Dev Log #3: Player Mechanics & World Changes
Welcome to another dev log for The Dragons of Old! In the past week or so I have been focusing on player mechanics and doing some world changes. Most of what I've done acts as the base, I will continue to add to them as I go along, so I'll keep you updated!
Player Mechanics:
Because of the nature of the game, I knew I had to go third person. My vision for the game is to have a simple action game, there will be melee, magic, and ranged combat. Each style is not too extensive and will be easier for me to code and work on rather if they were super deep. I also started working on the HUD of the game.
So, starting off, I made a child of the character I showed off last Dev log, this will be the player class. I then thought of all of the inputs the player might make and what actions the in-game player will take. Using Unreal's new enhanced input action I created new actions, dodge, heal, attack, and interact.
Dodging: The player may dodge at any time, this will cause them to lose stamina and they can't dodge if they have no stamina.
Healing: The player will have access to three healing potions. They will fully heal the player.
Attacking: So far, I have only coded for melee attacks. The player has a melee combo of four. You will lose that combo if you stop attacking or are hit by something.
Interact: The player can walk up to an object and if that object has implemented an interact interface, they can interact with it.
HUD: I have made a basic HUD for the game, this includes player health, stamina, and mana. I have also added a popup for if the player moves within range of something that can be interacted with.
Dialogue mechanic: In the HUD, I have also added a dialogue box for when the player talks to an NPC. Using NotYetGames open-source dialogue tool I have a base for my dialogue system. This is a huge help as I will now not need to create my own dialogue system. For now, I have set up a basic dialogue tree for an example NPC. What's great about this plugin is that it allows me to save dialogue that has already been visited. Since I am taking saving the game into account already, this is a big help.
World Changes:
After finishing up some of the base player mechanics I wanted to focus a bit more on the game world. In my first dev log, I described my process of creating the world. I wanted to go back and touch up on a few things. I did not remake anything but touched up on some landscaping details. I also started working on some of the locations of the world. Starting with the village, using the assets mentioned in the previous dev log, I worked on some of the buildings of the village. So far this includes a blacksmith, alchemist, tavern, town hall, and a couple of houses. The village is not populated yet, but I have a good base. I also added some misc. buildings for minor locations.
After making the village I wanted to explore making caves. This is something I really want to implement for my game. This was another great opportunity to learn a bit more about landscape materials. In short, I made a visibility modifier that will make a selected area "invisible". This acts as the entrance to the cave. After I used some rock assets to create an entrance and pathway in the cave. There can be some improvement but I look good for starting out.
Post-processing: I understand that it is early on, but I wanted to explore post-processing, lighting, and other stuff. While I did not fully explore what these things are I played around with some settings to hopefully give the base of my game a "feel" to it.
Here are some before and after shots:
What's Next?:
Development of the game is going smoothly, but as school ramps up, I'll have less time to focus on it. For the time being, I hope to start working on more of the world, adding proper NPCs and maybe start working on the dragons! Stay tuned for more!