Log #6: Sep/6/2024

Texels, color palettes, and a man whose shoulder-to-shoulder length is about 16 feet. Finding a proper bugfix (thank you, thank you, your applause is too kind) and animating the player character for the tutorial project I'm working my way through. Entry for Friday.

One thing I had said I would do yesterday was make a color palette for the team's artists. After talking to our teacher, we decided to anoint one of our artists as the one in charge of the game's art, and they would make the color palette. As we got to this point, I spoke to a designer from another team, and we got onto the subject of texels. Me and my team spent a good minute talking to our teacher and working out how to scale things in our project. The artists were messing with all of their UV Blender nonsense, and I think we're now to a place where we can consistently size models for the game.

Also, for some horrid reason, at least one of our artist's Blender was using the imperial system, like, feet and inches and that sort of thing, as its unit of measure. What a scary idea. Sorting out this stuff is how we found out that one of our character assets we were using as a placeholder model was about 16 feet wide according to the software. I think the artists and programmers learned what they need to know, and we should be good from here on out. I'm a little uncomfortable because I don't understand it well, but I'm happy as long as everything in-game is a consistent resolution.

I had good luck working through the tutorial project today. I found the setting I need to turn off in order to make my character stop reverting back to his original orientation, just as our teacher said existed. After hovering over the setting that changed my character's orientation to match its motion, a pop-up appeared saying that this setting apparently needed another setting to be turned off. After disabling that other setting, everything worked great! It's nice to finally have figured that out. And I think now better understand Blueprint, Unreal's visual scripting software, because of all this. I worked through the tutorial a little more, and got some animations going on the character.

I'm excited to finish this tutorial and actually start messing with our game, but it's probably good I'm working through the tutorial because I am definately wading through new waters.

One of the team's programmers got some basic NPC movement going for our game. They were able to have the NPC walk towards a random point from an array of points, and make the NPC stop when the player got too close to them. It's nice to see progress, but it's also intimidating, because it shows us how much of the mechanics involve complicated details to work out.

Additionally, our method for interacting with players and items has changed. Now, the game works by seeing if an item is within a line that extends from the player. This way, when you are close to multiple interactable items, you select only what you're looking at.

Overall, I think today was quite productive. I'm excited to finish our "demo" phase of the project and really get going! (I'm looking forward to making weird 3D architecture!!) It looks like we have our work cut out for us!

-Luke Knotts