Devnote Friday #4
It’s 4:38 in the morning here, but damn it was worth it. It just feels so good when you finally get the thing that wasn’t working to work. When you implement a feature without having to look at 17 tutorials on Youtube. When you feel like you’re making progress - both in the project and as a developer. Here’s this week’s summary in development of OneGun. Still not sure about the final name, by the way.
Fire rate limits, using up ammo & reloading
For the longest time I was wondering whether the game should have limited ammo and have you rely on ammo pickups,or just have no limits allowing you to shoot endlessly. Eventually, I decided to go in the middle - your ammo isn’t limited, but you do have to reload. That will make balancing high-damage combinations easier. Also, reloading, with its own, fancy meter. No, not really that fancy. The entire UI is a placeholder at this point. But it works. And that’s what truly counts. And don’t look at that jiggling buzzsaw. It’s supposed to spin. It doesn’t, though. For reasons unknown. Beauty of developing a game, ladies and gentlemen - you fix one things, another one stops working.
Health pickups & a working HP gauge
Basically, this. Health pickups are now a thing, pretty fancy looking too, if you ask me. That means you’re no longer doomed to fail when you’re at 10 health, facing a room full of buzzsaws. They will be dropping from enemies and stuff, I may even add some fancy jiggling animation to them. And, yes, the HP gauge that was a source of my misery finally works! And the error was the most stupid thing imaginable! Who would’ve thought, that in Unreal Engine 1 = 100%, not 100 = 100%! I’m not the only one who made that mistake, right..? Right..?
Afterword
This week’s been rather tough, but it’s only going to get tougher. Especially when September ends and college starts. Even less free time to work on the project! Woohoo! That’s why I need to do as much as I can before October.