Blog: Light World

LightWorldPrototype2

I haven’t been on it as much as I’ve liked due to real life commitments, but I have made quite a bit of progress.  As promised, here’s another blog on ongoing Project: Light World and I’ve included a new screenshot.  While it doesn’t look like a whole lot has changed, internally though, I’ve done a lot.  For the past month, I’ve primarily been working on character movement and making sure the right animations play at the right time.  Unreal Engine doesn’t have a pre-created system for what I’m trying to do so it is very challenging, requiring lots of trial and error to put together.

In the above screenshot, the protagonist (tentatively named Amie) is in a diorama-like world filled with other 2D paper cutout characters.  I’ve figured out how to add realistic lighting to the sprite characters.  At the time of the previous blog, it was hard to tell where Amie was in relation to the ground whenever she jumped, but now that she casts a shadow, it’s much easier to get a sense of where she is spatially.

I’ve also redone the blueprints for the characters entirely so that they all share the same parent class.  Previously, they were separated resulting in me having to repeat a lot of code, thus making it run inefficiently.  But now with this new system in place, that means that it’s possible to quite fluently switch control between different NPC’s and not just Amie.  I haven’t decided if I’m going to have some follower companions or alternate playable characters, but this new update makes such a thing possible.

The creepy shadowy character is, as you may have guessed, an enemy.  To properly test the animations of the AI, I realized I needed something to base it off of.  The frog’s animations weren’t done, so what I did instead was just take Amie and palette swap her into an evil version.  Chances are I’ll probably end up keeping this character somewhere.  I like the concept.

In the future though, I’m hoping to have these sprite characters redrawn at a higher resolution most likely in a cartoonish anime style, so I’ll definitely need some help with that.  I’m also planning to replace the textures as those were taken from Unreal’s starter content.  I’d rather either make myself or commission everything involved with this game since I’m personally not a fan of premade assets.

As for story, well, I’m still working on that although nothing’s concrete yet.  However, it’s currently leaning towards some sort of psychological thriller in the E10 to T range.  A mix of genuine horror and quirky humor.

Once I make more noticeable progress, I’ll post another update.