Not much has been done this week. To be honest, I almost forgot to post about anything that was done. Juggling game development and college isn’t easy, and it is taking its toll. Don’t do it, kids. I managed to implement two little features, however.

Destructible Meshes

You shoot something, this something blows up and falls apart. That’s about it. I still need to tinker with physics settings a bit a lot, but it’s there and it’s working. More or less. The barrel needs proper inner walls, as well as it has to damage the player. Some actual explosion effects would also be nice.

Today a little bit earlier. That’s because I finished what I could, and what’s left is simply too time-consuming for me to start now. Making games until the first rays of sun start shining through the window’ Not always the best idea.

Target Practice

Nothing terribly special, just simple targets to practice your aim. They react to hits, they have hit zones (headshots and bodyshots), and were created so I can have something to test any enemy-related mechanics without making actual enemies yet. So far they only fall over, but a button supposed to reset them was created. Except it doesn’t work. And somehow interferes with the next feature I’ll talk about in this post, causing it to not react to player’s input. I may have an idea how to solve it, though. The whole ‘doesn’t even reset what it’s supposed to reset’ part, however? No idea. Yet. Next step (after getting the reset to work) will probably be triggering some events when all targets are down. That’ll be a base for a mechanic of clearing rooms to progress.

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.

Update on a lack of an update

Basically, this. Not much has been done this week, at least not much that could be shown in a GIF or a screenshot. It’s been mostly me fixing messy Blueprints of already existing systems and trying to make my programmer’s art a little less programmer-like. And me fighting with That One UI Bar That Just Won’t Show What It’s Told To Show. And that’s basically it. I’ll try and have a bigger update for you next Friday. Though I can’t promise anything. Now we’re getting into a realm of features that aren’t so easy to implement.

I’ll be honest with you, I was uncertain whether I’ll have something to show today or not. Some of the things that now work work, even though I have no idea why, and some things don’t work, and I also have no idea why. Besides, smoothing faces in Blender screwed me over. Always export your *.fbx files as binary, with exported face normals. Just so you know. But I do have something after all. Two and a half somethings, depending how you look at it.

Damage dealt to player

Yep, player can be damaged now. All damage taken is displayed in the console so far, but I’ll implement some better way when the time comes. Also, death screen. Not really. Just a widget that’s being created when health value reaches 0. But it looks cool. I had to make HP a float instead of an integer, since ProgressBar widget doesn’t take integers. That lead to what you can see, health going into negative. It’s an easy fix, though, I just somehow overlooked it. Will be fixed Monday, probably.