Personal Development Project - Blog Entry 3

Cleaning blueprints

I decided it would be best to clean up the blueprints so that they are easier to read when it comes to the progress review, it will also help me have an easier time finding things in the future.

Further fixes to crouch mechanic

I fixed an issue where the player had to double press the crouch button after jumping from a crouch to crouch again

I did this by setting is crouched to false after jumping, as it was still set to crouched even after jumping and setting the player height to standing which was essentially hiding the issue.

Changing back to first person arms

Due to the amount of time left in the module I have decided it would be best for me to return to the original body-less first person mesh, I originally made the decision because I thought it would be more immersive but hadn’t properly considered the extra animation work this would require. In order to maximise the effectiveness of my overall project in terms of my research goals (game flow and player power) I have concluded this is the best choice moving forward with my game.

Aim down sights

The next step I took was to create the function to aim down the sights of the gun, this will help the player aim when they shoot at enemies and is a crucial part of the player being successful.

To create it, I added a second camera that activates when he player right clicks, this is very snappy at the moment and needs some refining which I will do at a later date.

Refining blueprints

I decided to further refine the blueprints I had in order to streamline efficiency, I realised I had some useless nodes that didn’t do anything.

I now have two separate sequences that run off of a branch which checks under the object, instead of the long single list of sequences I had previously, one of which checked for something it did not need to check for.

Changing crouch mechanics

I have had an issue previously where I couldn’t get the crouch perfect, this was due to Boolean issues that I couldn’t get my head around. I decided to work around this by simply stripping the player of the ability to sprint or jump while crouched, this adds another button press, which ultimately disrupts the flow of the free running, however it is a worthwhile sacrifice in order to get rid of the last of the bugs.

I got rid of the previous calls to the crouch mechanic and removed the under object Boolean as these are no longer factors. So long as the player is crouched, they cannot jump or sprint. I had an issue that I couldn’t find a simple solution to online, however I have found a solution on my own. The issue was that even when crouched, the player would jump, even when a Boolean was applied to try and stop it.

The work around that I found was to add, from the “is crouched” branch true, an alteration to the jump velocity. So long as the player is crouched, they can jump, but the velocity of that jump is set to 0, giving the illusion that they are not jumping.

Fixing the error that has been “bugging” me since I made the wall climb

I had an issue with the wall climb where I would always receive an error report after testing the game, the error was linked to the wall climb. I found a solution for it: the line trace by channel did not have a return value. Top fix this I added a further branch that returns true to the next branch.

Removing iron sights

I previously had issues with my iron sights, this being that I couldn’t aim up or down when switching to the next camera, this was not a key feature and working on it, with my schedule already tight was proving to be problematic, as a result I removed the aiming down iron sights mechanic as the shooting still works without it.

Turn around while wall climbing

I decided to add a mechanic that turns you around 180 degrees while climbing up a wall, it isn’t a perfect system so far and there are a few tweaks to figure out, but I have gotten it to work.

I made a Boolean that checks if the player is climbing up the wall, if this is true then it plays an animation that forces the player around 240 degrees, which is 180 in game for some reason. From there I have been working on a system that allows you to pause in this position for a while before falling, from here you will be able to jump again from the wall. I haven’t figured out how I am going to stop the player after rotation, I also need to figure out a way make the player jump forward.

So far I have tried this, off of a sequence in my jump, but it doesn’t work yet.

An additional problem I have is that the player can only turn around once, if you jump to another wall you can’t turn again, additionally I need to make it so that contact with another wall resets the launch, so the player doesn’t drop off due to lack of momentum.

Things to do:

- I need the character to freeze and not fall down the wall for a period of time.

- I need the character to launch off of the wall if they press the space bar in this time.

- I need the S button press to reset after the space bar is pressed to jump from the wall.