Game Gen - Week 31

-

 Back in Action


I was thankful to get to take a couple of trips this September for my birthday and for the Affirmation Deck project! The events went well but I've been pretty wiped out from all the traveling and excitement. That being said, I still made some progress in my Space Paws game which I'm excited to share!

Last Star Paws Progress:

Last we left off, I had just finished getting the "explore" functionality working for players to discover new resources on which they will be able to build farms. This includes a timer function that uses the resource's distance from the player's base to calculate how long the discovery will be. 

Latest Development Checkpoints:

Getting Organized: 

To get myself better organized as I tackle this complex game, I started creating a "Jira" project to map out my tasks better. This really helps me stay focused on one step at a time without getting too ahead of myself and where I'm currently at in development. 

I can brainstorm ideas and features I'd eventually like to have in the backlog, or bugs I need to fix, and choose certain tasks that are manageable to work on each day/week. 



Continuing on Farming Functionality


The resource farming then selling loop is complete in its most basic format! You can now discover a resource, build a farm, farm resources, and add them for sale which NPCs will then buy and give you gold for! 

The resources also appear only if you meet the required Base Level to discover them, otherwise, they will be hidden from the player. 


Code Clean Up

I also worked a lot on cleaning up my code and was able to even remove an entire actor that was unnecessary and move its functionality into an actor I already had. This improved the amount of communication I needed to maintain between different C++ actors and made the code more manageable. 

Next Steps:

- Bug fixing in the main gameplay loop, like crashes when interacting with the UI at the same time an NPC buys something. 
- Updates to the farming loop, requiring certain gold and resources to build or upgrade a farm. 
- Continue brainstorming on further functionality to make the game more enjoyable. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Game Gen - Week 19

-
Image
Continuing in C++ and Unreal Engine! Over the last two weeks, I've focused on developing the core mechanics of my 2D resource game, "Star Paws." Here's a summary of the key C++ classes and functionality I've implemented: Here are the C++ Classes and functionality I've made over the last two weeks: Here's a short GIF of my 2D game, which is still very early in development.  Player Character  Setup : Created a Paper2D character using a C++ class, then converted it to a Blueprint. Functionality : The player character moves to the Base Console on tap, triggering the Base Management mission control menu upon arrival. A snippet of how we control the player's movement with timers.  Trade Table System  Structure : Developed a C++ class and Blueprint for managing trade goods using Enums and Structs. Mechanics : On interaction, items are sold, and the appropriate gold amount is added. NPCs trigger sales by moving to the table and purchasing items. A weighted sys
Read more

Game Gen - Week 1

-
Image
 This Week In My Adventures... Imported Public Domain Assets I utilized assets from various websites licensed with Public Domain to make the level more interesting.  Created Third Person Project Walked through setting up a new third-person project with Vives. Created Hamburger Pickup What started as just a plain white ball pickup turned into a fun giant hamburger, resulting in a normal-sized hamburger in your hand on collision.  Created Health and Mana Reduction Items for Testing I jazzed up the basic HP "damage" causing item and replicated it for mana reduction.  Created Health and Mana Potions for Restoration I found more public-domain assets online to use for my health and mana potions.  I then implemented the same functionality as my "damage-doers" but instead of subtracting from the variables, I added to them.  Created the Beginnings of UI with Functional Health and Mana bars.  Vives taught me how to start making a basic UI including a health bar. I then replic
Read more

Game Gen - Week 4

-
Image
This week, we really dove into many more of the deeper mechanics of Unreal Engine blueprinting and gameplay. We focused mainly on further developing the player character before moving on to start the actual gameplay loop mechanics. This involved delving into the math for curves, with which I'm not super familiar. However, Vives did an awesome job helping me understand, as did my girlfriend, who is way better at math than I am! Ha! This week I had a lot I accomplished, but here are the highlights: Improved character mechanics: We added a cooldown on the attack to prevent the character from freezing. This involved the mechanics of a cooldown paired with connecting it to the UI. Improved the map layout: I replaced the simple map with a better, larger layout with these neat medieval assets I found online that are public domain.  Improved the AI's path-finding ability: I added the use of an Environment Query System using Pathing Grids and looking for the Distance to the Flag or Play
Read more