Monday 07.02.2022
Started on the character actions for the Net. Yeah, it’s Animal Crossing: you sneak about, and catch bugs for an achievement while reading lots of bad puns.
Today I got the Idle, Walk and Swipe animations done. Modelled the net and did the basic setup in the build. You can move, but you can’t do anything else just yet.
Tuesday 16.02.2022
Refined the player’s animation blueprint and created an Anim Montage for the swipe.
Added code to the Player Controller to trigger a swipe if all conditions are good. The Player Character plays the animation and blocks any further button mashes.
When the swipe begins, the Player Character’s Blueprint does a sphere check for any CatchableNPCs in front of the player, and if it finds any, exits, cleans up, and starts the process for an identity dialog to come on screen.
Catchable actors had no code for being caught, so I added all that, tidied up the base class from my initial first pass (from years ago!) and setup all the existing butterflies to have the correct params. Everything can now be caught! Time to make variations…
I’ve tweaked the speed at which player movement spooks everything, and generally fiddled with the numbers so things are pretty easy to catch, but you can’t just run up to them.
Also textured the net, and setup the mesh to use a cloth simulation.
Lots of stuff touched and tweaked, but it all worked out quite nicely. A productive day!
Friday 18.02.2022
Designed an icon for the net and added it to the quick select inventory wheel. Came out ok, I think.
I added a delegate to the Player Character so CatchableNPCs can bind to it when they spawn. The player broadcasts out when it’s finished checking the Net, and then bound NPCs that haven’t been caught can decide if they want to flee, ie: if they think they’re too close to the player.
Also did the same for the Wand. I think it’d be cool for Moths to come toward the player, for example, or maybe have glow worms run away?
There's a quick video on TikTok
Pretty happy with all this. Ship it!
net