Archive:
Started making a Paint collectable for the zone. My first idea was a paint-roller, probably because I painted the bathroom at the weekend. Got as far as texturing it, when it dawned on me: it’s Jet Set Willy. It needs to be a cocktail glass!
I’ll need to check the materials on the Switch. I have a nasty feeling the transparency/refraction will pop on it. Looks fine on PC, though.
Made a start on an archway and wooden door for the room exit.
Finished the archway, modelled and textured the door, added a new particle effect to the teleports in the Hub level, and made a start on the VFX for the Wand Charge effect. (I might add a couple of fire flies to it, they were kinda cute in the original game).
Got caught-up, for more than an hour, in some weird bug where the Wand Charge wouldn’t trigger an overlap event, so it couldn’t be picked up. And worse, I never got to the bottom of it; deleting the actor and placing a new one fixed it. I’ve got the heebie-jeebies now.
So, wand stuff.
I’d not actually written any code to discharge the wand while it was active. Dur. The implementation leans on my custom-rolled Gameplay Attribute stuff: I created a time-based Attribute Effect that decrements the Wand’s charge over 100 seconds. The effect is applied on the button press, and blocked by any Tag that locks the player, meaning the wand doesn’t discharge during cut-scenes or room transitions. It’s elegant, in a way that gives me warm fuzzies.
Wrote some special case code, so the Wand Recharge Pickup reappears every time you walk in to the room, same as the first game.
The big hole in the floor is meant to be covered by an object that disappears when you have the wand light close enough. Took me a little while to create a material to do it, but the result is kinda cool. I would have liked the fringe to alpha out where there’s no emissive, but I couldn’t quite get it to do what I wanted. Don’t tell anyone… (Future Gareth: this never actually shipped, there were too many ways for the player to get stuck in the hole…)
There’s also a duck, bobbing about in the water! Yup. OG duck is in! Although, I made it considerably easier than the first game. This time, when you land on it, the player jumps automatically, you don’t have to time it yourself. And its collision sphere is massive, so getting the duck will be much less of a problem. And that means I can be much more of a dick about where I put them, and how you have to get out without dying… This one requires some nippy timing on the double jump.
Oh, and I changed my mind about Push Blocks and action buttons. The current implementation is a little fiddly, so I made a button controlled version… and it’s better. Quicker to use. Feels nice. I think I’ll push that back over to Maenhir…
Fired up the Deck & Switch and threw the new level at them. It needed a few fixes:
Sky Atmosphere needs a specific, unlit, “IsSky” material instance, to work on Mobile. This doesn’t really change the look of the PC build in any significant way, so I’m using the new material on all SKUs.Added some Wand Interactive platforms to “The Front Door”. Moved the Duck out of sight (you’ll need to come back once you can rotate the rooms) and created a new type of Wand Interactive that removes collision when you’re close enough. The hole in the floor is now working as intended.
I’m going to move on to the next room: The Hallway, and I want the first games’ Ghost statue in pride of place. Couldn’t find the original FBX files (past Gareth wasn’t expecting to get away with this for so long), so I had to install 3DS Max (forgive me lord), export out a new FBX, and then re-do the textures in Substance Painter. Man, the stone textures I did for the original looked sheeeeet.
Spent the day working on The Hall.
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