Project Vault Game Dev Log 12!

Holy smokes, it's the 12th devlog already ;o;!!! I'm actually a bit astounded with this, it's already been a year of work on project Vault! Just seeing where it's at now compared to when I started is almost startling. Starting from no knowledge of blender/Unreal what so ever, to now building entire levels and mechanics with a model I made myself. It's been quite a journey and one I've absolutely loved to death! There is still many more months to years of work needed for the game I have in my head, but for now it's great to sit back and see the progress I've made so far :3!!

So now for updates! This was a major month focused on rehauling Bod's Prone and crawling! Likewise I finally worked on creating some crawlspace tools that can help me more quickly prototype and setup levels! This also means that the first person camera has finally been implemented to the game also :D!

Stand/Crouch/Prone Transitions: It was finally time for me to cleanup the crawling animations for Bod! Spent a bit of time reworking and cleaning up the animations transitions between all the states so that it at least looks a bit better! Likewise the prone movement was reworked a bit also so that it feels less clunky! Got a couple future tweaks I'd like to make, but overall it's hit a pretty good spot till I reach the polish phase!

Crawlspace System: For a sneaking focused game, being able to climb into crawlspaces to get past guards is a must! To help with making this possible, I've gone and created a handful of tools to help me create placeholder crawlspace systems that I can help speed up level development! These have also been incorporated into the camera system to naturally transition from 3rd person view and back anytime Bod enters or exists the crawlspaces! In addition, I've managed to also tie in the squeeze system with these so that Bod can squeeze into crawlspaces also! Future development for this will focus on creating hatch entrances, and drop down exits that Bod can use when in the crawlspace!

First Person Camera: I've finally gotten the first person camera working with the current camera system! Been a heck of a lot of work learning how my spline camera plug in works so that I could better implement it. Being able to go from 1st person to 3rd person has been crazy cool to play with, even if it was a headache to get it working haha! At least now I can start implementing some QOL tweaks overtime with the game build to get it to a state that I like for the game :3!!

Movement Testing Rework: With all the changes I've done over the months it was time to finally build up a new movement testing level. Designed to help me test out a bunch of the various mechanics in the game, I'll slowly be building it out as new stuff gets added in the future! As of now, it fully showcases what I've build up with the climbing system, ladders, and crawlspaces!

Skybox: One of the little side things I also worked on for the game was the addition of a skybox to my testing levels! Pretty much got it roughed in for now, but it was interesting learning how to make a panoramic image that could get imported to Unreal to make this thing!

Chaff Sower Mechanics: One of the first gadgets I'm going to be designing in game will be a sort of improvised chaff grenade that Bod can use. Going to be a lot of fun building this guy up and I really hope I can add a lot of depth into what you can use it for in game :3!!

So what comes next? Going to be spending all of May doing some major cleanup on everything I've done in the game so far. As I've learned how to do things with Unreal over the last year, I've started accumulating small bugs and issues from a lot of the earlier unreal tutorials I followed. Spending a bit of time to clean them all up is going to help a ton for the overall gameplay! Outside of that, lots of animation cleanup for a few of the old stragglers would be nice next month. Finally I'm planning on also adding in some actual levels! Things that will be closer to the actual gameplay I'm looking for! Going to be a lot of work, but I'm planning on creating another test build version that folks in here can actually sink their teeth into X3!!!