Happy New Year

Happy new year from The Afterward Developer Blog.

December was Interaction Actor month, and a more thorough update is in the works. Holiday traveling and other issues have seen to it that not as much was done on The Afterward this month as I'd have liked.

Rest assured. In a few days I'll update what progress I have. They'll be pictures. And though it won't be the complete feature you'll get a look at how I pseudo coded and planned this feature to be somewhat scale-able and useful in a variety of situations.

I will also honestly report any hiccups I may have had.

Until then my friends.

Micro Update

I was a little chagrined by my last update so I wanted to post the improved Camera Actor in action. Here's a video.

You'll see the transition back to the template controller camera is no longer an issue, and you'll see that the  player input rotation is changed from volume to volume. I was trying to create the player turns a corner scenario found in adventure games where you want the player to stop moving down the same axis and start moving in another direction.  You can see test level screen captures after the video.

You can see by the screen shots I'm now using an independent set of trigger boxes that talk to the camera actors. And that I need to set those input axis indicators to "Hidden in Game".  I'm now thinking that I may want to get the change input axis functionality into the volume so that I can have more control of axis change without having to change cameras.

Up Next:

December will be Interaction Actor month. I've got some preliminary work done on it, by way of trace functions, but I'm having some trouble with having the little icons that indicate other actions existing as Child Actors.

 

Camera Actors and Input Axis

The first update! Well, -- the first update beyond the initial introductory update. This update is all about Camera Actors. Specifically the ones I'm making for The AfterWard.

The Custom Camera Actors and  an early test configuration.

Why are camera actors important?

I'm trying to capture the scene to scene mechanic and aesthetic of old adventure games, and more recent TaleTale Game entries into the genre. So a simple  follow camera isn't particularly interesting to me.

 Additonally, an adventure game (especially in 3 dimensions) isn't a painting that a player pawns moves on top of. The player moves through it. And sometimes it's useful to change the axis of input to create an ambiance, or encourage player movement in a particular direction or to even just have a pleasing and logical viewpoint.

Looking at The Wolf Among Us there are instances where the camera is behind the character as he moves down a hall way and shifts when he approaches a door.  Thinking back to Biggby's apartment you start in the kitchen and exit, and the input axis shifts slightly when you enter the main area. Hitting the W key  no longer moves the player along the same vector (which was away from the camera in the kitchen, specifically that dingy window) but now moves the character towards the new point of view at a logical offset from the kitchen exit.

I spent two to three minuets one night moving all over one area trying to see the shifts in input, and to the credit of the designers most of the time they are subtle and intuitive and guide the player in a general direction.

   

Things I would need:

I would need a trigger area for the player to enter to trigger the switch in POV to the camera actor.

I would also need a way of communicating a new input axis (a rotator) to the player controller depending on information I'd stored in the camera actor. 

So, I prototyped these in blueprint.

The Camera Actors.

The basic components are a camera, a trigger volume, a rotator set in level, and some functions that talk to the player controller. I even tried to be clever with construction script in that I wired up a system to let me scale the trigger boxes. 

Moving them around though became a problem and not wanting to create a brand new camera actor for each shift simply so I can go in and custom move the components seemed unappealing. So, I decided to make a volume actor that talks to the Camera Actor. 

Creating the Bug

To have fun and test this I wanted to create a bad-design bug. I wanted to enter a camera volume that would change my view point, and , while continuously hitting W, Enter an adjacent volume which would switch my view point and my axis by 180. If I were doing as I said, and continuously jamming that W key, I would soon find myself back in the original POV, but only for a moment as my W-key-habit would see me back in the second POV again with my input axis flipping back and forth.  

Here's a video with the bug and some other tests. Note: at the time of this video's creation I had the camera shifting back to the controller camera when the player wasn't in a volume. This makes the transition look really rough. Chances are by the time you're watching this I've fixed it. I just wanted to get a video up  because video.

Up Next

I want to refine the new independent volume class, but you can expect the next entry to be about interaction Actors. Another important part of an adventure game is interacting with things. Here you'll see my try to scale it to a functional, and flexible system.

See you then. 

Introductions and Abouts

Hello fellow developers, and well, anyone really.  This blog was created to chronicle my attempts to make a point and click adventure game in Unreal Engine 4, titled The Afterward. It will update Monthly on the 30th of each month-- more frequently schedule permitting.

I will be updating this blog until I hit the vertical slice of The Afterward. Which may take some time. After I have a vertical slice I'll take this project over to kick-starter or some other funding apparatus and try to secure funding for a complete product.

Questions:

Who are you?  I'm a level designer. You can see my portfolio at ldmoates.com, but if you want to I'd like it if you called me Patrick. I've written scenarios free lance, been a design consultant, and did development work for VIPR:VR. In short, I'm not any one special, but I like Unreal 4, I like science fiction, and I love adventure games, so this is something I feel compelled to do.

Why are you keeping a Developer Blog? I'll admit that a developer blog is a thing that serves my needs. It's my development gym buddy, and updating it is just one of many ways to keep myself going towards completing The Afterward's Vertical Slice. Yes, I'll be using Scrum Agile, a fairly standard production methodology, but there's nothing quite like having the entirety of the internet as you accountability buddy to keep you moving.

Why are you making this game? Above I said I was compelled to make this kind of game, it's what I'm crazy about but I also want to grow my skills as a developer. I'll be prototyping features in blueprint and moving them over to C++.

Can I help? Yes. I can think of two ways right off the bat.

1: I will hit a point in development where I will need to hire some 3d artists/animators to augment my skills. I would want to pay you money for your skill. I'll post when that time comes.

2: There may be times when I get stumped or you see me executing what I feel is a fantastic feature but you know would be sheer idiocy. If I have a problem you know I'll research it but absolutely feel free to put in your two cents.

What will it be about? You'll want to read the story post. I"ll link it here when it 's up.  But for now I'm pretty focused on implementing features in blueprint and then moving them over to C++

When will it be done?  I don't know right now. I'll draft up a production schedule but honestly software development, especially game development is intricate and subject to all kinds of variables and circumstances.


Don't hesitate to contact me with questions and thoughts as I steam along.

In my next post I'll either talk about features or story... probably features though.