This week has been mostly about getting the basic versions of mechanics in, and iterating on them in a way that allows us to play around with them. Firstly, I iterated on the greybox, adding a boxed in area that allows players to practice jumping and moving between boxes. This will allow us to tweak attributes like jump height, force/direction, and things like distance falloff. The jump mechanic may be tweaked in the future once the proper animations and model are in, to make it more suited to the character.
Starting on Tuesday, I began creating the ActivatableObject class. This class is designed to be implemented on top of objects that the player can interact with, like alarms, switches, and other objects in the scene. This class only extends to objects that cannot move – pickups are in a different category. I attached this script to a door object (which will also be in the game) and got button-activated doors working. Doors will sometimes be opened manually (if they logically should like a bathroom door) or be triggered by a button/other system (such as a security door). This class is what all of the other systems (alarm/button etc.) will derive from. From this point, I developed an alarm system that is designed to work with the stealth plugin to attract NPCs. When the player triggers the system, it is designed to generate noise in an area, which alerts the NPCs and directs them to the location of the alarm. In order to work with this system, I had to create lasers. The laser systems in the game are capable of moving backwards and forwards, rotate, and also stay static. The lasers can be turned off by interacting with control panels (the alarm panel). The alarm panel (through the ActivatableObject class) is able to be enabled and stopped by the AI as well, as it can be called during the wait time in the stealth plugin. The alarms, when disabled by the player, disable the lasers (which are child objects). The alarms are structured this way so that we can separate certain lasers if we want to, creating puzzles where only some of the lasers are disabled. This means that the players still have to jump/dodge some of the lasers. After Implementing all of these features, I added them to a simple greybox to test them, in conjunction with Josh’s camera scripts. The camera functions well in the smaller environments, as do the lasers. Because the camera can now rotate vertically, it is much easier for the player to make sure they dodge the lasers. The lasers create an interesting environment and tool for us to play with. In the overall level designs that we follow, we will be designing around these lasers – the potential for different, interesting patterns is huge. Of particular concern right now is the movement system – more work needs to be done on making sure that the character does not feel ‘slippery’, and that the movement feels relative to the footsteps. This will be achieved and tweaked towards once we have the new character model and animations in the game, as we will be able to tune movement speed, animation speed, and other variables. The feeling of ‘skating’ should be eliminated soon. The plan for next week is fairly straightforward – make sure that movement (in all axes) feels good, then make sure that the basic iterations of the mechanics feel fun. Currently, we have both the experimental greybox and the first iteration of the tutorial level greybox in the game, and we are able to begin testing mechanics and how they will work.
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