Progress Log

[Senkusha]

This is going to be my online diary of my development progress, my developers log.  I'll include screenshots as I progress through my development goals.  Today, I've opened a totally blank project.  I was originally going to do an Open World beginning, but I guess the developers at Epic decided to remove that option.  So, a blank project it is.  I'm going to build the Third Person controls and camera system from the ground up in an attempt to understand what they all do better.  So, here's the first entry:  I welcome you to the world of Bubble Pop Paradox!



I have no idea what this warning means yet, but I'll figure it out in short order.  My first task is to add the Third Person camera and Player into the world.  I'll use the typical Mannequin for now.

My character goals include:

• The ability to choose between several "All Star" anime characters, that I'll have to meticulously design from scratch in VRoid Studio.
• Each character will represent a different "Class", certain advantages, skills, special abilities and unique disadvantages that will add to the Player's enjoyment and play-ability (mostly, mine!)
• I'll also have to include a mechanic that reduces the size of the character model by a percentage (right now, I'm thinking 1%) to add an incentive to not get hit by the incoming objects (dodge-balls)
• I'm going to give each character a unique offensive energy based weapon that can be used to destroy incoming objects, however, my goal is to only use this as a last resort, destroying the ball also damages or destroys the prize inside.
• Each character will have a set of five critical Stats:  Agility, Brawn, Cunning, Determination, and Empathy.  These values will be initially set based on the character that is chosen, but can be increased (or decreased) via game play.

My goals for the "Enemy" include:

• Initially the enemy is a dodge ball.  I want the ball to react normally to anime based physics!
• Inside each ball is a 1% probability that it will contain some sort of prize.  This prize will be intelligent randomly chosen and can include size re-adjustments, buffs, special abilities, additional weapons and attacks, etc.
• Later, I plan to introduce rivals modeled after my protagonist anime models that will include specialized Artificial Intelligence, and dialog.  My goal for this game is not to be a killing type game, but one that encourages typical Shoujo tropes, such as friendship and overcoming obstacles with teamwork and problem solving.

My goals for the game play mechanics and build include:

• I'm primary going to focus on keyboard and mouse movement controls.  I'll add game pad controls later, if I feel it'll enhance the game play control.
• I want to use as many free assets as I can find.  I don't want this project to become a financial sinkhole.  And I want other people, if they choose to follow along, can build the game in their own style.  I won't be posting how I accomplish things in this log, because there's an entire section on the website dedicated towards working with these free tools, this is only a diary outlining my progress.
• The world will be an open world, meaning that the player can freely explore the area that I make.  I want to try to make much of the world dynamically generated, that way, things are in different places every time a player enters the game.  Some things, such as critical landmarks and objectives will probably remain pinned down, but I want the goodies to be dynamically placed.

[Senkusha]

It may not look like I got a lot accomplished today, but I actual did complete a number of tasks.

• I defined the Input Mapping System, so I don't have to hard code my inputs for Character Movement or Camera Manipulation.
• I imported a prototype character from VRoid Studio.  (No animations just yet.)
• I defined the HUD / User Interface, and applied a center crosshairs target.
• I created two projectiles, a laser energy weapon, and a dodgeball.  The dodgeball bounces upon impact (unless it hits the player, then it explodes.
• I lined up the Energy weapon with the crosshairs.
• I made the camera only move when holding down the Right Mouse button.
• I got rid of the annoying initial mouse click to begin playing the game.
• I setup a DodgeBall Spawner that will create a Dodgeball every one second.
• I added the basic sound effects for the Dodgeball and the Laser weapon.

[Senkusha]

There's a couple of bugs that I've tried to quickly work on before getting to work this morning.  I was unsuccessful at resolving:

• My laser bolts are not destroying the Dodgeballs.
• I need to examine the logic for my Bounce condition.  It appears to be backwards, yet is working as it should.  Confused.

[Senkusha]

Not much was done today, as I was fighting with my computer that decided to throttle my CPU to 10%.  I think the power supply may be faulty.  Now I get to spend $219 for a new one.  In the mean time, my computer is limping along with some overclock settings.

I manged to fix the blue print for the dodgeball.  Now when it hits the ground, it bounces and sounds, and doesn't explode, but it will when it hits the player character.  Also the player character now shrinks by 1% with each hit.  Finally I added a score counter and a size indicator to the HUD.

[Senkusha]

Today was fairly productive.  I added a compass and composed the outer wall of the Maze.  I attached the Dodge Ball Launcher and made a doorway with some stairs.  Applied a mirror finish to all the walls.  This is going to look confusing as hell!

Unfortunately, my computer is still really, really slow.  I am in the process of saving $50 per paycheck in the hopes that I can afford a new power supply ($219) to get my computer back up to working 100%.

[Senkusha]

I didn't have much time this morning before work, but I did manage to add a Coordinate System.  I did this so that I could also figure out where my Laser Bolts are spawning.  I have the weird issue that when I set my Bolt Spawn to the Firing Location (an invisible socket that represents my character's arm being outstretched in front of her), the bolt appears at the location, but fires back towards the camera, instead of to where my crosshairs are.  This is despite the Raycasting working as it should.

I would post the screen shot, but since I turned off a bunch of Windows' Services because my power supply is crap right now, I can't find the screenshot.

[ZandraJoi]

Very interesting updates! While I'm not into developing & coding, I can appreciate what all goes into it. Looking back at the updates can help a person keep going with their goals

[Senkusha]

I've done quite a bit over the past few days, and have neglected to update my log!

• I've added a coordinate system, health and energy bars.  I've also changed the Score to read as XP.
• Some things that I've done behind the scenes, I've added an Enemy DataTable so that I can configure all my enemies in one place.  A DataTable is a fancy Structure (a variable that can hold different types of variables together).  A DataTable is kinda like a Excel Spreadsheet.  I can read these values in the code, but I don't believe that I can Update any of the information.  This is useful to store an array of Structures and not only see but manipulate the values in one place easily.
• I can randomly spawn Borg Cubes now and they will travel randomly throughout my world.
• I've added an Primary Stats block, that uses my five critical statistics, Agility, Brawn, Cunning, Determination, and Empathy.  Health and Energy are calculated from these values.
• Save and Load game functionality.

This isn't the final location of the Stats Block, this is only a debugging screen so I can see what it looks like during game play. I'm planning on making a dedicated Wizard to create a character.  It's also not quite finished yet, as I need to lock down the total amount of points spent.  (I'm using a method that Asheron's Call used to only give half the number of available points to spend so that a character can't be Over Powered.)

Some bugs I've noticed:

• Laser Bolts don't "Destroy" when they collide with a target.  They do eventually "time out".
• The Targeting is very slightly off mark.

And one thing I thought about doing is reworking the navigation controls.  Currently, I'm using the keyboard and mouse.  I'm thinking of using the mouse exclusively.  I can use the Left mouse button for interface interactions, the Right mouse button to control the direction (left/right rotation) and pitch (ascending/descending) -- yes, I'm planning on adding Flight.  And I'm going to use the Scroll Wheel to determine Speed/Velocity, or Forwards/Backwards movement.  This will allow for more fluid movement as I'm not struggling with the keyboard and mouse.  I can also use icon/buttons on the Interface for character interactions.

[ZandraJoi]

I like the progress! How do you come up with ideas on what to do & what not to do?

[Senkusha]

I've got a lot of inspiration from other video games that I've played, and I'm just combining the ones that I want.