Prototyping week 1

-First week of prototyping is over!The goal of this week was to manage to implement all the core mechanics of the game.Alas due to inexperience with the engine while we covered most of these mechanics a few more must be implemented to have a gamemode where we can test the victory conditions of the game rather than having players run around and throwing objects at each other.

-While working with blueprints proves to be an easy way to make prototypes, this was our real first try in the team trying to make a full working game, this means also that a lot of time was spend on watching tutorials,reading unreal engine documentation and posting on Unreal’s answerhub for some clarifications and guidance.Since our prototype includes grabbing and throwing objects , some time was spend in trying to find the best of detecting the said objects and then executing the grab, a quick implementation which might not be the most elegant and performant way of doing was added(doing a radial trace around the character).A user from the unreal answerhub also provided us a better way of implementing this while also taking character sockets in consideration, which is something we will need to implement later into the production.

-One other thing that has to be taken under consideration is whether we should make use of all 4 gamepad buttons for grabbing and throwing only.Does it really contribute something to the game or can something more interesting can replace some of these buttons?This is something where we will need a full version of our gamemode to judge.

-Also another area we had to explore as team was the combination of blueprints with c++, someone would say that blueprints are the way to go for prototyping but c++ is the language the programmers here are more familiar with and making a project that contains both gave us a bit more of an insight in which situations one proves more efficient than the other.It didn’t surprise us exactly but using blueprints proved the fastest and most efficient way to prototype something in unreal while c++ is something we are more familiar with, it proved also a really slow alternative(compilation of code and using visual studio at the same time).So in the question of what to use for the main version of game in Unreal, using c++ to build a few core classes and then making blueprints out of them seems the best,fastest way to make a project in this given time frame.

-Last but not least the camera of the game is something that right now works and is more or less what we wanted as a team but the question that lies is whether it will serve the game as well while there is frantic action on screen.Making the camera class a bit more flexible and playing with a few variables will give us the correct answer!

Onwards to Prototyping week 2!

Prototyping week 2 is already here!As mentioned before we will need to have a complete game mode and that means implementing the victory condition and a few other hamster-ball pickups.On the art side of things , the art style has been decided and now its time for concept art,refining the  characters,figuring out how game environment will work (free-floating in space vs. on the face of a planet) and research the rigging of invertebrates (octopus, snake)!It will surely be a busy week!