1. Levels and Bugs
Since James extended the due of the vertical slice, we had enough time to polish the levels. Nandish and Ryan made the levels until Sunday (March 17th) and I had to hurry to finish them. First, I put more modular assets, like poles, in order to make the levels look filled. Then I put some props such as trees, small crosses, and so on. Lastly, I put foliage on the levels to make it look better. The level 1-1 and 1-2 were okay, because Ryan already put a lot of props and assets to fill out the levels. All I had to do was fixing the assets appearances, scales, and placements, and putting props and foliage.
The level 1-1 is a tutorial level to teach how a gargoyle and puzzle system works. The skulls in the levels explain them.
(I took the screenshots after we decided to use fog instead of post process.)
The level 1-2 was also created by Ryan. It is also another tutorial level. First, I didn't like the idea because I thought it didn't show how the enemies move and I wanted to introduce from easy to hard concepts. But after the discussion with Ryan, I just decided to follow his idea. Now I'm satisfied the result. The level itself has some points to improve, but I like the design now. You can get power-up bone-throw by the zombie corpse, and throw bones under the cliff to avoid the enemies. This level also shows how the pressure plate and buttons work. Once you step on the pressure plate, you trigger the puzzle and it opens the door. Then you can see the button and throw a bone there. If you enter inside just because the door is open, you will get trapped and encounter the very kind skull.
For me, the last level 1-3 was the most problematic. Nandish made the level, and it had so many problems, even though he worked so hard. It was too empty and too big. The enemy AI also didn't work. With the discussion and adjustments with Nandish and Marcelo, the bugs and AI were solved. The level 1-3 introduces actual playable level, not just a tutorial level. I fixed and changed the puzzle because I wanted to show a lever. Also, I put door opening sound with sound assets I got from other webpage.
After all the levels were done, I merged all the levels I worked to one level. Our original concept was connecting all the levels by gates. To merge it, I had to deal with a lot of things. First, I had to delete duplicates such as audio manager and Navmesh. Then connected three different terrain smoothly. I think it was the hardest one because there were some assets that have only one side. I think only for merging and polishing, I spent more than 4-5 hours at that time.
(the playthrough Marcelo recoreded)
Besides polishing the levels, I also fixed the bugs in the levels. I don't know how much I played the levels to test them out. The enemy AI and puzzles were not complete, I had to fix it with Marcelo. I also had to fix the main menu design. Nandish made the amazing game title logo, and I put it in the main menu UI with the button sprites I created. I also designed options menu too.
I will change the actual option screen design after Deepak and other people ends the functionalities.
When me and Marcelo were packaging the whole game, there was a very annoying bug. The zombie AI was not working in the package game. We had a really hard time to figure out why and to solve the problem. Amazingly it was because of the order of animation blueprint nodes. I felt so annoyed after we found the reason. There was another annoying that the power up UI icon was not showing in the game. Marcelo got the reason, and it was because of the string itself. The bone-throw powerup was a space between the two words and it caused the problem in the package, not editor. All the bugs I wrote above perfectly worked in the editor! And it made the bug fixing harder.
I also want to talk about the red vignette texture. Even though I created the new material and the new textures way before, I applied them in this sprint for the vertical slice. Now our red vignette have some blood!
2. Graphics
After the vertical slice ended, our team had a meeting to gather ideas to finalize our game. Also we got some feedback from the people who played our game. James asked us to make a video to show when the gates are opening and I did it. (I will write below.) Also Ryan wanted to change the 3rd person perspective camera to show all the objects and enemies around the player. I fixed the camera arm length and angle.
In the last sprint, I found a bug related to Niagara and post process. I tried my best to solve it but I failed. So I made a poll to decide between fog and post process. First, I made the scene with fog and compare it to the post process.
As you see most of our teammates like fog more and we decided to go with fog. I will keep trying my best to fix the post process bug, but I'm glad to use fog instead hehe.
I also created a document to show all the settings for the fog in the discord channel as a thread, so if anyone want to set the fog without my help, they can do it with the document.
3. Localization
This is one of my most important works in this sprint. I really wanted to put translation in our game so our family and friend can play easily without having problem with English. I used 'localization dashboard' in Unreal Engine 5 and set all the settings for that. I added all the languages we need and gathered all the texts needed to be translated. I am responsible for Korean, Marcelo for Portuguese, and Nandish for Hindi and Gujarati. But there was a problem. Because Portuguese has special characters such as 'ç' and 'ã', and Korean, Hindi, and Gujarati don't even use Alphabet. So I had to set the different font for each language. For that I created a font manager and save all the fonts. Then I created a based widget which changes fonts based on current culture (language setting in UE5.) I made all the UI which have texts inherit the base widget class I created and applied all to the each text. It took 1-2 hours just to set the base widget and set the font change.
I think I pasted this node more than 30 times. Anyway I was happy that it works. Now we have translation system! I finished Korean translation, so the game has Korean!
I also added the changing font functionality in the option menu.
It was way harder then I expected, but I succeeded anyway! The hardest point was changing and applying translation right after we change the language. But it worked! I'm so proud of myself.
4. Rendering
As I said, I created some sequences and applied them in the level like the video below. James said that he didn't know where the door opening was coming from, so he wanted us to add the video scene to show the gate opening.
I also put the scene in level 1-3 to show the two gates opening after the player uses the lever.
Lastly, I helped Nandish to make our poster and business card for Level-up Showcase in Toronto. Especially I suggested him to change the idea of the business card, because I wanted to put the scene that the player is chased by all the enemies.
And I created the scene with like this.
And look at the result!
Nandish is really amazing designer. It is so awesome, and I can't wait to give other people in Toronto. The post is also so nice.
I can't wait for the final game we will make!
Comments