields and abilities. switching to alt fire turns it into a shotgun that fires frost projectiles that slow and may freeze characters in place.

For the Technician Character I always had the idea that he would use a magnetic nail pistol. It fires magnetic projectiles that create a field that pulls all other projectiles of the same type in. It’s regular fire Is a fast Semi-auto fire mode that you can carefully aim your shots. but once you do you can switch to alternate fire and go full auto, with the magnetic field up you can curve your bullets and just finish off tough enemies or fast enemies who move a lot. I’m glad that this one is also working as intended.

NEXT STEPS

I am finishing up the base functionality of the Inventory System so my goal this month is to make items you can pick up and add to your inventory. Considering that currency & Ammo will all be auto pick up and those have already been resolved, my focus will be entirely on getting you to be able to pick up weapons and drop them as well as exchange them in your inventory slots.

Finally I will work on being able to equip the item and have you use, I will begin with the weapons because that is the system that is furthest along and I can see tangible impacts and work out any bugs that come out along the way. Once all that is done I think I try to make the base melee weapons, at least the class specific ones in order to work out the melee combat system.

For now I think this was a pretty lengthy update. Not as lenghty as others I admit, but having to redo the whole thing kind of killed my writers mood. Rest assured that I’m still working hard on the game I’ve just been quiet about it.

Until we meet again fellow reader.
Daniel “Freaky” Aguilar
Game Designer
Plasmapunk Studios

Reworks & Redos