If you have read my previous blog called 'Magical System', you will have noticed how we have used a crystal menu to allow the player to select what magical power they would like. However, this wasn't our original idea as we had thought of an Omnitrix where the player would be able to turn a dial shape watch on their hand to select what magical spell they would like.
*Concept by Luke Shingleton*
After many team discussions, this idea became less fundable as we saw more solutions needed to be fixed if this was going to be added. For instance,
having to have a system to check to see if the player was right or left-handed;
what happens if the player is in an intense combat situation and wants to change magic? Will they need to drop their sword? If so, what combat benefits would they gain from this?
As much as we all loved this idea, you can quickly see why we decided as a team to change how this system worked and in fact, this was for the best.
*Concept by Luke Shingleton*
We all wanted to lean more towards this idea of magical crystals as it helped enforce the player's magical background story. With this idea, our asset developer Karl Redfern could sketch up various ideas for the hand asset and how it would include the crystals. After Karl presented this idea to the team, we all immediately fell in love with the hand on the far right as it gave the player an adventure atheistic with the straps around the hand and the crystals.
*Concept by Karl Redfern*
Nevertheless, it was my job to bring this concept to life, and that's precisely what I tried to do. I started by having the crystals in the world and allowing the player to walk over and pick them up.
I then wanted to try and get the core of our inventory working, and this would include having a crystal that you pick up in would and then add to the player's inventory when they would open their inventory. This should allow the player to grab one of the crystals and crush it, activating their magic that I have talked about in the 'Magical System' blog pots.
With this mechanic being rarely unique to our game, I struggled to find references and courses on how to go about setting this up, which meant an extreme amount of trial and error, resulting in developing time being wasted. However, when I discussed this issue with the team, they were able to re-insure me that the time to get this mechanic right was worth the extra development time.
Like the magical system, I found that these crystals would be referenced in the world and the inventory. I would take the same approach with data tables for the magical system. I simple started by creating a structure that held eight of the core variables;
Crystals - that actor blueprint
Crystal Parent - the parent of all the crystals being used
Type - the type of magic that the crystal activates
Unlocked - whether the player has unlocked the crystal or not
Magical Index - the magical index for each crystal relating to its magic (can be found in the magic data table)
Colour - the colours of the crystals (was used before we had textures)
CoolDown? - if the crystal has no mana left, it should start to cool down
I needed a way for the player to activate their magic, and I thought the most effective way to carry this out was to have a custom event on the player as I wanted to use the back trigger to crush the crystals as it was the most common gesture to recreate a closed fist.
In the video below, you should hopefully see how I was able to bring this vision to life a wee bit better and how the magic was now activated once the crystal had been crushed by the player giving us that core mechanic to allow the player to switch between different magical types for a more diverse combat system.
However, after getting feedback from the tutors and peers, we still felt that the crystal inventory system lacked a player feel. Our other programmer/ game designer Holly Boyle picked up the project to add an open and close animation to the inventory. Immediately, you could tell this made a significant impact on players feel as it gave the player the power to summon their crystals when they needed them.
*Holly Boyle produced content in the video*
However, since this was a new system we needed to add to have this animation open and close, they lost their crush and magical activation. Still, after a day of polishing and making more dynamic functions, we could have this system back up and running in no time.
Out of house assets used
These assets were only used for visual effects.
Magic Circle Creator - The blueprint is this pack was used for the circle effect on the inventory menu with the symbols that rotate, we did not script it. Blueprint name: "BP_MagicCircleCreatorADV" - we did not script this blueprint
Comments