Week 5 - Ladder Volumes

Well, last week was a serious pain.  The light detection seemed like it was almost complete but due to a minor last minute error things didn't work.  In essence, the code wasn't handshaking properly with everything else meaning my code wasn't getting called.  This lead to a whole load of other issues and resulted in this past Monday/Tuesday working things through with my professor to get things done.  The good news is that a valid method has shown itself so by next week, things should be done with the light detection no matter what.  For the time being, I'm focusing on the ladder volumes and kismet triggers.

With the map I have, the ladder volumes have been fairly easy.  We don't have very much to do in the first map to enable to character to climb everything, so I actually have the ladders almost done.  Just a last minute bit of tweaking.  The only issue I'm having with them is that the player can fall of the sides sometimes on some of the smaller gaps.  This just needs a blocking volume that either myself or Vince will be putting in.  As for the triggers, they all need to go into a part of the level that we haven't designed yet.  It will involve a cutscene/enemy spawn trigger and a trigger to let the character unlock doors.  Both should be fairly straight forward and can't be fully done at this time.

All told, this week hasn't been so bad and it's been a huge relief knowing that the light detection is being taken care of.  By the end of this week, I should have half of my work for this done in about half the time meaning I'm still on track for getting everything accomplished.  As for the rest of the group, the HUD/menu's seem to be done/almost there.  The first level is only missing the end section and the challenge parts for items we haven't yet done/are finishing.  It also needs textures put in.  AI is almost done last I heard and hopefully the weapons are nearing completion.  Best of all though is our main character is almost done and ready to be used.

Week 4 - Light Detection

Last week I was unable to finish the light detection and so that has continued into this week.  Also, as soon as I can finish it, I'll also be starting work on ladder volumes in our first level.  That said, I've made progress towards completing the code.  With the help of my teacher I've changed how I'm going about it.  Instead of running a line of sight algorithm, I'm putting a hit box on the light and running a check to see when the character crosses the beam.  That said, the amount of levels of light detection will likely be dropped back to only a yes or no.  I've been having difficulties getting a spotlight to register anything and every example I've seen used a point light.  That means there is no easy way to have multiple hit boxes running within the light.  Not to mention I would most likely need a secondary light object to run a second hit box.

As per the past big, we also have no issues within the group.  Everyone was continuing their sections from last week so we should have a lot done come this week.  That's it for this week and come next week level 1 will be fully climbable.

Week 3 - Game start

This is week 3 and we have officially started production on the game.  My task for this week is to work on the lighting aspect of the stealth system, or make sure that the character is easier to detect if he's standing in brighter light.  I've been struggling with this and it's been somewhat frustrating.  But I think I have a very nice way of doing things, that takes care of multiple facets.  I had started with trying to replicate what other people had done, namely they all had their code trying to trace between the pawn and the light to see if they were being hit.  I wasn't able to get this to work at all.  What I decided on makes is to utilize spotlights and their inner/outer cone properties.  Now, all of this is theoretical at this point as I haven't been able to code it in or find the variables to work with it in unrealscript, but the idea is there.  Using this, I can make the outer cone at 50 degrees and the inner cone at 10.  The character will then have 4 levels of light detection, 1 being not noticeable and 4 being anything can see you.  I will make it so the code performs a check between the light, the character, and the ground below it to get an angle.  This is compared to the angle of the cone.  If he is greater then the outer cone, he's outside the light and at 1.  If he's in the outer half of the cone, or 30-50, then the character is at 2 detection. In the 10-30 range he's at 3 detection and standing in the heart of the spotlight, anything under 10, will result in being a level 4.

I haven't started coding yet because I'm still trying to learn the last bit to make sure I know how to do everything, but this method should garner the desired result.  From this base, It's a matter of working it into the AI that if the player's detection variable is set to 1-4, then the AI will detect him sooner or later.  It also means stealth will almost always reduce your detection variable by at least 1 level.

That said, we still have no issues in group.  Things are going smoothly from what I've heard in everyone else s portion.  Everything from last week was done and turned in when it was needed.  This week, I can see my section bleeding over to next week, but aside from that things are looking up.

That's all for this week.  Next week should be the finishing of the stealth elements and possibly the implementation of our first weapon or two.

Week 2 - The Game Design Document

It's been a week later and at this time we've started getting into the game design document.  We actually have a lot of work done today, more then I would have initially thought.  All but one person has their section in and it all looks pretty solid.  We have a good grasp of what's going on and ideas have started to take form in ways that will be doable.  Pretty much the only thing we don't have at least a basic idea for is the characters/story section fully written out, and we have at least a rough idea of what most of these are already.  All in all, things are looking good as of now.

Since last week, a couple of changes were also made.  The biggest thing is we've decided to make this into a 3D sidescroller.  This has given us some new issues, but simplified a lot of things.  At first I wasn't 100% sure on it and where things could be going, but after thinking it through and talking about ideas, it seems like a great idea while still keeping the original feel.  We have also started research on what needs to be done.  Just from the bit I've done so far, things don't seem quite so bad.  Some ideas of how teleportation could be worked have come to mind and these don't seem so bad.  Also there are some tutorials that explain how to do some of the things were looking at, enough that we should be able to make a sizable dent in the project.

Those things aside, there hasn't been any issues in group.  Since last post, everything got done fine and the new deliverables all seem to be getting turned in as we need them.  That's all for this week and I'll be sure to have another update next week sometime.