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Chibi Brawl (Working Title)

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Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Monday, May 16, 2016

I've posted about this project previously in my ZOPU thread briefly, and had promised a demo at some point before stuff happened that was causing the compiler to fail... Anyways, putting it in a separate thread now since it's officially a separate project from ZOPU now...

Quick update video:
https://youtu.be/ggdf1CmsOcg


Updated a lot of the game mechanics over the last few days, and swapped out the old model I made for the player character in favor of some better quality premade assets from the UE4 marketplace. Specifically, the Chibi Hero Female pack as well as the free Infinity Blade assets and the Dynamic Sword Animset pack (Which had some really well done animations that are far superior to anything I could make myself right now), as well as a music pack or two...

Mostly, the last few days were spent on combat mechanics, and trying to get the attack combos to look and feel as smooth as possible. So far they work pretty good, although there are still a few bugs to work out with the current setup.

Also setup a fairly basic test boss enemy type (Big guy at the end of the above linked video) using mostly basic distance checks and direct movement input manipulation (No actual AI system in place yet...)... As simple as it is currently, it works for the moment, at least for this boss...

Going to build out at least one full dungeon for a demo, which should hopefully not take too long, and then I'll release the previously promised demo...

Yes, I know, I'm cheaping out (though not financially...) by using premade art assets, but it looks better for the moment than what I was using before, and I'm probably going to replace some of these premade assets later anyways... Regardless, this lets me focus less on the art for right now, and more on the actual gameplay mechanics and level design, which was most of what I've been doing lately anyway...

Kakarot2550 View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Wednesday, May 18, 2016

It looks good, you should continue working on this and release a demo Smile

Eagle The Purpose View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Wednesday, May 18, 2016

I don't know why, but I get flashes of end 90's/early 2000 PC/PS1 kind of games while watching this preview. And at the same time, it's quite refreshing seeing newer techniques used to achieve this.

Looks very interesting on certain sides. Looking for more!

Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Wh1t34Gl3(SAS) wrote : I don't know why, but I get flashes of end 90's/early 2000 PC/PS1 kind of games while watching this preview. And at the same time, it's quite refreshing seeing newer techniques used to achieve this.

Looks very interesting on certain sides. Looking for more!



To be honest, some of the ideas here were from Zelda games. Namely the pots and switches (pretty much every Zelda), and the falling platforms (Zelda 2). I guess you could say I'm taking old ideas with this and trying to make them new again?

Either way, I do plan on getting a demo out soon, because this one's fun to work on, and I'd love to make it a commercial game (which will need a demo to help with a funding campaign, if I'm going to go that route...).

Kakarot2550 View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Wednesday, May 18, 2016

What more can I say, goodluck and have fun! I will be checking it out from time to time to see how it's all working out

Eagle The Purpose View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Wednesday, May 18, 2016

To be honest, some of the ideas here were from Zelda games. Namely the pots and switches (pretty much every Zelda), and the falling platforms (Zelda 2). I guess you could say I'm taking old ideas with this and trying to make them new again?

Yeah, noticed the winks to the Zelda franchise. It's the global/overall ambiance that remembered me of PS1/old PC games, though.

Concerning the falling platforms of Zelda 2, I think I recall the concept being also adopted in later titles; probably in another form, though.

Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Saturday, May 21, 2016

Finished the layout of the first/demo dungeon. Now I just need to populate it with more stuff, lights, ground clutter, decorative room props, enemies, exc....

Also need to make some further adjustments to doors/keys/Falling Platforms to fix up some remaining bugs that seem to have popped up occasionally...

Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Sunday, May 22, 2016

Did some play testing yesterday with a friend's kids, and got some needed feedback for making the game a bit more user friendly, also noticed some bugs that will require fixing before release, cause otherwise they break the game and make it improbable to complete the level...

Most notably, trigger volumes were firing off and locking doors before the player has actually even entered the trigger volume... Best guess is it's an issue with either the game predicting player movement, or something attached to the player causing an overlap event that shouldn't be able to. (Leaning towards it being the latter.)

Also, starting to get some noticeable frame rate issues that I need to investigate a solution for...

Edit: I was right about it being an overlap caused by something attached to the player, forgot to adjust the collision on a sphere collision volume I was using for radius checks of nearby actors for reasons... Fixed now, so moving on to see if I can improve performance any.

Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Update coming soon, just as soon as I have internet at home again to upload everything that's been changed/added so I can show screenshots/videos...

Stay tuned...

Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Still no internet at home, and no video yet, so here's some quick pictures in the mean time.

Recent changes:

Loading between levels is now (mostly) seemless, and uses persistent levels and level streaming to carry over from one map to the next. Advantages are lower load times for certain areas, as well as allowing both music and loading screen animations to play (The second of which is still to be added...)

A World Map has been started on that aims to be a massive environment for the player to explore, level up, and adventure through. Currently still in progress, and current focus is the main port-town of Terminus. Still mostly using the Infinity Blade or similarly free Epic Marketplace assets right now, but that's because I'm terrible at creating environmental assets, and will look to replace them later if I ever get a budget for the game that allows me to hire an environmental artist... But that's something for the far distant future...

While it hasn't been implemented into the game yet, I have a general storyline figured out now, that will include various main and side quests, as well as cutscenes and hopefully a robust Mass Effect-style dialogue interaction system. (Maybe not as robust as that, but along those lines...)

Also added are some prototype "vehicles" to make traversing the environment quicker and easier(The goal will be to add a fast travel function as well eventually...). Not pictured below, because I'm not happy with either of the prototype meshes I've made yet, they're mostly just placeholders right now.

Some limited split-screen multiplayer functionality, including a Deathmatch mode was added, and subsequently broken when I switched over to the Level Streaming load setup, so that's going to need to be fixed again soon.

And finally, I'm going to be tying up a few bugs as best as I can, implement the introduction at least for the story, and then compile out a demo, so expect a playable demo hopefully before this fall (If not, no later than this winter...). Recommended for more recent computer hardware though, as this game still struggles a bit at times even on my new laptop., unless I drop the settings really low...

And now for the only part everyone's really going to pay attention to, the pictures:

Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Saturday, July 02, 2016

Got my internet back up, expect an update video soonish, but in the mean time, I'm working on the dialogue system...

So far, I have a working prototype for branching dialogue, but I'm going to rework it a little before I make the next video, since I'm not 100% satisfied with it yet...

Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Sunday, July 03, 2016

Made some more changes, most notably adding in support for surface type detection for footstep sounds, as well as unifying all sound effects under a global volume setting... And broke the AI while attempting to fix a back-end issue... Will correct it before the next video though, and combat wasn't the focus of this update anyways, so whatever...

Anyways, here's the video I've been promising...

https://youtu.be/IS1_1K6jLKU

ryku220 View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Monday, July 04, 2016

Looking good! You probably already noticed, but I personally think the clothing and hair physics are a bit strong. I'm pretty newby when it comes to engines but is the anyway you can add weight to the hair, and the clothing so it doesn't bounce around everywhere?

Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Monday, July 04, 2016

ryku220 wrote : Looking good! You probably already noticed, but I personally think the clothing and hair physics are a bit strong. I'm pretty newby when it comes to engines but is the anyway you can add weight to the hair, and the clothing so it doesn't bounce around everywhere?



I think they're still at the settings they were defaulted to in the packs they came in, but I think I might be able to adjust them some if I decide to later when more of the rest of the game is built. Personally though, I think how the cloth/hair is setup by default for these is still tons better than the cloth systems I've attempted to make for myself so far, even despite the inaccuracies.

Regardless, even most AAA games have rather unrealistic cloth simulations at times, so I'm done stressing over it, particularly since I have a lot of other things to worry about for the game that are much higher on the priority list still.

ryku220 View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Thursday, July 28, 2016

Shenku wrote:I think they're still at the settings they were defaulted to in the packs they came in, but I think I might be able to adjust them some if I decide to later when more of the rest of the game is built. Personally though, I think how the cloth/hair is setup by default for these is still tons better than the cloth systems I've attempted to make for myself so far, even despite the inaccuracies.

Regardless, even most AAA games have rather unrealistic cloth simulations at times, so I'm done stressing over it, particularly since I have a lot of other things to worry about for the game that are much higher on the priority list still.

Makes sense. Has there been any progress on your project sense?

Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Thursday, July 28, 2016

A little, but not much worth mentioning just yet.

Truthfully, I've been reluctant to work on things the last couple weeks because of how quickly my laptop has been overheating in this ungodly heatwave we've been having where I live, so I haven't done too much since my last post beyond a few minor fixes or tests. I'm hoping I can get back to work on it soon though.

ryku220 View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Sunday, July 31, 2016

Ahh hope your all good in that heatwave and I'm sure once it passes you'll have a better update.

Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Monday, August 15, 2016

Bought a moderately priced "Medieval building" construction pack a little over a week ago, and just finished going through and redoing the buildings/city-layout in the first and main city (The buildings I was using originally were placeholders from the Infinity Blade Ice Lands pack, and were little more than recolored broken down shacks, not houses). Of course, I still need to make the streets themselves seem "lived in" with some additional props and debris thrown in there.

Oh, and I added a "park" like area on the north end of the city with a bunch of flowers and stuff, and just need to add a few benches or such to finish that area up, so overall, the city is about half done... Unfortunately, the game itself is only about 10% there (Demo is about 40%ish, still need to add in the main-quest NPCs, map system, and a few additional enemy types for good measure)...

Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Thursday, September 01, 2016

Video Update!

Spent the last two days reworking my previous swimming mechanics, and ended up scrapping them entirely, and replacing it with a more adaptable water volume setup.

Previously, the player would "walk" on an invisible "swim surface" to maintain the correct height while swimming at the water's surface. This had some collision bugs that would cause the character to sometimes be too "shallow" in the water to correctly swim, so I pitched it. Splashes and swimming height were handled by the Character blueprint, which unfortunately also had to go, since it was a static height.

Now, the swimming, splash particles, splash sounds, buoyancy, underwater post processing volume, and water physics volume, are all handled by a single blueprint actor. I place the actor and the Physics/Post Processing Volumes into the scene, add the volumes to the actor as stored reference variables, and can then resize the volumes and water directly from within the single actor's variable settings. This also freed up the water to be more dynamically configured in levels at varied heights, including multiple different heights in the same level, which was previously improbable.

The "Weighted Boots" equip was more of a "I wonder if I can make this too" feature, and is only half working. The Boots mesh swaps correctly, but movement speed isn't slowed out of water, and walking under water on sloped surfaces has the character sliding down the hills when not moving, both of which need correcting before calling it a completed feature.

But it is a small step in the right direction for equipable/usable items, which is something I still want to add (Through a Zelda styled item equip menu though, which I still haven't setup yet...).

Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Saturday, November 05, 2016

Small update:

Started the initial layout and population of the second dungeon, and subsequently broke the AI in a whole bunch of ways...

Also made the fire/volcanic area look more fiery/volcanic, but still need to populate it with its dungeon, fire-themed mobs, and make the smoke-plume use camera depth fade correctly, as currently it does not...

Also did some minor optimization to improve performance slightly. Still chugs a bit though, so I need to find some more areas to trim the excess performance issues...

Edit: Oh, almost forgot, I also added in a day/night cycle function from the UE4 marketplace which I'll be trying to expand into time-of-day based events/missions/exc. that will also effect gameplay and the game's main story once I get time to add it all in.

Shenku RiO Incarnate View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Update:

Expanded the world map landscape... By a lot...

Still not final, might move some things around, redo some continents (notable the northern and southern ice continents which bug me due to their being off-center from everything else...), and pretty much none of the newer continents are populated by foliage, rocks, enemy spawns, exc. yet, so I still have that to do, but those will have to wait until I optimize the new map areas to not give such bad performance hits.

Also fixed a bug that was causing multiple versions of the player to spawn at game start that was caused by an oversight on my part for handling the initial player location when starting the game.

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