Grinding

I spent a good amount of time this week developing the game. I made huge progress and I learned a ton of new stuff.

I made good progress on the game design document, too. When it comes time to collaborate with others on the project this document will be critical. This allows me to get all my ideas in a tangible form so they can be critiqued, debated, transformed and scrutinized.

A forest dragon adolescent

Here's the punch list I rocked through:

• Fixed an issue with the enemy actor highlight and unhighlight functions that caused the highlight to display incorrectly or not at all

• Setup click to move (will likely disable this in the game)

• Setup auto run mechanics

• Allowed client side navigation in project settings to make sure the movements worked in multiplayer for clients

• Refactored code on player controller to condense some larger functions

• Set effect applied to use an Remote Procedure Call (RPC) and be reliable so that clients can respond to the gameplay effect applied delegates

• Learned how to mark functions as UFUNCTION(Client, Reliable) to make sure they replicate properly on client side

• Tested to make sure multiple clients on listen and dedicated servers could respond to the RPC

• Added animation pack for spellcasting ability animations

• Added animation pack for RPG adventure animations

• Added secondary weapon slot skeletal mesh component to the base character class

• Fixed rotation of left hand weapon socket to allow bow to sit properly in player's hands

• Created IK rigs and an IK retargeter so I can map bone chains to other animations from different skeletons for reuse

• Created class to allow actors to cast projectile-based spells

• Created fireball projectile blueprint

• Fixed an issue with retargeted animations being offset on the X axis when using root motion

• Wrote code to send gameplay events to spawn projectiles based on animation notifies

• Created custom ability task class

• Wrote code to send & receive the target data payload after clicking on a target

• Learned more about soft and weak pointers

• Learned more about C++ dereferencing

• Implemented prediction code into gameplay abilities using prediction keys

• Added code to orient the player towards the target when casting projectiles

• Enabled motion warping plugin

• Implemented motion warping track into animation montage so that players face their target when casting spells

• Added code to spawn impact effect and sound when projectiles overlap with specific actors using collision object trace channels

• Added primary and secondary casting sockets to primary and secondary weapons

• Added gameplay effect that causes instant damage on impact

• Created custom enemy health bar class that hovers over the enemies

• Health bars now react to damage gameplay effects every frame and adjust the values properly

• Health bars are now hidden on start and appear when damage is taken

• Created data asset & enum to hold class information for the unique player classes in the game

• Created default attribute effects set to reuse across classes

• Created curve tables to control each classes primary attributes by level using .csv or .json files

• Wrote code to initialize enemy attributes from the new data asset

Fireballs!!!

This week I will focus on the damage mechanics in the game and applying damage in shared classes that are flexible and extensible. I pushed through several big milestones this week and I am optimistic for the same type of progress this week.

Tonight there is a full moon staring down into my window as I write this blog. Haunting and comforting at the same time. What is the moon??

Cheers, Vinny