Coffin Bound Games

One of the latter steps with building a level is beauty-ing up the area, and by that I mean cluttering and filling the corners with junk. For this we firstly need some tat to put in, the girder, barrel, and cones I made myself but I imported the loose stones, gears, pulleys, and filling cabinets. The thing that I'm proudest of however was the boxes I used to fill out the shelves, since as soon as play has been hit they chose random meshes and even random materials [although it might've been easier to just place the assets myself than program the random boxes but they still make me immeasurably happy].

I learnt back in college that putting sound effects into games can make the world of difference to a game, I was making a game about playing as a post apocalyptic taxi driver where the bad guys drive after the player and shoot at them. While play testing the game it seemed quite easy to get a reasonably high score until I added gun sound effects to the enemies and suddenly the real pressure of being shot at had an impact on how the player plays the game. Having seen how much of a difference sound effects can make to a game with not a whole lot work I've since tried to put sound into my projects where possible. To this end I've put multiple sound effects into my current project, from coins jingling to ambient noise [for wind, water, and electrical buzzing sound effects] to relays clicking on to multiple mechanical and metal breaking sound effects. [note that all sounds where taken off of YouTube and then converted to mp3s, wavs, and edited down via a multitude of incredibly sket

 Since the Tees transporter bridge is just that, a transporter bridge, the platform needs to move from one side to the other. I chose to do this by making the platform move along a spline [an almost criminal under use considering how much a spline is capable of] but the main reason is partly because I mostly already knew how to use a spline, having used them in the past, but also at a set point I wanted the platform to plunge into the water [although the bridge is a landmark and dearly loved I thought it only fitting, and also because I didn't want to have to model the other side of the river].  However it was almost impossible to convincingly replicate gravity and drop the platform into the water in a way that seemed natural so at the end of the spline, just after it dips, it sets simulate physics to true allowing simulated gravity to do all the work.

 Eventually we come to the original reason that a bridge was even built, a large body of water. we've already got a deep ravine under the bridge so all we need to do is install a water plug in [since it doesn't come in standard unreal] for this I used the aptly named 'water' plugin which, although reportedly being experimental was the most commonly recommended plugin. I dropped the custom water body into the level which proved very easy to edit to the size that I needed and had lots of options to edit wave size, frequency, width, height etc. However the water wasnt greatly appreciated by my very low spec CPU and makes the game run quiet poorly while looking at the water. Additionally due to the heavy fog in my level I could very easily have got away with instead using a plane made to be slightly transparent [and this might well be changed before I declare the level complete].   

As I think I've previously mentioned the player will be turning on the electricity through the level via a fuesbox [requiring a fuse] a switchboard [requring a switch to be turned on] and a coin operated meter [requiring a coin] I started by blocking out the various boxs's, using boxes, and the objects required to fix them. I havn't shown off the code [since it's incredibly boring] but one part I was quite proud of was instead of the bridge asking whether the three objectives where complete it asks whether a float is equal to 3 with each objective increasing the float by one [although any processing power saved was immediately wasted on the water that I'll bring up in another post] I'm also quite proud of the meter which, upon a coin being inserted, will change it's material.

 I'm not sure if I've yet explained the admittedly very simple mission that the player will be able to complete in the level, but since in this post I will be breaking down the layout of the level now seems like the opportune time. To get the bridge to work, the player needs to fix the electrical system between the bridge and an electrical pylon. During the development of the level the I came up with three things that the player will need to fix to get electricity to the bridge, a switchboard, a coin operated electricity meter and a fuse box, the coin op meter and the fuse box requiring a coin and a new fuse respectively, these items being hidden in the toll office and the warehouse. The placement of these buildings is very important to organically and subtly draw the player through the level and towards the next objective [hence why the layout of the level changed through development] obviously lights and the like will also be used to draw the player through the level, partly