Posted September 26, 2025 by nomadochi
#dev log
Problem: We can't see what we are doing!
I spent so much time making sure that it was easy for me as the developer to see while, testing, and iterating, that I completely forgot about the fact that it would all be stripped away in the build version. I came to this realization after our last build, and have been trying to implement some additional cues to make it more clear what exactly is going on for the player.
Old Build in editor: While developing and testing, this worked perfectly. Not only was it clear when I was playtesting what would go where, but also while developing, it gave me visual cues for improvements/changes, as well as just a guide when debugging aspects of the build system.
Old Build in .exe: Once we got the full build running I felt really stupid for not seeing that so much visual feedback was missing.
Solution: Think INSIDE the box
While trying to give more cues about what was happening I decided to look through some of the assets that we had pulled into the project. The tower assets that we decided on using came with a bunch of different textures and materials that we could use. I found one material that was a sort of holographic blue that was perfect for our sort of build representation.
I began to implement this material for the towers and buildings, and gave them a period of time required to be fully built. While still "under construction" , the structures showed the blue outline, and once fully built, they returned to their true materials. I had it all implemented too, but once I was getting ready to commit I realized that Unreal had kicked me out of revision control and that I was working on files that had already been checked out by others developers. I ended up reverting the work not only because I didn't have the files checked out, but also because I realized that this change in appearance to the buildings, while very helpful and more visually appealing, it was not as important as making it clear where the buildings could even be placed.
I decided to take this realization to heart and to begin focusing on showing the parts of the grid that can be placed on and those that cannot. I created a small class to represent the tiles on the grid. I gave this a simple cube mesh along with the holographic material. Now whenever the player enters build mode, top down or first person, they can see the surrounding tiles of where they would be placing the object. It currently is all in a single color, but I plan to have it change colors based on if something can be placed or not.
BLUE = Basic preview color for tiles
Green = Good Placement Location
RED = Bad Placement Location
Newest Build .exe: Our newest build includes, a first person and top down build preview of the surrounding tiles! Currently all blue but, the tile with the building to place will in the future, change colors based on if it can and cannot be placed.
First Person Building:
Top Down Building:
Building in Both Modes:
Resolution: Constantly think like the player
This build is definitely an improvement when it comes to feedback but there is definitely more room for clearer more responsive feedback. It is a really good start to including visual feedback in the build and I am pretty happy with the outcome so far. It will need some tweaking and refinement as we progress in mechanics and cleaning up, but as mentioned, these additional materials will be used to show a different build "status" and I am sure that I will find more ways to improve upon it as we go. I have learned that I need to be much more cognizant of how the player will see things rather than just leaning on my own understanding of the concepts and mechanics as a developer.