Archive:
As you’ve probably noticed, I tend to work in passes across code and content. It’s taken me a while to settle on this, but I like to get things in and working (mostly), live with it for a bit, and then go back, tweak, polish, and tidy-up as necessary. I leave audio until I’m in the mood, at which point I’ll do a flurry of things… This seems to be the best compromise that I’ve found between forward momentum, and me getting bored with things that take more than a day or two to implement. Boredom ain’t productive.
The downside of all this: I always have a lot of loose ends.
Now that the “initial experience” flow is in (and you can play through the first two parts of the game), it’s a good time to tidy a few things up.
Today I added audio to the Love Box, replaced the button audio in the Moon Base, tweaked the Level Sequence that plays when you unlock the Main Deck, and gave that some audio. The rest of the day was spent trying to implement a nice way to give visual feedback when you’re carrying a Duck. I think I ended up in a good place:
EffectListener so it can spawn VFX & SFX that attach to sockets on the character’s skeletal meshAnimation Blueprint to bind to the PlayerState’s OnTagAdded and OnTagRemoved delegates. By looking at the tag, I can play an upper-body Animation Montage on the character, and stop it when the tag’s removed.I also discovered that the Carry Ducks have never actually worked properly. They were always awarded when you left a room, regardless of whether you were carrying them or not. Derp. Anyway, that’s fixed, and the player character automatically carries a duck when the correct tag is added:
And now I’ve fiddled with this some more, I’m going to despawn the Duck as soon as you start floating, meaning you absolutely definitely have to find a walkable path out of the room to collect them. No short-cuts!
Ok, this is freaky. Woke up this morning, and Rob Fearon posted up a new doodle…of Lumo!
How did he know that I was working on the Ducks?! He’s nailed the pose, and everything…
Speaking of Ducks: The Carry Duck despawns when you transition to floating. I updated the OG duck (that you jump on) to use the Effect Listener stuff from yesterday, and that spawns VFX that orbits the player character’s head. A vast improvement on the UI indicator I had in the first game.
Also added audio when the Duck respawns (when you cancel carrying it, enter float, or die), and more excitingly: if you press jump while you’re carrying a Duck, it’ll quack! All I’ve done this morning is mash the jump button and make Ducks quack. I’m so easily pleased.
Added a Warp Pipe to take you up to the Definitely Not Monkey Ball room. Fixed the first Spline Follower NPC (from t’other week) to be a well-behaved RoomControlledObject citizen, and added windows to The Attic.
Oh, there’s something wrong with the Love Box. It keeps emitting hearts, so I’ve broken something, somewhere.
Fixed it! A one line change that I made a couple of days ago was Derp, so I just needed to revert it.
The Boom Box is in!
Ian’s designated DJ for the proceedings.
This works a little like Mario’s Red Coins: turn the Boom Box on, and a series of cassettes spawn into the world, along a path. You have to collect them, in order, before the time runs out. While you’re running about, a C64 track plays. Collect all the cassettes and the tune will be added to a jukebox, that’s still firmly on my TODO list.
Everything’s done apart from the VFX as the Cassettes come in and out of the world, and whatever ceremony I need to add to remove the Boom Box on success. I should have time to finish that off on Friday.
Friends:
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