Dev log blog
(For Combat Design)
Heaven has fallen.
Vampires rule the world.
And yet, something fights back. The will of the old gods remains unrelenting.
You must ascend the wall, slaughtering numerous foes, all in an attempt to stop the reemergence of the light. Blood spills with every step, trailing behind you in your wake.
Will you push them back, or allow the light to banish you from this world for eternity...
For the eternal dark.
Project Hemorrhage Dev logs
Week 1
This week, for the team’s design process, we had a meeting discussing the type of combat system we wanted to create. We brainstormed several ideas, receiving inspiration from recent combat games that we all played and what we thought was feasible, entertaining, and overall, something that portrayed the sort of experience that we were looking to create. We created a Miro board where we posted all our ideas to start gathering references. I personally reference games such as Jedi Survivor, The Witcher, and God of War to name a few. We discussed things like difficulty and fluidity, regarding aspects of combat such as combos, locking on, and other features of combat games that we liked that we could try to replicate. We eventually decided on a third-person experience for this combat project because we felt like a first-person experience in a combat game just doesn't feel as good and fulfilling. Because I am focusing on the visual design aspect of this combat system, I referenced some games regarding their VFX that I think would fit into the style of our system. The main reference that I had was God of War 2018 because I felt that the impact and visual weight of the VFX could be used in a similar way for our project that would really bring some more visual interest and satisfaction. I also spoke to my team about a possible system that I could build for our project that I think would be really awesome to create and implement. The idea that I am pitching to our team is a Dismemberment System that allows the player to cut off limbs of enemies, to really give it that wow factor and bring some more visual interest to the combat system as a whole.
REFERENCES: God of War VFX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn8jTna65i4Links to an external site. Black Myth Wukong VFX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBlSobhmZELinks to an external site.
Week 2
So, for this week, the team met together and started talking about exactly what kind of setting and theme of the combat system we wanted to create. We brainstormed together as a team everyone throwing their ideas, where we eventually landed a theme described as; low tech/old, Magical spells or maybe abilities, a system where a big sword just makes sense in the attacks it uses and has accurate physics imitating what we would expect it to feel like in a somewhat realistic way, human enemies that the player can dismember the enemies, a mechanic that I proposed for the project as I felt like it would give more immersion and interactivity, while also giving the team a general idea as to what it would look like in its rudimentary phase. We also decided on the animation pack that we wanted to use for the project, which is a Great sword Animation Pack, which has now been bought and added to our source Control. We also specified the kind of character that our UE Mannequin was going to represent, to give the player more context and linear experience, which is a "Vampire with a great sword in the world of ______, traversing a city wall to reach a spire". After the team got this important conversation out of the way, we then decided on tasks and how each of us would start working on the project from here on out. A few team members are brainstorming spell ideas, while I am compiling a list of potential effects to create for the project. We will then reconvene to compare the different assets we've come up with, and decide whether to combine, reduce, or even increase those items. My tasks for the week have mostly just been trying to come up with potential VFX that we could implement into our system and potentially adding them to the project if I get to it in time. A big task that I was focusing on was the Dismemberment System and how I wanted to go about that. I found an amazing resource online that is the Technical Art Document from the developers of Left 4 Dead 2 that spoke about how they created their system. If you are at all curious, I would highly recommend checking it out; it talks about the goals, technical restraints of the time, the initial prototype, and the final solution that they came up with.
Week 3
This week, we met as a team to further discuss what qualities of gameplay we wanted. We made a chart to compare it to other games that we have gotten inspiration from, charting them based on the number of enemies that you would fight in a single encounter, and the amount of assistance they gave the player. We placed these inspirations on this chart to pinpoint exactly how much influence we wanted to extract from each example, as well as the style and feel we wanted to end up using. We also discussed specific qualities that we wanted our game to have, for example, 2-3 enemies with no more than 4 max, wide assist angles, and low 'magnetism' or 'snapping' to enemies, dodge canceling on hit. We also discussed an interesting quality where the 'corpses' of the enemies’ matter and could be throwable, interactable for health, or blood, and lastly, we discussed having a moderately strict perfect dodge with some potential time dilation. The next part of the meeting was where I was able to apply myself to the discussion more. We spoke about the basic VFX that I would make for the team in order to have a starting point of things to work on for me in the engine. The basic list comprises things like sword trail, enemy attack, with some clouds and bats for our perfect dodge. These are some pretty simple and straightforward FX with the feedback that they give, the most essential part of the systems themselves. We also discussed some enemy impacts, ground impacts, as well as dust from footsteps or dodging, and some decals for cracked ground to help give the heavy attack some more oomph visually. In the engine, I created some basic materials and particle systems for some basic feedback for the player. I made a blood impact, a sword trail, and some sparks for when the sword is dragging on the ground.
Week 4
This week was a bit of a rough week for me development-wise. I had my wisdom teeth removed last Wednesday and didn't come out of my opioid-induced fever dream until about Sunday evening, essentially having only a few days to really make any progress at all. But I was still able to get something going. These last few days, I implemented a sword trail through the Niagara particle system using a material that I created, as well as the ribbon renderer in the system itself. To add a little bit more flair I add an emitter that spawned little black and red particles around the static mesh of the sword.
Week 5
For this week, our team was focusing on different aspects of polish and what these parts can do to add to our game. We discussed VFX, SFX, camera shake, and haptics being applied in a 'first pass' to at least communicate to our player at a basic level. This was done to walk, jog, dodge roll, regular dodge, some basic sword trails, and impacts. This was where most of my work was done for this week, with polishing the sword slash from last week, creating some blood FX regarding impacts, and how these would look in the future when we start implementing more of our mechanics down the line. We also had an in-depth discussion regarding the button layout on our controller and how this would affect the experience we want to create, and to map these buttons in a way so that the controls are not counterintuitive to the player. For personal contributions:
Implemented a first pass version of dust being kicked up in the walk, jog, dodge, and roll animations via a notify state so that the FX played at the correct moment.
• Started the dismemberment system, where I found a cool plugin that may or may not help, but still allows me to get the ball rolling with this idea. It is a plug-in that allows you to cut a skeletal mesh, separating it into separate SKMs that still behave with ragdoll and physics. (This ended up being scrapped since it completely broke the project during runtime.)
• I created two separate Sword Trails, one for the light attack and the other for the heavy attack. With this FX, I created a refraction on the trail itself, as well as having two separate textures to visually tell the player that these two combo strings are different from each other.
• I also created a shockwave, which is a first pass, that was added via notify state to the animation of this attack. I timed it so that the timing of it made sense visually.
Week 6
For this week, our team focused on some more polishing aspects, such as UI and Enemies, with some playtesting to get some feedback on our combat so far. What I did this week was essentially polish some of my effects. The effect that I focused on polishing this week was the charged attack, where I wanted to make it feel similar to the charged attack of the great sword from MH. Following this FX, I am going to polish up our charge effect on the player and/or sword itself. For the shockwave itself, I used a texture that pans on the X axis to give some more visual movement, as well as making a lot of dust kick up into the air with some debris. From here i want to remove the crack from the Niagara system itself and put that into a blueprint, so right now it is a sort of placeholder on that has a very short lifetime, but also moves with the player, which is precisely what I do not want with the final FX. I want the crack itself to last on the ground for about 15 seconds and stick to the location that the player performed the charge attack. But right now, it only lasts for about 2 seconds.
Week 7
This week, I set a lot of foundations for future FX that I will create, as well as reiterating previous FX such as the blood ball, charge attack impact, and creating a different blood system that looks more fluid than the previous blood that I had created. Some of the foundational work I did was implementing various Blood Decal textures and creating materials from them to incorporate into a blueprint so that when a blood decal spawns, it is a different blood decal each time, because I wanted to create variety within these decals so that it wasn't the same one over and over. I haven't had a chance to implement it into the project, but I have created the materials in the engine so that I can just create an array of these materials within the blueprint itself. I also created a master material meant that is emissive because I want a glow/Fresnel effect on the player to scale from 0-1 to help emphasize the feeling of a power fantasy with the charged attack. This FX itself took a lot of time because I really struggled with the logic behind it, but I got it to the point where it is on the player, and only happens once. I now know what I am going to do to make it work properly in the engine. Because I wasn't able to get this effect to the point that I wanted it to, I did add some additional FX to act as a placeholder for now, which I may or may not keep in the future. I want to incorporate both of these into the charge attack later on, but I need to prioritize some other FX for the team.
Week 8
For this week my team focused a lot on polishing what we already have, we sped up our animation by cutting frames before and after the initial attack, this has made our combo’s feel a lot snappier and more enjoyable to use. My personal work this week was focused on polishing previous FX to better fit what the team had envisioned. Because our level designer made a really cool level that better fits the context of our game, I adjusted the colors of the textures used in my particle systems because even though they appeared normal in a testing level they were very bright and emissive and just didn’t look too good. I adjusted the new blood impact to appear in the game as well, since before it was not appearing, but it was a simple fix. There was also an issue with our blueprint for the blood ball, just a visual bug, but it was scaling the blood ball down a lot and make it look squished. I also created quite a few more materials in an effort to make the blood splashes look more dynamic, I initially wanted to do blood geometry in an animated mesh generated from Houdini but I ran into issues in the pipeline and just decided to do other things for the blood such as a dissolve mask that makes the blood seem dissipate as its lifetime goes on. I have also made a lot of progress on the dismemberment; I have all of the components together I just need to implement it into the level. I have the opacity mask, body parts, ‘gore cap’, and a basic idea of how to implement it into the game.
Week 9
During this week, work was very light for me; it mostly included tweaking previous FX and assigning values assigned to those values. I did do a lot of adjustments to the blood FX that I created to better fit the lighting of our level that one of our teammates made. This was something that required me to look a little closer into Lit, and Masked particles, because blood needs to interact with the light, but the lighting that we had was quite dark. What I eventually did was just add some extra directional lights with the shadow casting turned off, so that it would illuminate objects from more than one direction so that we can see the light interact with the blood itself.
Week 10
This week the team took a much needed break, for GDC.
Week 11
This week, I continued to make changes to the current FX and new ones for the team. For new FX, I implemented Niagara systems for the Blood Idol spell to make it more aesthetically pleasing and fitting the context of the spell itself. It is still a little buggy, but it looks better than before. I also created a system using an array of decals that will, in the future, spawn on the ground whenever the blood directional spray collides with the ground. Within this array, it has a random seed so that it will randomly pick between 5 different decals, with more potentially being added in the future. For past FX, I further polished the BloodBall projectile, adding an impact and a trail when it is being thrown.
Week 12
This week I created a small system to spawn blood puddles whenever an the blood particles from the initial impact collide with the ground or other objects. This was done by exporting the particle collision data from Niagara into a blueprint, and further connecting it to a Blueprint I created that contained an array of a variety of blood decals to make the blood splash feel dynamic and fun to use. I also fixed a small bug where our blood was spawning from the collision capsule of the sword on collision rather than the mesh itself. This made it feel a little weird and disjointed to attack an enemy and see the blood spray a few feet away from the body. now it emits directly from the enemy mesh and improves the game feel.
Week 13
This week was primarily polish on my end adding some FX for Jordan's cutscene, as well as polishing up some other small FX that I forgot to implement. For example, some of the sword slashes did not have a trail on them, and the sockets for them were misaligned. I also added a basic form of dismemberment to one of the executions, and got the help of implementing it with Jordan. I also created the bloodwave FX ability.
Week 14
For this week, it was essentially just light polishing on preexisting FX, making changes to lifetime and velocity for the Bloodwave, and some aspects of the Bloodidol, as well as the Bloodwave. I also added some additional FX to executions to give them a juicier feel. This way, I created a few different Niagara systems, such as 'Limb_Blood' and 'Blood_Constant_Spray'. We met as a team and discussed some of the additional polish that we wanted to add to the game, adjusting values, adding a boss fight, and some potential further FX that would be nice to have later on in development.
Week 15
Due to my Advanced Studio being a few weeks behind, I had a very light workload for this week for this class. What I did get done, however, is resizing the Holy Bifrost attack for our boss cutscene due to it being way too big.
