Development Update -Video- feature - Project Grand Vault

It has been a while since we last posted updates here on IndieDB regarding the development of our project, even though we have been sharing short videos or images on our social media profiles.

This time, we want to show you a video of the project’s current status in regards to development, but first let’s go through the different tasks that we have been working on for the last couple of months:

• Porting code to C++: In late 2015, we started designing and implementing blueprints for our AI characters, following several tutorials by Epic Games, which were very helpful for us to understand the overall mechanics of how AI and its behaviour trees work in UE4. However, when it came down to implementing them on our game, the performance wasn’t that great and some decisions and tasks on the behaviour tree weren’t executing properly. That’s why we ended up porting this part (especially) to C++, although I have to admit it has been a very steep learning curve, the time and difficulties were very well rewarded when we saw the results. A word of advice, if you are thinking of using C++, go for it, the documentation is very helpful and it really adds more flexibility to your project.
• Particles system: You may appreciate on the video as well, we have been playing and creating particles for the downtown level, if you take a closer look there is a part in which there is a waterfall, before it was a plane with an animated texture, now with the help of our programmers, we have a particle emitter in on of the waterfalls as a test, even though the material is missing, we can already notice it adds much more dynamism to the environment. Other parts where our work with particles can be appreciated, is on the maalite pick ups as well as the health pick ups.
• Level design: We continued to work on the design of levels, especially the ruins level, in which we have 7 different rooms already finished with textures, lighting and interaction. Speaking of which, we have been tweaking the dialogue boxes, adding a much nicer custom design and, programming-wise, we have been implementing those kind of interactions (with NPC’s and other actors) in a much more optimal way, to improve the overall performance of the game.
• Sound design: Several sound assets have also been added to the game, starting with background music for both levels (as can be appreciated in the video), but also, sound effects for steps when our character is running, for the punches and for some interactions like picking up maalites or health.
• Background story: Last but not least, our creative team has also been working on re-organizing and refining different aspects of the story of our game, all with the intention of bringing you the best experience in our Project Grand Vault world.