Introduction

Glad to have you back for another devlog! We’re now in the second week of sprint production, and things are starting to take shape. There's been a lot of progress, from lighting tweaks to new interactive elements, and we’re excited to share what we’ve been working on!

Coding

Queued NPCs AI

This week's episode on AI development was produced by....... David, one big piece of our game is going to be having obstacles and what better obstacles than BIG humans that are trying to buy snacks and drinks to go watch their movie? Well for the first week of our first sprint we got you covered with that, we finally have the queue system in the game but sadly for now the characters are just getting destroyed when they reach the end of the queue. 

That s not really a challenge so David  designed a diagram for this. This week we only got the first part covered where the AI is waiting in the queue and then transitioning towards the different behavior. Here is a sneak peak of what we have planned. The orange square is where we are right now.

Camera

One of the things we had to figure out (and still are) is the camera. In the early stages, we settled for a camera that follows the players at a fixed offset with a locked rotation. Now, we upgraded to a camera that follows the players across a spline that we can easily modify to control the camera. Thanks to David's foundation and Jakub's expansion upon it, below is the final result!

Inverse Kinematic driven legs

We had David work on this before. He got it to work with an old rig we had. Based on the same video David based his implementation on, Jakub partially made an implementation that works with the current rig.

This could still use some improvements:

1. The legs right now are sliding. They should lift from the ground and then be placed further.
2. Right now, the legs go right underneath the player. They should predict where they should go further in time.

Art

The Block-out

At this stage our level block-out is one of the most important parts in art production. The previous week our artist Akshit made a block-out that served as a good base, but needed some adjustments and rethinking. Patricija took over from there and she began by doing a draw-over on screenshots of the existing block-out, planning out all the details with input from the whole team. This approach helped us avoid wasting any precious time as working in 2D is quick and allows us to iterate fast.

After the draw-overs were done, Patricija went in Blender and readjusted the walls and floors to have correct scaling and proportions compared to the characters. This took some time and careful planning as we want our level to have progressive introduction along Side Akshit modeled the final Design of Ticket Booth and Snack Station. Our level begins with a simple corridor that lets players get comfortable with basic movement and walking straight. From there, they navigate through belt barriers in a zig zag pattern. Step by step we gradually introduce new mechanics and increase the complexity.

After the base was made and tested by our programmer Jakub, Patricija placed block-out meshes all over our level. She placed and planned the meshes so they are reusable and also make the level feel unique and cozy. It was important to give the meshes the right naming conventions and import them straight to unreal as separate objects, so later when we model the props, we can quickly re import them and they will replace the place holder mesh. 

Outside Environment

As our programmers are moving forward with the camera movement, artist can already start planning out the outside environment. Patricija made a few planning sketches of how the environment could look like.  We might have to change the layout as we go, depending on the visual aspects and the changes we might have.

Character Rigging

This week Patricija rigged some characters as every week. She rigged the ticket seller and ticket checker modeled by Len, as well as some of the NPC's that were modeled by Akshit. For the NPC's that will be the costumers of the cinema, Patricija needed to rig only the legs as they will only walk in the game and bump in the players.

A retractable belt barrier 

We wanted to experiment with retractable barriers for standing in line. Len worked on a blueprint that spawns static meshes of these barriers, you can choose the offset and make a really fun path using the spline. 

Next up, we’re switching from instanced meshes to regular static meshes to make the belt fully physics-based. This means characters can push against it, causing real-time stretching. On top of that, we’re making it actually retractable. With the spline system, we can place it all over the level in different patterns, making it super versatile!

More lighting!

With the semi-finished block-out, Len focused on lighting to enhance the scene’s visual impact. A cube map was applied to the height fog to create a starry night sky, and the directional light was removed to reflect the night time setting. The warm tones of orange, pink, and red create a pleasing complementary palette, while blue spotlights add contrast and depth to the scene.

After all, Las Vegas is all about LED lights and vibrant, colorful buildings.

Movie posters

Since our level is set in a cinema, there will be plenty of movie posters, "coming soon" displays, figurines, and more. Len created posters inspired by existing movies, redesigning them to match our game's iconic character creation style. 

See you all next week!