GameJam 2 Production

Menus

Main menu

Death Screen

In the future we planned to implement a leaderboard for people to record their scores/times

 Map

we have decided to make the map a basic forest style and made basic low poly assets to fit this, shown below.

 

This is an example of a first draft of what the map would look like in the game and what the player would see while in the game.

we decided to go low poly so that more effort could be put into making sure the game worked how we wanted it to.

Player

At the moment we just have a placeholder for what the player character looks like

the line coming off of the character is the weapon the player utilizes through the game to fend off the enemies, when pushing the spacebar, the player shoots a projectile at whichever direction the mouse is facing to hit an enemy.

This code manages the player's health and deals with damage dealt to the player character

Player movement

Weapon control

Enemies

the enemies currently are just cubes that follow the player as we ran out of time to make the game look better but we are glad with the progress we made in the functionality of the game.

the enemy character spawns in select areas of the map and from these points, per round, the spawn rate increases to slowly fill the map

on their own the enemies do not do a lot of damage but when they group up the damage amplifies.

Enemy Viewport

When the enemy spawns in it finds the location of the actor and follows behind

When triggered by a timer, a select rate of enemies spawns into the game map for that round

XP

As the player picks up more and more xp it fills the bar. in a future version of the game we planned to make a store for the xp to be spent or for every time the bar fills up it makes the character's max hp increase

This connects the xp pickups to the xp bar, making it increase as more are picked up

After the xp is picked up it destroys itself so that the player only picks it up once

Health

this bar lows as the enemies collide with the player character. once this bar is empty the player dies.

Pickups

When the pickup is grabbed by the player, their health goes up by a set amount

Once the pickup is grabbed, it is destroyed

GameJam 2 prethoughts

 Topic: Growing

Me and Daniel decided to use the theme of "Growing" to make a horde based game where the player must try to survive and gain xp as enemies continuously spawn around the map in bigger and bigger groups until the player is finally overcome with too many enemies and dies

we have also thought of an idea that the xp can be used between rounds for abilities or bonuses to use in a side menu store sort of mechanic

pickups around the map can also be found for the player to be able to heal throughout the rounds and they will spawn less and less per round until they stop spawning

we imagine this game to be top down

the player should also have a way to destroy the enemies with some sort of weapon (ie a gun)

Final Business Plan Edit

Business Plan Link

Norfolk Games Festival Meeting

 On Friday the 3rd of March we joined a call with the Festival managers for the Norwich Games Festival and they liked what we had presented and they did not want to change anything about our game but did warn that younger peoples would be at the festival and just to be warned to be careful about what we choose to have in the game and keep it mostly tame as we are making a horror genre escape room game but that is fine for us as we do not get graphic or show gore or have many/any adult themes in our game that would be too bad for the people we are showing our game to.

Me and Daniel also showed a PowerPoint presentation of what we would be speaking about in our half hour talk at the festival and we were told to make our talk more personalized as to our own experiences in studying games development as there will be other talks with people already in the industry that will give more of a look into what goes into working instead of the studying side of things.

Dialogue Systems

AC Dialogue Base 

Function List

AC_Dialogue_Base Functions

These are the different function events that are set in the Actor Component "AC_Dialogue_Base." the functions shown here are some of the main pieces of code that goes into making the dialogue system for the game, and is a Parent Component of what all of the code looks to for big changes and when communicating with each other.

Function "OpenConvo"

This screenshot shows the "OpenConvo" function in the AC_Dialogue_Base and is what the game calls to when the player first interacts with an NPC. when the code is called to, it creates a widget, using the widget "W_Dialogue" which is what the game uses as a base to put character text and dialogue options for the player to choose, displaying it onto the screen/viewport.

Function "CloseConvo"

This part of the Dialogue base is very simple, just clearing all previous instance of the dialogue from the players view and removing it from their screen

Function "Dialogue"

This function is left empty so that it is left free for the Child Actors of the code to use (Each different NPC) so that all of their dialogue is unique to them and nobody recites the same thing to the player every time.

Function "ClearDialogueProgress"

This deletes all of the data going into talking to an NPC so that after the dialogue is ended, once the player re-interacts with the NPC the dialogue is reset to the beginning. This can be turned off or set so that the NPC says any number of things after a dialogue has concluded.

Function "RemoveDialogueProgress"

This is similar to the ClearDialogueProgress code although instead of resetting the Dialogue code, it can make it so that after the dialogue has ended, after re-interacting with the NPC we can set the Dialogue to a previous said message.

Function "SetDialogueTreeIndex"

The code presented here sets up the Dialogue Tree Index for later when Dialogue branch choices can be made for the player to choose.

Function "AddDialogue"

Function Add Dialogue finds the dialogue from the Child Actor, finds the name of the NPC along with its dialogue and displays that to the Widget once the NPC is interacted with and orders all of the different dialogue nodes in the correct order. this also finds and orders the optional dialogue player choices.

Function "UpdateSelectedOption"

Another very simple part of code, The "UpdateSelectedOption" function, once a dialogue choice has been made by the player it proceeds to the next section of the dialogue in the list.

Function "ProgressDialogue"

Again being another small section of the code, this part just progresses the dialogue by a set number in the list of dialogue sections (in this instance it only proceeds by 1 every section)

                                        AC Dialogue Child

Function & Interface List

AC_Dialogue_Child Functions

the function "Dialogue" is linked to the Parent Actor "AC_Dialogue_Base" in order to communicate to the "NPC_Child" when adding new dialogue. The rest of the Interfaces are communicating with the Dialogue's BPI "BPI_Interactable" in order for the individual interfaces to be able to also communicate to the NPC_Child.

This connects to the AC Dialogue Base for the Dialogue aspect, it connects to the NPC Child Actor in order to handle all of the physical intractability that is not handled by the Dialogue code or widgets.

Function "Dialogue"

This replaces the empty Dialogue section from the Parent Actor "AC_Dialogue_Base" and is handled here and not in the Parent Actor so that all of the individual Child Actors/NPCs have individual Dialogues and Choices.

This hijacks' the Parent Actor Dialogue function and replaces it with Speaker name information along with its Dialogue and Options, Shown in the "Add Dialogue" and "Make Array" segments, in this instant the Speaker name being "ChildTest" exclaiming "This is a test" with a Yes/No option.

BPI_Interactable

BPI Functions

This just shows the different named functions that get called when interacting with the BPI Interactable.

Enum_DialogueState

Enum_Dialogue Options

The different Enumerators here interact with the different Functions, linking them to the Enum_DialogueState to communicate through Actors.

NPC_Base

Function "SetInteractableState"

This function should be remembered from the BPI_Interactable and sets the events of "SetInteractableState" into play which means that once the player has come into an appropriate radius to the NPC, It sets their name to visible above them so that the player knows who they are talking to prior to the interaction

NPC Name Set

Here is where we set the basic npcs placeholder name to be, allowing to to be changed within its child actor so that everybody's displayed names are different

NPC_Base Viewport

This is just an example of what an NPC would look like prior to being skinned with its unique texture

NPC_Child

Function "Interact"

The function presented here shows the NPC Base Actor code contacting with the Interactable BPI so that the code with the playable character, once it enters radius of the NPC that it is able to interact with the NPC in order to open the Dialogue set up in the AC Dialogue Child.

NPC_Child Construction Script

this just connects the NPC Base and NPC Child in order for the child to be able to have a unique name set in place where the name placeholder is already set, replacing the text already there with a name

IMC_Default

IMC Button Map

The IMC is where I set up the button mapping for the Dialogue Interaction to be set for the player to push. the IMC is also set to interact with the IA_Interaction as the IA_Interact is connected to the playable character.

IA_Interaction

IA_Interaction

This is set up so that the IMC can communicate through this to the rest of the code that goes into making the Dialogue System.

W_DialogueOption

DialogueOption Viewport

this shows the dialogue option button, this will have text overlaying it to show the player what option is what and gives them a choice to select any option displayed to the player Viewport

DialogueOption Code Part 1

- Event Construct

This just sets the Dialogue Option text that is set in the NPC Child code and allows it to be seen by the player

- On Hovered

This part sets the button so that it changes colour after the player hovers over the button with their mouse icon, just making it so that it is clear to the player which button is being hovered over to reduce confusion or the chance of clicking the wrong option accidentally.

DialogueOption Code Part 2

-On Unhovered

Once the player drags their mouse away from the dialogue option button the original colour of the button is set, showing to the player that that button is no longer clickable unless they bring their mouse back

-On Released

Once the button is pushed, it looks to the UpdateSelectedOption Function in the AC Dialogue Base, to forward the dialogue and progress the game.

W_Dialogue

Dialogue Viewport

This shows the placeholder that will be filled in and shown to the player once they interact with the NPC. this will show the name of the NPC they are interacting with along with what they are saying along with the dialogue options that the player can decide on to branch the game to different endings. the name and text are set in the NPC Child code.

Function UpdateDialogueText

This code makes the widget clear back to the placeholder text and removes what was set from the NPC Child code, preparing it to be replaced by the next dialogue and dialogue options in the dialogue list, again progressing the dialogue. this happens because without this code then the next text in the dialogue list would just overlay the old text and make it unreadable for the player.

Reflection

When doing this in the future I probably could have made the code much more simple to save time to do more for the game instead of making an entire system for the dialogue and player options to be set.

Overall I feel the code works well and as intended though so I am happy with the work put into this.