BRENNAN JAMES SEGARRA
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Gutter Dev Log

Icons, Alt Items, and Throwing

6/7/2023

 
  • Very on and off across like 6 hours, maybe actually only 3.5 in total but idk
  • WANTED to combine the fixed pick-up function and basic UI with array logic for holding actors in specific inv slots and showing them in the UI with paint 3D icons I made while playing dnd.
  • Made the icons, pleasantly happy with them even with the hindsight of scope creep banging me head against something completely different for the rest of the night.
  • Before making any other item BPs, figure I should make a basic item BP template - ez
  • Decide to make a new item off duped off it, to test everything working. Decide the most basic option is rock.
  • Ez rock texture spheres, basically works. Dumb me decides I should now jump into making it an object with physics collisions and give it the primary "use" function of throwing it. Rest of the night is wrestling with code that supports repeat said physics, picking up, and throwing. In the end only really throwing kind of works. The physics and pick-up is very buggy at the moment and I need to sleep. 
  • Id love throwing for AI distraction or combat but its more than I can chew for now when I originally intended to just get the Inv to work
  • Oh yeah also while clicking through a "throw rock" tutorial, I stole super simple random enemy AI pathfinding (something I should actually be focusing on for a gameplay vertical slice and dammit I know that).
  • Action items should be, allow myself to have the pick up, store, and take out basic Inv system, ACTUALLY give enemies set spline path walking, look for player, and follow player pathfinding behaviors (plus a way to damage/fail state player), then finally actually start building and dressing a blockout level. (Fingers crossed I jump to the latter before getting stuck on all that AI....)

Fixed it

6/6/2023

 
  • 1 hour
  • Dispatcher on item bp before doing ANYTHING references player it casted to on begin and compares the player's "currently selected actor" with itself before proceeding to "pick up". w00t

Pick up and Use through Dispatchers

6/5/2023

 
  • 2 Hours
  • Dug into trying to understand event dispatchers so I could use them for contextual item use.
    • Successfully set up logic for grabbing the knife with my select system and "storing" (deleting atm) it with said dispatchers - but haven't connected exactly how to separate the pick up dispatch from every other instance of said item. (Right now grabbing one knife, grabs all of them)
  • I'm sure I'll work it out when less tired, just hoping it'll be more elegant of a solution than checking every individual item tag every time.

Item Selection

6/4/2023

 
  • 3 Hours
  • Set up the basics of a system for detecting nearby objects tagged as "Item" and then highlighting the nearest of them to where the first person camera is "looking" by moving a point light and toggling it visible.
    • Meant to eventually function as an intuitive process for selecting amongst a variety of nearby items to pick-up and then use or store in the inventory bar.

Start UI Inv Bar

6/1/2023

 
  • 2 Hours
  • Had the idea for consistent interaction usage for any kind "items". At least anything the player can pick-up. Right now its just the knife/weapon. Though throwable junk, keys, usables, etc would be nice to have and be maintained by a consistent system of, "you need a free hand to pick-up" and items need to be stores in the limited hot-bar or dropped to have said free hand.
  • TLDR I started making a UI hot-bar and an animation of it sliding in and out of the bottom of the screen.

Videos and Active Behind Detection

5/25/2023

 
  • 45 minutes at 8pm, and then another 45 at 1am 
  • First sit down was just tediously recording videos to showcase the current state of mechanics so I can RETROACTIVELY upload and edit them into the log posts actually mentioning them. Make these slightly more worth reading in retrospect.
  • Second was me realizing the issue of only ever checking for "Behind" upon begin and end overlaps - where I want it (like many prompt options, maybe including picking up things or general interactions) to simply switch the moment it can be. For example the enemy alert is at 3, they player is overlapping the behind collider but not showing the prompt because alert is too high. Though then when it lowers, the player has already "begun" the overlap and so the prompt doesn't appear until they leave and then reenter. Big cringe dont like - so I fixed it by making it check specific actor overlap on the player tick event. Begin overlap now just grabs the "current enemy behind actor" to check against, and it works woooo.

Stealth Kill and Alert

5/24/2023

 
  • 1.5 hours
  • Already had a death state on the enemy (kill collision and rotate/locate face down onto the ground) and so just needed to link a slash while "behind" to instantly kill. Extremely basic but still satisfying. Though reminded me this should only be possible when unnoticed or not doing alert state for the enemy
  • Tossed an integer on the enemy that is cast to and searched for before "isBehind" is decided for the player. Then prompting me to want to toss a trigger collision cone mesh on the enemy's face and set a very basic alert functionality. Max alert when seen, and then a looping timer when not seen to count down the 3 other alert levels before hitting zero. 

Cleaning Components (Mostly)

5/23/2023

 
  • 2.5 Hours
  • Fixed the "Behind enemy" overlap detection - had the tag on the wrong component. 
  • Misc Player and Enemy component collider and mesh adjustments. Found I think a good middle ground of camera perspective within the capsule and seeing the meshes when looking down while also not clipping through walls.
  • Main issue in this regard now is just the weapon still clipping through most things despite constant fiddling to bring it closer within the capsule while "animating". Might eventually bite the bullet to try complicated render math. Hope is for the player to hold many different things and not worry about clipping so tbd tbh.

Collision Issues

5/22/2023

 
  • Like a little less than 2 hours
  • Broke and trying to fix the collisions and spacing between player character and enemy. Half motivated by wanting to give the player a body so the spacing of an item held and how it interacts with the enemy looks and makes sense.
  • Effectively a mess at the moment - getting tedious to troubleshoot multiple volume component overlap collisions.

Crouch Knife

5/17/2023

 
  • Intended for an hour, ended up being almost two.
  • Threw a box collider on the enemies back and added logic to detect when the player is currently behind an enemy. Intended for eventual stealth take-downs.
  • Figured out how to reference the Knife BP the player picks up, and threw on a timeline lerp animation transition between holding it upright while standing and flipped downward while crouched. 
<<Previous

    Pitch

    ​UE5 First person dishonored-like stealth navigation and combat.

    Goal

    Round out basic mechanics and systems to then build a robust and polished level design to play around it.

    Timeline

    May 2023

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