Hello everyone! Long time no see. I had two weeks where I could work for a few hours on my game and some help. In those two weeks a lot of progress has been made and I can't dive too deeply about it but I still want to record progress here so here it comes.

A good school friend of mine that has some free time these days came to help me and mainly worked on the camera!
I had a lot of explaining and code review and pair programming to do so I didn't progress on my own but if my friend stays free. I will have a lot of work down in parallel of my work. And that's very precious.
Together, with the power of our brain cells and determination. We managed to do a pretty solid camera system for exploration.

As more people joined I didn't want to send private message or text or anything to my devs because they work with me out of their free will. It is precious and it shouldn't be pressured. So I made a discord so they can keep track of my progress.
On that occasion I invited a few trusted friend as consultants so they can give insight when I'm having open deliberations with myself about how the game should feel and change.
I am so thankful for everyone willing to help me out and that warms my heart in those dark times... And by that I mean I just watched the 10th episode of Dangan 3 despair arc and that was a bit traumatic for me... But it's fine. Hard content will make me better!

And I'm pretty proud of it. I've been able to make static debug variable and functions available everywhere INCLUDING in blueprint.
It took me some time but it's very easy to integrate anywhere and it doesn't compile when I build as a shipment build which is always good to prevent debug function from even being in the end product code.

I don't have a lot of visual evidence about this but I have been making progress in a lot of alleys. You can see that with the updated Kanban as well as with this now coming list of pushes.

Doesn't seem like it but a lot of work. Crazy lot.

Personal notes:

• Learn English grammar
• Make shorter push titles
• Work more!!!
• Stay healthy!

I don't want to go in any detail as it was gruesome. I'll just say, nothing Covid related! Anyway I was literally stuck in bed for a whole weak. I still tried to work but I couldn't go as far as I wanted. Didn't open the project. Just added the new team member to the project and shared all my work file with them. But that was it.

Still I did a lot of thinking, especially since I had someone to talk to and dive deep inside my project and there were some unanswered question I had to deal with. And I answered the most important one of them all.

First thing I did is I created a visual research document. I already had all that in mind but in order to convey an idea about what the game is going to be, I have to make clear and precise examples. I love video game above else but I also love cinema, especially animation. Luckily I have now a beta account to SHOTDECK which allows me to take good screenshots of movie shots to convey my visual ideas for the game.
You also can check my visual document here as it gets updated and I'll share a few screens if you don't have the patience.

Here you can see that direct movie comparaison can shine what Paris looks like compared to, even if retro, a US city

Here you can see a direct comparaison of urban poly games that have a good look but not specifically suited for my game. A good balance would be an in-between those two pictures as a game style.

So as you can see. Even in my state, work has been done but it's not super impressive if I may say so hahaha. Still I'm glad I was able to do something at least.

For a long time, I knew the game was going to be about someone that fights, and struggle. And I had to have game mechanics around that but I didn't want them to be secondary to the story. It's a game. Gameplay should be a center part to the narrative and the narrative a center part to the gameplay. Not two separated entities.
I know the main character first choice is non lethal combat. And I loved some ways of fighting in some games that seemed powerful while not killing the enemy. Its then I realized unique games that were openworld or somewhat openworld where I loved the feel and gameplay behind fighting.

For the feel, someone that I know a lot of people love deerly.

Tifa feels very powerful with just fist and kicks. She can kill with them, but she can also powerfully knock out enemies with that. And I want the player to feel as powerful as Tifa when playing my game.

If you didn't know, Dead Island has a unique combat control system that has a very heavy impact in the gameplay. The analogue mode allow you to lock on an enemy and swing your right joystick in any direction in order to aim at limbs or push an enemy towards a certain direction.
ITS AMAZING.
You can break specific arms in order to prevent them from fighting and in this video we can see the player just launching zombies overboard by specifically swimming from right to left.
It's unique, it uses dynamically the environment as well as interact a lot with a simple zombie enemy, it brings a lot of variety and I want that to be center in my game. Top down will allow to project on top of the verticality our enemies in a number of ways. And believe me, I'll make that awesome.

Finally, a game that uses a lot of melee fighting, and in first person, is an early Arkane title (that is amazing, play it if you didn't) that is called Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Arkane used the source engine, that was made by valve and used in every game they made, because of its heavy physic oriented design. They used the engine not only for puzzle but in fights as well.
The fighting is still pretty simple but the level design makes up for that. It even makes it super good with traps, empty space and all that kind of juicy things to use during enemy encounter to use the environment as a weapon.
If I can mix all that in my top down that uses verticality... I will be able to make a game with unique fighting style that will allow for very good gameplay on top of a game with, I hope, a good narrative.

I never talked about it, but I also wanted these logs to share more than just me working on a project. I wanted to share a little bit of myself. So if I get the time and I heal, I will also sometimes post about two things I really want to express.
The thing is, right now it feels a bit pointless as (it's not bad in any way) these logs don't have a big audience and so my thoughts will be for myself only. And what I'd really want when sharing an opinion is to have someone with a different opinion. So we can share arguments about why and elevate both our opinions and construct them better, improve them.

​Anyway. I have always some insight that needs someone to contradict them, especially towards gaming and game experiences. Recently I've played a bunch of ps4 exclusives that happens to be HUGE OPEN WORLDS WITH PLAY TIME SUPER LONG, and while I have nothing against the gendra, I have some criticism that I'd like to state. Like why most of them can't handle an ending that feels complete narrative and gameplay wise? It has to have something to do with how much you stretch both of them for such a long experience but some studios like Rockstar manage to make their ending super good so...

Anyway I'd like to do entire articles about that. Also I'd like to share stuff I love, like movies or taking screenshots of games.

Hello everyone!

A god damn lot happened this week. I did learn a lot. I did work a lot. And I'm way more efficient these days. I can't work on this everyday but what I do I'm proud of and things are going faster every week.

Also as a reminder, as a one man project... Everything takes long because all the time I spend on hack'n'plan, on programming, on levels, on shaders prevent me from coding and advancing. I'm also reading a lot to iterate and try to do the project as best as I can

I also updated the tags

Not going to show it as well but I changed my folder organization as well.

I wanted to do pixel arts for this project, like the two first GTAs or Darkwoods that are heavy influences on this project. But I can't do that.
Well I could but it would be a lot of time going into animating sprites. The reason is simple...​

The first reason I worked in a certain way with a pawn and I created and added a bunch of component to a pawn which is the base class you can work with in order to control a character was because I didn't nude a skeletal mesh. It was also to learn to somewhat redo my character and interact with the engine's physic.
But this custom pawn lost its interest when I stopped doing 2D and so, it would save me a lot of work to actually go through a character instead of a custom pawn.

At first I thought it was too bad because I made a lot of progress on my pawn.

As you can see I'm getting closer of the top down controls I wanted to do with permanent aim sight. The cursor has a weird bug that I'm explaining there, but in its current state, it won't have any impact on the game at all.

Also all of these movements can be overridden, and so if I control... Anything, as long as it was a children from that pawn. It would work. The controller will stay forever as this is a single player game but the pawn might change depending on narration, mini games or anything else really. So this was a lot of work to do these simple feats.

Because of all that, erasing my work felt wrong... But I did a pretty good job. Before changing the code and moving it to my character. I saved all my progress into my source control to retrieve my work if everything goes bad and... In like... 2 hours. I managed to take all my code changed it, change my references and it worked instantly.

Specifically, about music. I really want for my idea to not change with time and shape my project and have clear place where I save my ideas and I can convey them.
Since,,, Why not you can check it out there. If it get's updated you will see it.
I really need to work on a more presentable game design document, not a google doc but an actual power point with mock ups and images, or at least references to easily grasp the project.

I also documented myself a lot, downloaded Blender and Quixel Mixer, I read a lot about how the engine function exactly and try to really ready myself to master Unreal Engine 4.

You have no idea. Sometimes the smallest things gets on my mind and I want to fix it so much that I don't do what I'm supposed to do. And this gets encouraged because I work alone. If I want to fix the light I'll do it and I'll spend my life and search everywhere to find hints. Or try everything in the engine and editor until eventualy it is fixed.

In order for you to grasp the situation. I'm not going to say the "problem"... Here's a screen of it. Contact me or comment if you find it. I spent a whole afternoon to "fix" this issue

Finally if you want to precisely know my work... You can check it out bellow as I post every patch notes I made on my git. Here it is !

I actually applied to various studios to see if they'd be open to work with me outside of my school days. I hope I'll get some work but I'm not ultra invested right now. It will be fine as long as I find work before septembre 2021.

I didn't push my work Tuesday so both days merged...
​
-Added a lot of metadatas and specifiers
-Linked the pawn to the controller on possess
-Made all the axis and actions functions
-Bound horizontal and vertical functions to the controls
-Tested it out it works
-Create a new physic material
-Binded all keys to the controller ( I should make some menu functions inside the controller directly )
-Made movement functions
-Made jump functions
-Made a simple player state enumerator (not using it currently but will have to)
-You can jump infinitly as a result
-Made a new Blueprint because the c++ update bugged the last one
-Didn't get rid of the last one
-Made the capsule collider component the root component
-Using it to compute movements
​-Quickly changed the jump formula to bring it closer to the UE4 metric system

The "light problem" day, also the day I did my aiming code

​-Added a function to get the velocity in the player pawn
-Made a function in the tick of the controller to get inworld cursor position
-Cleaned a bunch of comment and useless code
-Forgot to put the UFUNCTION macro above the getter
-Fixed some shadows and lights

Lot happened today, good day of work gents!

-Can move through Character
-Can jump through Character
-Camera is still doing its camera stuff
-I learned a lot about Unreal Game Framework
-My gitignore didn't ignore right because of it's location. Fixed it... I'm stupid
-Made a blueprint for the character
-Added a mesh
-Cleaning starts
-Pawn was deleted
-InputComponent was deleted
-CapsuleComponent was deleted
-SkeletalMesh component was deleted
-Map was tested

So my school was chosen amongst many to send students to work with other students from the US as well as Canada. The goal is to talk about inclusion, diversity and do a small Unity project about that.

I've sent an application because it was a week where I didn't have school in case of, sent a color letter about my intentions and my background and heck. They selected me. From all the students of Isart Digital that did an application, mine was held.

So I signed a thing and now, I'm apart of the thing. Unless something very bad happened like a mistake.

You guys have no idea how pumped I am. I hope I'll make a beautiful game with beautiful people!

If anyone is reading, thanks for that. That is the kind of investment I do not understand. Stay strong, stay loved, and see you guys next time o/

This is going to be a weird sentence. But as expected everything is harder than expected!
Doing a game alone is no easy task everyone knows that. But I'm actually just doing a vertical slice and present it as a game!
Still... Progress as been made. I'm just getting lost in my unlimited tasks in all fields. And I like that! It keeps things fun. But it makes the actual coding go a lot slower than if I was only focusing on programming.
​Still, let's present what has been going on.

Again. I feel like at some point. Some people are going to join me and help me. And to accommodate. I created my own hack'n'plan to use kanban and priority request I assign to myself in order to increase my workflow and allow anyone to easily join.

Also I'm using tags on top of the kanban to also do good debugging and also if I need to focus on specific types of tasks.

(I also did a tag for documents but I didn't bother to take another screen... Sorry!)

So now I have a debug map that is way bigger than what I showed last.

I also coded a lot. A lot of architecture and not actual features. But I'm trying my best to shape up a system and then get used to it and then surf on it like a beauty.

And I have a first sight of what the game will look like with that architecture. I'm trying to do a lot of things to give myself freedom. The game might have more than one controlled character for very specific instances. So I have to code the actual control managing in the controller but the character functions IN the pawn... Once the polymorphism is done, I'll have a lot of freedom.
Anyway, so far I just have the view of the game and I already feel glad about how it feels. As creative you always doubt. And I do... For sure. But it doesn't mean I can't keep going on and trying.

That should be all for this week. To anyone reading. Take care of yourself. And thank you for reading.

Next week is school week. We'll see how I'll do!

I'm sad I didn't code too much (even though to be honest I did some minor shaders... And this game isn't going to be shader heavy ).
But I did quite a lot of work which I'm happy about.
I'll do some quick points so it's much more visual and impactful!

Ready?
Set...
Go!

Going from just creating the project to do a little bit of prep work for a good debugging environment, coding materials around a folder architecture using only material instances in a scene deriving from a master material. And also git if I ever want to work online with someone, all of that in one day. Is pretty good to be honest!

If you pay attention to my git commit you'll see I write them like a patch note so it'll be easier to follow my work. If you want to see it more clearly here it is!

• Created a map
  
• Created a main material
  
• Created dev material instances
  
• Updated the map a bit

Have a nice day everyone!