Dev Diary - 16 NOV

16 NOV 2020

Unreal Tanks

Got my first taste of the widget system for UIs in Unreal. Nothing super extreme, but I was able to get the UI to countdown to 0 at the beginning of the game and warn the player that it has begun once the timer runs out. Afterward I got it so that when the player manages to kill every enemy turret in the scene it displays “You win!” or if they die a “You Lose!” For now dying just deletes the camera which kinda throws the visuals off, but otherwise I think it’s coming together really well.

19 NOV 2020

Project Violet

Regardless of other projects, I’m still putting in consistent work into Project Violet. Today I completed level 2, making all major levels complete. With some tweaking here and there to minor bugs and glitches, the overall gameplay l loop is ready for playtesting. There isn’t a boss yet, but I need to know how hard everything is based on these current settings. So far personal testing has shown each level does increment in time to complete naturally.

20 NOV 2020

Project Violet

I managed to get quite a few playtests done by varying degrees of skilled players. One thing that definitely helped was making the crew rescues heal the player. While I do want to offer a decent amount of play time despite the short number of levels, I think it’s unfair to boast “hundreds of hours!” just because I made it unreasonably difficult. The mantra to always keep in mind is that the player needs to feel like they messed up if they lose- not that the game is unfair. With a few flaws recognized here and there, I think the overall response was positive.

21 NOV 2020

Project Violet

Based on yesterday’s playstesting I have a few tweaks here and there I’d like to address. There were also a few bugs I hadn’t even noticed in my dozens of times playing that they somehow bumped into. (Go Figure..). As such, cleaning all of that up and starting to work on the final boss fight are my top priorities. Once the boss fight is complete it will be nothing but aesthetic till launch!