Proving Grounds

Devlog

• Dynamic Spline Creation - Sprint 7
  July 23, 2024 by NullNotZero#spline, #pathfind, #AI

  Author: Tyler Sessler The goal was simple- after a charge attack, I wanted my enemy to loop back towards the player on a smooth curve. There are a few requirements to this task: 1. The enemy should en... Continue reading
• Boss Mechanics
  July 20, 2024 by NullNotZero

  Author: Joseph W Our goal with boss fights is to break away from the simple design that we see in the rest of the game, and more specifically in the horde survival genre. Taking a page out of games li... Continue reading

  
• Creating AI Concepts - Sprint 6
  July 20, 2024 by NullNotZero

  Author: Tyler Sessler Artificial intelligence, 'AI', is the concept of creating sequences of events that mirror that of a brain's thought process. When creating AI, you will often have an end goal in... Continue reading

  
• Projectile Offset Hit Detection - Sprint 5
  July 13, 2024 by NullNotZero

  Author: Tyler Sessler Enemy projectiles are relatively simple at its core- spawn an actor with collision, update the direction, and check for overlaps. Most of the time when finding it's spawn locatio... Continue reading

  
• Area of Effects
  July 13, 2024 by NullNotZero

  Author - Joseph W. Taking inspiration from MMORPG's like FF14 & WoW we wanted to add in a system that would allow us to create skill-based mechanics that were more than just "There is a projectile bei... Continue reading

  
• Better Aiming
  July 07, 2024 by NullNotZero

  Author - Joseph W. Through our development process we have tried a few methods of aiming for the abilities but none of them felt how we wanted them to until we settled on aiming toward the mouse curso... Continue reading

  
• Creating Levels
  June 28, 2024 by NullNotZero

  Author: Joshua Luvene Posted on 06/27/2024 The game only had one level, so you would start the game, load into the singular level, kill the enemies, then exit the game. This makes for a very un-intera... Continue reading

  
• Animation and Valhalla Level
  June 28, 2024 by NullNotZero

  Author: Joshua Luvene Posted on 06/21/2024 We did not have a level created for the project, which is an integral part of the game being played. Without the level, players would be on a blank map with... Continue reading

  
• Buffs/Debuffs & DoTs/HoTs
  June 28, 2024 by NullNotZero

  In order to implement over time affects and lasting buffs/debuffs we modified our health component to keep track of the base value relevant to the player, alongside the current value. For things like... Continue reading
• Retargeting for Animation - Sprint 3
  June 27, 2024 by NullNotZero

  Author: Tyler Sessler Each skeleton has a set of unique bone structures, so unless we get a universal template, we will have to modify imported skeletons. Art developers will often prefer the A-Pose w... Continue reading

  
• Enemy Spawning Methods - Sprint 2
  June 22, 2024 by NullNotZero

  Author: Tyler Sessler Playing the logic for an enemy spawner has its advantages in a few locations. After thinking it out, I came up with three places- a component attached to the player, an actor wit... Continue reading

  
• Upgrade System
  June 22, 2024 by NullNotZero

  Author: Joseph W The upgrade system in Proving Grounds is intended to have multiple behind the scenes modifiers, for instance luck affecting the rarity of upgrades that appear upon leveling up. Unlike... Continue reading
• Audio Detailing - Sprint 1
  June 14, 2024 by NullNotZero#Sprint One

  Author: Tyler Sessler Deciding where to place music functionality was a simple yet tricky task. Music plays through any point of the game- menus, loading screens, boss battles, and must be able to cha... Continue reading

  
• Conal AoE abilities
  June 14, 2024 by NullNotZero

  Author: Joseph W Posted on 6/14/2024 Unreal has many capabilities to fetch a list of actors that are within a designated area, though specifically for fetching enemies within a cone there is no built... Continue reading

  
• Problem with Asset Attachment
  June 14, 2024 by NullNotZero

  Author: Joshua Luvene Posted on 06/14/2024 The player had the weapon attached to the character mesh, but it was not positioned in the hand of the character. In game this would make it more difficult t... Continue reading