Connecting Blueprints

There is a scene where we chase the tribal leader through the woods along the river. It ends at a forest fire, blocking off the path through the canyon. To prevent the player from backtracking, the fire spreads blocking off the path. Getting the fire blueprint to work was challenging for me. I had difficulty with my first method which was changing the collision and visibility. Now the fire moves (very, very quickly) from the other fire and transforms into place.

The pigs seem to have lost their material and animations. I need to fix that.

The Stalactites work beautifully, crashing down in front of the player as they traverse the cave.

Canyon Climbing Areas

There are a few areas in my canyon level where I need the player to climb. To do so, I placed an invisible ladder over top of the climbing areas. in this first example, the player has, what appears to be, a series of handholds built into the cliff conveying that there is an opportunity to climb. In reality, the handholds do nothing, the player is climbing the ladder.

This second example requires the player to climb up on to a tree to cross a river. Similar to the cliff area, we are using a hidden ladder. The black and cyan grid visible in the first image is an invisible barrier that prevents the player from walking into the river.

Metrics Gym

We are working on a Metrics Gym showing all of the abilities for a first-person level so that the gameplay can be tested before or as the level is being designed and built. 

The first example here is a "bear," (yes, its a pig, but it's the best that I could find in our library.) The "bear" is an enemy in the level. It did not have an AI system, so I had to build a blueprint that allows the "bear" to roam around in the green area with a walking and idle animation. once the player enters into the pig pen, the pig will track the player. Once the player enters into the collision capsule, the pig begins an attack animation while continuing to track the player. There is a final, very small collision capsule around the pig that allows the player to press K for kill, which triggers a final Death animation. In my blueprint, there isn't any damage points for the player or the pig, we haven't covered anything like that in class yet. 

The second example here is a cave scene that has a falling Stalactite. This is triggered when you enter a narrow doorway and resets when you exit the cave area. In the actual level, there wouldn't be any reason to reset it, but for the metrics gym, it made sense. I wanted to have the stalactite use actual physics to drop, but that didn't seem possible. So, I used a Timeline to animate the stalactite mesh. The stalactite drops fast enough that the player is never able to get under it. This, again, prevented the need for the programming of damage points.