This week has been a lot of trial and error. Putting together the Grey Room, the area I'm currently working on, started out as a VERY tedious task. I was moving, scaling, and rotating hundreds of rock meshes to form the cave portion of it alone. Most of my time this week was spent doing this. as well as mocking up the other parts of the level with BSP. I've gotten a start with lighting and with filling up the space with the bits and pieces I want, but it's not QUITE far enough along that I want to show screenshots yet.
However! The other bit that is taking a good deal of time is figuring out the AI for the level. It wasn't terribly difficult to get pathfinding to work in UE4. What's most difficult at the moment is finding the right balance of: A) contact with the AI and B) not being able to see the AI at all. I want it to remain shrouded in mystery for the most part. The video below gives you an idea of the cave environment's general look. The last two segments of it also show some surprises, where I fully expected the AI (just a placeholder model in the video of course) to be somewhere he didn't end up at all. Check it out right here:
Both times I heard the AI, I realized it was taking different routes through the cave to get to a specific spot seemingly randomly, rather than taking the shortest path, which was the expected behavior. This is, to me, a pleasant surprise. Not knowing what's going to be around the next corner is the idea. Obviously, the AI not performing its expected behavior could also mean potential bugs, so I'll need to give this some more smoothing out. But it's interesting nonetheless that this could happen using a simple navmesh/waypoint system I set up in UE4.
A shoutout to mylexz for the track at the intro of this video, which he submitted for the game. He is an awesome producer and I'm glad to be able to use some of his work! Mylexz on SC: Soundcloud.com
The puzzle I showed in last week's video is also complete, but I'm not going to show anything more of that today. I have to keep some things a surprise, right? In any case, development is still moving along nicely and I hope by the end of the next week (if Bloodborne doesn't comsume my life) I can have the AI and the rest of the Grey Room functionality complete, with only polishing of the level design left to do.
Thanks everyone for checking out the game! You are literally my motivation in its entirety. Cheers! :)
I just wanted to say well done. It never ceases to amaze me how much love and dedication some indie developers put into their games. It's all too easy to forget this is a passion for someone. And all too easy for others to sit home alone scratching their ***** criticising and not even taking a moment to say 'cool'.
Awesome work, creepy, dark, weird, love it.