This week during the hurricane I worked on finally adding my first new feature in C++, the extraction helicopter, where once the player wins the game as you can see in the videos upper right hand corner where they've killed 100 mutants, they're able to call in the extraction helicopter by throwing a support ability grenade. This felt like it was a good next step in stretching my legs with C++ where I've created features similar to the helicopter before, like the strike jet, but not in C++. That way I already had a gameplan and generally knew the pitfalls, so I could focus on the difficulty of working in C++ over blueprints without the excessive debugging that comes with making something new. As you can see the feature is nowhere near complete, but the general pieces are there: The player wins, they throw the support ability, and the helicopter flies in.

Despite setting myself up for success, the process of getting to this point was still fraught, as I had to spend most of my time working to find ways of making the C++ interface with our primarily Blueprint project, and underscored that this process of working in a hybrid C++ Blueprint environment is still very new to me, and in no small part uncomfortable. 

I wish I had more to show so far, but with the frustration I've faced dealing with this new skill set, along with my built up tiredness of going nonstop for over a month now I've recognized that to move forward I need to be okay with where I am. For the most part I've accepted that things will be moving slower than they were in Blueprints for the foreseeable future, but I have no doubts my own emotions will rear their ugly heads again before this project is out with frustration over this exact process again. For now, all I can do is have patience with myself, continue to support my teammates, and be okay that my own work will be moving at a slower pace.