Working On Doors

 Working On Doors

Chris Lenhart

    The door I am designing in Unreal Engine 4 is a 'double door' , meaning that the door will slide and split from the middle allowing the player to move into a new area to explore. Though if I can I would like to try and make the doors pivot outward away from the player to incite in their mind that there is no need to return to the previous area once passing through the doorway.

Reading through Liz England's blog I thought many of these questions really pertain to what kind of game is being made alongside what features it has, if the game is a single player game then questions pertaining to coop are then irrelevant. So for the questions I am choosing to answer I am doing so from the point of view of a single player third person boss fighting game.  

The Door Problem:

  • How does the player open the door? 
    • The player will stand on a certain spot, say a pressure plate, in front of the door that will allow it to open and enable the player to progress. 
  • Do doors lock behind the player?
    • Some doors will lock behind the player forcing them to progress and disabling them from backtracking through the same way they came in.
  • Are there doors in the game?
    • This one seems sort of redundant, asking if there are doors in the game when I am writing a something entirely about doors. Though its quite important, I recently played Risk Of Rain 2 where there are no doors in the game for the player to engage with in any manor. So you still have to ask, "are there doors in the game?"
The Other Door Problems:
  • Concept artists: 
    • The role of the concept artists would come up with various looks for what door could be, they could be decrepit old former selves of once majestic doors or even such things as a iron bar jail door. 
  • Level designer: 
    • As a level designer, maybe since the doors are tied to pressure plates some might need more weight and that could be free form. Meaning that anything the player could think of to put enough pressure on the pad could work. 
  • Animator: 
    • This one is rather simple, the doors could be triple A quality but if they don't move properly like opening or closing that isn't very helpful if the player has to move through said door. 
    Getting back into Unreal Engine 4 was a bit rocky. Though I do remember working as a group last year with Ty, Hunter, and Elijah on creating a level which had doors in it. There were trigger boxes, animations for the door to play, and other tid bits I remember which most of this is jogging my memory back to where it should be. I still have difficulties following sometimes what each component does in the visual scripting but talking through it and giving them simpler names helps. 





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Titanfall deserves a Titanfall 3 BLG#3

Image
Titan User-Face The element of the titan user face I will be writing about is the lines that indicate to a pilot (player) that they are inside the titan. The black lines that "separate" the screen are there to add to the effect on the player that they are inside a three story mech of destruction. That element is diegetic, the character in the game world is able to see those lines just as the player is. What is non-diegetic though is all the elements boxed in red. Those aren't visible to the character in game but is visible to the player giving them information. Though much of what is on screen could be considers spatial and diegetic, the pilot (in game character) needs that information to tell them what is happening. Such information would be the mini map in the top left, the power core level which is the blue bar in the bottom left, much of what is in the Titan fall screen/user interface is diegetic and spatial. 
Read more

Unreal Engine 4 Overlays

Image
The 7 Stages of Action There are seven stages of action needed to take into account when talking about usability. Listing all seven stages Goal, Plan, Specify, Perform, Perceive, Interpret, and Compare I will explain how they relate to my health bar and my blood splash in my Unreal Engine 4 prototype.  Goal The goal of my prototype was to develop a creative idea for a crazy themed FPS game. The need for a health bar and damage overlay is essential in an first person shooter, how else will the player know their health unless told by the game in some form. So I created, instead of blood, laughing that pops up on the screen the more you take damage. Furthermore creating a my version of a health bar, a craz-o-meter, which when taking more and more damage will turn bar starting in green more towards the yellow, orange, and finally to red.  Plan The action of my prototype is to display how taking damage effects the player. Now since this is only a prototype there is...
Read more

Flow Charts and Discover-ability

Image
Chris Lenhart Flow Charts  :         The application Clock on Iphone has roughly five main screens. Those being World Clock, Alarm, Timer, Bedtime, and Stopwatch. All Screens but Stopwatch had some sort of settings/editing page that could only be gotten to by going to their respective screen first. In terms of Flow I think that there is a good balance within the app, it isn't overly complex with where you can go from screen to screen but it makes sense as to where you would go to get to settings on the five main screens. Personally I use the Clocks app all the time for almost all of its screens besides Bedtime, and I believe that many other people use the app just as much as I do using nearly all of its functions. The fact that no one talks about how easy the flow is on the app means that the flow is good. The everyday person shouldn't pick up on that it should be expected from the app. Discover-ability  :         The tool I'm go...
Read more