Week 21: Puzzle Time!

Progress and Problems

We're making progress! - or so it seems. The level for our Off The Map competition entry is coming along great. We are slowly, but surely populating the scene and I am liking how fast we are getting on with this whole project. However, there is a slight issue. There is something that just seems off.

We have been receiving feedback from a set of tutors that was designed to our group throughout this project and continue to regularly receive feedback twice a week. One thing they pointed out was that our level - while it looks great - just doesn't look like Alice in Wonderland. While we have referenced quite a few parts from the book (like the lake of tears, the tea party and the croquet grounds and palace), the whole thing just doesn't look a lot like Oxford, which is the city that Lewis Carroll lived in when he was writing the book. Since it was his home town, he would've taken a lot of inspiration from it when writing the book and we somehow need to incorporate this in our level.

Our level so far.

Models and EVEN MORE Blueprints!

Aside from that let's see what I have been working on this week. I spent quite some time modelling a tree. I am currently learning how to get better at modelling foliage. I have an awesome tutorial, which teaches how to model foliage from scratch and then use that modelled foliage to bake down diffuse and alpha maps to use as texture for making foliage. I didn't get around to finish it yet though, as I was also working on more blueprint related stuff.

I have implemented a system that switches the character between worlds. We wanted to have a rabbit hole, which would lead the player across the river and into the tea party area, in which everything would be like a different dimension. Instead of the luscious, green grass, we would have a purple sky and a very misty and surreal environment. So to do that we basically created a copy of the level and changed a few parameters to achieve that effect. The blueprint would then load this level and teleport the player to the other side of the river. I had to create a text displaying on the HUD to notify the player that the next level was being loaded and I also had to learn a bit about save games in UE4, which was a bit hard to get my head around at first. Basically, you can not transfer variables between levels. Everytime you load a level, everything from the old level gets deleted and reset. This was a problem, since later on I will work on scripting in a collectible system and I wouldn't want the player to lose all his collectibles when he entered the other level. This is where a save game comes in. It allows you to save a bunch of variables into a special blueprint and then save the whole batch into a file, which can then be loaded again once the new level has been opened.

Tea Party (slightly outdated screenshot)

Another thing I have been working on was a puzzle. We wanted to have a massive fountain right in the centre of our level and decided we could use that to implement a jumping puzzle. I have been working on optimizing this puzzle and it is now working great. It included a set of blocks at the base of the fountain that have a pattern of going up and down in different speeds. The player needs to jump from platform to platform to reach the second stage of the fountain. From there he would then need to jump onto a set of cards, which are flying around the fountain in different directions and speeds. Once the player reaches the top, he will be rewarded with a collectible.

The hard part about making this puzzle was making it achievable for people of all skills. When I created the puzzle at first, I made it challenging - or at least what seemed challenging to myself - but because I was already a seasoned veteran when it comes to PC games it was way too hard for people who don't often play PC games. I had to tweak quite a lot of things, like the controls of the player, which were very sensitive. One person pointed out, that they have problems, since they like to keep their hands touching the keys, however an ever so slight movement would result in an accidental quick button tap, which would launch the player forward. To counter this I implemented a very slight delay (0.05 seconds) into the controls, which is just enough to not make the player launch every time you simply tap the key, but it's not noticeable if you actually intend to move and hold down the key. The controls feel a lot better now.

Another thing that I changed was the collision of the platforms. I noticed that many players who don't often play PC games tend to look straight ahead to the next platform when jumping, instead of looking down at the platform you're jumping from. This would cause them to often jump too early and loose a vital bit of distance and fall down instead of getting to the next platform. By making the collision slightly bigger than the platform itself, it would not take away from the challenge, however make it less punishing if you miss-time your jump. I am thinking of incorporating this into the level in addition to creating a system that will incrementally increase the size of the platforms if the player keeps failing, so that the game would gradually get easier as they keep trying.

I had to tweak the speeds of platforms and distances between platforms quite a lot, as well as change the size of 2 platforms, between which I wanted the player to use the sprint feature that I scripted into the game, however at first it didn't seem obvious and people who tested the game always wanted to jump between these platforms at first without sprinting. I wanted it to be more obvious, so I make the platforms longer in size, so that it looks a bit more like they have enough space, making the player more willing to sprint.

Fountain (with puzzle)

Finally, I have been working on a small script that allows the player to pick up objects within the level. This wasn't too hard, as there was an example of exactly what I wanted within the Example Contents of UE4. While introducing me to a few new nodes within the blueprint editor, I quickly understood what they meant and re-scripted it within our level.

More additions to come.

I plan on implementing a checkpoint system, so that if you reach the second half of the fountain, you wouldn't have to do the whole first part again incase you failed, as people who didn't usually play PC games found it quite frustrating to get half way through only to fail and having to re-do the whole puzzle. More on that next week~