Hello everyone,

This has been a hectic week, trying to get stuff ready before spring break, so we have lots of things to show you guys, so let’s dive right in there!

Our dev team implemented the combiner, complete with all the features. It was quite a lot of work since we wanted to add world UI to the combiner to make it more clear which items it requires and which one it would return. But it was worth the effort. With the animation and particle effect added, the end result looks great.

Another feature they implemented is what we like to call, the playground. It’s a level-lobby system where the players can walk around, change their character and select a level to play by grouping up. There were a few problems with character selection: other players influencing the way you can select a character, the selection not passing on into the level you start. Since every level (including main menu and the playground) is a separate level in unreal, and has a separate game mode, our devs needed some time figuring out how to pass on the data, before it gets destroyed by changing the level and game mode.

By including more art assets into the game and tinkering with the shader for our force field, the game looks more interesting already. We know it still doesn’t look like much. But like we said before: the first goal was to create the “flow” of the game (main menu -> lobby -> level). It’s easier to do it now, then to have to add it into the game later on. Now that most of that work is done, there’ll be more room for gameplay and graphics. Most of the mechanics are already working. Now we just have to build up the game with it.

Lastly a lot of cleaning and bug fixing happened. We also had to fix quite a lot in our folder structure and naming conventions weren’t always correctly applied, and knowing UE4, renaming stuff can be quite the task, even worse when combined with source control.

The game is starting to work and feel great code wise, so the art team was there with a steady flow of assets to be implemented. With a lot of out models, consisting of simply pick up items so far, with more on the way, and a lot of stuff that needed to be rigged, skinned and animated. With our artists heavely working together, there was no divide in whom did what. Everyone worked closely together, and discussed what things would be prioritized above others. So there were characters in the works, while still working on items and the combiner.

That being said, that combiner was still a pretty handful. As our artists didn’t have that much knowledge about particle systems in UE4, and since there had to be a particle on there, we had to look it up to create this. Though we all had a course about it, it takes some time and struggles (and a lot of trials and errors) to get to some acceptable result.

With half of our items and assets pretty much done, we can start moving on to more environmental stuff after the break. The art team is super stocked about this because it will give the opportunity to really dress up the level, make it pretty. Everyone likes a good working game over graphics and prettiness, we thought to ourselves, why not both? 😉

That’s it for this week guys, again, we would very much like to know what you think about it so far, and of course care for the feedback you provide. We look forward to see you all after spring break!

Kind regards,
Tension Dev Team