My game dev origin story

Platformer:

Classic arcade horizontal run'n'gun similar to Metal Slug, Cup Head, etc. It would have set stages (assuming I get that far into development).

Bouncy ball platformer where you can only roll, or "slingshot" yourself but you will continue bouncing after you hit the ground/wall.

Racing:

Racing on the Z-axis similar to Subway Surfer, AB Cop, Outrun, etc. - Sprite based with the player staying in the center while the environment moves toward the camera or left/right for turning.

Combine with a shooter. Possibly a Spy Car race with various classic gadgets (oil slick, machine gun headlights, etc. Could also be based loosely on Wacky Races (1968) by Hanna-Barbera.

Chariot racing including weapons. The rules should be based on the Wikipedia page for chariot racing.

A puzzle racer where you place the road/obstacles down in order to get the fastest time through a number of pre-placed checkpoints (see: trackmania puzzle events). Alternatively, being able to draw the road like Mini Motorways could be another interesting way of doing it but harder to balance.

Asteroids:

Physics based movement (side thrusters + main thruster)

Resource management/ rogue-like where you decide what systems to focus on keeping online while letting others fail so that you can survive until a rescue team can arrive. - Letting things fail may provide other benefits, and repairing/improving other systems may create new problems (i.e. Adding additional shielding my slow your ship down making it harder to dodge, letting life support fail will give you an oxygen resource bar you need to keep up by breaking icy asteroids otherwise you'll faint/die.

The Platformer

So, the first thing I wanted to do in creating the platformer prototype for the first assignment is to brainstorm some ideas of the gameplay loop, some core mechanics, and some unique selling points.

My first decision is that I want to make the game using pixel art since GDevelop has a large variety of tools with pixel art in mind. It would also allow me to make my own assets or use some of the many free asset packs commonly used for gamejams. I kind of want to see if I can design a full game around the assets within the pack.

The assets within this free pack available on the GDevelop store gave me an idea for a puzzle-platformer with an interesting mechanic. I could reasonably make a platformer where you can switch between various realities where different platforms exist only in the one you are currently viewing. I believe it has a lot of potential and could be quite fun too. Another small mechanic I thought of would be enemies that stay in their respective worlds so you could swap out and back in order to 'dodge' them.

I have settled on the "1-Bit Platformer Pack" by Kenney as I believe it would suit the potential mechanic well, falls under CC0 (allowing me to use it without attribution), and is by the same author as the player sprite used by the tutors.

I intend to change the colours of the sprites depending on the 'reality' the player is in, keeping a few select platforms a neutral colour that exist in all realities.

I started to learn the ins and outs of GDevelop 5 today by going through the first 3 basic tutorials before loading up the workshop content for Week 2. I mostly just followed the basics but I did work ahead to incorporate the jump, and walk animations. I also had it flip the object when changing directions.

Using the second general tutorial (Background and cameras), I wanted to add a basic background as the grey was a little dull. I also decided to replace the camera follow event with the smooth camera extension in order to add a some polish.

After importing the clouds and the sky, things worked initially but the clouds were in front of the platforms. To get around this I created a new layer and caused the issue above.

This is the performance after retargeting. I decided not to do data clean up due to time constraints and scope of the project. I think most/all of the "issues" will be hidden by the abstraction or the environment.

I exported the model into Motion Builder 2024

This is the model after I changed the visibility of the various nodes to increase ease of use.

I fully characterised the model. The only minor issues were some imbalances between the arms but they weren't enough to cause issues.

In order to fix the issues with the MetaHuman, I decided the easiest solution was to just replace the whole thing.

The material was able to be added but without knowing why the mesh is deformed like this, I can't really fix it.

I've got a rough plan for what still needs to happen along with a list of issues.

Issues:

The P4Ignore file doesn't work. Every single file is being updated. - The file seems to work, just not show the ignored files when running the setup bat file.

Unable to change material of the Meta-Human.

Meta-Human has seams between the head and body.

The GitHub page for Unreal Engine returns an error 404 and I'm unable to retrieve the correct version of Unreal because of this. I've had to attempt to

Group MetaHuman seems to be violently warped

Things that need to be done:

Update local version of project to latest

Download previous version of Unreal Engine (5.2.0) - Unable to do this due to issue #4 (shown above). - I've opted instead to update the project to Unreal Engine 5.2.1 - - I'm currently working on a copy of the project until I can get clearance to push to main.

Fix P4Ignore

Port my material into project i. Import master material and material instance from personal project. ii. Push to Server

Figure out why I'm unable to apply material to Meta-Human - Tutorial used to apply material instance to MetaHuman

Fix Seam issues of material i. Export base Meta-Human to Maya, or blender. ii. Edit the mesh to be a single item rather than several sub-meshes iii. Reskin the mesh iv. Weight paint the edited mesh v. Check that this new mesh works inside motion builder vi. Import updated mesh to Unreal project vii. Test mesh with material - If it works, push to the server - If it doesn't work, place the updated mesh in a private project and roll back the group project to the main version. Repeat until it does work, or find assistance.

Improve material to allow music visualisation functionality

Find out the timings for the final render.

Create a controller for material(s) for the final render to be able to switch between the various abstractions at run time

I watched this tutorial to learn how to do it.

This is the material network for a ferrofluid material I created using this video: