Moon Hook Blog: Backlog

Hey folks!
I know it's been a while, I fell ill last week and got really behind on making sure the game was running smoothly before we presented our PoCG. That was last Thursday. We feel like we did really well, and found the fun of our game. Previously, when the character attacked enemies, they would throw a glaive weapon and we had it connected to a timed attack mechanic; the player would have to hit buttons on the gamepad in time with moving rings which would extend the time attack and the glaive would bounce to the next enemy. Through playtesting we found that this mechanic was really tricky to nail down for beginning players and realized that it couldn't be a staple for normal play in our game. So our programmers cooked up a new control scheme after the team met and now it's 100% better. Instead of our timed bounce, we now have a lock on mechanic, which allows the player to lock on to enemies, walls, switches, everything. It's fun to see people come up with different ways to solve puzzles using the lock on now. 

We've also been able to get automated build scripts fired off so we have an .exe at the start of each day. The big help with that means we can watch our FPS both for the PC and console side of development. FPS is a huge concern of ours because our laptops are pretty powerful but consoles traditionally don't have the same kind of power, so we're watching our min-max requirements very closely. 

High Res Screenshot by Chase L.

One thing we learned is watch our imports and exports, specifically pertaining to animations. Our artists modeled our main character in 3DS Max in cm, then imported her to Maya and was converted to inches, then back suddenly to cm, which made her 2.54 times bigger than normal. After we finished the animations and implemented her in Unreal, she looked like Godzilla had landed in our world, ready to kick over the ruins and everything. What we learned was to watch our import settings and preferences a lot more closely, which is frankly a great learning experience for us. 

I know that's not a lot to read for a catchup but things are so busy and we're moving quickly. Our vertical slice is due next week Thursday so we'll probably get you an update then. Until then, take care and keep creating!

OP