EMMA TETHRAIN
Menu
Flying Village progress. I Added a rock path by the first houses on the Flying Village in the Night Level. I’m using smaller rock assets because Linus didn’t place out landscapes on the Flying Island so it’s just assets that the player walks on, so I can’t use the landscaping painting tool. Starting to place out landscaping up there is a low prio right now, there are more important things that need to be fixed. Since there are so many levels I would also imagine that I need to make several different landscapes as well and that would be time consuming. I also removed one of the streetlights because it kind of drew my eyes to the left when I came up the platforms to that area, not leading me towards the right so I removed that distraction to make the path more clear. I added some trees and bushes to make it feel more alive. It feels a bit frustrating that I won’t be able to make the Flying Village feel good gameplay wise since there’s so much that needs to be fixed there but I won’t have the time to be able to fix everything with the time that is left. But at least it’s a bit more decorated now. What it looked like by the jelly area when I started. I went all out on changing the jellyfish area, adjusting landscape and assets accordingly. I also found a bunch of assets and foliage that were inside of other assets that I made sure to either delete or place in new spots. I’ve noticed that it’s very easy to make level layouts too big so my focus was to fix it so that the area leading up to the Jellyfish bouncing challenge feels right in size and that it will lead the player to where they need to go. Also having the area be smaller in size helps with placing out assets and making the area feel more alive. It feels fun to combine decorating and thinking about the gameplay flow at the same time. Player CameraI adjusted the player camera so that the player avatar isn’t blocking the player's view. raising its location by 70 and giving it a slight tilt downwards (-1.0). I’m thinking that either Linus or Calle can continue playing around with it if they feel like it next week. But it feels much better than before and the player is able to take in their surroundings much better. Adjusted the camera angle of the player avatar. What the camera looks like in-game. I also changed the Lag of the camera boom (camera arm). Now the camera lags behind the player to make the players movement feel more smooth and satisfying. I also added a rotation lag. I will leave it like this for now and talk to the other designers tomorrow and see what they think about the changes and have them playtest them, and if somebody wants to they can play around with the numbers as well. Worked some more on the environment.One of the bridges down by the starter beach in the night level was squished together compared to the other so I fixed that. There was a bunch of foliage that was levitating in the air as well to I made sure all of it was on the ground. I checked the foliage on the part when you scale the first hanging bridge as well. Fixed the Camera even more.I placed the camera's location further back so that when the player jump they can still see the shadow under them in the neutral camera mode (not having zoomed in or out with scroll). What it looks like in-game now. I looked at Jak and Dexter, Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Odyssey as a reference of the player character's placement from the camera. The player is able to use scroll to zoom in and out with the camera, but I had no idea about this function, I randomly found out when I went through the Player Avatar Blueprint. So I'm thinking that a normal player might miss that feature and perhaps finding out about it later in-game. So I had that in mind when making sure to have the shadow show. There are still chances where the shadow is out of frame, but it's much better than before, and the player can change the direction of the camera with the mouse. Player Jump.I took time to play around with the player jump mechanic and adjusting numbers because the jump has no satisfactory to it at all, and this is a mechanic that is very important since it's a platformer game. I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted it to and I was a bit confused since when I did changes nothing happened. So I don't know if there is something else that is clashing with the Character Movement: Jumping / Falling. But I decided not to spend more time on the jump for now. What I did change was the gravity scale from 1.0 to 1.3. So that the player falls down faster. I looked at Jak and Dexter and Super Mario Odyssey as a reference to how long the player avatar is airborne in those games (single jump), in Jak it was about 1,2 seconds and in Mario about 0,8 seconds. In our game the jump was about 3 seconds long. Unreal crashed several times...While I was working on the jump suddenly Unreal started to crash over and over again and then when I started it up again had stuff that was gone, like the player avatar mesh and certain menus were inaccessible so I was scared that I had accidentally removed something or done something that messed everything up. So I Unstaged my changes I had done since my last push on Fork. So I had to redo the camera, fortunately I've been updating my dev diary alongside while I've been working so I have the pictures of what I did so I can quickly change the camera position and add the Lag and adjust the numbers back to how they were on the player avatar camera. I'll have to redo the foliage however. The camera started to act really weird when I was redoing my progress, It got choppy and was really wonky. So I closed unreal, unstaged my progress and tried again. I realized that I put all of the information on the camera boom (transformation was supposed to be on the camera not the camera boom), and that's why it was acting wonky. I put the information in the right place and then it worked! I made sure to push the change on Fork. It was good that I went back and did the foliage because I found some that I had missed to move that were clipping into the top hanging bridge. I am going to go through the level thoroughly towards the end of next week to look over everything but it's nice to find that kind of stuff now so I don't have to deal with it later. I also noticed that the lever to the cave had been covered. It doesn't look good at all but I'll leave like that for now. The walking space by the door is so tight so the two big rock assets that are on each side of the waterfall just blocks it, and their collisions are really bad as well. I also took care of the foliage from the starter beach up til' the lever and also checked the cliff area's foliage as well so that's dealt with. Before and after by the Jellyfish area. I have left the landscape be by where the jellyfish bouncing challenge begins because I want be sure of the layout before I remove it. Entering the area it feels a bit more clear where you're supposed to go now compared to before. I also edited the bouncy jellyfish challenge to give it a better flow as well as connecting it with the new landscaping. I'm going to continue to edit this tomorrow.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
November 2023
Categories |