Day 14 - July 22nd The Final Day by Atmostphear

Well, I made it, the game is complete... sort of... I guess I should say playable. So I'll make this post a reflections and overall thoughts rather than writing about how I struggled immensely trying to figure out AI combat for 7+ hours. I'm definitely not happy with the AI but at least it tries to fight back.

Reflections:

Here we go, reflecting time. I'm really glad that I stuck through with it until the end. I honestly wasn't sure if I was going to make it through. On average I was spending roughly 12 hours a day working on this, minus a few of the days. I'm completely exhausted but I really think I made some okay progress over these 2 weeks. I still want to keep pursuing a career in game development but I'm doubtful that will come true since I feel like my game was pretty below average.

Overall Thoughts:

The game itself was most likely below average like I just stated above. I'm not too happy with the "final" prototype product. I definitely improved though and that's clearly visible by looking at the day 1 submission. I'd like to participate in more game jams but I think I'll take a break for at least a couple weeks since I am mentally drained now. Also I'm really kind of disappointed in the Unreal Engine. I really liked the blueprinting system but there were many things that didn't seem to work as intended. At least the way I interpreted it. For example, sometimes if I set a delay no delay would actually happen or the time when I was trying to create a nav modifier but it kept resizing. Anyways, I'm definitely going to look at switching engines for my next creation.

Thanks if any of you bothered to read my awful and cringey blog posts. I'd love some feedback and pointers so email me, leave a comment somewhere on the blog, find some way to contact me. I'll drop a link to the download below.

You can download the game here.

Also if anyone in the future reads this and wants to work on a project with me don't hesitate to contact me. I really want to work on something bigger and gain more experience. I think my email is on this blog page but just in case it isn't...

Email: Logan2389@gmail.com

Happy gaming and so long.

Update: Power Outage

Yesterday at around 3:00 AM my city was hit by a huge storm that knocked out power for the day. So unfortunately I didn't make any progress on my game. I'm hoping that combat AI won't take too long to figure because I wanted to dedicate at least a couple days to it.

Day 12 - July 20th Progress by Atmostphear

Feeling lazy again on the screenshots, mostly because there's getting to be too many things I'd have to screenshot. Hopefully I'll get time to take some nice ones here soon.

• Tweaked the lighting again
• Because you know which person can never be happy with anything?
• It's me, I'm that person
• I fixed the falling animation for the boss
• It looks okay for now, not super smooth but it gets the job done
• Added a sound effect when dealing damage
• Made some adjustments to the camera and raised up the arms on the player to move them into the camera more
• I'm trying to get that Elder Scrolls immersive camera feel
• It's definitely not Elder Scrolls immersive but I tried
• The camera also clips into the player's character a bit but it's not super noticeable
• The goblins have animation now
• Including two whole death animations that are randomly chosen!
• Speaking of the goblins I got them awesome looking daggers courtesy of Quandtum on opengameart.org
• Seriously this dagger is super cool, I really love the art style

Rogues Talon by Quandtum

• I added a popup text to alert the player to seek out the boss
• Just in case someone tries to play it down the line and doesn't realize there's another room with a boss in it

TODO:

• The final feature of the game:
• AI combat
• Once I have this done the game should be essentially complete
• Unless the respawn mechanic I put in last week wasn't working
• Still haven't got to test that yet...
• Also I'll need a death animation for the player but that takes 5 minutes
• If I have some spare time I'll add in a knockback mechanic that the boss can use

Day 11 - July 19th Progress by Atmostphear

Did a boatload of stuff today since I slacked off this weekend. If I post screenshots it will be later because I'm feeling lazy.

• Thinking about naming the game "Overlord Slayer" 
• Not super excited about the name but it works for now
• Melee combat is functioning
• I had it working yesterday but I didn't realize I was actually healing enemies instead of damaging them *facepalm*
• Attacks for the player sweep so you can slash through multiple goblins which is pretty satisfying
• Need to add some sounds for melee
• Added some small health bars above the goblins' heads
• That was some awkward wording, good thing I'm not a writer
• Added a big health bar for the boss that pops up Dark Souls style when you engage him
• Shows his name and has a number for current health / total health
• Speaking of the boss and goblins they have some new meshes
• Got them at mixamo.com
• Have some of the animations for the boss working
• Need to figure out a falling animation
• No animations for the goblins yet
• Also made some minor tweaks to the HUD and lighting
• Just can't be satisfied with the lighting
• Added anchors to the HUD so it should work for multiple resolutions
• Tweaked some other various things with the HUD

TODO:

• Get animations for the goblin and put them in
• Get the rest of the boss animations working
• Implement combat for the AI
• Hopefully I can figure this out
• Like I said above fix that falling animation for the boss

Day 10 - July 18th Progress by Atmostphear

I know the date says July 19th but it's just past midnight so that doesn't count

• Put in an actual playable character now with animations
• Found some really cool models with tons of animations for free at mixamo.com
• Also thanks to Anafeyka for the awesome Damascus Steel blade
• The animations look a little strange in first person but they get the job done

New character

• Still working on getting the melee working and will hopefully have that done by the end of day 11
• I have capsule collision setup on the blade and damage is blueprinted but it's not being transmitted for some reason

Day 9 - July 17th Progress by Atmostphear

• Lighting is slightly better now
• Still dark but playable and not hurting performance as far as I know

Current lighting setup

• Got some new doors in that actually fit the environment
• Thanks to Danimal and Yughues on opengameart.org for the awesome door
• Also had to learn how to use Blender a little bit to export them properly so that took up most of my day

New door w/ animation

• I've downloaded an idle and attack animation so I'm currently trying to get those in the game and functioning

Day 8 - July16th Progress by Atmostphear

This one's late again, had a busy day yesterday.

• Spent a few hours trying to get the lighting fixed and brighter but still no luck.
• Raising the intensity of the lights causes performance issues so I'm trying to avoid that.

Day 7 - July 15th Progress by Atmostphear

This is yesterday's post since I was out late playing Pokemon GO.

Also, halfway mark!

• I made some tweaks to the HUD I made yesterday
• There's now a gold "+1" that pops up when you get an additional potion
• Also I made the "Goblins remaining:" disappear when fighting the boss
• I took some fire and blood particles off one of Epic's example projects
• Since we aren't monetizing the game this should be fine for now
• I setup some torch fire but I'm having some issues with lighting so I'm working on that today (July 16th)

Torch fire that I put in

Day 6 - July 14th Progress by Atmostphear

• Added in a functional HUD
• The health bar stays the same color, the gif didn't record properly

HUD in action

• Boss falls from above now for 2 reasons
• 1, it looks pretty cool and badass
• and 2, I couldn't fix the navigation modifier issue I've been having for days so the boss needs to stay off the map until the player triggers it in
• Remind me to look into level streaming, it might be an alternative to navigation modifiers

Falling boss

• You may have noticed that there's fog now, wow!
• Still playing with it to get it how I like

Foggy

• Minor fix: Only the player can open/close doors now
• Goblins and pretty much anything that had collision used to be able to trigger doors to open/close

Day 5 - July13th Progress by Atmostphear

Did mostly blueprint work again so there won't be much for show and tell today.

• New feature: Boss weakens after each wave 
• Each wave he loses 5% of his max health 
• However, he doesn't drop below half health
• Hopeful bug fix: Put in a check that makes sure enough goblins spawned to finish a wave 
• This should fix the issue of exactly 1 goblin not spawning on a random wave 
• New feature that doesn't actually do anything yet: Respawn! 
• Resets back to wave 1 on death and resets the boss to his max health 
• Can't test if it's working since I haven't implemented damage yet
• Put in some arches because I was tired of looking at a blank ceiling 
• You guys like arches right?

Such arch

• Issue that is driving me up a wall: Navigation modifier is not fully building
• This might be a bug with the Unreal Engine
• Crossing my fingers that it isn't or I'll have to rework the AI
• Basically the modifier tells the boss where it's not allowed to be
• When the the project reloads the modifier will only fill a 2000x2000 box in the middle of the map and no other modifiers can be made anywhere else
• 2000x2000 is not big enough
• TODO:
• Maybe work on that knockback functionality I said I would do a few days ago..?
• Implement a basic UI so I can actually see what's going on
• Work on a torch flame particle if I have time

Day 4 - July 12th Progress by Atmostphear

No screenshots or gifs today because it's late, I'm now exhausted, and I did mostly blueprint work anyways.

• Boss AI (this was a big pain in the ass)
• Finally doesn't act like he's one of the goblins, well... most of the time
• Remember kids, delete your RecastNavMesh before trying to build navigation
• Potions (also a pain in the ass but not as bad)
• Currently you start the game with 2 potions
• Press 'E' to use a potion
• Each potion heals 25 health
• Max health is currently set to 100
• They take 2 seconds to heal 25 health
• If you try and use another potion while one is going you don't get the full amount of health back
• So don't spam that potion button!
• Your potions are refilled after a wave
• Every 5 waves you gain another potion
• This caps at 10 potions
• I probably did other things but my brain is fried at this point
• Issues:
• I have a lot of them
• Also,
• For some reason on a random wave exactly 1 goblin will not spawn and prevent you from finishing the wave
• I'm not bitter
• Projectiles are bouncing off the invisible boxes that trigger opening and closing doors
• I'll look into fixing this when I implement the actual weapons

Day 3 - July 11th Progress by Atmostphear

• Door animation works for the most part

Gate animation

• Temporary boss enemy in place
• Gave him extra health and made him slower than goblins
• Still trying to fix his AI (he tries to pretend he's a goblin)

He's excited to see you

• Fixed random number of enemies spawning
• Brought initial wave down to 3 and 2 extra goblins per wave
• Was lagging with a lot of goblins after a few waves

Day 2 - July 10th Progress by Atmostphear

• Goblins can take damage now
• They disappear after 1 second

Goblins taking damage

• Goblins can now spawn on either side
• There's currently a bug where it spawns a random amount

Two goblin spawn areas

• Waves are implemented and functioning
• Initial wave spawns 10 goblins
• There's 15 seconds between waves
• Planning on having about 60 seconds
• 5 extra goblins are added every wave
• Temporary until we know what we want to do for each wave

• Started working on door animation

Goals for tomorrow:

• Finish door animation
• Get a temporary boss enemy in place
• Add some knockback functionality
• Had something else but forgot ¯\_ツ_/¯

Day 1 - July 9th Progress by Atmostphear

• Rough layout of the game map, no details added yet
• Blocks in middle are for the pagoda/gazebos

Spawn room

Main room

Boss room

• Enemy spawn setup
• Will need to implement waves later
• Just using the default mesh until we have a goblin mesh

10 enemies when game starts

• Basic enemy AI

Only chases player around

• Health and death setup 
• Not actually attached to anything yet