Skip to main content

CAGD 370 Blog Post 1

 In CAGD 370, my new group and I have just started working on a new project currently titled Thunder Vault! It’s a 3D Platformer where the player has to rely on their pole vaulting skills and momentum-based physics to clear levels as quickly as possible! Andrew Kostlan is the Lead Designer, Anish Neupane is the Producer, and I am the Programmer of this project. In our first 2 week sprint, We’ve set up our backlog, developed and tested our paper prototype, and created our Unreal Project File and set up Github Version Control from within the project!



As the Programmer, I was the one to set up the Unreal Project this week. I chose Unreal Engine version 5.5.3 since it’s the latest release, so that we’ll have access to all the latest features during development.



The next thing I did was set up Git Version Control within Unreal. I recently purchased a new computer, and didn’t move over anything from my old machine so that I could have a fresh, uncluttered start. A consequence of this though, was that I had no Git software installed on my computer. So I started by first creating our github repository in the web browser, adding the UnrealEngine .gitignore file. Next, I downloaded Github Desktop to clone the repository on my computer. With the repository on my machine. I then tried to link Unreal to Git by giving it the path to my Github Desktop .exe, but that wasn’t working. That’s when I remembered that I had to install Git itself onto my computer. So after doing that, and giving Unreal the correct path to my git.exe, my version control was up and running!




I was hoping to have gotten started on the player character’s movement mechanics this week, but sadly prior time commitments as well as a monstrous couple weeks of homework prevented me from doing so. However, with the Project now set up and available for my group mates and me to work on, I’ll easily be able to start adding in the fun stuff next sprint! And hopefully I’ll have a more interesting blog post next time because of it. I’ve spoken with the lead designer about his vision for the player’s movement, and I’m very excited to start implementing our ideas!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Treats and Trials: Postmortem!

  Game Info Group Number 2 In Treats and Trials, Players build their own haunted houses out of trap and candy cards. Then, the exploration phase begins and players explore each other’s haunted houses by turning over cards! Candy cards give you candy pieces, but trap cards raise your fear level and can force you to leave without collecting all the candy! The Player with the most candy after three rounds is the winner! Target Audience: Director, Explorer, Competitor, Achiever The Pitch This time around, we were pitching our own original game ideas to the class! This assignment was due on halloween night, and since halloween was fresh in my mind I was thinking about halloween games that I could create. I recalled how when I was very young, my grandparents liked to set up a haunted house in their front yard for trick or treaters to explore. (It terrified me when I was 3!) With this on my mind, I thought of how I could bring the experience of exploring a haunted maze to a card game, o...

CAGD Blog Post 3 - Thunder Vault Kinesthetics Playtest!

  Sprint 3 of Thunder Vault’s development has ended! This sprint has been a pretty exciting one, with our first digital playtest, some good feedback, and a lot of big changes to come! Starting with the playtest, we had the player set up in a simple level with some obstacles to vault over and walls to bounce off of. I wanted to give the player some kind of goal, so I made an enticing tower in the middle of the level that required 4 increasingly hard jumps to ascend. This proved pretty effective! All of the playtesters that I watched tried multiple times to climb the tower, although I think I was the only one who was able to reach the top sadly. This indicated to me that while the mechanics felt comfortable to me, they were not nearly as intuitive for our playtesters. We also lacked any kind of tutorial or how to play section, meaning we had to explain the controls to our testers verbally. I would like to somehow design our next level in a way that encourages the player to explor...