Initializing production sprint 2...

Hello again! The first week of the second sprint is now behind us. We began this sprint with deciding which features/effects/interfaces would be prioritized and which might be cut from the game, if we run out of time. So this week has also been a little slower than the last one and we don't have that many new thing to show. That being said, we have worked on some background logic to make sure everything works as robustly as possible.

Controller navigation

One of the largest things we did this week was trying to implement proper controller navigation to all menus in the game. First we looked into Unreal's Common UI plugin, but after a lot of testing we came to a conclusion that it is much too complex and experimental for a game of this scale. We would have to write too many background systems just to get it running properly with all of our existing systems, so in the end we decided to with the default implementation in Unreal. 

Even the default requires some C++ engine overrides so that we can take the controller analog input out of the interfaces and back to the player characters, but we managed to find a way to do it cleanly and now the navigation works well. It still requires some work to get good button styling amongst other things.

We did notice that changing the focus system in Unreal is not really well documented. We had to dig through the forums and source code to find the correct class to change the keys. By default, Unreal has a class called FNavigationConfig, that defines all keys that can influence the focus state. By deriving from that class we were able to override the behaviour and remove the analog inputs completely. In theory this should work for everything, but more testing is required to see whether we found an actual solution for our problems.

Colour picking

We got some feedback last week about the way players join the game, and we made some changes again. Now you are able to change your colour at will while in the main menu. We also added a couple more colour options for now to choose from, although those will likely change still.

Start game zone

We have also been working on a new way to start the game in the main menu. In addition to a button click players can now gather up in a specified zone and, if enough players are present in that zone for a certain amount of time, the game will automatically start. There is still some work to do to make this work how we want it to. But for now this is the result.

Designs

We did some designs and textures for the main menu. As we didn't quite have time for adding everything to the game, here's a shot of the design our artists made. The in-game version looks a little off still. The players can jump around with their characters in the black area, which will be filled with the platforms. In addition to the menus, we also discussed about the loading screens. We came to a conclusion that since the loading times are easily under a second, we'll just use a fade to black for now. It's unlikely that we would change it later unless we get some very good ideas.

Last time we talked about the background design and adding it into the game, but we actually decided to increase the scale of the level, which meant that the design had to be redone. For now we'll concentrate on the menus but the background is definitely coming in the next weeks.

Effects

Many actions are still missing effects at this point, but we are working on including as many as we can. For example, this week we finished the pick up and parry effects. We may make them more epic later on, but for now it's important to create effects for everything that need them for.

Animations

Most actions now have an animation. They are still quite unnoticeable, but still give a little more life into the game. During the polish we aim to make these stick out more. Also the movement effects will make animations feel better.

Next plans

Next week we are going to be adding even more effects into our game, as well as finally including a dynamic score (or "matchmaking") system locally. We are also working on adding more interesting power ups.

That's is for today! We'll be back next week with more progress updates. See you then?