Map Improvements
This week, I focused on making improvements to Tutorial, Forest, and Swamp levels in order to release a new beta test. A lot of work went into adding small details and props to the environment to keep exploration interesting.
Bandit Camps
Bandit camps now show up on maps and include a chest that is only unlockable after all enemies in the camp are defeated – similar to BOTW. I’m planning on having these chests reset every morning.
Each camp chest holds an array of enemy references and calls a function on event dispatcher for when an enemy dies. After all enemies are eliminated, the lock on the chest pops open and the player can view inside.
Stances
I moved stances to a separate tab in the inventory and separated obtained stances from other items. I think it makes more sense to have a stance be permanently acquired instead of being an equippable item, since it doesn’t make sense for a player to lose a stance after learning it.
I also made it more difficult to obtain stances that correspond to bosses. Previously the stance is immediately acquired after the first fight with the boss. However, now the stance is acquired only after defeating the same boss multiple times within the reminisce feature. This motivates the user to use the feature, adds more replayability, and makes more sense conceptually since the player would need to gather experience against a stance to know how to use it themselves.
I plan on making various difficulty levels for each reminisce fight to have the same boss have varying levels of difficulty – similar to NG+ from Dark Souls.
Guns!
I added muskets to the game which can currently be equipped by the player, and eventually by enemies. Right now, the weapon deals significant damage but plants the player in a spot with limited range of motion. This leaves them vulnerable while shooting which helps balance it out. I also plan to add a long reload time after each shot.
Conveniently, I was able to use the exact same idle animation I use for bow and arrow to have the player holding the musket.
The item works by holding gameplayeffect data within the Equipment_BP actor. When the player equips the equipment, it grants them a gameplayability for FireGun_GA which allows them to fire the weapon on left mouse button. The effect-ability system allows me to modularly add new equipment with distinct attributes and behavior without overcomplicating the codebase.
Even with all the nerfs, the weapon seems overpowered. It would likely be introduced very far into the game, since I wouldn’t want the player to become reliant on it. I might also make musket balls very expensive to obtain.
Next Week
I need to finish out refining the maps for levels 1-3 and get a build out as soon as possible!
Time Allocation (12 hours)
- Map Creation (5 hours)
- General Programming (4 hours)
- Asset creation (2 hours)
- User Interface (1 hour)
devpachi 