Hello Hello! Week 2 is here?? (OAO )

So I figured I'd get this outta the way ASAP so I can start working on some assets today. I'm essentially here to recap what went on during the semi-hiatus of this log. Figured I'd just drop day-by day bullet points of the most substantial things... Alright, now where'd I leave off....

[!] LONG POST AHEAD {!]

Recap

Day 5: I'll briefly cover this day, since I did post something...

• Started the inventory tut early and breezed thru it. (Sans a couple weird errors. One of which was likely a bug...)
• I apparently woke up late after that. Just for dumb reasons. I was kinda sore, but I finished the tut and added a 'dialogue' box feature. Not much of a system, but it did enough for what I knew lol.
• Spent a lot of time with UE4 and mental lag btw. And apps lagging my start bar cuz they need updates. (pls go awei)
• All that stuff is in the video from my last post.
• Announced dev-log hiatus.
  

Day 6: Worked till 6AM the next day oops. I was spacing out pretty hard that day.

• I spent a lot of time around 4AM this morning (again) rearranging my to-do list and clearing up this notebook. Partially b/c I didn't make a log for Day 5 yet, so there's stuff hanging around.
• Quickly tried out AI tut to see how it works. I know I could use it to handle dialogue, I'd just have to figure out a sys… I practically unscheduled that day so.... that's off the list.
• I broke something in the tut anyway. I seriously break everything in the top-down template.
• Reopened my project to see most of the folders I put in there yesterday went missing??
• Discovered I needed a specific class for HUDs.
• Material editor is extremely slow on my computer....... tried copying the cursor decal from topdown example, and it was just... lag lag lag. My laptop is old and slow and uses integrated graphics, but here I am -- trying to build something in 3D. Like a madman.

Day 7: Spent too long trying to reinstall antivirus that afternoon and suffered a severe headache the rest of the day.

• Solved a couple issues with implementing 'collection' game mechanic but my headache got worse so I tried to rest.
• Got up after a couple hours to solved more issues. Headache came back by the end of the day.
• Scaled project down to go for a more 'toy' like experience. Something like the Zen demo… maybe with comedic relief.
  • I want to stay on schedule to meet primary goal (finish something) and wanted adequate time to work on models.
  • The 'collection' sys I was working on was taking too long to get it to work how I want, and rushing to stick to schedule isn't helping. So.. you won't be collecting little sprite friends, but they'll still be around.

Day 8: Wanted to post a playable, but I woke up late again.

• Cloned the project to revise everything... I was lucky it crashed after everything was said and done lol. I briefly revised the level flow. (on paper.)
• Camera teleport/vantage points work! It's also a decent workaround to the editor being slow to register when I click a camera.
• Sadly all of that took me like... 4 or 5 hours. Not much was done. This is why I'm cutting things out lmao. I'm gonna quickly rewrite how this level will flow, then layout the level as planned.
• Prepared "locked" actor class. (objects you click to change its state and 'unlock' something in the level. Like the pillars. Or the flowers, not that they unlock anything.)
• Added more functionality to the UI: you can now close the game from menu and close the dialogue box  \o/
• Spent 2+ hours trying to get set up a sort of level event... managed to get an array to check when all 'locked' actors were 'unlocked', then play an animated sequence.
• No church Sunday, so I stayed up late to build something playable.
  
  • It's built, I just didn't upload here yesterday: [download from dropbox]
  • Don't expect anything awesome. It's really ugly and full of default placeholder mess.

Yesterday, Day 9: I already posted the playable ↑ A lot of the stuff I wrote up there was actually done in the wee hours of this day, but whatever lol

• Spawning stuff works. Yahoo. They even stop spawning after a set maximum. \o\  /o/
• It also doesn't work. The time I have to wait for that array I made to check the locked items got longer.
• My editor is also slowing down a lot orz
• "Maybe we'll spawn things, but differently. Maybe they gotta be attached to the ground or an object . Maybe I'll just scrap them altogether because they're stressing me out." We're officially building a toy.
• Called it a day there. Trying to avoid winding up with a headache like Day 7's  again.

Task List

Brain Dump

Thoughts/Comments:

• There's a playable. Linked above. It's ugly and horrible but here it is again. Sorry it's only Win x64 right now.
• I apparently don't know enough about Blueprints lol
• Setting things up to be as reusable as they are customizable is a life saver!! (Next to 'to-do lists.') I build a template with some custom features exposed, then throw it where something like it should be in the level. Later, I can come back with custom pieces. I believe this is an aspect of modular design, right? Or something like it.
• We're not doing the next game jam alone now that I've gotten my feet wet. I think I've proven to myself I can stick to this thing, despite all the doubtful thoughts in the back of my head lowkey wondering if "game dez is really my thing." Last time I didn't like something cuz I was bad at it, it suddenly became my fave when I figured it out. (*cough* art *cough* 3D modeling *coughcough*)
• Realized I forgot to talk about what I was most proud of in my Recaps. I thought being able to spawn stuff was a cool thing I did, even if it was imperfect and essentially broke everything else.
• I'm hoping spending more time outside the editor this week will restore a bit of my sanity.

I almost played thru a whole playlist of 766 songs but here's a small handful of em:

Oh, another gif from day 8: