von This is the second week of our game design studio 4.
Tuesday:
Based on the assumption that the wall running blueprint didn’t work because we used a first person character instead of a third person character, Chris tried it again. Chris choose a third person character and modified it to the point of having a first person view, which worked great. But even though Chris now had the same base as in the tutorial, the blueprint still didn’t work, so again Chris lost time trying to fix this issue.
After a lot of struggle, the teleportation blueprint is fixed and now in one blueprint instead of two seperate ones. I modified the first person character by removing the gun and the ability to jump, but I still need to adjust movementspeed. Tried to add a postprocessing effect which should look like you are “blinking”, but I didn’t really figure it out how.Also, I learned that you can make “pins” in blueprint lines…which makes life A LOT easier.
Picture below: I’ve learned how to have two , in this example boxes, in one blueprint, with the ability to move both boxes later independently from each other.
One element of the level we wanted to implement was a maze, which should embody the emotion of confusion. Before starting, we wanted to create a prototype which was based on primitive shapes like boxes in the unreal engine itself. The reason was that we could walk through the maze and check if we liked how it was setup or not. At first, Chris used a maze generator to have a base and tried to build a prototype, but in the end, Chris came up with another idea. Based on an effect in cinema 4D Chris generated a maze much faster, which had a different touch to it. When imported in Unreal, it felt actually fluent and Chris noticed it was a bit more confusing than a regular maze, which embraced the targeted emotion even more. Another thing Chris tried out, was generating an animation in cinema 4D and trying to import it in unreal in order to check if everything functions correctly. For this Chris used a simple platform that moved sideways for the entire time. We did encounter problems, even though the animation was imported successfully, the collision with the object didn’t work. After asking, Chris figured out it could have been due to the way how the file was imported.
Wednesday:
I Implemented a TriggerVolume which enables/disables a PostProcessingVolume after a time. After discovering how to change material values, I noticed that I need to change the postprocessingmaterial on its own. For that, I need to make a MaterialCollection (I can’t, or at least dont know how to access the parameter). After that, we tried the whole afternoon to fix a problem with our Cinema4D Mesh. A lot of time wasted.
So therefore, I had to do the “Eye blinking Effect” in the Evening. However, it kinda worked like I wanted to.
Now that we had the basic layout of our maze, the challenge was to change its characteristics in order for it to look like a part of a world. We decided that we wanted something like an underground cave, Chris wanted to implement those wall elements with help of displacements created with noise maps. The first problem was that Chris could just use the base layout of our maze, because the displacements didn’t react properly and basically just destroyed to complete structure of the mesh. Chris tried using simple planes to recreate the layout, but soon noticed that this wasn’t a great option as well. Chris had issues to create a fluent transition between of the elements because the displaced meshes didn’t line up. After that, Chris used cylindrical elements, which worked out ok, but also here there was the problem with the alignment of the element. Our idea was to have an additional element between the pipes that would act as a transition between shapes. After importing it in unreal, Chris faced issue with transparency due to the fact that Chris didn’t invert normal maps and the mesh looked worse than in cinema itself. Chris figured out, that the actual displacement maps weren’t import, but that the mesh was in a baked state that couldn’t be changed. After this realization, Chris thought was to directly create the displacements in unreal itself in order to have the flexibility of changing the mesh if it doesn’t look like we wanted it.
Thursday:
I’ve just finished the part where the player looses vision. If he stands in a collision, vision will be lost shortly, then the player input will be disabled to make sure he can’t outrun this, player will be teleported and input will be enabled. I also improved an post processing effect by adding an own seamless noise texture map. We also talked again about how we design the labyrinth due to the failed mesh in Cinema4D. I started with the level, so no more sandbox.
Today Chris wanted to figure out how the displacements function in the unreal engine itself. After watching a few videos and trying it out, Chris did come to the conclusion that this method would be the better solution for our problem. Basically, Chris create the basic meshes in cinema 4D, import them to the unreal engine and then use a material to create displacements directly in the engine in order to avoid the issues Chris faced and to have the flexibility of changing the parameters when necessary. However, Chris noticed also some problems, the mapping of the texture works great on round shapes, but on angular shapes the transition looks horrible. Based on that realization, Chris changed the shape of our maze in order to avoid that issue. Another smaller issue was the scaling and repetition of the texture which Chris could fix with the help of a video. Now Chris can define the size of the texture on the material itself. Until now Chris just checked if the basic functionalities would work, the next step would be to actually create the maze that we want, choose textures, displacements and actually create the level as we intended to.
Friday:
Couldn’t work on the project due to my illness. But took the time (even more) on
Saturday:
I still feel like a grilled potato, but at least I’m trying to get the corridors right..And there the problems starts. BSP to Mesh = No Collision, which I can fix by adding an own CollisionBox. But then the mesh is just black, completely black even with light.
But thanks god this did the trick: https://learnunrealengine.com/fix-mesh-turning-black-issue-ue4-geometry-brush-converted-static-mesh-turns-black-building-lighting/
I’ve also added some camera shake, postprocessing and material to make it better. Probably going to change from corridor to a more “circle” based layout, so the effect really grips, right now it’s like a collision box.
Sunday:
Im still thinking about the corridor..it doesn’t makes this „woah its infinite“ emotion, i probably should change it to a form of a square, where you walk corners which shouldn’t be possible. I’ve also created two different ways of infinite corridor. But I need to change my BP_Teleporter or make a new one which the DestinationPlane is turned by 90°.
