Archive:
Added a second room. Cylindrical, this time, as that’s another shape that wasn’t in the first game.
The mat, in the centre, will act as a lift to carry the player up to the Wizard’s Lair. In the original game, mats were based on box art from Mire Mare. This one’s edge is based on Underwurlde. Might try and sneak the rest of Ultimate’s catalogue in…
Interactive elements in Maenhir show an Action Button Icon to aid the player. I thought I’d do the same thing in Lumo – I’m not restricting myself to one button, this time around – but I’ve taken it a bit further. Action Button Icons are now a Plugin, and they automatically detect the platform (PC, Steam Deck, Switch) and show the correct texture for the joypad button.
I turned the mat into a moving platform, and updated Player Triggered Moving Platforms to take optional Action Button Icons from the Data Asset, construct the UI widgets, place them, and hide/show them when the player’s within interactive range.
You’re probably as unimpressed as my fiancée was (well, she did ask what I’d been up to), but the short story is: I have animated on-screen button indicators, they’re data-driven, and they look correct on each platform.
It was all about the Cauldron room, today. This room leads to the playable zones, and it’s the Wizball nod. The player will come back to it (hopefully) with colour for each Cauldron. Ideally, this zone will reflect progress back to the player, probably by becoming more colourful, but that’s a job for another day.
I used Fluid Ninja tools to bake some velocity fields for the dry ice, flick books for the falling smoke, and sat in Niagara for ages, trying to make a particle effect that used the volumetric fog to give the impression of smoke on the ground.
I’ve had a quick go at a colour grade for this area, although the player won’t see the room looking like this until the end of the game.
Musings, random thoughts, work in progress screenshots, and occasional swears at Unreal Engine's lack of documentation -- this is a rare insight into what happens when a supposedly professional game developer plans very little up-front, and instead follows where the jokes lead them.
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