Week 9 Devlog

This week marks the 50% milestone for the showcase deadline. As we were pushing toward having a playtestable build, we were unable to reach the goal, however made strides in progress with the combat system, artwork and implementation, updates to the menus, and a procedural enemy spawning system using PCG. 

Combat System

Making progress on the combat system, we have the basic slime enemy that deals damage to the player and displays a health bar above its head. We look to improve our enemy creation through modular settings that can be easily altered to have dynamic enemy types that are derived from quick iteration and altering values. 

Artwork & Implementation

We have made some progress toward decorative sprites by adding ground and wall torches that lock to the player's camera dynamically, mimicking a billboard sprite. This was a major step to more easily implementing a camera rotation feature in the future that does not cause conflict with having 2D sprites. A "Dash", "Knocked Down", and "Combo Attack" animation were also added for the main character player. The Slime King animations are also completed and needs implemented into the game as a final boss fight with custom mechanics. For future updates, we plan on adding normal mapping and shadow casting to all rendered sprites to further immerse the 2.5D environment. 

Menu Updates

The addition of a lobby menu for players joining a server allows for a character select possibility and will eventually lead to multiple class types for the players to choose from for their journey. The functionality of the menus are priority, looking ahead cosmetic changes will be made as features are fully completed.

PCG Enemy Spawning

A system using Unreal Engine's PCG framework allows us to spawn enemies in any area based on a point grid sampled from the included geometry. Each point is randomly sampled from an array of enemy blueprints and spawns the actor based on the ratio of points selected to spawn. This procedural spawning allows us to have dynamic spawning in the generated modules of the dungeon so the player cannot expect the same outcome each time the room is encountered. Looking ahead, blueprinting will be added even more to randomize the ratio of spawn locations and produce a more unpredictable outcome.