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

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...

CAGD 370 Blog Post 4 - Second Playtest!

  This sprint has been quite an eventful one! To start off, I revamped the pole-vaulting mechanics for this sprint’s playtest! I started by creating a new enumerator that would allow me to create different “stages” of the pole vault. The first of these states is the “Ready” state that the player begins in. In this state, you can see a red line trace that shows where your pole is going to be planted. In the previous version, this was only visible when the player held down left click. Now, by pressing left click, the player “plants” their pole and enters the next state. Pole Vault Ready State Next is the “Planted” state. In this state, the player’s pole is anchored to wherever the line trace connected to when they entered the state. If the player moves too far away from the anchor point, they go back into the Ready state. But as the player moves closer to the anchor point, they move more slowly. This is to simulate the resistance of the pole “flexing” as the player moves closer...