Month 3 of Project Leumen Dev

Days 53-7 something of project leumen's progress. Lots of work, lots of stuff, lots of changes. Tons of new animations and things I can't really show here, but we'll have a proper "update" on the project leumen tab of this website eventually.

Month 3

Day 54

Today I got the melee system working using a bunch of traces and other things. It's super rudimentary, but it should work for what I need. The big issue I kept running into was overlapping the same actor with multiple sphere traces caused damage to happen multiple times. Now, I have a manual throttle time I can set for each animation in which the damaged actors will be cleared/added to allow for each actor to be hit once. Melee weapons will probably need a small nerf to damage since almost all of them will be able to cleave through multiple enemies atm.

Day 55

Fixed some issues with resistances and weapons not using the proper bullet.

Added 11 fish types, all of which will eventually have their own items and other things. This is just a temporary set of names so I can start working on things. Replaced some of their meshes with random objects like swords, guns, etc just to make sure their spawning was working properly (it currently is, thankfully!)

Day 56

More fishing fixes and started recording my first real devlog. Had an issue where my zipping program for some reason corrupted a few files when I tried to test this project on my other computer, however it's working fine now.

Day 57

Started working on throwable grenades. Can't “hold” grenades, but they can be thrown by quickly clicking from the inventory and hitting the number on your item bar which pulls them out. Very nifty. This took a while to figure out due to replication issues, but it's working now!

Day 58-59

Spears, spears spears – worked on spears today, fixed more animations (like my reload and firing animations) and more. My characters starting gun is about 70% done, it just needs hit FX and sound FX when it fires and muzzle flash stuff. Added anim notifies, grabbed some free animations that shockingly work, did a TON of blueprint work and other stuff – but after a few hours of work I got spears working!

Currently for melee, this is what I have to set up.

1: I need to check the character ABP and connect nodes within the code for stance changes

2: I need to make an equipment handler and change the stance

3: I need to get the animations set up in the montages to be working in the top half of the body, this is done on the ABP and the animation sequences when used.

4: For spears specifically I still need to make the stabbing system an additive animation so that it only hits one direction and doesn't cause any strange animation glitches.

Unfortunately however for any weapons with combos and not just 2 simple attacks, I'll have to remake the system. I'm still looking into this, as so far the two weapons (the baton (sword atm) and spear just have 1-2 basic weapon animations.

I also added more features to grenades, such as launching corpses and players. And Fleshoids have this new goofy “fall” attack animation which will serve as their heavy attack. May make it knock players over, not positive yet. I don't have many knocking over animations yet.

Day 60

This log is really disorganized but regardless I'm glad I'm making it. I've technically been working on this for a little over two months now despite only being on “day 60” (as I haven't worked EVERY day, but 5 days a week or so.)

Tonight I got a lot done.

I finalized the spear animations, making them additive to the base spear pose.

I worked on a new type of grenade, the paint grenade. This unfortunately still has a lot of stuff I have to work on. For starters, I don't even have a paint splatter decal yet – the one I downloaded doesn't have the texture map set up properly, so that's a whole thing I have to deal with. And I might just need to remake the whole thing. Secondly, I need to get an actual spear asset made next order with my modeler.

With the paint grenade I've set up, things look great so far. Now that I have basic “throwable” objects set up, I can start working on a lot of different throwable items. I also now know I can make animations happen on my character from my equipment handler SUPER easily by just copying the throwable logic and changing some things. This means placing animations, long static animations, etc can all be set up.

Day 61

Today I finally started making a level and experimenting with lighting. I don't quite have enough assets for a “full level.”

Testing in an actual level made me realize a few things.

1: I need to stop my third person camera from being adjusted by every single prop. Only walls, ceilings and the floor should effect it – and even then I don't LOVE the way the camera is currently. Might make it be able to phase through walls, as of right now it moves in/out toward the character's shoulder.

2: Some of my textures have a white sheen they shouldn't have. I'm not really sure how to fix this, I'll have to get in contact with the artist. It's ONLY the textures that have the damaged texture on it, so that's quite strange.

3: Fishing animations are going to require some more work/coding on my end as the system in place uses an addative animation which I have 0 intention of doing, I want to make a custom fishing animation similar to something like monster hunter where the character struggles before pulling up the fish. Likewise, I want a casting animation. I have ideas as to how to do this, but it's gonna take a bit to figure out.

Day 62

Well I solved one of my big issues regarding textures for the environment. For some reason they weren't importing properly, but they're set up right now – so yay, I have fleshier walls and floors. I still have some issues with these emission textures, though, namely that it's 110% them causing the Trophy Agent and Female Trophy Agent to emanate a bright white light. No other characters have similar emission files and none of them do this. This means after the next environment assets are done I'll probably have to get in contact with my 3d modeler and go from there.

I did another room in my first level and added a second type of fleshoid enemy that's slower with different animations. The catch with these is if they get closer they attack a LOT faster, so they're slow but you want to kill them quicker.

Testing enemies in the environment has taught me I need to figure out a way to have them move on top of tables and other objects. I'll need to look more into this. There are several ways of handling it like an invisible ramp or something called a jump spot. I don't really wanna use jump spots as I'm sure they'll look odd, but I'll figure it out.

I also fixed the camera to the best of my ability, although it requires I make sure every single object overlaps with the camera instead of blocking it within collisions.

Day 63-65

I think some of my emission files might be completely fucked, but for the time being I started working on a lobby for the players to spawn in. This lobby will have vendors and different systems which players can use, such as our crafting, vendors and more.

I worked on this for day 63, 64 and 65, as it takes quite a while to make levels in unreal engine from what I'm noticing. I also started learning about lighting and how to light different areas more effectively. The one thing that kind of sucks about this is I'm realizing just how many props I need to actually make these levels look “full.”

This isn't a huge deal and it also means I can work on other stuff while I wait for these environment props to be done. Namely, tomorrow I'll be working on my melee weapon system. Probably try and make 2-3 “movesets” I can use for different bladed and bludgeoning weapon types. I have spears fully done, I just need my first spear asset which I should get in a few days alongside my wallbreaker gun (so I can finally finish my breakable walls and props) and another kinetic fast-firing pistol.

Notes of things I really need done asset-wise:

Energy pistol

Small magic firearm

Energy rifle (currently only have magitech rifle for magic energy)

Design-choice wise, I am going to show “magic” weapons as magic by making sure to include leycrystals or mana crystals and their equivalent batteries and wires. Energy weapons may just look more streamlined/futuristic, and their ammunition will not include these crystals – instead they'll have power packs and less wiring. The magitech stuff will require the leystone wiring. This is to help get a consistent look across the weapon classes.

Fishing rods and variations (I want at least 5)

Fish (at least 5 different models and one “giant” fish that can be an enemy)

Day 66

Today was a VERY productive night. I finally started getting melee set up, although it's kinda dumbly complicated due to my inventory/weapon system.

It goes through an equipment handler and notifier, with this being the weird system I cooked up:

> Swing on Handler

> Handler plays animation

> Animation has a notifier in it that tells the character the animation is being played on to call an event dispatcher

> Event dispatcher goes back to handler, tells handler to reset variables

> Combo plays through handler and resets through handler

This works for literally any weapon I want to do. I can even change damage values per combo swing if I want to, but as of right now not going to worry about doing that.

Day 67

Once again I did not test replication...

And once again, replication is an issue.

Apparently root motion is not replicated. This is going to cause all sorts of issues if I use attack animations that use root motion. However, almost every attack animation I have...uses root motion. And it's something I need to learn to do anyways.

I could separate the melee from the legs like I INITIALLY planned (which is how spears will remain implemented), but people seem to like root motion attacks a lot for combos. So now I have to figure out how to replicate these.

What confuses me is currently the player doing the call calls the function, then that function plays the animation on the server, and then it gets multicasted – but somewhere in there, the variables are getting messed up per player and making it so that the proper animations aren't being shown. Worse yet, one of the animations regularly breaks (only in multiplayer) altogether. I believe this is actually due to the variables not being connected properly.

This sucks but I'll need to figure it out, thus furthering the complication of this melee system which is already ridiculously complicated for such a simple combo-based system – I haven't even implemented things like dodging, special attacks and potentially blocking yet...

Day 68

I'm an idiot

IT WAS WORKING I JUST HAD THE WRONG ANIMATIONS IN THE REPLICATION SELECTION NODE I SPENT SO MUCH TIME FIXING THIS

Day 69

Today I moved all animation-based combos into the character blueprint, as the characters are all going to have their own animations depending on whether they're male, female, different races or species, etc. And I need more options to blend out and whatnot then what selecting an equipment event currently allows with the built in system included with my items.

For the most part I spent time hunting for assets tonight while starting to theorycraft for different weapon combos. I still also need to figure out dodging and jumping and how to get those to not be accessible while in a melee combo – I think I'll need more animation-based notifiers.

I wasted a lot of time tonight – I think I'm gonna focus on getting dodging and jumping working next. I'll have to change things once I swap animations, but I need to at least get the basics done before I really start fine tuning things. I'm realizing I might also need to move my spear logic to be within the character blueprint, but I'm not positive. May not need to if I do some weird finnagling.

Day 70

Dodging is finally being worked on!

I have a ton of new dodge animations. I'm gonna set up a system similarly to the character blueprint provided with the references with a candodge variable. I just have to figure out how to get the direction I'm walking from my current movement system.

Day 71

I for some reason cannot get replication working with this for the life of me, and it's driving me crazy.

6 Hours of work and basically nothing to show for it. The good news is I got some more assets finally, including my spear. The bad news? I'm realizing my spear animations might need some work, as I don't want players to be able to dodge or roll while stabbing. Nothing is ever easy in programming it seems!

Day 72

FINALLY DID IT! DODGING IS MOSTLY WORKING – I'm still missing 4 directions, but I'll get there.

Here are my insane notes:

Forward: 1, 0

Backward: -1 , 0

Left: 0, -1

Right: 0, 1

ForwardLeft: 1, -1

Forwardright: 1, 1

Backwardleft: -1, -1

backwardright: -1, 1

FIRST NUMBER IS Y

SECOND IS X

I had to pass these two variables through a bunch of rpcs, a server event and a multicast event. Now, I just need to make sure the actual resetting of everything is proper.

Looking at spears, they are really going to need a lot more effort I'm realizing. Right now they're two handed, I may have to make them one handed for ease on my own part...and entirely change how they work. No more moving while swinging? I'm not sure, I'd like to keep the moving while stabbing JUST for spears. I'll have to figure that out.

Day 73

Fixed an issue with my aimoffsets and my additive animations in general >

Changed additive anim type to mesh and then used the referenced animation at frame 1, this fixed weird turning issues with many of the animations I have! Super glad I got this working. The only animations this did not really fix are in relation to reloading, which still have some oddities.

I also added the heavian pistol tonight, which fires a random spread of bullets in a direction. During this weapon's creation, I also removed projectiles ability to collide with other projectiles to stop any errors during firing – as the projectiles were sometimes hitting each other in midair when they spawned.

At some point my grenades broke...not actually sure how or why. Going to see if I can grab them from a backup, but as of right now not sure what's going on with them. I might just have to remake them, which would suck, but it is what it is.

Okay nevermind, grabbed them from a backup – thank god.

Day 74

Today I got very little done, mostly worked on interactable chairs – got it semi-working but it's gonna need some fixes. And by some I mean a lot.

This is the end of log 3! A video titled dev log 2 should be up on my YT shortly.