Entry 024 - Moveable Cells & Force-Field

Although a feature might seem easy to program, most of the time it's not. Movable Cells for instance, a simple idea of being able to move certain dedicated cubes. To make them feel new, I made a kind of teleportation system. But in order to get it to work, it took me days of pure frustration... well, for now it is done. There's still a little error, but it's not critical, hence screw it for now and continue working on other parts of the game.

But what are Movable Cells? How do they work? The Cells themselves will lie around all over the map. Once you get close to one it'll glow indicating, that it can be activated.

Foreground: Usable Movable Cell / Background: Force-Field.

Now that it's been marked as active, you can interact with certain platforms on the ground. If triggered using a key, the lastly activated Movable Cell will be teleported to the platform. But there's a little catch: once a Cell has been activated, no other one can be used until the original one has been deactivated.

An activated Movable Cell; on top of a platform.

Other than that, I've done a lot of thinking, mostly about the story and the environment. Especially the last one became boring to look at... don't get me wrong, it worked well but I came up with something different. A sky-box. But a fake one, that is merely some kind of a projection onto the sphere. If you get to close to the sphere, a force-field will appear to show off the levels boundaries.

Greetings,
Dave

Entry 023 - Energy Cells gone?

Well, it (again) has been way too much time since the last post and I dearly apologize for that. Let me start with the Energy Cell System: I continued working on it and had a version with a carriable cell that was even throwable AND, if thrown on a cell station, went right in there. It was gorgeous to look at but once I tried implementing more than one cell it all just broke. No matter which cell you grabbed, only the first one to be placed in the map was grabbed. I broke it down the easiest way possible to get rid of the problem, but after almost two weeks of pure despair I gave up... guess that was the point where my programming knowledge ended (since I am designer, not to forget).

Edit: Not to forget, I worked with cells to trigger from a distance. It was alright and functional but... it just didn't feel right hence another two weeks gone. Not wasted, though, since I learned a lot about tracing within the UE4.

The Switch Cell (off/on) and the Movable Cell.

So what to do? For now, all three skills will be accessible using dedicated keys. Once I figure out a way to implement a HUD working great with VR a queue skill-set might be implemented (more on that later... eventually). Other than that I made the textures for switches and a moveable cell working with pressure plates. Besides that some optimizations were made; for instance a better and more flexible checkpoint-system or an enhanced lighting setup etc. Also finally I do have an idea for a great ending of the game, story-wise of course.

After all you can see I was definitely busy even though I was sick with the flu for two weeks. The next things to consider for the project are: getting to a feature finish being close ahead and figuring out the financial part. One consideration might be switching to Patreon or even making a crowdfunding campaign... but only once the features are mostly done and I have started the level design. That's it for now, take care!

Greetings,
Dave

Entry 022 - Energy Cells 2.0

Since last time a few things have happened. First of all the Energy Cell Texture has been improved for the lying around actor. At the same time, the whole blueprint has been redone to get rid of some issues I had. Previously the interaction was defined by an Overlapping event that worked, until the player threw the Cell right in front of him. To fix that, I instead used a Tick event with an "Is Overlapping Actor" that it working alright. This did come with new problems but that is programming I guess...

Left: Common Switch - Right: Energy Cell Station (both wip)

At the same time I started working on the Switches and the Cell Stations, where the Cell itself have to be put in in order to provide any other actor with energy (activate Switches etc.). And that pretty much wraps it up for this time.

Greetings,
Dave

Entry 021 - Energy Cells

So last news it spoiled the Energy Cells and well, let's have a look at them. But first: what has changed my mind to implement them after all? The answer to that is simple, I figured out how to make them be in front of everything (no clipping). Within the materials there's an option called "Disable Depth Test" that, combined with a translucent material, does exactly that.

Energy Cell Prototype - Can be Taken and Thrown

The white "stripes" indicate, that the player can interact with the object. So once you get close enough you can use the object and in this case grab it. Once that is done, it'll be displayed close to you:

Energy Cell Prototype - Carried by the Player

I've also managed to make the item throw-able already hence hitting the F key will throw the Energy Cell away. If it does land on the floor, it can be grabbed again. Though if it does fall down, it'll respawn at its initial position. This system works perfect although I did use some tricks...

Besides that a nice material effect has been done that will show off the current energy for the carried Energy Cell itself. And well, only the basic Cell is in the game so far, meaning that in the future the other ones with the actual skills will follow. Last, quick notice: I am currently thinking of removing the Electricity Induction Cubes or re-doing them.

That's all for now, stay tuned for more awesome info!
Greetings,
Dave

PS: The purple cube is being used for the Teleportation Energy Cell.

Entry 020 - PC broken and Packaging Problems

The last few weeks have been a pain in the ass. Beg me pardon for this expression, but truth must be spoken. First of all I have had problems packaging the game, it just never worked. I tried getting rid of all the errors but it just didn't work. A whole week I was devastated until I made the decision, to "redo" SPLIT. But before I even got the chance to do so, my PC (mainboard) broke.

I have had problems before with my board, so that my CPU only used 1,2 instead of 3,4 GHz (i7 2600k). That wasn't perfect but it worked and I hoped it at least would be okay until Skylake (i7 6700K) would arrive... of course, it didn't last. So now I am working with my Notebook, though it does not have enough power to work properly with (especially VR).

Therefore until Skylake is released I have to work with my Notebook and for the last three weeks I did. I am almost done re-creating SPLIT and I am very happy with that since the UE4 finally does package the project properly. But yeah, that's pretty much it. Re-creating SPLIT in a new project (everything newly imported etc.) and trying to set up my Notebook so I can work with it. And well... I did some other stuff like I figured out a way to implement the Energy Cells but that's a news for the next blog entry.

Greetings,
Dave

Entry 019 - Prototyped Walkable Mainmenu

This time let me present a short glance of the prototype for a walkable mainmenu. The menu items are being switched/scrolled using the arrow keys or the mouse wheel. To active the currently selected item, left klick or enter is being used. It's but only a little test for now and there are several other ideas worth considering.

Mainmenu Prototype - With Walkable Dummy Options Area

You might be asking, why no news for the Energy Cells? Well, I ran into several issues I couldn't resolve due to engine limitations and VR itself. Therefore I stoped working on it (for now) to clear my head to come up with new ideas... and in the meantime the mainmenu sounded like a sweet idea.

Greetings,

Dave

Entry 018 - Visual Feedback & FX

While still trying to find a solution (almost did it) to the carriable Energy Cell, I did a few things to improve the effects for the Slowmotion and the Player Health. So let's get started with the player health:

Player Health - Visual Feedback (left death, right wounded)

As your health decreases, so does the saturation while the chromatic aberration and the vignette effect decrease. For the Slowmotion instead contrast, bloom and motion blur (only noticable in motion) are being changed to get a brighter and more intense image.

Slowmotion - Visual Feedback (left active, right not active)

So how did I manage to do that? If you remember Entry 16 I figured out the "Make Post Process Settings" function and used it to my advantage. The short version of what happened: after a couple of failures (like one special function for everything) I created many variables and a function that does update the post process settings whenever needed.

Custom Post Process Tick Function using Variables

It basically uses variables to update itself. It's being fired using the Tick Event, BUT: there's a branch checking if it is needed at all. So for instance, if the health is above 100 and there is no effect going on it won't be used saving performance. Now the only thing that's left to do is to change the variables in order to create an effect which can be seen in the image below.

Slowmotion FX using Variables to work with the Custom Function

This is a bit more complicated in order to achieve a fade out once the energy used for the skill is going from 100 towards zero. What can also be seen is another custom function called "Set_PostProcessSettings_Reset" to restore the settings to default if the respective checkbox is checked. All of this is but a tiny glimpse and does only represent a small aspect of the entire solution.

Greetings,
Dave